I’m an executive-level security headhunter. That means I spend a lot of my week doing two things: talking to CISOs or those people ready to be CISOs and consulting with companies that are in the market for a security leader. My experience is that companies looking for a security leader fall into three categories. The first category consists of...

European Union data protection law restricts the transfer of EU-origin personal data to countries outside the European Economic Area unless there is a mechanism in place to ensure an adequate level of protection of the personal data. In 2000, the European Commission approved the EU-SU Safe Harbor Privacy Principles that allowed many U.S. companies...

The instant a device is connected to the internet, it gets scanned and interrogated for open ports, software versions, and default passwords. Who conducts these scans and why? When you connect to the internet, what kind of attacks will you immediately see? The days of mass exploitation are upon us and encouraged, in part, by the rise of the Internet...

Reddit said that a digital attacker infiltrated some of its systems and accessed user data during a recent security incident. On 1 August, the social news aggregation website revealed that an attacker had compromised a few of its employees' accounts with its cloud and source code hosting providers...

These days, it’s not a matter of if your password will be breached but when. Major websites experience massive data breaches at an alarming rate. Have I Been Pwned currently has records from 295 sites comprising 5.3 billion accounts. This includes well-known names like LinkedIn, Adobe, and MySpace. Password breaches are a cause for embarrassment;...

A data security incident at a pediatric hospital affected more than 100,000 individuals including patients and employees. On 20 July, the Boys Town National Research Hospital published a "Notice of Data Security Incident" on its website. According to this statement, the Omaha-based medical...

2017 saw many data leaks and breaches that stemmed from poorly configured Amazon AWS configurations, or more specifically, configurations of AWS S3 buckets. These weren’t small leaks, either. As a result, Verizon, Dow Jones & Co and the WWE found themselves in the media for the wrong reasons. And they’re not the only ones. A quick Google search...

A shipping company suffered a ransomware attack that affected certain network systems in one of its regions of operation. On 25 July, COSCO Shipping Lines disclosed on Facebook that it had suffered a "local network breakdown" in the Americas. The company, which is owned and operated by the Chinese government, said that the incident degraded local...

On the heels of last month’s White House reorganization plan, the state of cybersecurity careers within the government is changing. In part, this plan aims to address several pressing issues in the job category within the context of government employment and to attract top talent to otherwise staling roles. Over the past few years, government...

If you haven't been targeted already, you might have at least heard about the latest "sextortion scam" that surfaced a couple weeks ago. I've been seeing the email scam making its rounds since then, and sure enough, it's now hit my own inbox. Seeing this nefarious message firsthand, I wanted to share some things to watch out for with scams like this...

Zero-day attacks have businesses and consumers alike worried about how to protect data. If we don’t know what a threat looks like, can we really protect ourselves against it? For some time, security tools have been developed with the objective of helping organizations defend against the unknown, but the reality of zero-day attacks (the fact that...

Last time, I got the opportunity to speak with Jessica Hebenstreit. Not only is she a senior security consultant who has had a lot of different roles; she’s also the chief Operating Officer of the Diana Initiative. I learned a lot from our discussion. This time, I got to speak with Monica Jain, co-founder of LogicHub Inc. It takes a lot of hard work...

Someone leaked the source code for the Exobot Android banking trojan online, leading the malware to circulate widely on the underground web. Bleeping Computer said it received a copy of the source code from an unknown individual in June. In response, it verified the authenticity of the code with both ESET and ThreatFabric. Security researchers from...

In the age of DevOps, application security is an increasing concern for organizations. But attention on application-specific security bugs is comparatively low. We have extensive online security scanners for testing online threats, but they are not so effective for detecting security vulnerabilities that are application-specific in Python, Node.js...

A data breach that's being described as Singapore's "worst" digital attack on record exposed the personal information of an estimated 1.5 million people. On 20 July, multiple ministries Singapore's government held a press conference on what they believe was a state-sponsored attack. They didn't...

Cybersecurity is generally considered to be a highly reactive field where professionals struggle to keep up with new and emerging threats. As the profession works to become more human-centered and proactive, I have attempted to design a new modeling process that is highly pertinent to these emerging priorities. It combines the existing conceptual,...

According to a new report, popular smartphone games such as "Clash of Clans" are being used to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars on behalf of credit card thieves. Researchers at Kromtech Security describe how they first came across the money-laundering ring in mid-June when they analyzed an unsecured MongoDB database. The database, which was...

Organizations face numerous primary threats and security concerns when it comes to their container environments. Those issues extend into their build environment, an area which organizations need to protect because it’s usually the least secure aspect of their container infrastructure. They also extend into other areas, including inside the...

This summer, my family and I visited a few Arizona ghost towns, and the experience made me wonder what it might have been like to travel across the Old West with all your possessions in tow. What would it feel like to ride through mountains, deserts and territories with only a canvas-covered wagon protecting your valuables? I bet they were keenly...

Microsoft announced its Identity Bounty Program through which security researchers can earn up to $100,000 for an eligible submission. On 17 July, Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) unveiled the creation of a new bug bounty program to help it remediate vulnerabilities affecting its Identity services. Phillip Misner, principal security group...