Do you have what it takes to become a cybersecurity expert? We interviewed 3 security professionals to find out how they got their start and what advice they would give to someone starting their career in cybersecurity. With security threats increasing, much of business continuity has come to rely on data security. In particular, engineering teams building cloud software rely on access to an ever-growing number of computing resources.
For many years, there was a wide misunderstanding that encrypting some data is equivalent to protecting that data. If it’s encrypted, so the thinking goes, nobody else could access it, and it is therefore safe. While it is critical to encrypt data at rest as well as in transit, the job of protecting data goes much deeper.
Although external cybersecurity attacks and malware make for sensational headlines, the biggest security threat most organizations face comes from trusted insiders with privileged access to sensitive data. Cybersecurity Insider’s 2020 Insider Threat Report reveals that 68% of organizations report that insider attacks are becoming more frequent and that they feel vulnerable to them.
Cloud-based business models such as infrastructure as a service and software as a service have balloon in popularity, gaining mainstream acceptance in recent years. Cloud providers benefit from superior economic models that scale while also reducing their development risk and complexity. However, with success comes attention, so it’s only logical that criminals have emulated these models.
For the newest instalment in our series of interviews asking leading technology specialists about their achievements in their field, we’ve welcomed Dan Izydorek, Founder of PC Miracles. Dan is a cybersecurity specialist who has recently spoken on Fox news on this subject.
Accenture has acknowledged that it was the victim of a ransomware attack on July 30 in what it described as a "security incident." As reported by Cyberscoop, the hackers (a gang known as LockBit) began leaking stolen data and threatened to release further compromised information. LockBit first emerged in 2019 and its ransomware cyberattacks primarily target large corporations, from which it hopes to extort large sums of money.
HTTP/3 is the third and upcoming major version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) used across the web.HTTP has been the main protocol on the internet since the 1990s, with the second release (HTTP/2) introduced in 2015 as a major update with many new features. Whilst request methods and status codes will remain the same, HTTP/3 makes a departure from its predecessors by not using the Transport Control Protocol (TCP) as the underlying transport layer.
Utility companies are increasingly being targeted by cybercriminals. Although the highest profile utility cyber attack in recent memory was the May 7 ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline that caused gas shortages on the East Coast, power companies of all kinds are popular with criminals for a reason: they can’t afford a shutdown and they have the money to pay a ransom.
The demand for highly qualified staff with the right skill sets along with hands on experience is not new news in cybersecurity. However, the difficulty of gaining experience prior to meeting the objectives for interviews for entry level jobs can be a tough hill to climb. Ample resources available online, including the ability to set up in-home labs, which helps.
Many CISOs I speak with across Europe tell me their cybersecurity teams rely on two, primary open-source platforms within their security operations (SecOps). The first is Malware Information Sharing Platform (MISP), that allows the storing and sharing of indicators of compromise (IoCs) with other MISP users. The second is TheHive, designed for security incident response (IR).
