On August 15, the Clop ransomware group announced on their leak website the breach of South Staffordshire Water, a privately owned UK water supply company. This attack is yet another example of ransomware gangs targeting critical infrastructure expecting to receive a big payout, which is reminiscent of hundreds of previous incidents, including the well-known Colonial Pipeline and JBS attacks.

A port can be defined as a communication channel between two devices in computer networking. So, are there any security risks connected to them? An unwanted open port can be unsafe for your network. Open ports can provide threat actors access to your information technology (IT) environment if not sufficiently protected or configured correctly. Case in point: in 2017, cybercriminals exploited port 445 to spread WannaCry ransomware.

Cybersecurity is becoming more of a common term in today’s industry. It is being passed around executive meetings along with financial information and projected marketing strategies. Within the cybersecurity lexicon, there are some attack methods that are repeated enough to become part of a “common tongue”. These terms are infrastructure agnostic; it does not really matter the infrastructure type you have.

A web application firewall is a network security solution for commercial use that protects servers from potential cyber attacks that can exploit a web application’s vulnerabilities.

As businesses and organizations scale and grow, their network infrastructure can also grow increasingly large and complex. Using a flat network structure (all devices connected on one server) makes it easier for cybercriminals to roam freely and unimpeded in the system in the event of a successful cyber attack. Implementing network segmentation best practices can limit the scope of an attack, prevent malware from spreading, and disrupt lateral movements across your IT ecosystem.

For decades, IT and operational technology/industrial control systems (OT/ICS) were seen as separate entities within organizations. In keeping with practices first defined by the Purdue Enterprise Reference Architecture, the two systems were entirely air gapped to never impact one another. While this separation kept OT networks more protected, it is no longer practical.