Like many things in life, hackers are victims (and I use the word loosely) of stereotyping. You won’t find much stock imagery depicting hackers that doesn’t involve a hoodie, a dimly-lit room and several monitors full of scrolling binary text. And whilst that’s definitely sometimes true, it also makes several assumptions about hackers in general, which is at best misleading and at worst leaves you wide open to attack.

A selection of this week’s more interesting vulnerability disclosures and cyber security news. Some big news items this week, namely further details on the ransomware campaign claiming Norsk last week spreading to other targets. One bit of good news is that there appears to be a flaw in the code and a simple Windows Shortcut can stop it from working.

One of the main issues I find across the information security industry is that we constantly need to justify our existence. Organizations have slowly realized they need to spend on IT to enable their businesses. Information security, on the other hand, is the team that is constantly preventing the business from freely doing as they please. IT is seen as a driver of success, and security can be, too. The security team just needs to learn how to enable the business.

Last year, as in years prior, was a year full of cyber-attacks. But what was interesting was the trend of small and medium businesses being targeted more often. Generally, those types of businesses have either rested in the false impression that they’re not a big enough target or didn’t have plentiful valuable information hackers are seeking. The reality is the opposite and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Since Active Directory is the foundation of all Windows networks, monitoring Active Directory needs to be part of any comprehensive security strategy. Up to version 3.5, EventSentry utilized Windows auditing and the security event log to provide reports on: User Account Changes, Group Changes and Computer Account Changes.

While most companies attempt to secure their data, many continue to fail their IT audits. When trying to determine whether your risk management program effectively mitigates risks, you need to find metrics that support your ability to comply with internal policies as well as external industry standards and regulatory requirements.