Today’s banks and financial institutions closely cooperate with various third-party vendors. While such cooperation brings a lot of benefits, it also raises some significant concerns regarding the security of the data and resources these vendors have access to. In fact, according to Verizon’s 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report, the financial sector is among the most targeted, accounting for about 10% of all data breaches across all industries in 2018.

Like the previous years, 2019 also witnessed the surge in data breaches and cyber-attacks. However, organizations having SIEM or/and SOAR system in place were better than those using traditional security tools. The cyber-attacks in 2019 were mostly related to financial crimes, supply chain attacks, phishing exploits, state-sponsored attacks, Grid attacks, health sector attacks, and attacks on IoT devices. Cybersecurity skills shortage was also one of the major concerns in 2019.

Penetration testing (or pen testing) should form a crucial part of every cyber security strategy, but to get the most value from assessments, organisations need to ensure that they receive the best quality reports from providers.

Software vulnerabilities are part of our lives in a digitalized world. If anything is certain, it’s that we will continue to see vulnerabilities in software code! Recently the CVE-2020-0601 vulnerability, also known as CurveBall or “Windows CryptoAPI Spoofing Vulnerability”, was discovered, reported by the NSA and made headlines. The NSA even shared a Cybersecurity Advisory on the topic. Anthony previously talked about it from a public sector and Vulnerability Scanner angle.

In December 2019, Citrix announced that their flagship product, Citrix Application Delivery Controller (ADC) and Gateway, had a vulnerability that would allow code execution to take place on affected devices without any authentication. This vulnerability (designated CVE-2019-19781) was severe - on a scale of 1 to 10 it was deemed a 9.8 meaning that an attacker able to exploit this vulnerability could do serious damage.

Research by Cybersecurity Ventures projects a doubling of the global cost of cybercrime in the 2015-2021 period from $3 trillion to $6 trillion. The escalation of cybercrime is closely related to the rapid expansion of the cyber attack surface. For instance, the total number of Internet users doubled between 2015 and 2018 from 2 billion to 4 billion, and is expected to hit 6 billion by 2022.

The NIS Directive is the first EU horizontal legislation addressing cybersecurity challenges and a true game-changer for cybersecurity resilience and cooperation in Europe. The Directive has three main objectives. The NIS Directive is the cornerstone of the EU’s response to the growing cyber threats and challenges which are accompanying the digitalization of our economic and societal life.

Many years ago when I first started my career in network security as a support engineer, I received a phone call from a customer. (Let’s call him “Frank.”) He used our vulnerability scanner as a consultant for his own customers, and he was concerned that the scanner came back with 0 results. After reviewing his set-up, I easily discovered the answer.

In today’s world, we enjoy incredible mobility that our ancestors could only dream of. In a matter of hours or, at most, days, we can go from one continent to another. At the same time, our lives depend on the security of all sorts of our private data: from our credit card information to our browsing habits. But if at our homes we can be sure that we have taken sufficient security measures and protected our systems, things get muddier when we travel.

A selection of this week’s more interesting vulnerability disclosures and cyber security news. For a daily selection see our twitter feed at #ionCube24. Cast your mind back to the Ashley Madison breach and the black-mailing of members revealed in that breach. I don’t recall another like it until recently. This time though, with how common ransomware has become, are we going to see more victims approached as well as the source of the data breach?