Cyber attacks that lead to data breaches are becoming increasingly common in all industries, but there are certain types of businesses that are more vulnerable than others. The hospitality industry in particular is one of the most likely industries to be targeted by cybercriminals in addition to retail and finance. It only makes sense that the...

In the digital age, organizations and the missions and business processes they support rely on information technology and information systems to achieve their mission and business objectives. Not only is technology used to efficiently enable businesses to carry out operational activities, but it is also the backbone for the United States' critical...

The U.S Government released on January 5, 2021, a cybersecurity plan to secure the nation’s maritime sector against cybersecurity threats that could endanger national security. The Maritime Cyber Environment With International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) mandate “to ensure that cyber risks are appropriately addressed in existing safety...

In a previous blog, I discussed securing AWS management configurations by combating six common threats with a focus on using both the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Amazon Web Services Foundations benchmark policy along with general security best practices.Now I’d like to do the same thing for Microsoft Azure. I had the privilege of being involved...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s January 2021 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-922 on Wednesday, January 13th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-1647 A vulnerability in the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine (MMPE) is currently seeing active exploitation. Since...

In their attempt to extort as much money as quickly as possible out of companies, ransomware gangs know some effective techniques to get the full attention of a firm's management team. And one of them is to specifically target the sensitive information stored on the computers used by a company's top executives, in the hope of finding valuable data...

Tripwire's December 2020 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities from Microsoft, Pulse Secure, and Oracle. First on the patch priority list this month are two vulnerabilities that have recently been included within the Metasploit exploit framework. One is a vulnerability in Pulse Secure Desktop Client and the other is a...

Over the last few years, the idea of patching systems to correct flaws has graduated from an annoying business disruption to a top priority. With all of the notorious vulnerabilities that can wreak total havoc, the time it takes to patch becomes a minor inconvenience when weighed against both the technical challenges and possible regulatory...

OVAL is the Open Vulnerability Assessment Language, which uses XML based documents to define vulnerabilities based on characteristics of a host system. It can also be used to gather information about the host. When an OVAL file is evaluated, it generates a report file with the results of the vulnerability evaluation or a system characteristics file...

If high-tech gadgets are on your holiday shopping list, it is worth taking a moment to think about the particular risks they may bring. Under the wrong circumstances, even an innocuous gift may introduce unexpected vulnerabilities. In this blog series, VERT will be looking at some of the Internet’s best-selling holiday gifts with an eye toward their...

As if dealing with COVID-19 were not enough, 2020 turned out to be a banner year for another troublesome strain of virus— ransomware. Malicious actors grew more sophisticated, daring and brutal. They also hit a number of high-profile targets. For those of you who didn’t keep up with all of the developments in the ransomware space, we’ve broken down...

If high-tech gadgets are on your holiday shopping list, it is worth taking a moment to think about the particular risks they may bring. Under the wrong circumstances, even an innocuous gift may introduce unexpected vulnerabilities. In this blog series, VERT will be looking at some of the Internet’s best-selling holiday gifts with an eye toward their...

As the retail world’s center of gravity shifts to the cloud, payment card fraud has followed suit. According to Verizon’s retail vulnerabilities study, attacks against e-commerce applications are by far the leading cause of retail data breaches. This trend mirrors similar outcomes in other industries, like food service. A complimentary Verizon study...

Last week, the United States Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) advised on initial steps to take in response to the SolarWinds software that was compromised by advanced persistent threat actors. While federal agencies were under a deadline to complete certain actions, this issue will require continued clean-up and longer-term...

We’ve previously discussed best practices for securing Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services but, this time, we are going to turn our attention to Google Cloud Platform. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is growing at an impressive 83 percent year over year but generally receives less focus than AWS and Azure.We can use some of our best practice cloud...

Vulnerability Description The United States Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has advised that an advanced persistent threat (APT) actor was able to insert sophisticated malware into officially signed and released updates to the SolarWinds network management software. The attacks have been ongoing since at least March 2020 and...

Digital threats confronting Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) are on the rise. That’s because attackers are increasingly going after the Operational Technology (OT) and Industrial Control Systems (ICS) that shareholders use to protect these assets. In their report “Caught in the Crosshairs: Are Utilities Keeping Up with the Industrial Cyber...

For the longest time, or as far as I can remember, the holy grail of all networking platforms has been the need for a single pane of glass, that single source of all information that you would need to be most effective.So, what is a single pane of glass? If you take it at face value, it simply means a window that consists of a single square frame...

Today’s VERT Threat Alert addresses Microsoft’s December 2020 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-918 on Wednesday, December 9th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs There are no In-The-Wild or Disclosed CVEs patched this month. CVE Breakdown by Tag While historical Microsoft...

Tripwire's November 2020 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities from Microsoft, Adobe, and Oracle. First on the patch priority list this month are three vulnerabilities in Oracle WebLogic Server that have recently been included within the Metasploit exploit framework. Supported versions of Oracle WebLogic Server that...