With the advent of digital technology that makes its way into every sphere of our lives, software’s reliability and integrity are particularly important. Hackers never stop trying to gain unauthorized access and exploit application weaknesses to achieve their goals and gain from outact. This can mean peril respectively for individuals and organizations.

The FBI has issued a warning to US retailers about a financially-motivated malicious hacking ring that has been targeting employees with phishing attacks in an attempt to create fraudulent gift cards. Staff at the corporate offices of US retail companies have been the target of highly-sophisticated email phishing and SMS phishing ("smishing") attacks. These attacks attempt to gain access to employee accounts, IT systems, and cloud services used by the company.

The highly competitive digital setting that we have today requires modern software applications to serve as the foundation of business operations, communication, and service innovation. However, this agility has some risks since outsourcing part of application development to external tools and libraries implies that the organization can unintentionally introduce vulnerabilities that cybercriminals can use against them.

Retail and hospitality businesses prioritize delivering exceptional customer service and growing revenue. Just as their mission relies on a service-oriented staff and quality products, it also requires secure and reliable connectivity. A high performing and secure network enables retailers to offer consistent and positive consumer interactions across online and physical stores around the world.

As a business owner or IT professional, you understand the importance of protecting your company’s sensitive data, systems and reputation from cyber threats. One of the most effective ways to uncover vulnerabilities and strengthen your organisation’s security posture is through penetration testing, particularly white box penetration testing.

A cloud-based application security assessment (or ASA) is a systematic evaluation to identify vulnerabilities and improve security in cloud applications. It aims to ensure the application’s structural, design, and operational integrity against all cyber threats. A staggering 82% of data breaches in 2023 involved data stored in the cloud.

Let’s catch up on the more interesting vulnerability disclosures and cyber security news gathered from articles across the web this week. This is what we have been reading about on our coffee break! Ah, so you’ve seen those random shops that pop up on unrelated domains?

In a move to harness the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI) while mitigating associated risks, the Executive Office of the President has issued a landmark memorandum directing federal agencies to advance AI governance, innovation, and risk management. Spearheaded by Shalanda D. Young, the memorandum underscores the importance of responsible AI development in safeguarding the rights and safety of the public.

What do you get when you bring soaring numbers of connected devices online around the world—more than 29 billion by 2027? For consumers and businesses, the Internet of Things (IoT) promises a life of ever-increasing convenience, efficiency, and insight. Unfortunately, cybercriminals have just as much to celebrate.

Dependency management is a broad topic encompassing, among other things, keeping an inventory of dependencies, removing unused dependencies, and fixing conflicts between dependencies. In this article, we will focus on one large part of software dependency management that devs can do easily and with great results: updating dependencies.