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The Challenges of Managing Third-Party Vendor Security Risk

It’s no longer enough to secure your own company’s infrastructure; you now must also evaluate the risk of third-party vendors and plan and monitor for breaches there, too. Data breaches are reported in the news all the time, and more than 60 percent of them are linked to a third-party. When you’re a business owner, that is a scary statistic. Third...
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Worm Using Removable Drives to Distribute BLADABINDI Backdoor

A newly detected worm is propagating through removable drives to distribute a fileless variant of the BLADABINDI backdoor. In mid-November, researchers at Trend Micro first observed the worm, which the security firm detects as "Worm.Win32.BLADABINDI.AA." They're still investigating the threat's exact method for infecting a system. But after...
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Catching Configuration Changes that Can Lead to Data Exposure

Amazon’s new security issue, which came to light just days before one of its biggest sale events of the year, is making recent headlines. And whilst it probably won’t stop the online retail giant from achieving a profitable Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, it certainly will make many users stop and think. Though it’s still early in the...
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NIST Framework for Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity

Four years after the initial iteration was released, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released version 1.1 of the Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity. The framework was initially developed to be a voluntary, risk-based framework to improve cybersecurity for critical infrastructure in the United...
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German Social Media Provider Fined €20K for Data Breach

A German social media provider received an order to pay a €20,000 fine for a data breach that occurred in the summer of 2018. Knuddels.de (Source: Spiegel Online) On 22 November, the regional data protection watchdog LfDI Baden-Württemberg announced that it had imposed the fine on a local "social...
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Rooted in Security Basics: The Four Pillars of Cyber Hygiene

The term “cyber hygiene” pops up frequently in articles, blogs and discussions about cybersecurity. But what does it really mean? Some say it is an ill-defined set of practices for individuals to follow (or ignore). Others say it is a measure of an organization’s overall commitment to security. Still others – and I am among them – think of “cyber...
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SIM swap! Man charged after million dollar cryptocurrency theft

San Francisco resident Robert Ross first realised something odd was going on when his iPhone lost its signal on 26th October. But his cellphone signal wasn't all that Ross had lost. Within minutes he had also lost his entire $1 million life savings, including the money he had stashed away for his two daughters' college education. According to media...
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Countering Espionage: An Enterprise Risk Management View

I am neither a political scientist nor a historian. However, I am conscious of some certain past events in human history which had political impacts and also influenced the course of history as we know it. Some say such events occurred on the basis of social, political and historical backgrounds and factors, whilst others pointed out to the certain...
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Two Young Men Jailed for Involvement in TalkTalk Data Breach

Two young men received prison sentences for helping to perpetrate a data breach at the UK telecommunications provider TalkTalk. On 19 November, Judge Anuja Dhir QC at the Old Bailey sentenced Matthew Hanley, 23, to 12 months in prison. She handed down a slightly lighter sentence of eight months in jail to Connor Allsopp, 21. Judge Dhir explained...
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IoT Purchasing Checklist

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak at SecTor on a topic that I’ve been interested in bringing attention to for a while, the shifting IoT market. You can view the entire presentation online; however, I was asked if the checklist that I present was available via any other means. The following is the IoT Purchasing Checklist that I...
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Fuzzing PHP for Fun and Profit

PHP is probably the single most prevalent server-side scripting language on the web. PHP has been the de facto choice for popular blog platforms like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal, which makes it a very attractive target for a wide range of attackers. It is also a very ideal system for demonstrating the power of American Fuzzy Lop (AFL) to identify...
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Cybersecurity Is (Still) Everyone’s Job

As noted previously—and as we all know—an organization cannot be secure until the entire workforce is engaged in reducing cyber risks. Each member of the group has the power to harm or to help, since each one has access to information systems, handles sensitive data and makes decisions every day which maintain, erode or strengthen the human “attack...
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20% of MageCart-compromised merchants get reinfected within days

MageCart, the notorious malware that has been haunting online stores by stealing payment card details from online shoppers at checkout, is reinfecting the same websites time and time again. Dutch security consultant Willem de Groot, who has been tracking MageCart and similar threats since 2015 and has come across over 40,000 compromised stores, says...
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14 Malware Families Targeting E-Commerce Brands Ahead of Black Friday

Researchers discovered 14 malware families targeting dozens of e-commerce brands just over one week before Black Friday. Kaspersky Lab observed the threats targeting 67 e-commerce brands including 33 consumer apparel sites, eight consumer electronic outlets and three online retail platforms. Banking trojans made up more than half of the malware...
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Is Your Vulnerability Management Program Efficient and Successful?

Be organized and efficient. It’s a simple rule of life that makes things run a whole lot smoother. This is something especially important when running your vulnerability management program. There are only so many hours in a day, rather, there are only so many hours in a down cycle where the business will let you scan their environment for...