In a previous blog, I discussed securing AWS management configurations by combating six common threats with a focus on using both the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Amazon Web Services Foundations benchmark policy along with general security best practices.

With all the Russian election hacking scandals in the news during and after the 2016 Presidential election, curiosity consumed me to architect and run an experiment to see if I could monitor changes in the threat landscape in either Moscow, Russia or Washington D.C. during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections.

With the evolution of technology comes new approaches to solving problems. Sometimes a new approach fixes the problem; sometimes it creates new ones. The good thing is as folks who work in fast-paced, high-tech environment, we information security professionals are great at quickly analyzing the new technologies and applying them to our daily lives. …Or so we thought!

So how do you marshal the resources that you need to implement effective supply chain security? Borrowing from the same motivation techniques that we use to keep ourselves going to the gym, I recommend a combination of sex appeal (highlighting attractive benefits), pain avoidance (highlighting the painful risks) and recruiting allies (finding support within and outside of your organization).

Anyone who has a presence on the internet is likely to be suffering from breach fatigue. Data leaks are reported in the headlines on a daily basis, and users can feel so overwhelmed by the sheer number of breaches that they feel there’s little they can do to keep ahead of hackers.

Today’s increasingly connected world, with access to mobile devices and cloud scale computing, is leading to disruption in business models and processes. To succeed, you have no option but to continuously deliver new value to customers at the increasing speed that they demand.

Technology has advanced to a state where clients now expect a constant stream of updates for their software and applications. To fulfill this demand, developers commonly turn to what’s known as a CI/CD pipeline. As noted by Synopsys, this practice embraces two important software development concepts of today’s streamlined world.

Most people do not regard their cybersecurity and privacy documentation as a proactive security measure. On the contrary, many oftentimes view documentation as a passive effort that offers little protection to a company, generally an afterthought that must be addressed to appease compliance efforts.

A few weeks ago, I woke up one morning to discover that Android had 34 software updates waiting for me. This was followed by my laptop wanting to reboot after installing the latest patches from Microsoft; my tablet needing a reboot after its latest firmware update; and my server screaming for me to put “yum” into action to install the latest patches available from Red Hat – all before 10:00 am in the morning!

In the last few years, organizations have been subject to extortion through ransomware. Now, hackers are bypassing the nasty business of trying to get people to give them cryptocurrency to simply hijacking your processor to mine for cryptocurrency. As a result, the methods employed are growing in sophistication and creativity, including using internet memes to compromise systems.