Poor secrets management leads to data breaches that can result in compromised credentials, a damaged reputation and millions of dollars in mitigation costs, legal fees and lost revenue. Secrets are non-human privileged credentials that provide access to sensitive information, systems and services. Types of secrets include database passwords, SSH keys, API keys and encryption keys.
A security breach is when an incident occurs that results in unauthorized access to sensitive data, applications, networks or devices. Typically, when a security breach happens the intruder is able to bypass security measures that were put in place to keep them out. As a result of a security breach, a company or organization’s public image suffers, which can lead to the company losing money. The company or organization could also suffer legal consequences.
According to a recent Gartner study, the fast pace of change across technologies, organizational priorities, business opportunities and risks requires identity and access management architectures to be more flexible. As digital business relies on digital trust, security and identity are — more than ever — an essential foundation of an organization’s business ecosystem.
According to the latest IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average breach costs $4.35M per incident, climbing by 12.7% from 3.86 million USD in IBM’s 2020 report. This does not account for lost business opportunities and lingering reputational damage. A cybersecurity tabletop exercise could substantially reduce this amount simply by having a well-thought-out incident response plan and effectively exercising business continuity plans.
At the beginning of August, CREST partnered with OWASP to release the OWASP Verification Standard (OVS), which is designed to formalise and expand on OWASP’s existing work on application security and their own security standards, including their Top 10 Project. OWASP has existed since December 2001 and has been supporting penetration testers and developers alike ever since with tens of thousands of participants.
In our companion blog post, Vedere Labs analyzed the main ransomware trends we observed in the first half of 2022, including state-sponsored ransomware, new mainstream targets and evolving extortion techniques. Ransomware is the main threat targeting most organizations nowadays. However, three other notable cyberthreat trends also evolved during this period: Below we analyze each of these trends in more detail.
With business and technology becoming increasingly intertwined, organizations are being forced to rethink how they look at digital security. Once overlooked or viewed as a mere afterthought, today it has become a business-critical necessity. As a result, organizations across industry lines are racing to improve their security postures.
Data classification can feel like an overwhelming task, especially for organizations without a strong practice in place. As with any security approach, data classification is both crucial and tempting to avoid. Regardless of whether the value is recognized, there’s a chance that it gets pushed further and further down the priority list in favor of items that are easier to address.
As a direct result of COVID-19 burnout, the ongoing Great Resignation trend might be impacting healthcare more than any other industry. Research shows that healthcare has already lost an estimated 20% of its workforce over the past two years. This turnover is happening top-to-bottom throughout organizations. Doctors are switching between hospitals, administrative staff are leaving the industry, and technology teams are being lured away by higher paying jobs in other sectors.
