In today's digital landscape, cyber attacks are an ever-present threat, and they all ultimately target one thing: data. For most organizations, the challenge lies not only in protecting this data but also in understanding the full scope of what they have. Many organizations struggle to identify how much sensitive data they possess, where it resides, and who has access to it.

On September 11, 2024, GitLab released patches for a critical vulnerability affecting various versions of GitLab CE/EE, identified as CVE-2024-6678. This flaw allows a remote attacker to trigger a pipeline as an arbitrary user under specific conditions. A GitLab pipeline is a collection of automated processes that run in stages to build, test, and deploy code.

As organizations increasingly integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into their operations, the nature of data security is undergoing significant transformation. With AI’s ability to process vast amounts of data quickly, the risk of data breaches and leaks has grown exponentially. In this context, Data Loss Prevention (DLP) has (re)emerged as a critical component for IT professionals seeking to safeguard sensitive information.

In 2023, nearly 60% of incidents investigated by Arctic Wolf Incident Response involved a vulnerability that was two — or more — years old. That means the organization had 24-plus months to find and remediate the vulnerability before threat actors took advantage. Why do vulnerabilities remain persistent? There’s a number of reasons, not the least of which is that more of them pop up each day, creating a mountain of vulnerabilities that feels too difficult to summit for most businesses.