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IoT Devices — Why Risk Assessment is Critical to Cybersecurity

The IoT Threat Landscape As technology continues to pervade modern-day society, security and trust have become significant concerns. This is particularly due to the plethora of cyber attacks that target organizations, governments and society. The traditional approach to address such challenges has been to conduct cybersecurity risk assessments that...
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New "Norman" Malware Took Part in Large-Scale Cryptominer Infection

Researchers identified a large-scale cryptocurrency miner infection in which a new malware family called "Norman" took part. The Varonis Security Research team made the discovery while investigating a cryptominer infection at a mid-sized company. Here's what they found through this effort: Almost every server and workstation was infected with...
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MITRE ATT&CK July 2019 Update

On the last day of July, MITRE released its most recent update to the ATT&CK framework. The ATT&CK framework is a curated knowledge base of tactics, techniques, software, that adversarial groups have leveraged when compromising enterprise systems. The July 2019 update is relatively minor compared to the April 2019 update, which saw a new tactic with...
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Fraudsters Used Phishing Emails to Target Hotels in North America

Fraudsters launched an attack campaign that distributed phishing emails designed to target the hotel industry in North America. In summer 2019, researchers at 360 Security Center discovered that bad actors had sent attack emails to financial personnel working at various hotels throughout North America. These emails informed recipients that their...
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VERT Threat Alert: August 2019 Patch Tuesday Analysis

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s August 2019 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-845 on Wednesday, August 14th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs Microsoft has indicated that none of the vulnerabilities being patched this month have been used in-the-wild nor have they been...
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Tripwire Patch Priority Index for July 2019

Tripwire's July 2019 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities from Microsoft and Oracle. First on the list for July are patches for Microsoft's Browser and Scripting Engine. These patches resolve 11 vulnerabilities including fixes for Memory Corruption weaknesses. Next on the list are patches for Microsoft Excel and...
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CEO Cyber Quiz: What’s Your IT Security IQ?

Every business leader understands that, when it comes to cybersecurity, the stakes are extraordinarily high. CEOs tend to take notice when they read headlines about yet another big-name company being victimized by a massive data breach or about industry forecasts suggesting that the annual cost of crime losses and damage will hit $6 trillion by 2021. However, does that mean top business leaders...
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How to Build a Mature Vulnerability Management Program

The evolution of the cyber threat landscape highlights the emerging need for organizations to strengthen their ability to identify, analyze and evaluate cyber risks before they evolve into full-fledged security incidents. When it comes to cyber risk mitigation, the terms “patch management” and “vulnerability management” are used as if they are...
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Apple Increases Maximum Bug Bounty Program Payout to $1M

Apple announced that it will be expanding the scope of its bug bounty program and increasing its maximum possible reward payout to $1 million. Ivan Krstić, Apple’s head of security engineering, made the announcement during a presentation on iOS and macOS security at Black Hat USA 2019. He revealed that Apple's bug bounty program will begin...
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State Farm Says Security Incident Might Have Exposed Customers' Data

Insurance company State Farm revealed that a digital security incident might have exposed their customers' personal information. In August 2019, ZDNet obtained a copy of a letter in which State Farm disclosed a data breach. The insurance company specifically revealed that a bad actor had conducted a credential stuffing attack. This type of operation...
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Best Practices for IT Security Teams in the Age of Cloud

About a decade ago, organizations were hesitant to adopt cloud solutions, with many citing security concerns. Fast forward to 2019, and 81% of organizations have a multi-cloud strategy, spurred on by the desire for increased flexibility, usage-based spending and desire to respond to market opportunity with greater agility. In fact, organizations are...
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Living the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Cybersecurity

The recent Tripwire blog ‘7 Habits of highly effective Vulnerability Management’ by Tim Erlin was a great read with some sage advice on the always relevant security topic of VM. I noticed, however, that although the seven points themselves were all Tim’s own, the title snappily paraphrased Steven Covey’s classic management book. This made me think....
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AT&T Announces Launch of Public Bug Bounty Program

American multinational conglomerate holding company AT&T has announced the launch of its public bug bounty program on HackerOne. Revealed on 6 August, the new program will award security researchers who submit reports on eligible vulnerabilities that affect AT&T's websites, mobile apps, devices and exposed APIs. In-scope flaws include weaknesses...
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Ask the Experts: How IT and OT Can Collaborate in the Name of ICS Security

In a recent blog post for the State of Security, we asked security experts what they thought would make the biggest impact on the security of industrial control systems (ICS) in the next 5-10 years. They gave numerous answers, but perhaps the most frequent response was the ongoing IT-OT convergence in industrial organizations. Our experts felt that...
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Staving Off the Monetary Consequences of a Data Breach

Cybersecurity breaches and regulatory compliance are this year's themes. Marriott was sued and fined $124 million for their data breach back in 2014, according to The Wall Street Journal. Capital One leaked 100 million credit applications including Social Security Numbers. Both LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics exposed millions of patients’ medical...