Tripwire Enterprise is a powerful tool. It provides customers insight into nearly every aspect of their systems and devices. From change management to configuration and compliance, Tripwire can provide “eyes on” across the network. Gathering that vast amount of data for analysis does not come without challenges. Customers have asked for better integration with their processes and third-party tools.

Qatar is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Finances Online, Global Finance Magazine and others consider it to be the wealthiest nation. This is because the country has a small population of under 3 million but relies on oil for the majority of its exports and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). These two factors helped to push the country’s GDP measured at purchasing power parity (PPP) to over 132,886, per Global Finance Magazine’s findings in August 2020.

Dealing with the aftermath of ransomware attacks is like Russian roulette. Submitting the ransom might seem like it’s the sole option for recovering locked data. But paying the ransom doesn’t mean that your organization will get its affected data back. Let’s not forget that ransomware also continues to evolve as a threat category.

Today, we released a Threat Definition Update bundle for our Tripwire Industrial Visibility solution to aid in the detection of Zerologon. Otherwise known as CVE-2020-1472, Zerologon made news in the summer of 2020 when it received a CVSSv3 score of 10—the most critical rating of severity. Zerologon is a vulnerability that affects the cryptographic authentication mechanism used by the Microsoft Windows Netlogon Remote Protocol (MS-NRPC), a core authentication component of Active Directory.

Lateral movement is one of the most consequential types of network activity for which organizations need to be on the lookout. After arriving at the network, the attacker keeps ongoing access by essentially stirring through the compromised environment and obtaining increased privileges (known as “escalation of privileges”) using various tools and techniques. Attackers then use those privileges to move deeper into a network in search of treasured data and other value-based assets.

“Doubt is an unpleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.” Whilst I claim no particular knowledge of the eighteenth-century philosopher Voltaire, the quote above (which I admit to randomly stumbling upon in a completely unrelated book) stuck in my mind as a fitting way to consider the shift from traditional, perimeter-focused ’network security’ thinking to that of ‘ZTA’ (Zero Trust Architecture.)

Victims of ransomware attacks could potentially receive civil penalties for making ransom payments to a growing list of threat actors. On October 1, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) revealed that it could choose to impose civil penalties on ransomware victims who make ransom payments to malicious actors whom it has designated under its cyber-related sanctions program.

For many companies it would be a nightmare to discover that they are the latest unwitting victim of a ransomware attack, capable of crippling computer systems and locking up data if a payment isn’t made to cybercriminals. There’s no magic wand that can make a ransomware attack simply disappear with no impact at all on an organisation, but you can lessen the problem by carefully following tried-and-trusted steps in the immediate aftermath of an attack.

I’ve spoken before about Zero Trust approaches to security, but for many of those starting on their journey, there isn’t an obvious place to start with the model. With this post, I wanted to share an example approach I’ve seen working that many organisations already have in place and can be easily rolled into a larger program of Zero Trust hardening: understanding your Shadow IT.