Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

The Metasploit Framework is a Ruby-based, open-source framework that is used by information security professionals and cybercriminals to find, exploit, and validate system vulnerabilities. The framework consists of various exploitation tools and penetration testing tools. Information security teams most commonly use Metasploit for penetration testing (or “ethical hacking”) to identify and remediate any existing vulnerabilities across an organization’s networks.

There are almost 165,000 known CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) listed in the NIST Database. In October of 2020, the NSA published a list of the 25 CVEs most likely to be exploited by Nation-State attackers in China; Checkpoint software found over 3 million attempts to penetrate networks or steal files using these known vulnerabilities.

Netlogon Service is a Microsoft Windows Server process used to validate or authenticate users and devices in a domain. It is used to confirm the user’s identity on any particular network that the user is trying to access. Netlogon is a process, not an application, therefore it is continuously running in the background. It can be stopped either manually or by some runtime error.

In Q1 of 2021, 4 in 10 people encountered an unsafe link while using their mobile devices – less than a year later, 5 in 10 people encountered threats in Q3 2021. This trend will only continue as text message, email and social media phishing scams surge.

The Australian government is looking to pass the Security Legislation Amendment (Critical Infrastructure) Bill 2020, an overhaul which is aimed to help Australian businesses fend off cyberattacks. The Bill expands the business sectors that were previously defined as critical infrastructure by adding, amongst others, Food and Grocery, Finance and Banking, Universities, Communications, Defense, Energy, and Transportation to the list.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) established rules for handling personal information in the EU. And with strict penalties for noncompliance, it puts the onus on businesses like yours to know where all their GDPR-related data is located and how it’s treated.

Back in 2008, Microsoft added a new technology to PowerShell and named it Desired State Configuration or DSC. In essence, DSC is the framework that delivers and gives the user tools to maintain configuration. Desired State Configuration allows you to define your environment’s aspired state with a simple declarative syntax that has been added into the PowerShell script. It is then assigned to each target server in your environment.

The risks of a data leak have never been higher. Over the last year, data breach costs rose from $3.86 million to $4.24 million, a record high. Data exfiltration, sophisticated hacker attacks, and even insider threats are forcing organizations across the board to take a more sophisticated, multi-layered approach to data security. Enter: data masking. Data masking is a simple technique that can help organizations continue to work productively while keeping sensitive data stored safely.

Social engineering is a form of security fraud that relies on psychological manipulation techniques to trick people into revealing sensitive information. In the previous two articles in this series, we discussed in depth what social engineering is, and highlighted a variety of both common and sophisticated social engineering attacks.

The complexity of cybersecurity threats has increased over the years. Additionally, the number of attack surfaces that can be used by cybercriminals has expanded phenomenally with the rise in remote and hybrid workplace models. With such a wide scope of possible cyberthreats, there’s no single solution that can counter them all.