In the beginning of May, a U.S. pipeline company suffered a ransomware attack. The company decided to respond by halting operations while it investigated the incident. This delayed tens of millions of gallons of fuel from reaching their destination all along the East Coast.Less than a week later, Bloomberg reported that the company had paid millions...

Back in September 2020, I configured a SonicWall network security appliance to act as a VPN gateway between physical devices in my home lab and cloud resources on my Azure account. As I usually do with new devices on my network, I did some cursory security analysis of the product and it didn’t take long before I had identified what looked like a...

When it comes to evaluating technology in the home, there seems to be no shortage of new devices and shiny gadgets, mainly part of the Internet of Things (IoT), to discuss. Unfortunately, there seems to be no shortage of security issues to consider regarding these same devices, either.It's not uncommon to hear of "virtual break-ins" caused by a...

Everything evolves. Simply stated, the gradual development of something from a simple to a more complex form is what evolution is all about. When something ceases to evolve, yet still exists, it becomes classified as a living fossil. One example is the Ginkgo Biloba tree. It took millions of years for this evolution to cease. This all happened...

Confidence isn’t new when it comes to cybersecurity. All the way back in 2015, for example, 86% of security professionals working in the energy sector told Tripwire that they were confident they could detect a breach in a week. Just less than half (49%) said it wouldn’t take them longer than a day to spot an attack. It was the same story a year...

In a previous article, we introduced the fact that one of our largest growing populations is that of the “Baby Boomer” generation (those born between 1946 to 1964). As the Boomers get older, they become susceptible to many of the emerging dirty tricks that exist on the Internet. Phone scams, lottery scams, tech support scams, and a host of other...

Six people alleged to be part of the notorious CLOP ransomware gang have been detained and charged by Ukrainian police, following nearly two dozen raids across the country. According to a statement released by the Ukraine's cyber police, the hacking group is thought to have inflicted $500 million worth of damage on universities and organisations it...

Back in 2018, the State of Security spent a lot of time going over v7 of the Center for Internet Security’s Critical Security Controls (CIS Controls). We noted at the time how the Center for Internet Security shuffled the order of requirements for many of the existing controls in that version. It also cleaned up the language of the CIS Controls,...

The head of the UK's National Cyber Security Centre has warned that ransomware has become the biggest threat to British people and businesses. In a speech being given today by Lindy Cameron, chief executive of the NCSC, to the RUSI think tank, she highlights the need for ransomware problem to be taken seriously, and warns of the "cumulative...

Dr. Eric Cole, former CISO and founder of Secure Anchor Consulting, explains how learning to communicate with business language can create a more compelling case for executive buy-in. https://open.spotify.com/episode/7fFPZyFkP4eB1DoMdPcdOv?si=6f16ad3361f24256 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5UDKiGLlzxhiGnd6FtvEnm Stitcher: https://www...

In Part 1 of this series, we introduced the concept that the most vulnerable people on the internet are our senior population. According to the FBI, elder fraud impacts millions of American seniors every year. Figures from the United Kingdom show similar levels of criminal activity targeting seniors. Most of the elder fraud schemes are financially...

If you are new to the security world, it is fair to ask yourself, “Isn’t access to data and systems always conditional? Isn’t it always granted to someone who has access to the credentials (ID and password)?” True enough, but in totality, the approach to managing access encompasses a broader spectrum of privacy policies. These policies include a mix...

On January 20, President Joseph Biden issued Executive Order (E.O.) 13990 to help protect U.S. bulk power organizations. This Order enacted a 90-day suspension of E.O. 13920 which was set by the previous administration. The new executive order empowered the Secretary of Energy (“Secretary”) to publish new criteria around pre-qualifying vendors of...

Cloud-native applications that are based on new types of infrastructure such as containers and serverless platforms are being rapidly adopted by organizations worldwide. While cloud-native applications deliver compelling benefits such as elastic scalability, unmatched resilience and rapid development velocity, they also raise challenges.Cloud-native...

In a world that is constantly evaluating costs, it is little wonder that there is an increasing demand for cost-effective solutions to business problems. In the real world, this means 'free,' and in the digital marketplace, it means 'open source.' Open Source aka "Freeware" Since the early days of the internet, open source software (OSS) has been...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s June 2021 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-947 on Wednesday, June 9th.In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEsCVE-2021-31955This is one of two vulnerabilities fixed in today’s patch drop which were reported by Kaspersky Lab after detecting...

We all have heard and read how the pandemic has disrupted our lives, how it has accelerated digital transformation to an unprecedented extent and how it challenged the existing security policies and practices. The question is how the people responsible for fortifying their organizations experienced the whole situation. Letter from the frontline ...

The principle of least privilege in cybersecurity prescribes that no user should have access to system resources beyond what's necessary for fulfilling a specific task. Adhering to this principle has become essential, as one of the primary ways malicious actors breach a system is by compromising (legitimate) user access. The 2020 Global State of...

Like technology itself, cybersecurity is ever-evolving and encompassing more areas of our lives, including transportation. Popular science fiction movies have led us to expect flying taxis and private space travel as the future of transportation. If that is going to become an eventual reality, the first steps towards that future are “smart cars” and...

On a Mission of Protecting Abraham Lincoln is credited with saying that “A lawyer’s time and advice are his stock and trade.” Whether the quote is mis-attributed to Lincoln is irrelevant to the greater message, which is that attorneys are “knowledge workers.” To state it as bluntly as one attorney once explained to an executive where I worked, “My...