Like their larger counterparts, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are moving swiftly to migrate IT workloads to the cloud, hoping to slash operating costs, eliminate technical debt, and accelerate digital transformation projects. However, cloud migration security risks are often poorly understood at the outset or overlooked entirely.

While studying for my master's degree in cyber security, I co-authored a paper regarding the rollout of IoT devices and the security considerations that businesses need to address to ensure these devices are secure. The paper underscored how a large majority of IoT devices used vulnerable components and did not follow basic secure programming principles.

Earlier this month, the United Nations (U.N.) released its latest Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR2022). For those of us who assess risk for a living, it is a sobering read.

Kroll has recently observed a new malware strain called “Bumblebee” operating as a loader, delivered via phishing email, in order to deploy additional payloads for use in ransomware operations. The malware takes its name from the unique user-agent (since changed), which it used to connect to command and control (C2) servers. It was first reported by Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) in March 2022, with the first sample submitted to VirusTotal on March 1.

Kroll’s incident responders have seen threat actor groups becoming increasingly sophisticated and elusive in the tactics, techniques and procedures they employ to steal payment card data. One common method is to “scrape” the Track 1 or Track 2 data stored on the card’s magnetic stripe, which provides the cardholder account and personal information criminals need to make fraudulent “card-not-present” (CNP) transactions.