In the world of security, authentication, and authorization methodologies are foundational aspects of defense. Authentication techniques protect against unlawful entry to systems through the verification of a user, and authorization either grants or denies the verified user’s access level. For example, if an employee from the finance department...

Identity governance, also known as access governance, is an integral part of any enterprise data protection and compliance framework. Seamless and timely access to required systems or resources can significantly increase employees’ productivity and performance. However, excessive privileges or unmonitored user access can often lead to internal and...

Recently, Tripwire held its Energy and NERC Compliance Working Group virtual event. Tripwire has customers spanning the entire energy industry, including small, medium, and large city municipals, cooperatives, and investor-owned utilities and energy companies. The information shared in these sessions offered valuable insights for both very mature...

Many people remember where they were during historic events. Whether it is a personal, or a public occurrence, it’s just human nature to remember these significant moments.  Every profession also has its share of memorable events.  In medicine, those who were in the profession will remember where they were when they heard about the first heart...

The healthcare industry has been a favored target for cybercriminals for many years. In the first half of 2022 alone, 324 attacks against healthcare organizations have been reported. Attackers have primarily focused on large hospitals in years past, but there has been a sudden switch to smaller healthcare companies and specialty clinics. There seems to...

In the business world, compliance means making sure that companies of all sizes are meeting the standards set by regulatory or oversight groups in various laws and standards, such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX, and GDPR. Sometimes, an organization will self-impose its compliance by adhering to guidance and frameworks from organizations such as NIST, ISACA, ISO...

In response to increasing societal concerns about the way businesses store, process, and protect the sensitive data they collect from their customers, governments and standardization organizations have enacted a patchwork of regulations and laws. Some of these are generic regulations (CCPA, GDPR), while others are industry specific (SOX, NERC, HIPAA,...

The Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals (CPGs) are a new baseline released jointly by CISA, NIST, and the interagency community, with a goal of providing consistency across all critical infrastructure. The primary webpage for these goals gives us a great understanding of what they are (and are not). It is worth delving into those specifics to...

Change detection is easy. What is not so easy, is reconciling change. Change reconciliation is where most organizations stumble. What was the change? When was it made? Who made it? Was it authorized?  The ability to answer these questions are the elements that comprise change management. Historically, the haste of accomplishing a task consisted of a...

Have you ever walked up to an ATM after another person finished with the machine only to find they left it on a prompt screen asking, “Do you want to perform another transaction?” I have. Of course, I did the right thing and closed out their session before beginning my own transaction. That was a mistake an individual made by careless error which could...

The third quarter saw some major developments across the privacy space. In the U.S., we saw a federal bill for comprehensive privacy achieve more than ever before, children’s privacy proved to remain a top concern, and the Federal Trade Commission formally began its heavily criticized “Magnuson-Moss rulemaking” process. Not to be outdone, the...

  Compliance is an essential aspect of every organization, and in business terms, it entails ensuring that organizations of all sizes, and their personnel, comply with national and international regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and SOX. When guaranteeing compliance, many firms frequently overlook security. Gary Hibberd states that compliance with...

If you were to take a look at the cybersecurity news cycle, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s only large enterprises with expansive customer bases and budgets that are the most vulnerable to attacks. But that’s not entirely true. Even if it’s at a much smaller scale, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) still have stores of sensitive...

Law firms owe their clients several types of duties, such as the duty of care, duty to provide competent representation, as well as other ethical responsibilities. Their duties even extend to former clients and must be upheld long after they no longer have a formal attorney-client relationship. More specifically, lawyers have a duty to not disclose any...

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework was meant to be a dynamic document that is continuously revised, enhanced, and updated. These upgrades allow the Framework to keep up with technological and threat developments, incorporate lessons learned, and transform best practices into standard procedures. NIST created the Framework in 2014 and updated it with CSF 1...

What is File Integrity Monitoring? The IT ecosystems of enterprises are highly dynamic. Typically, organizations react to this volatility by investing in asset discovery and Security Configuration Management (SCM). These core controls enable businesses to compile an inventory of authorized devices and monitor the configurations of those assets. In...

For most modern businesses, there’s a divide between Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT). The difference between these equally integral facets of digital manufacturing is a subject currently under debate. Ultimately, information technology deals with information and data. In contrast, operational technology handles the physical...

It is always said that security is never a one-size-fits-all solution.  This is true not only because of the apparent infinite varieties of equipment in each individual organization, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the different ways that every organization views security. Some spend lots of time focusing on physical security, especially those...