Blog

Blog

PCI DSS 4.0: How to Delight the Auditors

While we all know the actual point of PCI is vastly more far-reaching, we can’t deny that the juggernaut of PCI DSS 4.0 compliance is getting past the auditors. However, there is a right way to do it that doesn’t just check the box – it creates the underlying business operations that enable you to pass an audit any day, at any time, with just the...
Blog

EPA Has ‘New Rules’ for Protecting Public Drinking Water

The EPA isn't mincing words when it comes to protecting public drinking water. Earlier this month they released a memorandum putting specifics into the general advice to maintain cybersecurity at public water systems (PWSs). Per the report, “[The] EPA clarifies with this memorandum that states must evaluate the cybersecurity of operational...
Blog

Glamourizing fraudsters hurts victims of fraud, and society

We seem to be fascinated by fraudsters, and recent documentaries prove this. The documentary landscape is populated with many fraud-centered stories, such as The Tinder Swindler, Fyre, The Con, Fake Heiress, The Inventor, and many others. Some have even been made into series, such as the story of Elisabeth Holmes in The Dropout, and the story of...
Blog

How Retiring Gas and Coal Plants Affects Grid Stability

Legacy gas and coal plants are being aged out – and no one wants to pay enough to keep them going. With increased pressure from green energy laws and added competition from renewable sources, these monsters of Old Power are being shown the door. Considering they've predated and precipitated all Industrial Revolutions (except for this last one – that...
Blog

Social Networking Without Selling Yourself

A truism about the free tools online is that if you aren’t paying for the service, then you are the product. Take your grocery store's “club” card program. You sign up and give them your name and phone number, and every time you shop, you swipe your card and get discounts on certain items. If you shop at the same store all the time, it makes...
Blog

5 Long-term Benefits of Adopting Zero Trust Architecture

For the past several years we’ve all been sold the benefits of moving to Zero Trust, and it’s worked. We’re sold. But what now?At this point, companies have decided to embark on a long and committed journey – Zero Trust (ZT) isn’t built in a day. Keeping a clear eye on the finish line is necessary to maintain enthusiasm and buy-in as ZT architecture...
Blog

Job scams: How they persuade and how to protect yourself

With so many companies currently reducing their workforce, job scams have become a serious and widespread problem for those who are looking for work. Stories from people who came across these scams on LinkedIn talk about scammers asking for their IDs, possibly to commit identity fraud or theft. Although most of these scams come with glaring warning...
Blog

Data Classification: Your 5 Minute Guide

It’s old news, but data is – and will remain for the foreseeable future – king. It has to be dealt with and handled responsibly, assigned to the right boxes, and stored properly. Why? Because everyone wants it, and there are increased efforts to obtain it by ever-more sophisticated and subtle bad actors. You wouldn’t put a piece of junk mail in a...
Blog

Privacy in Q2 2022: US, Canada, and the UK

The second quarter of 2022 offered plenty of positing on privacy, both in the U.S. and internationally. In the U.S., we saw the addition of another state privacy law, and a spark of hope in privacy professionals’ eyes with the introduction of tangible federal legislation. Plus, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is positioned to act on rulemaking...
Blog

Grooming lies and their function in financial frauds

Grooming techniques used in various frauds are getting more common and more elaborate. Fraudsters are coming up with narratives that involve complicated lies and may have different stages, depending on the type of fraud. Often, different actors are brought into the story. These actors also lie to the victim, in order to support the narrative. The...
Blog

A Tripwire Milestone: ASPL – 1000 is here

When I joined nCircle as a security researcher in 2006, ASPL 117 had just been released. I missed the ASPL-100 release celebration, which included custom sweatshirts, but there was still one unclaimed shirt in the office and I brought it home, my first piece of company swag. That shirt still hangs in my closet all these years later. For those of you that are unaware, ASPL, Advanced Security...
Blog

May The Fourth Be with You: Jedi Mind Tricks and Scams

Over the past few years, I’ve used Star Wars Day as a way to talk about two of my favourite things – Star Wars and cybersecurity. I wrote about scammers in 2020 and IoT in 2021, and I really thought I’d write about IoT again this year. After all, there’s no shortage of IoT blunders to talk about and tie into the Star Wars mythos. Instead, an article...
Blog

Improving Edge Computing Security in 2022

More organizations are turning their eyes to edge computing as cloud adoption reaches new heights. Experts predict there will be 55 billion edge devices by 2022 as latency and resilience demands grow and 5G makes these networks possible. While this growth is impressive, it raises several security concerns. Edge computing expands attack surfaces,...
Blog

Top 3 Grooming Techniques in Fraud: What to Watch for

Grooming is a method of establishing a connection with a person to perpetrate a crime against them. Grooming is becoming more common in fraud, both online as well as in interpersonal interactions. What's more, scammers are getting more sophisticated in their techniques. There is a mistaken belief that scammers are forceful, arrogant, and therefore...
Blog

Understanding the Benefits of Managed Cyber Services

As part of our upcoming attendance at the International Cyber Expo & International Security Expo, we were lucky enough to sponsor The Cyber Security Webinar Series with Nineteen Group and Grey Hare Media. Both Philip Ingram MBE and Emanuel Ghebreyesus, strategic account director for Tripwire, spoke about several topics including: The increasing...