Cyber threat intelligence (CTI) considers the full context of a cyber threat to inform the design of highly-targeted defensive actions. CTI combines multiple factors, including the motivations of cybercriminals and Indicators of Compromise (IOC), to help security teams understand and prepare for the challenges of an anticipated cyber threat.
Simply put, a data leak is when sensitive data is unknowingly exposed to the public, and a data breach is an event caused by a cyberattack. An example of a data leak is a software misconfiguration facilitating unauthorized access to sensitive resources - such as the major Microsoft Power Apps data leak in 2021. An example of a data breach is a cybercriminal overcoming network security controls to gain access to sensitive resources.
Kerberos authentication is a network protocol that secures user access to services/applications by using secret-key cryptography across client-server communications. The Kerberos network authentication protocol helps prevent hackers from intercepting passwords over unsecured networks.
A data exfiltration attack involves the unauthorized transfer of sensitive data, such as personal data and intellectual property, out of a target system and into a separate location. These transfers could either occur internally, through insider threats, or externally, through remote Command and Control servers. Every cyberattack with a data theft objective could be classified as a data exfiltration attack.
The combination of poor cybersecurity practices, sensitive data storage, and a desperation to preserve business continuity at all costs, makes the healthcare industry a prime target for cybercriminals - an inevitability that was further exacerbated by the pandemic. To support the relevance of healthcare cybersecurity programs within the current cyberattack climate, the 4 biggest cybersecurity challenges in the healthcare industry are listed below.
CIFS (Common Internet File System) is a network protocol that allows clients to communicate with servers and access file sharing and print services as if they were stored locally. The CIFS protocol is a particular implementation -- or dialect-- of the file-sharing protocol SMB (Server Message Block). The Server Message Block protocol was released by IBM in 1983 that has since undergone several modifications to its functionality by Microsoft.
CIFS and SMB are both Windows file-sharing protocols used in storage systems, such as network-attached systems (NAS). The key difference between CIFS and SMB is that CIFS is a dialect of SMB – a particular implementation of the SMB protocol. The CIFS protocol is now considered an outdated SMB dialect, with the newer SMB 2.0 and SMB 3.0 addressing many of the inefficiencies of CIFS.
As cybersecurity regulations continue to tighten their grip on vendor security, a greater weight of responsibility is expected to fall on Third-Party Risk Management Programs. So if you're currently struggling to keep up with your vendor security due diligence, your workflow congestion will only worsen if a scalable and streamline vendor risk management program isn't achieved.
It's easy for cybersecurity teams to think they're doing everything to stay ahead of data breaches and cyberattacks in this post-pandemic era. For instance, you've probably rallied qualified experts to augment your IT ecosystem and supplied them with state-of-the-art threat detection and mitigation technologies that offer real-time insight into your infrastructure security.
