The FBI recently warned and advised on a current scam in which bad actors mail malicious thumb drives in packages and trick recipients into thinking there is a legitimate reason for connecting the thumb drive to their computer. Let’s be clear. DON’T. Don’t stick that thing in your computer. You don’t know where it’s been!

Arctic Wolf joins the Gartner Peer Insights Customer First Program in the vulnerability assessment and managed detection and response service. The members of the Arctic Wolf team are excited to announce that we have pledged to be a Customer First vendor in the vulnerability assessment and managed detection and response service. Our team at Arctic Wolf takes great pride in this program commitment, as customer feedback continues to be a critical priority and shapes our products and services.

It would be hard to overstate the critical importance of security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) capabilities for the effective mission success of security operations centers (SOC). Without a solid SOAR capability in place, an SOC will be easily overwhelmed with routine and repetitive tasks that in and of themselves could become a vulnerability.

The oil and gas industry’s global supply chain uses a vast array of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) systems. These systems require constant cybersecurity protection to ensure energy flows efficiently and productively around the world to meet global needs. Hackers know that IT and OT systems are often interdependent and closely linked. In fact, the recent Colonial Pipeline attack resulted from the successful breach of Colonial’s IT network.

Traditionally, most organizations have had siloed departments wherein teams’ activities are highly separated and the objectives within organizational structures are divided. This operational methodology has brought about friction – especially within the IT department, where developers and ITOps lack collaboration.

Things tend to slow down for many businesses at the end of the year. As the holidays roll in and employees take time off with their families, December is generally a time to take stock of what transpired over the year and start looking ahead to the next one. Unfortunately, that’s not how cybercriminals operate.

For many organizations, cybersecurity is an overwhelming challenge. New threats emerge seemingly in the blink of an eye, and IT and security teams are constantly reacting to the moves of bad actors who always remain one or two steps ahead and get to dictate where and when their attacks are carried out. As you might expect, a reactionary approach to cybersecurity is not ideal. It’s typically borne of necessity due to undermanned teams or inadequate resources. Ultimately, it is destined to fail.

Evidence continues to mount that it isn’t a matter of if, but when and how an organization will be attacked. So, we are seeing Security Operations Centers (SOCs) narrow the focus of their mission to become detection and response organizations. As they look to address additional use cases, including threat detection and monitoring, investigation, incident response and hunting, data becomes incredibly more important.

During AWS re:Invent 21, I had the honor of hosting Phil Weeks, Senior technical advisor at IHG for an informative session on IHG’s security modernization journey during the pandemic which started with replacing a legacy SIEM.

The pride of Arctic Wolf is our Pack. Now more than 1,200 Wolves strong, our team’s dedication, drive, and commitment to ending cyber risk has enabled unprecedented growth and innovation for Arctic Wolf. As we close out 2021 and look to the year ahead, we wanted to take a moment and reflect on a few of the highlights from the past year.