It’s difficult to recall a time over the last ten years when cloud requirements were not at the forefront of the Defense Department’s modernization efforts. Cloud capability reviews and requirements, in some form, extend from the Pentagon’s net-centricy efforts — to the Joint Information Environment, Digital Modernization, and up through to today.
When the Biden administration released Executive Order 14028, “Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity”, it included guidance to enhance the security of the nation’s software supply chain. As a result, key building blocks are being developed to both strengthen software security and bolster software Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) programs across the Federal government.
Microsoft continues to develop, update and improve features to monitor and prevent the execution of malicious code on the Windows opearting system. One of these features is AppLocker. This feature advances the functionality of software restriction policies and enables administrators to create rules to allow or deny applications from running based on their unique identities (e.g., files) and to specify which users or groups can run those applications.
Splunk SURGe recently released a whitepaper, blog and video that outline the encryption speeds of 10 different ransomware families. The outcome of this research was that it is unlikely that a defender will be able to do anything once the encryption has started. Ransomware today is also mostly “human-operated” where many systems are sought out and compromised before any encryption activities occur and, once they do, the encryption is just too fast to meaningfully affect the damage done.
People often ask me, “What’s the purpose of cybersecurity?” I tell them that it serves to protect the valuable, intangible data assets of firms or private individuals, usually by trying to shrink the attack surface. One way to achieve cybersecurity is to utilize threat intelligence research in your firm’s security plan. In this article, I will discuss the benefits of understanding and implementing a threat intelligence program.
