Networks form a critical core for our modern-day society and businesses. People, processes, and technologies should be in place for monitoring, detecting, logging, and preventing malicious activities that occur when an enterprise experiences an attack within or against their networks.Key Takeaways for Control 13Enterprises should understand that their systems and networks are never perfectly...

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 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...

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...

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....

Burnout happens when job demands such as workload, time pressure, and difficult clients are high, as well as when job resources, including quality leadership, autonomy and decision authority, recognition, and strong relationships, are lacking. The field of cybersecurity is particularly difficult, but that doesn't mean burnout is inevitable, and it doesn't mean you can't recover after experiencing...

Grooming is a method of establishing a connection with a person to perpetrate a crime against them. Grooming is becoming more common in fraud, both online as well as in interpersonal interactions. What's more, scammers are getting more sophisticated in their techniques. There is a mistaken belief that scammers are forceful, arrogant, and therefore...

The US Government has issued an alert to organisations about the threat posed by the BlackMatter ransomware group. The government's Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (better known as CISA) issued the advisory earlier this week, following a series of BlackMatter ransomware attacks since July 2021 targeting US critical infrastructure,...

I’ve been working at Tripwire for over two decades, and I’ve acquired a fair bit of swag over those years: branded jackets, hats, shoes, a watch, and of course a drawer full of t-shirts. One thing I never would have predicted owning was a Tripwire-branded face mask to protect me from a global pandemic. Over the past year, I’ve worn that face mask...

Ada Lovelace Day is October 12th, celebrating women in STEM, which includes cybersecurity! Every year, the holiday does end up being a history of computing, as Ada was composing what we’d now consider the software for a theoretical first computer that had not been built. But that was in the 1840s. What are women doing today? Have you heard of...

REvil is one of the most notorious ransomware groups in the world. Also known as Sodin and Sodinokibi, REvil has made a name for itself extorting large amounts of money from businesses, operating as a ransomware-as-a-service (RAAS) business model that sees it share its profits with affiliates who break into networks and negotiate with victims on...

CIS Control 6 merges some aspects of CIS Control 4 (admin privileges) and CIS Control 14 (access on a need-to-know basis) into a single access control management group. Access control management is a critical component in maintaining information and system security, restricting access to assets based on role and need. It is important to grant, refuse, and remove access in a standardized, timely,...

Knowing who has credentials, how those credentials are granted, and how they are being used is the foundation of any secure environment. It begins with user accounts and the credentials they use. Maintaining a thorough inventory of all accounts and verifying any changes to those accounts as authorized and intentional vs unintended is paramount to establishing a secure environment, and this...

Ransomware is having a bit of a moment. Check Point revealed that ransomware attacks increased 102% globally in H1 2021 compared to the start of the previous year, with the number of corporate ransomware victims having doubled over that same period. Average ransom payments also grew 171% from $115,123 in 2019 to $312,493 a year later. But those...

Got a grudge against an Instagram user? Well, scammers may just have the perfect service for you - at quite an affordable price. As Joseph Cox at Motherboard reports, the criminal underground has stepped beyond the likes of offering ransomware-as-a-service and DDoS-attacks-for-hire to advertise an easy way for anyone to target an Instagram account...

Back in June, I wrote about the Transportation Security Agency’s (TSA) new security directive concerning pipeline owners and operators. The order mandated those entities to disclose security incidents such as the ransomware attack that affected the Colonial Pipeline Company back in May to the TSA and the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security...

Most discussions around cybersecurity understandably focus on information technology (IT). Assets like cloud services and data centers are typically what companies spend the most time and effort securing. Recently, though, operational technology (OT) has come under increasing scrutiny from leading security experts in both the private and public...