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Back to Basics: Combating Zero-Days with Common Sense

The past few months have accelerated the struggle between cybercriminals and those that defend against them. It seems that once again we are back on the defensive—as fast as law enforcement can arrest the bad guys, more and increasingly vicious cyber-attacks are unleashed. It’s been ugly, heartbreaking, and in some cases demoralizing. Even though...
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WannaCry Poses Healthcare Risks in Today's Interconnected World

Patients turned away. Ambulances diverted. Doctors and nurses locked out of patient files and unable to deliver care. On Friday, 45 National Health Service (NHS) organizations in the UK and Scotland and over 200,000 other victims in 150 countries fell prey to the WannaCry ransomware. The threat spread quickly, infecting vulnerable Microsoft systems...
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Women in Information Security: Thaís

As a woman who works in cybersecurity, I know that there are many amazing women in my field. Last time, I had the pleasure of speaking with Cheryl Biswas, who works as a corporate cybersecurity consultant. This time, I spoke to Thaís. She's been educated on two different continents in both physics and computer science! Now she's doing some pretty...
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10 High-Profile Malware Families of 2017

Each year, the United Nations observes the International Day of Families on May 15. It's a day that focuses on the role families play in cultivating education and lifelong learning. By emphasizing the importance of caregivers, the International Day of Families encourages parents to teach their children about sustainable development, human rights,...
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ICS Security Starts with an Understanding of Industrial Digital Attacks

In a previous article, I discussed how organizations are working to protect their industrial control systems (ICS) against intentional and accidental security threats. One of their biggest challenges is figuring out whether their information technology (IT) or operational technology (OT) teams are responsible for ensuring ICS security. Given the...
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VERT Threat Alert: May 2017 Patch Tuesday Analysis

Today’s VERT Alert addresses the Microsoft May 2017 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-724 on Wednesday, May 10th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2017-0290 Also known as Microsoft Security Advisory 4022344, this is a code execution in the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine...
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Situational Awareness: Beware of Your Cyber Surroundings

In previous articles on understanding big data, the need for AI, using encryption and tokenization (including the drawbacks of encryption), and the series on human vulnerabilities, we laid down just some of the building blocks necessary to create a robust cybersecurity strategy. Yet there is a larger problem we often experience: losing the trees for...
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How to Build a Secure Wordpress Environment

In Part 1 of this series, we covered how easy it is for any novice to set up a self-hosted WordPress site and how quickly security can fall between the cracks. In this blog post, I will share with you what to look for in a Webhost provider, how to secure and harden WordPress, and what often-overlooked items you should watch out for during this...
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April 2017: The Month in Ransomware

Online extortionists took their attacks to a whole new level last month. They brought the infamous Locky monster back to life after more than three months of hiatus. The architects of the Jigsaw ransomware campaign were busier than ever, contriving seven new variants of their plague. The Hidden Tear, EDA2, and CryptoWire proof-of-concept ransomware...
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Building on a Solid Foundation: Future-Proof your IT Environment

In today's expanding world of digital security threats, some truths are self-evident. Information security professionals must understand: That change happens That protecting customers and preventing unnecessary downtime is both a financial and moral imperative That we can only collect intelligence on things that we monitor That we must...
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100 Days in Office: President Trump on Digital Security

April 29, 2017, marked Donald Trump's 100th day in office as President of the United States. Since his inauguration on January 20, President Trump has fulfilled his campaign promises of nominating a conservative judge to the Supreme Court and withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But he has yet to meet some of his other...
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Foundational Controls Work - A 2017 DBIR Review

When the 2017 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) came out last week, I read through it like I do every year. Each time I go through the report, I challenge myself to find something new and interesting. This year, I was intrigued by the "Things to consider" and "Areas of focus" at the end of each section. These two blurbs gave tips on...
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Bug Bounties: An Overview of Their Past, Present, and Future

Bug bounties, security acknowledgements and reward programs all have strong ties to IT security today. But that wasn't always the case. In the past, public penetration testers and security researchers mostly looked out for their personal benefit without recognizing their own responsibility to the security community. The reason? In a lot of cases,...
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Making Sense of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

The upcoming GDPR compliance deadline of May 2018 affects any organization across the world that collects, processes, or stores data on citizens of the European Union. The intent behind the GDPR is to better protect the privacy of EU citizens, and the mechanism to do so is through harmonizing the existing data privacy laws across Europe. “The six...
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Disclosing Zero Days

Governments ought to disclose zero-day vulnerabilities and begin to collaborate to make digital disarmament more than just ‘a thing.’ The case for these policy changes is becoming increasingly clear as new public debates begin to take shape around online privacy, trust and the prevention of cyber conflict. However, much work lies ahead in correctly...
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The Human Factor: Technology Changes Faster Than Humans

The title of this piece is quite obvious, but it is also an unappreciated fact. Consider for a moment the change we have seen over the last 30 years: access to cyberspace was scarce, often limited to enterprise users such as governments, educational institutions and the largest corporation, whereas today, there are billions of users that treat the...
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The Human Factor: Cybersecurity’s Forgotten Conversation

In any conflict, humans are impacted. In conflict, the best scenario is that the individual leaves unscathed and perhaps even unaware of what could have been their misfortune, whereas in the worst of cases – such as kinetic warfare – the impact can be the ultimate price: loss of life. There is also a cruel truth of conflict that often gets looked...