On Wednesday, April 6, 2022, VMware disclosed several critical-severity vulnerabilities impacting multiple VMware products. If successfully exploited, the vulnerabilities could lead to Remote Code Execution (RCE) or Authentication Bypass. In addition to the critical severity vulnerabilities, VMware disclosed several high and medium severity vulnerabilities, which could lead to Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF), Local Privilege Escalation (LPE), or Information Disclosure.

In an unsettling new phase of the cybersecurity era, Russia’s ground war in Ukraine and behind-the-scenes war on the internet have dovetailed into an upswing of cybercrime that may or may not be politically motivated. Time will tell how this online maneuvering ultimately plays out, but for the moment tension abounds as the cybersecurity community anticipates the next big attack.

Working in a Security Operations Center (SOC) is like working in an emergency room on a weekend shift at 2 AM. The steady stream of new alerts screaming for attention and combined with the lack of enough trained personnel make it a miracle that it all seems to work through on a string and a prayer. The question is though, when will the luck run out?

According to the American Gaming Association, there are 981 casinos in the United States, raking in more than $57 billion annually in gross gaming revenue. With that much money at play, it’s no wonder hackers view casinos as potential jackpots. And while the public tends to consider casinos as exceptionally secure, the reality is this: When it comes to cybersecurity, the house doesn’t always win.

With agile development, the software development life cycle has evolved, with a focus on customer satisfaction to enhance product features based on user feedback. This helps shorten the time to market, since teams can release a minimally viable product, then continuously improve its features. The agile technique encourages team cooperation through sprints, daily standups, retrospectives, testing, quality assurance and deployment.

On Thursday, March 31, 2022, GitLab released an advisory for a critical password security vulnerability in GitLab Community and Enterprise products tracked as CVE-2022-1162. GitLab is DevOps software that combines the ability to develop, secure, and operate software in a single application. The exploitation of CVE-2022-1162 can allow a threat actor to guess a hard-coded password for any GitLab account with relative ease.

We have built a Security Operations Center at Netskope in short order. Facing the vast expanse of the Security Operations ocean, I grabbed my board with my team and focused on doing a few things really well. We documented workflows, expanded our visibility, and tuned monitoring systems. We paddled out from shore, braving the shark-infested waters of the threat landscape.

“May you live in interesting times.” Cybersecurity professionals live this phrase every day. From supply-chain attacks, pervasive exposure from zero-day vulnerabilities, or the dramatic rise in ransomware, we undoubtedly live—and work—in interesting times.