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Survey: 84% of Security Pros Said Their Organizations Struggled to Maintain Security Configurations in the Cloud

Headlines continue to suggest that organizations’ cloud environments make for tantalizing targets for digital attackers. Illustrating this point, the 2019 SANS State of Cloud Security survey found "a significant increase in unauthorized access by outsiders into cloud environments or to cloud assets" between 2017 (12 percent) and 2018 (19 percent)....
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Embrace the Chaos: An Emerging Trend in Software Engineering?

What if your job was to break things repeatedly in order to make them work better? Sounds like the dream of every curious six-year old, but it's actually an emerging software engineering trend based in the transition from devops to devsecops. It's designed to test systematic limitations with the goal of improving security and performance under any...
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Forensics in the Cloud: What You Need to Know

Cloud computing has transformed the IT industry, as services can now be deployed in a fraction of the time that it used to take. Scalable computing solutions have spawned large cloud computing companies such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. With a click of a button, personnel can create or reset entire infrastructure...
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Being a CISO Isn't Just About Information Security - It's About Building a Stronger Business Strategy

Gone are the days when being a CISO (or even just ‘the security guy’) was about actual information security or IT security. Even the term IT security is outdated now, as it emphasizes a one-dimensional view of what security is really about. However, I digress… The information security element of CISO is correct, but for a variety of reasons, the CISO’s role is very different from what it was a...
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Climbing the Vulnerability Management Mountain: Taking the First Steps Towards Enlightenment

Just as you would map a hike or climb by creating waypoints you plan to hit each day, you must plan your vulnerability management process by creating similar goals. We call these goals Maturity Levels, from ML0 to ML5, as we defined them in the last blog. You have your asset inventory from an open-source tool, asset tracking database or maybe your...
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Protecting Modern IoMT Against Cybersecurity Challenges

Even though the healthcare industry has been slower to adopt Internet of Things technologies than other industries, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is destined to transform how we keep people safe and healthy, especially as the demand for lowering healthcare costs increases. The Internet of Medical Things refers to the connected system of...
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Psychological Tricks of the Malware Trade

As a Professional Services Consultant, I have the pleasure of traveling all around the globe meeting clients and talking to a wide variety of IT security professionals who form the front line of defence against malware. One of my favorite topics is how people got their start in their careers in IT, but when I start discussing my own early years and...
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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...