Currently, ransomware is the most prominent cyber threat to businesses and individuals. Ransomware attacks are growing more prevalent as cybercriminals find new ways to profit from them. According to CyberEdge's 2021 Cyberthreat Defense Report, 62% of organizations were victimized by ransomware in 2019—up from 56% in 2018 and 55% in 2017. This rise...

If the UK Government gets its way, IT service vendors and other cloud-based service providers may soon be required to adopt new measures to strengthen their cybersecurity, amid rising concerns about supply chain risks. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has floated plans to make mandatory compliance with the National Cyber...

The growing value of business data, the vulnerability of networked systems, and the importance of fuel infrastructure have made oil and gas companies major targets for malicious hackers. Already, the industry has been the victim of several high-profile attacks. The Colonial Pipeline hack compromised the business’s networks, shut down its operations...

The COVID-19 pandemic changed many aspects of how businesses operate, remote work being one of the most significant. At the outbreak’s peak, 71% of American workers telecommuted at least part-time, 62% of whom rarely worked remotely before. This shift has impacted many industries, but the legal sector faces more disruption than most. Legal work...

A recently published report from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has warned that official security guidance from the Department of Education is out-of-date, and needs to be refreshed to address the increasing reports of ransomware and other cyber threats. According to the GAO report, the current plan for addressing threats to K-12...

In this episode, Tripwire's Senior UX Researcher, Martina Dove, uses her psychology research to explain to us how the brain operates when presented with a cyberscam. She also discusses her model for identifying fraud susceptibility and what we can do to prevent falling for these scams. https://open.spotify.com/episode/42XYgovmDPlVKsbNukQE4z ...

The past few weeks, I’ve been spending a lot of my free time preparing for the OSCP exam, which means refreshing a lot of skills that I haven’t used in years. A large part of that is rebuilding muscle memory around buffer overflows, so that’s how I spent my four-day weekend. I logged about 70 hours compiling small programs, writing buffer overflows,...

Data security and privacy are today a prime focus for most organizations globally. While there have been several regulations and standards introduced to improve data security, the evolving landscape makes it challenging for organizations to stay compliant. For many organizations, GDPR and PCI DSS are the first topics that come to mind when privacy...

Cyber insurance has great potentials in improving cybersecurity practices and protecting organizations against the impact of security incidents, but these potentials “have yet to fully materialize.” This is the key highlight of a recent report developed by the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) and the University...

Today’s cyber threat landscape is extremely challenging. Ransom this, ransom that, ransom everywhere – information technology (IT) professionals must work to protect organizations against the next big ransomware attack. Over the years, the sophistication of ransomware attacks has increased as well as the amount of money demanded and paid out in...

In my previous post, I discussed some of the most common types of services offered by managed service providers (MSPs). This brings us to what organizations need to do to prepare to work with an MSP. Here are some considerations to keep in mind. Have an Idea What You Need Organizations could land themselves in trouble if they end up wasting money...

Operating in hybrid environments can get really tricky at times. As more and more organizations are moving their sensitive data to the public cloud, the need to keep this data secure and private has increased significantly over time. While handling their valuable datasets within their respective environments, companies need to ensure utmost data...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s November 2021 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-972 on Wednesday, November 10th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-42292 Up first this month, we have a 0-day in Microsoft Excel that allows an attacker to bypass security features....

As you’ll recall, the White House published an Executive Order (EO) on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity back in May 2021. The EO issued several commands such as creating a Cyber Safety Review Board to lead post-incident analysis of significant security events and requiring software developers to make data about their solutions publicly known....

As the world increasingly moves to a digital format, cybersecurity is becoming more important than ever. It’s especially significant since, according to a recent survey by Sophos, 51% of businesses in America experienced a ransomware attack in 2020. That’s a staggering number of security vulnerabilities that truly shouldn’t exist in the modern day...

Anyone who works in technology in the United Kingdom (UK) is familiar with the Public Services Network (PSN). This organization was established back in 2008 to help public service organizations to work together to share resources and reduce duplication. Over time, the Internet has become suitable for most of the work that was previously managed by...

The U.S. Department of Justice charged a British man for his alleged role in stealing $784,000 worth of cryptocurrency using SIM swap attacks. According to the unsealed indictment, Joseph James O'Connor – also known as "PlugWalkJoe" – conspired with others to steal approximately $784,000 worth of cryptocurrency from a Manhattan-based cryptocurrency...

Data loss can be a consequence of a variety of factors from malicious ransomware to hardware failures and even natural disasters. Regardless of the reason for data loss, we need to be able to restore our data. A data recovery plan begins with prioritizing our data, protecting it while it is being stored, and having a plan to recover data. Key...

Tripwire's October 2021 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities from Squid, Microsoft, and Adobe. First on the patch priority list this month are patches for Squid (CVE-2021-31807, CVE-2021-31806). Exploits for these vulnerabilities have been recently added to the Metasploit Exploit Framework. These systems should be...