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The Agent vs Agentless Debate - Part 2: The Operations Side

This is the second part of a two part blog post on the factors that can help you decide whether an agent or agentless solution will be the best fit for your organization. Part 1 provided advice from a security perspective. In part 2, I offer advice that considers the implementation and ongoing operations management. Let’s look at operational...
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Do Healthcare Breaches Undermine Trust?

In the spring of 2014, the Federal Bureau of Investigations sent out a private notice to healthcare providers warning them that as a result of lax security controls in their field, the healthcare industry as a whole was more prone to "cyber intrusions" than the financial and retail sectors. Unfortunately, this threat has not changed in the past year...
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The Color of the Day

Earlier this year, the FBI stated that the second most prominent scam on the internet is the wire fraud scam, whereby a CFO is sent a phishing message that is supposed to appear to come from the CEO, requesting an urgent transfer of funds. These attacks that are targeted toward the “big fish” in a company, usually the Chief Financial Officer, are...
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The "Internet's Most Hated Man" Has His Twitter Hacked

Truth be told, it's not been the best of weeks for Martin Shkreli. The former hedge fund manager made himself and his firm Turing Pharmaceuticals notorious earlier this year by raising the price of an AIDS treatment drug from $13.50 to $750 per tablet. That particular stunt resulted in Shkreli being dubbed "the internet's most hated man", and you...
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Phantom Squad Hacker Group Takes Down Xbox Live

The hacker group Phantom Squad has recently claimed responsibility for an alleged attack that caused problems for Xbox Live users. Earlier this month, Phantom Squad announced that they intended to take down Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live gaming platforms for one week beginning on Christmas Day. “We are going to shut down Xbox...
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Killing Phish the Sumerian Way

Circa 3000 BCE – The Sumerian language is dead. Why? Because as it’s often said, a language is just a dialect with an army, and the army had long vanished. A thousand or so years earlier, however, Sumerian was the first language to have a written form, and Sumerians wasted no time in developing tools – elaborately carved cylinder seals – to...
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12 Steps to Cyber Health

A recent article by The Financial Times argues that boards should be looking to employ younger directors to tackle the cyber security “problem." Meanwhile, the EU has unveiled the proposed Network and Information Security Directive. Think about the psychology here, really… The more we raise the bar and levels of expectations, given the volume of...
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Optus Investigating Breach After Data Leak on Freelancer.com

Optus, the second largest telecommunications provider in Australia, is investigating a data breach after customer data was leaked onto Freelancer.com. Australian news site Crikey reports that the breach occurred when an employee of the debt collection firm Arc Mercantile posted a spreadsheet...
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Merry Malware: How to Avoid Holiday Phishing Scams

Phishing scams are a menace. According to the Verizon 2015 Data Breach Investigations Report, at least one in 10 people fall for phishing attacks. This rate of success spells trouble for businesses. Indeed, a report issued by the Ponemon Institute in August of this year found that the average organization could potentially spend up to $3.7 million...
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Xi Jinping: China Should Be Able to Censor Whatever It Wants on the Web

President Xi Jinping believes that the People's Republic of China should have the right to decide what to block and censor on the web. In his opening speech for the second World Internet Conference, which opened in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province on Wednesday, the Chinese president invoked national sovereignty, a principle enshrined in the Charter of the...
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Cyber Security in EMEA – A Letter from Neil Harvey

It is my privilege to have joined Tripwire as the company's Vice President of Sales for Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) earlier this Autumn. At this time, I would like to explain why ongoing developments in the security world influenced my decision to come aboard. So, let's jump right in. Why did I join Tripwire? First of all, EMEA – my area...
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UK Man Arrested in Connection to VTech Hack

UK law enforcement has announced the arrest of an individual as part of its ongoing investigation into the hack against VTech, a provider of electronic learning products. On Tuesday, officers from the South East Regional Organized Crime Unit (SEROCU) published a statement in which they explain the status of their investigation. "A 21-year-old man...
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Testing Scan Credentials for More Accurate Vulnerability Assessment

If your doctor walks into the exam room for your annual physical and listens to your heart, takes a quick look at your throat, and then gives a clean bill of health without asking many questions, a quick interaction might make you feel good if you’re not worried about your health. However, if you haven’t been feeling well, or if you are at risk for...
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Twitter Warns Users of Possible 'State-Sponsored' Attacks

At least 30 Twitter accounts received a disturbing message from the site late last week, warning that they may have been targeted by government or state-sponsored hackers. Canadian non-profit Coldhak, which focuses on privacy and freedom of speech issues, was one of the first to reveal that they had received the warning from Twitter, and included a...
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Retailers: Keep Your Guard Up This Season

For most retailers, the holiday season is easily the most profitable time of the year, bringing in huge crowds of shoppers the last couple weeks of the year. However, the much-anticipated holiday season is also notorious for being the season of hacking, as illustrated by several massive breaches during this time in previous years. Hence, retailers...
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The Tale of the '1718 File'

An interesting ruling was released by the Federal Trade Commission a few weeks ago. The ruling dealt with a case in which LabMD, a cancer research company, was accused of improperly protecting consumer data that, if disclosed, is likely to cause substantial consumer injury. The initial incident, which led to the FTC investigation, started back in...
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InterApp Claims It Can Steal Information from Any Phone User

Earlier this fall, a contributor to The State of Security explained that one of the greatest privacy and security challenges confronting our smartphones today are the apps we choose to install. He noted in his post how app developers often make money by harvesting data from users' devices and in turn selling this information to marketers. They also...