If you’re busy securing the perimeter, mandating strong authentication practices, and restricting software downloads, you may be missing the mark. (Just to be clear: if you are doing those things, keep it up. You’re off to a good start, and none of what follows here replaces classic and vital cybersecurity measures.) Protecting your organization from outside threats is foundational to any...

Gabrielle is a security engineer. She deploys tools to scan for threats and vulnerabilities, read logs, and manage the security risks for her company, but is all that data really helping? Sometimes, it seems like she works in a noise factory instead of a SOC . The cacophony of all the log and event data and vulnerability scans are pouring into the SIEM, and it’s Gabrielle’s job to listen to the...

A Social engineering attack is the process of exploiting weaknesses in human psychology to manipulate and persuade others to perform in a way that is harmful. Prior to the digital age, criminals would carry out these attacks in person, in what was known as a confidence game. The perpetrators were referred to a “con men”, regardless of their gender. In the cybersecurity realm, these attacks are...

Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a technique used to identify the underlying reasons for a problem, with the aim of trying to prevent it from recurring in the future. It is often used in change management processes to help identify the source of any issues that arise following any modifications to a system or process. RCA is something Tripwire Enterprise is often deeply tied into too. Before we talk...

This piece was originally published on Fortra’s AlertLogic.com Blog . Managed detection and response (MDR) would be nothing without a SOC (security operations center) . They’re on the frontline of our clients’ defenses — a living, breathing layer of intelligence and protection to complement our automated cybersecurity features. These are the people who make our MDR services best in class so...

CISA released in late February a cybersecurity advisory on the key findings from a recent Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) red team assessment to provide organizations recommendations for improving their cyber posture. According to the Agency, the necessary actions to harden their environments include monitoring network activity to spot abnormal behavior, conducting regular...

Dealing with the aftermath of ransomware attacks is like Russian roulette. Submitting the ransom might seem like it’s the sole option for recovering locked data . Ransomware also continues to evolve as a threat category within the past year, with old names like REvil rearing their heads and new players like Black Basta emerging in 2022. Malicious actors employ ransomware to extort money (at least...

The healthcare sector has become a popular target for cybercriminals and is one of the most targeted industries by cyber criminals. In 2022, 324 attacks were reported in the first half of the year. As bad actors continue to target the healthcare industry, cybersecurity experts and healthcare administrators should be aware that attacks are frequently impacting smaller companies. These numbers point...

The holiday season has arrived, and cyberattacks are expected to increase with the upcoming celebratory events. According to The Retail & Hospitality Information Sharing and Analysis Center (RH-ISAC) 2022 Holiday Season Threat Trends and summary report, ransomware and phishing attacks are expected to increase in retail. With the FIFA World Cup 2022, many cybersecurity experts have advised...

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 international community saw marked progress as well...

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 information that’s appealing to bad actors — and...

As budgets start to tighten for countless businesses concerned about the potential financial winter that many are predicting, security teams across the world are reviewing where best to place their investment to ensure they get the best “bang for their buck”. With that in mind, now might be time to explore some key areas where I see organisations spending wisely to deliver great results on a...

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 addition to managing changes to their...

The increasing popularity of online payment systems results from the world’s gradual transition to a cashless and contactless digital economy — an economy, projected in a recent Huawei white paper, to be worth $23 trillion by 2025. With digital commerce emerging as the largest segment in the projected $8.49 trillion global digital payments market in 2022, it’s not surprising that businesses are...

In March 2022, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was updated with a number of new and modified requirements . Since their last update in 2018, there has been a rapid increase in the use of cloud technologies, contactless payments have become the norm, and the COVID-19 pandemic spurred a massive growth in e-commerce and online payments. At the same time, cybercriminals have...

The new PCI DSS Standard, version 4.0 , contains all the steps, best practices, and explanations required for full compliance. In fact, even an organization that does not process cardholder data could follow the PCI Standard to implement a robust cybersecurity program for any of its important data. In our series about how the new standard differs from the previous version, we examined some of the...

As we continue our review of the 12 Requirements of PCI DSS version 4.0 , one has to stop and consider, is it possible to have a favorite section of a standard? After all, most guidance documents, as well as regulations are seen as tedious distractions from the importance of getting the job done. However, depending on a person’s position and function in an organization, it is possible to “geek out...

In Part 1 of this series , we reviewed the first four sections of the new PCI standards. As we continue our examination of PCI DSS version 4.0, we will consider what organizations will need to do in order to successfully transition and satisfy this update. Requirements 5 through 9 are organized under two categories: Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program Requirement 5: Protect All Systems and...

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council has released its first update to their Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) since 2018. The new standard, version 4.0, is set to generally go into effect by 2024, but there are suggested updates that are not going to be required until a year after that. This, of course, creates a couple of problems for those who want to phase in the new standard...

It’s not often we can say this, but 2022 is shaping up to be an exciting time in information governance, especially for those interested in compliance and compliance frameworks. We started the year in eager anticipation of the new version of the international standard for information security management systems, ISO 27001:2022, soon to be followed by version 4.0 of the PCI DSS standard. Although...