In 2023, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 21,489 BEC complaints with adjusted losses over $2.9 billion USD, according to their 2023 Internet Crime Report. By way of comparison, ransomware, the cyber attack that grabs all the headlines and keeps IT and security teams up at night, accounted for only 2,825 complaints, with adjusted losses of less than $60 million USD.

Summer is a time for relaxation, travel, and spending quality moments with family and friends. However, it is also peak season for cybercriminals who exploit the vulnerabilities that arise during this period. Cyberattacks surge during the summer holiday season as businesses and individuals let their guard down. Many companies operate with reduced staff as employees take time off, leaving fewer eyes on critical systems and security measures.

Increasing phishing attacks are a constant threat to organizations, making it crucial for users to report suspicious emails. This practice not only helps in identifying and mitigating potential threats, but also plays a significant role in educating and creating awareness among employees. The importance of reporting suspected phishing emails cannot be overstated, as it acts as a last line of defense against cyber threats.

Over the years, several security defense architectures have merged into a single solution. Endpoint detection tools can perform sophisticated detections and correlations that used to require a Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS), Web Proxy, and SIEM. Application Firewalls often provide features like Proxy, antivirus, and NIDS, and now we have Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), which promises to be the next multi-tool security solution. Let’s give SASE a closer look.

To qualify for cybersecurity insurance, organizations must implement strong access controls, have an incident response plan, use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), provide employees with security training, regularly perform penetration tests and use encryption to protect sensitive data. Continue reading to learn more about the six cyber insurance requirements and how your organization can meet them.

Since April 2024, Arctic Wolf has been tracking an ongoing campaign by Black Basta ransomware group affiliates leveraging Microsoft’s Quick Assist for initial access. The Black Basta affiliates have been conducting vishing (voice phishing) attacks by impersonating IT or help desk personnel, claiming they need to fix an issue on the victim’s device. In other instances, the threat actors leverage an email bomb attack to flood the victim’s mailbox with emails from subscription services.

Logging was once just a best practice to help you understand what's happening inside your applications. Now, any security expert worth their salt will tell you that you can’t build a security plan without it. As a result, organizations have turned to specialized logging tools like Log4J to strengthen their application security. This move has proven highly effective, with cyberattack risks on businesses dropping from 44% in 2022 to 34% in 2023.

Cloud breaches continue to rise unabated as organizations adopt hybrid cloud strategies. Many organizations have tried to simply extend their preexisting on-premises security into the cloud, but the cloud is a fundamentally different environment for security. It’s faster, more complex, and more dynamic, with an ever-increasing attack surface. Striking first means adversaries have a head start by default, leaving organizations only a fraction of time to investigate and initiate a response.

Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux), initially known for its perceived complexity in configuration and maintenance, has evolved into an indispensable security architecture across most Linux distributions. It empowers administrators to finely control the actions permitted to individual users, processes, and system daemons, thereby bolstering defense against potential security breaches.

In a guest blog post, Aaron Jewitt, Principal Detection Engineer at Elastic, walks us through a Tines workflow he built to improve the efficiency of his team's automated alert triage processes. He recently shared how his InfoSec team uses Tines to automate alert triage over on Elastic's blog, which makes a great companion piece to this post.