If you were to take a look at the cybersecurity news cycle, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s only large enterprises with expansive customer bases and budgets that are the most vulnerable to attacks. But that’s not entirely true. Even if it’s at a much smaller scale, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) still have stores of sensitive information that’s appealing to bad actors — and they’re often much less equipped to protect that data.

If you're in the cybersecurity sector, you'll know that October is “Cybersecurity Awareness Month,” a time when cybersecurity specialists everywhere push hard to get the message out that cybersecurity is important. Each year, there is a different theme, and for 2022, the theme is "See Yourself in Cyber." According to the CISA website, the theme is meant to demonstrate that "while cybersecurity may seem like a complex subject, ultimately, it's really all about people.

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework was meant to be a dynamic document that is continuously revised, enhanced, and updated. These upgrades allow the Framework to keep up with technological and threat developments, incorporate lessons learned, and transform best practices into standard procedures. NIST created the Framework in 2014 and updated it with CSF 1.1 in April 2018.

Law firms owe their clients several types of duties, such as the duty of care, duty to provide competent representation, as well as other ethical responsibilities. Their duties even extend to former clients and must be upheld long after they no longer have a formal attorney-client relationship. More specifically, lawyers have a duty to not disclose any information about a client or prospective client, unless that individual consents, or an exception is dictated by law.

In the cybersecurity profession, some names stick out among the great creators and contributors. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Richard Benham about the role of a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Professor Richard Benham is known globally as a pioneer in the world of Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence, and Cyber Warfare.

As budgets start to tighten for countless businesses concerned about the potential financial winter that many are predicting, security teams across the world are reviewing where best to place their investment to ensure they get the best “bang for their buck”. With that in mind, now might be time to explore some key areas where I see organisations spending wisely to deliver great results on a budget.

In the past, teams incorporated security testing far after the development stage of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). Security testing would influence whether the application would to proceed to production, or get passed back to the developers for remediation. This process caused delays while teams worked on remediation or, worse yet, it increased security risks when teams released software without applying the necessary security measures.

Cybersecurity funding in corporate environments has always been a source of anxiety for those who seek to keep organizations safe. When we examine the cybersecurity readiness of many state, local, and territorial governments, this funding struggle is taken to new heights of scarcity. Fortunately, a new program has been created by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to improve this shortfall, and better protect municipalities in the United States.

The IT ecosystems of enterprises are highly dynamic. Typically, organizations react to this volatility by investing in asset discovery and Security Configuration Management (SCM). These core controls enable businesses to compile an inventory of authorized devices and monitor the configurations of those assets. In addition to managing changes to their infrastructure, organizations must also keep an eye on the changes made to essential files.

One of the most important parts of a solid security program involves testing to see where your weaknesses lie. Continual improvement cannot be achieved without continual review. However, many people confuse the importance of vulnerability scanning with penetration testing. As a means of protecting an enterprise, one can never take precedence over, or replace the other. Both are equally important, and in some cases, they are suggested, if not outright directed by many standards and regulations.