Ransomware risk is top of mind for citizens and CISOs alike. From the board room to the room known as the ‘SOC’, everyone is feeling the pain of disruption. Being locked out of a system and forced back to pen and paper is shocking to our working lives. Too often, it is delaying a much-needed surgery or forcing manual intervention where a digital avenue was easy and efficient. But the effects of ransomware don’t appear to be going anywhere soon.

No one feels the pain of ransomware and other disruptive and costly digital cybersecurity attacks more than the people managing the day-to-day in your SOC (Security Operations Center). At 13 attacks every second in 2023, cybercriminals, fraudsters and nation-state hacktivists are overwhelming SOC analysts. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of SOC analysts report the size of the attack surface has increased. At the same time, CISOs and SOC managers are struggling to handle on-the-job analyst burnout and turnover.

Wipers are malware that delete data on a device or make it inaccessible. They can be used for sabotage, to destroy evidence of an attack or simply to make a device unusable. IoT wipers often rewrite important parts of the firmware of an IoT device, rendering that device useless, so they are also known as “brickers”. Recent notorious examples of IoT wipers are AcidRain which was used by a Russian APT to brick satellite modems in Europe at the outset of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Network Access Control (NAC) has undergone significant advancements since the beginning, continuously adapting for cybersecurity threats and technological innovation. As organizations embrace BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and IoT/OT (Internet of Things/Operational Technology), vendors have transformed traditional NAC solutions to meet these new demands while maintaining a balance between usability and security.

RedTail is a sophisticated malware designed for unauthorized cryptocurrency mining with a focus on Monero. It was first identified in January 2024, but it has been circulating since at least December 2023. Its latest iterations show improvements in evasion and persistence mechanisms, underscoring the significant expertise and resources driving its development.

Ten years ago, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released the Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 1.0 following an Executive Order from President Obama to help companies and governments facing cybersecurity attacks. In 2014, data breaches were escalating. Major Fortune 500 companies and household names, such as Target, Yahoo, 7-11, Visa, and more, experienced heaps of customer data theft, online fraud and attacks from malware.

The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is a robust cybersecurity regulation in the European Union (EU) taking effect next year. It is designed to help protect against evolving digital threats to financial systems. Like GDPR, the scope of DORA isn’t only limited to financial services companies and banks. Service providers in Information, Communications and Technology (ICT) and third-party vendors are also on the hook. If you haven’t been preparing, the time to be is now.

As cyber threats continuously evolve, hackers are refining their attack tactics and the frequency of assaults. Over the past several years, 63% of Security Operations Center (SOC) analysts report the size of their attack surface has increased, according to Security Magazine. Similarly, our 2023 Threat Roundup research discovered the enterprise is experiencing 13 attacks every second.

For security professionals and CISOs, reading about operational technology (OT) security risk feels like nothing new. We know a lot of OT is insecure by design. Despite advisory warnings and perceptions around operational security air gaps, industrial control systems (ICS) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) are being targeted more frequently via digital assets on the network. Vulnerabilities in OT systems are not brand new.