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.
Cybersecurity Supply Chain Risk Management (C-SCRM) deals with more than protecting an organization from cyber-attacks on third parties. It also addresses third parties to those third parties (known as “fourth parties”). Further still, a vendor to your vendor’s vendor is a fifth party, then a sixth party, etc. Your SCRM should involve knowledge of how far, complex and even convoluted your supply chain is. Then measure this complexity with your risk appetite.
A critical vulnerability in Instagram’s Android and iOS apps could have allowed remote attackers to run malicious code, snoop on unsuspecting users, and hijack control of smartphone cameras and microphones. The security hole, which has been patched by Instagram owner Facebook, could be exploited by a malicious hacker simply sending their intended victim a boobytrapped malicious image file via SMS, WhatsApp, email or any other messaging service.
Earlier this month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) published a joint report entitled “Cyber Planning Response and Recovery Study” (CYPRES) in partnership with the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and eight of its Regional Entities (REs) in order to review the methods for responding to a cybersecurity event.
If you had asked 10 year old Tyler what he wanted to be when he grew up, the answer would have been a very enthusiastic, “Teacher!” Over time, however, that desire lessened as my fascination with technology grew. I ultimately ended up attending Fanshawe College to study Computer Systems Technology. I never fully abandoned that desire to teach, though. For a period of time in high school and college, I wrote tutorials for a major online security forum.
Cyber-attacks against maritime and shipping organizations are only increasing. Notwithstanding the IMO’s requirement for organizations in this sector to achieve cyber resilience by 2021, more and more entities are being crippled by malicious attacks.
For many organizations, security flows from the top down. That’s a problem when executives don’t emphasize security as much as they should. Cisco learned as much in its CISO Benchmark Study “Securing What’s Now and What’s Next20 Cybersecurity Considerations for 2020.” Here are just some of the findings from Cisco’s study: The reason for these findings wasn’t immediately apparent from Cisco’s study.
By now, we know a lot about secure configuration management (SCM). We know the way it works, the integral processes of which it consists, the areas of your IT infrastructure that it can help secure as well as the different types of best practice frameworks and regulatory compliance standards with which it can help you to maintain compliance. All we’re missing is how to procure and deploy an effective SCM solution.
During the late 1990s, security professionals were using information assurance tools in concert with vulnerability scanners to detect and remove vulnerabilities from the systems for which they are responsible. There’s just one problem – each security vendor has its own database with little to no crossover.
In a fast-changing world, stopping to assess your success isn’t really an option anymore. It is increasingly important that security teams are constantly proving their worth and tracking their successes with a view to constantly improving so as to not to get caught behind the times and therefore exposed.
Security culture matters to executives, but these individuals are struggling to implement it. In a November 2019 study commissioned by KnowBe4, 94% of individuals with managerial duties or higher in security or risk management said that security culture was important for their organization’s success.
The 2020 Cost of Data Breach report from IBM and the Ponemon is out. It provides a detailed analysis of causes, costs and controls that appeared in their sampling of data breaches. The report is full of data, and the website allows you to interact with its information so that you can do your own analysis and/or dig into aspects relevant to you and your industry.
A joint cybersecurity advisory released on September 1st detailed technical methods for uncovering and responding to malicious activity including best practice mitigations and common missteps. A collaborative effort, this advisory (coded AA20-245A) is the product of research from the cybersecurity organizations of five nations.
Security configuration management (SCM) can help organizations do much more than just harden their attack surfaces against intrusions. This fundamental control also has the ability to make your audits flow more smoothly. Indeed, it allows organizations to pull reports from any point in time and demonstrate how their configuration changes and alignments help to support their compliance efforts.
A phishing attack used real-time validation against an organization’s Active Directory in order to steal users’ Office 365 credentials. According to Armorblox, the phishing attack targeted an executive working at an American brand that was named one of the world’s Top 50 most innovative companies for 2019 on a Friday evening.
European cryptocurrency exchange platform Eterbase has announced that it has suffered a security breach which saw malicious hackers access its network and steal funds worth US $5.4 million. In a message posted on Telegram, the Slovakian cryptocurrency exchange listed the six hot wallets plundered by cybercriminals for their Ether, Tezos, Bitcoin, ALGO, Ripple, and TRON riches.
Welcome to the second part of this two-part blog series for administrators who are new to the Chromebook enterprise system. In the previous blog, we discussed settings that are applicable to users and applications. In this blog, we will further explore the Chrome enterprise admin panel as we look into settings that pertain to privacy and physical devices. Device Settings Device settings apply to the physical Chromebook device. They are enforced no matter which user is logged in.
So far, there has not been a perfect solution to ridding the world of software and hardware weaknesses. Keeping up-to-date with which weaknesses have are most common and impactful can be a daunting task. Thankfully, a list has been made to do just that the Common Weakness Enumeration Top 25 (CWE).
Recently, both Apple and Google released new updates for iPhone and Android devices. One feature that was added was “Covid-19 Exposure Logging.” The feature is off (for now), and according to the text that accompanies the app, when turned on, it is set to communicate via Bluetooth to other devices.
Data is only as good as what you are able to do with it. Not only does the cybersecurity universe collect data, but individual enterprises also collect cybersecurity data from within their organization as well as from external sources in order to add to more context and relevance. All data needs to be analyzed in order to create actionable insights.
A report revealed that scammers requested funds in the form of gift cards in two-thirds of business email compromise (BEC) attacks. For a phishing trends report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), APWG member Agari examined thousands of BEC attacks that occurred in the second half of 2020. It found that 66% of them involved gift cards. By contrast, direct bank transfers factored in just 18% of attacks, followed close behind by payroll diversions at 16%.
Many organizations, from enterprises to small businesses and schools, are focusing efforts on distance working and learning. One significant hurdle for those who are suddenly tasked with supporting remote users is the question of how to manage a fleet of new endpoints. One appealing solution for managing all these new remote users is to use Google Chromebooks.
All of us know what a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) does from afar. A CISO upholds the organization’s overall security by overseeing the operations of the IS practice, the IT security department and related staff. In this capacity, those who become a CISO attain the highest paying job in information security, as it carries the associated responsibility of enabling business in a fast-evolving threat landscape. But is there more to this job than that description is letting on?
