In today's financial landscape, businesses are interconnected, and outsourcing and partnerships are necessary—meaning managing risks associated with third-party vendors is pivotal. Whether you're a small community bank or a multinational financial conglomerate, mastering third-party risk management is vital to safeguarding your institution against the vulnerabilities that third parties can introduce.

QR code phishing, most commonly referred to as “quishing,” is a type of phishing attack that tricks users into scanning QR codes to steal personal information such as login credentials or credit card numbers. When a user scans a QR code created for a quishing attack, they are taken to a malicious website that either downloads malware on their phone or asks for their personal information.

This week’s data breaches contained significant impact figures from around the world. Malware on a vendor’s computer inadvertently breached Japan’s Line Messenger. New York’s East River Medical Imaging suffered the loss of employee and patient record information. The Pan-American Life Insurance Group faces a 105k record data breach through MOVEit.

Cybersecurity breaches are at epidemic proportions; in the last two years, cybercriminals have stolen over 2.6 billion consumer records from thousands of organizations. The breaches target more than individuals—they target data from healthcare networks, academic institutions, small businesses, and governments. The attacks come at a destructive cost. Where criminals use personal information for extortion, and the trust of the public is ever-decreasing.

The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) can help you navigate the constantly growing ocean of open source vulnerabilities. But it’s difficult to lend your trust and put the security of your organization and your customers into the hands of a system that you may know very little about. Let’s take a closer look at the CVSS to see what it’s all about.

CrowdStrike’s cloud security team discovered a new vulnerability (CVE-2023-29082) in Flexera’s FlexNet Inventory Agent. When exploited, an attacker can escape from a container and gain root access to the host. Exploitation of CVE-2023-29082 can allow an attacker to perform a variety of actions on objectives, including execution of malware and exfiltration of data.

Developing applications and working within the software supply chain requires hard skills such as coding and proficiency in programming languages. However, protecting the software supply chain also requires some softer skills and an openness to strategies and tools that will strengthen your security posture. In this two-part series, we will discuss these considerations and how they support a holistic approach to application security and software supply chain security.

Top tips is a weekly column where we highlight what’s trending in the tech world today and list out ways to explore these trends. This week, we’ll discuss a few hacks to keep your instant messaging secure. We all exchange texts everyday. It has easily become the most used mode of communication in the last decade. But, very few of us think about the security aspects of instant messaging. It’s time to change our mindsets.

Are you aware of the increasing threat of SQL injection vulnerabilities?In Q4 2022, AppTrana stopped 1,111,548 of these attacks. With over a million SQL injection attacks blocked in just three months, it’s clear that web applications are under siege. How to stay ahead of the game and protect your business now? Here is a guide to understanding this OWASP top 10 vulnerability and how to prevent SQL injection attacks.