Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

On Jan. 15, 2022, a set of malware dubbed WhisperGate was reported to have been deployed against Ukrainian targets. The incident is widely reported to contain three individual components deployed by the same adversary, including a malicious bootloader that corrupts detected local disks, a Discord-based downloader and a file wiper. The activity occurred at approximately the same time multiple websites belonging to the Ukrainian government were defaced.

From nation-state threat actors to typical cybercriminals, the public sector faces a multitude of cybersecurity threats. At the same time, public-sector organizations struggle to maintain a robust cyber hygiene posture because they need to balance limited budgets with complex IT environments and highly interconnected ecosystems.

There are truisms that span history. One truism is that a single mistake can lead to disaster, and to some extent the series of vulnerabilities affecting the organizations that use Apache Log4j.

Z3 is a satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) solver developed by Microsoft Research. With a description like that, you’d expect it to be restricted to esoteric corners of the computerized mathematics world, but it has made impressive inroads addressing conventional software engineering needs: analyzing network ACLs and firewalls in Microsoft Azure, for example.

When a large government agency decided to refresh its infrastructure down to Layer 2 switches, Forward Networks data delivered over $6 million in savings. Like many companies around the world, this organization had challenges getting full visibility and the structure of its network, which had grown organically over time.

The modern digital environment is more risky than ever before, and the incidence of cyberattacks only increased throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In this day and age, even the most robust security systems may still be penetrated or breached by a sophisticated cyber-attack. This means companies can no longer afford to be complacent about security.

When an unfortunate event occurs, people tend to be curious about who was responsible for the event. It can be interesting and helpful to know who your enemy is and what their motives might be. But in cybersecurity, the primary focus is ultimately on preventative and detective measures to avoid similar issues. Let’s use a recent example to illustrate this point below.

Increasingly, life science companies are applying omics-based testing to clinical trials. These tests support precision medicine models for the study of rare cancers and other diseases. Genomics research tests, for example, can help account for diverse drug responses and outcomes caused by genetic differences in trial participants.