The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) is a United States federal law that aims to enhance corporate transparency and accountability. Signed into law on July 30th, 2002, the Act came in response to a slew of major corporate accounting scandals, including those involving Enron and WorldCom, that came to light in the early 2000s.Its primary aim is to enhance corporate transparency and accountability, ensuring...

Enterprises today rely on partners and vendors to help manage their data. Some companies depend on third-party infrastructure for day-to-day operations, so understanding the regulations and protection standards that a service provider is promising to uphold is very important.Key Takeaways from Control 15Identify your business needs and create a set of standards that can be used to grade service...

In recent years, the security of the United States' critical infrastructure has become a pressing concern, particularly in the oil and gas sector, due to its pivotal role in the nation's economy and energy supply. Recognizing this, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) implements several new directives in July each year aimed at enhancing the security and resilience of vital energy...

You can’t do large-scale business in 2024 without having a successful, well-run IT infrastructure. Arguably, it’s difficult to do any sort of business well (large or small) without tuning your IT capabilities to your business objectives. This allows them to work as one, not against each other.COBIT is a framework created by ISACA (International Systems Audit and Control Association) to do this...

The way in which we interact with applications has changed dramatically over the years. Enterprises use applications in day-to-day operations to manage their most sensitive data and control access to system resources. Instead of traversing a labyrinth of networks and systems, attackers today see an opening to turn an organization's application against it to bypass network security controls and...

Cybersecurity's role in geopolitics is growing more significant by the day. In a world of increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, governments worldwide are recognizing the impact digital attacks can have on national security, trade, and infrastructure.This has never been more evident than with the recent introduction of the Protecting Investments in Our Ports Act by U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R...

We all know that it is a question of when you will be compromised and not if you will be compromised. It is unavoidable. The goal of CIS Control 17 is to ensure that you are set up for success when that inevitable breach occurs. If an organization is neither equipped nor prepared for that potential data breach, they are not likely to succeed in responding to the threat.Key TakeawaysOne takeaway...

The National Information Assurance (NIA) Policy is a framework for offering organizations a foundation for information security management. It was designed and developed to aid organizations with the necessary steps to ensure information security, from assessing and classifying risk to choosing and implementing controls for mitigation.The NIA policy provides businesses with guidelines to support...

Depending on the industry, location, and business operations of your organization, you may have any number of cybersecurity regulations to comply with. Keeping track of each law that affects your organization and the various requirements associated with them can be overwhelming, but the consequences of noncompliance are often far worse.While diligent adherence to regulatory requirements is not a...

Penetration testing is something that more companies and organizations should be considering as a necessary expense. I say this because, over the years, the cost of data breaches and other forms of malicious intrusions and disruptions are getting costlier. Per IBM Security’s “Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024,” the average cost of a breach has increased 10% year over year, with the healthcare...

Resilience is one of the hottest topics of the moment, but for good reason. For most organizations, suffering a cyberattack is a matter of when, not if. Attackers are, lamentably, always one step ahead of defenders and, as such, responding to an attack and maintaining business operations have become arguably more important than protecting an organization in the first place. The NIST Cybersecurity...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s October 2024 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-1127 as soon as coverage is completed. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEsCVE-2024-43573A vulnerability in the Windows MSHTML Platform has seen active exploitation attacks against a spoofing vulnerability. Based on the CWE that Microsoft selected...

Breaches, be they accidental, careless, or malicious, are an inevitability for most companies. Depending on the industry, the consequences could range from something as minor as a little public embarrassment to hefty fines, lawsuits, expensive remediation actions, and loss of customer confidence (and, with that - business).The question is, how can compliance use this to its advantage and get a...

Tripwire's September 2024 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities for Microsoft.First on the list are patches for Microsoft Excel, Visio, and Publisher that resolve remote code execution, elevation of privilege, and security feature bypass vulnerabilities.Next are patches that affect components of the core Windows operating system. These patches resolve over 35...

For the past few years, the CRM market has witnessed steady growth and it is projected to reach $89 billion by 2024. Estimates are that this growth will continue into the foreseeable future. Essentially, CRM systems have come to stay and have become the backbone of many organizations.However, the bleak state of cybersecurity cuts across many industries, and CRM systems are equally vulnerable....

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has warned that malicious hackers continue to be capable of compromising industrial control systems (ICS) and other operational technology (OT) using "unsophisticated methods" - suggesting that much more still needs to be done to secure them properly.In an advisory posted on CISA's website yesterday, the agency said that internet...

Amid the numerous instruments that have augmented our digital communication and commerce experiences over time, email remains a staple for everything, from confirming purchases to life-changing events like the authorization of financial aid.It comes as no surprise that email scams have been a mainstay of cyberattacks since the earliest days of online correspondence. Worse yet, their scope and...

So, you're considering integrating the NIST CSF 2.0 (National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework) into your cybersecurity practices. Congratulations! You've taken the first step toward improving your organization's cybersecurity posture.However, you may need clarification about the best approach to aligning your cybersecurity practices with the NIST CSF. This process can...

To allay dependence on oil revenue and expand the private sector, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has committed, in recent years, to establishing a knowledge-based economy. Consequently, they have become a formidable competitor in Information Communication Technology (ICT). As the ICT industry has grown, so have government agencies to regulate it, namely the Signals Intelligence Agency, formerly...

Misconfigurations (when cloud computing assets are set up incorrectly, leaving them vulnerable to unauthorized access, data breaches, and operational disruptions) and inadequate change control top the list of cloud security threats in 2024, rising from third place the year before. It's clear that the transition to cloud computing has amplified the challenges of configuration management, making it...