Given that attacks are only increasing and there needs to be greater efficacy in how companies protect themselves, let us reference how the financial industry has created and relies on a body of standards to address issues in financial accounting as a defined comparison for Information Security. To support this argument, there is a defined contrast...

The cyber security skills gap was a problem prior to the pandemic. In a survey of 342 security professionals released in early 2020, Tripwire found that 83% of security experts felt more overworked going into the new year compared to how they felt at the start of 2019. Tripwire asked respondents to elaborate on that sentiment. In response, almost the...

In 2019, the hospitality industry suffered 13 percent of all data breaches, ranking third highest among targeted industries. It was two years later when NIST released SP 1800-27: Securing Property Management Systems to help hoteliers secure their Property Management Systems (PMS) and associated patron data. The National Cybersecurity Center of...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s May 2021 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-943 on Wednesday, May 12th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-31204 Up first in the list this month, we have a vulnerability that impacts .NET and Visual Studio and could allow a...

Human nature has shown that people re-use passwords, at least for non-work accounts that aren’t requiring quarterly changes. How can it affect your current security that you've reused an old password or passphrase from 2012? Surprisingly, quite a lot. Hashed passwords and the plain text equivalent from a breached site can be paired with your then...

Now that the ongoing worldwide trend toward “going digital” has been accelerated by COVID-19, taking extra precautions to protect your organization’s data, communications and information assets is more important than ever. Of course, there are many traditional and emerging ways to protect and secure your business: Employing cybersecurity...

Lane Thames, PhD and principal security researcher at Tripwire explains the challenges you might not have considered in IT/OT convergence. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2w3lsuN3V1ZOiLVGqxw58v?si=5lVBp46tTiK7tfzmCnpeuA Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5UDKiGLlzxhiGnd6FtvEnm Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-tripwire...

Several digital attacks against pharmaceutical companies have made news in the past few years. Back in 2017, for instance, Merck fell victim to NotPetya. The wiper malware spread to the pharmaceutical giant’s headquarters, rendered years of research inaccessible, affected various production facilities and caused $1.3 billion in damages, according to...

The White House is reportedly moving swiftly forward with a plan to harden the security of the US power grid against hacking attacks. According to Bloomberg, the Biden administration has a plan to dramatically improve how power utilities defend themselves against attacks from countries considered to be adversaries in cyberspace - such as Russia,...

When you think of the cybersecurity "CIA" triad of Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability, which one of those is most important to your organization? While the answer may vary by season for your organization, there is no argument that they are all equally vital sides of that CIA triangle, and each deserves the correct level of care and attention...

Due in large part to COVID-19 and the increased prevalence of remote work, ransomware attacks dominated 2020, and experts predict there will be at least twice as many cases of data theft in the new year.The U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency defines ransomware as “a type of malicious software, or malware, designed to deny access to a...

Another year, another new set of cybersecurity threats to overcome, outwit and mitigate against. At the beginning of 2021, the cybersecurity world was informed by CISA (the USA Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) of a spate of attacks targeting cloud environment configurations, supposedly occurring as a result of the increase in remote...

With a growing number of threat sources and successful cybersecurity attacks, organizations find themselves in a tricky spot if they wish to survive cyberspace. Oftentimes, the adversaries are not the challenge; the obstacle is the organization’s culture. Just like culture influences who we are as a people, culture influences the cybersecurity tone of...

The purpose of every security team is to provide confidentiality, integrity and availability of the systems in the organization. We call it “CIA Triad” for short. Of those three elements, integrity is a key element for most compliance and regulations.Some organizations have realized this and decided to implement File Integrity Monitoring (FIM). But...

Ransomware today is a billion-dollar industry. It’s crippled industries like healthcare. In 2017, for instance, WannaCry brought much of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service to its knees using the EternalBlue exploit. It was just a few weeks later when the NotPetya ransomware strain leveraged that same vulnerability to attack lots of...

As Marcus Hutchins was on his way home to the UK after attending Def Con and Black Hat in Las Vegas, NV, the FBI arrested him. This event sparked immediate internet outcry, especially among the cybersecurity community, as Hutchins was better known as MalwareTech and had just made cybersecurity fame by stopping the WannaCry ransomware outbreak a few...

Note: The attack procedure built in this post will not work for every macOS operating system or in every scenario. There are many factors that can block scripts from running at boot time, and you should always test against your target operating system. The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a universally accepted knowledge-base of tactics, techniques and...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s February 2021 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-928 on Wednesday, February 10th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-1732 A vulnerability in Win32k that allows for privilege escalation has been exploited in the wild. The...

On February 9, 2021, the world will celebrate the 18th iteration of Safer Internet Day. It’s an opportunity for everyone to recognize the importance of staying safe online. It’s also a reminder that all of us play a part in making the web a safer place. One of the ways we can observe Safer Internet Day is by helping children and teens navigate...

Picture this: a young person is in a dark room. The only thing visible is their figure, as it is just barely lit by the blinding LEDs of their computer screen. They type furiously on an ergonomic keyboard as thousands of lines of neon green monospace text fly across the screen. Click-clack-click-clack-click-clack. The moving text and the flying...