Looking back at the past year, there have been some downright spooky trends facing cyber security professionals. Ransomware attacks have skyrocketed, impacting organizations from healthcare to critical infrastructure to the suppliers of MSP suppliers and everyone in between. APT crews and criminal gangs have taken advantage of the pandemic that pushed everyone to remote work, making 2020/2021 the year that bad cybersecurity preparedness came home to roost.

The common theme across ransomware, insider threats, and data theft is the exfiltration of data. While threat research labs usually publish the process steps of ransomware encryption, keys, and disk clean-up, the parts about accessing the data and exfiltration are often left out. Also, one security solution does not solve the problem itself, making partner integrations vital to the success of security solution stacks.

Proper implementation of a user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) tool can solve lots of cybersecurity challenges by detecting well-hidden and slowly executed attacks, automating the analysis of alerts and logs, and speeding up incident investigation. It can even help you improve employee productivity. But implementing a UEBA solution also requires a lot of time and effort along with a clear understanding of how you are going to use it.

The number of data breaches has increased every year for more than a decade. Each incident costs companies time, money and resources to repair while inflicting often-irreparable damage to their brand reputation and customer loyalty. This reality only became more apparent during the recent pandemic as threat actors capitalized on the moment’s disruption and uncertainty to wreak havoc on our digital environments. In 2021, the number of data breaches is already on pace to reach a new record high.

This October, as businesses emerge from the pandemic, many are making strategic decisions about their long-term work arrangements. While there is a substantial debate about remaining remote or bringing people back to the office, many companies are choosing to meet in the middle, embracing a hybrid work arrangement that allows people to work both on-site and remotely.

Protecting your sensitive data and other critical assets requires establishing secure access to them in the first place. Lots of organizations do this by protecting their remote servers and corporate systems with SSH keys. However, even SSH keys can be compromised and abused by malicious actors. In this article, we talk about SSH keys and their role in secure authentication processes as well as about the benefits of effective SSH key management.

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which means that companies are once again surveying the threat landscape. They can’t like what they see. By July 2021, threat actors attempted more than 304 million ransomware attacks, surpassing the 2020 total just halfway through the year. At the same time, the number of phishing scams is soaring, and the cost of a data breach is more expensive than ever before, reaching $4.24 million, according to the most recent industry study.

Already a significant concern before 2021, this year has revitalized cybersecurity as a top priority for every organization. Highly consequential cybersecurity incidents at companies like Colonial Pipeline, Kaseya, and T-Mobile brought front-page coverage to the issue, while cybersecurity attacks on small and medium-sized businesses soared, spreading the reach of threat actors.