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 is concerned. While GDPR is an international data...

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. This vulnerability has seen active exploitation. It...

Data loss can be a consequence of a variety of factors from malicious ransomware to hardware failures and even natural disasters. Regardless of the reason for data loss, we need to be able to restore our data. A data recovery plan begins with prioritizing our data, protecting it while it is being stored, and having a plan to recover data. Key Takeaways for Control 11 Prioritize your data and come...

With the continuing rise of ransomware, malware defenses are more critical than ever before with regard to securing the enterprise. Anti-Malware technologies have become an afterthought in many organizations, a technology that they’ve always had, always used, and never really thought about. This control serves as a reminder that this technology is as critical as it ever was and lays out the...

Web browsers and email clients are used to interact with external and internal assets. Both applications can be used as a point of entry within an organization. Users of these applications can be manipulated using social engineering attacks. A successful social engineering attack needs to convince users to interact with malicious content. A successful attack could give an attacker an entry point...

Audit logs provide a rich source of data critical to preventing, detecting, understanding, and minimizing the impact of network or data compromise in a timely manner. Collection logs and regular review is useful for identifying baselines, establishing operational trends, and detecting abnormalities. In some cases, logging may be the only evidence of a successful attack. CIS Control 8 emphasizes...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s October 2021 Security Updates . VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-968 on Wednesday, October 13th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-40449 Up first this month, we have an elevation of privilege in Win32k that has been exploited in-the-wild via MysterySnail . This vulnerability appears to impact all...

When it comes to cybersecurity, vulnerability management is one of the older technologies that still play a critical role in securing our assets. It is often overlooked, disregarded, or considered only for checkbox compliance needs, but a proper vulnerability management program can play a critical role in avoiding a series data breach. CIS Control 07 provides the minimum requirements, table stakes...

All of us at Tripwire’s Vulnerability Exposure and Research Team (VERT) are constantly reviewing the news for interesting stories and developments in the cybersecurity world. Here’s what stood out to us during the week of September 27, 2021. We’ve also included the comments from a few folks here at Tripwire VERT. REvil Ransomware Group Goes Offline Back in July 2021, CyberNews reported that the...

CIS Control 6 merges some aspects of CIS Control 4 (admin privileges) and CIS Control 14 (access based on need to know) 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, and...

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 includes...

Key Takeaways for Control 4 Most fresh installs of operating systems or applications come with pre-configured settings that are usually insecure or not properly configured with security in mind. Use the leverage provided by multiple frameworks such as CIS Benchmarks or NIST NCP to find out if your organization needs to augment or adjust any baselines to become better aligned with policies your...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s September 2021 Security Updates . VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-964 on Wednesday, September 15th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-40444 This CVE describes a publicly exploited vulnerability in MSHTML that provides user level access upon successful exploitation. According to Microsoft, a...

For many years, there was a wide misunderstanding that encrypting some data is equivalent to protecting that data. If it’s encrypted, so the thinking goes, nobody else could access it, and it is therefore safe. While it is critical to encrypt data at rest as well as in transit, the job of protecting data goes much deeper. Encryption can mitigate risk from certain attack scenarios such as...

Today, I will be going over CIS Control 2 from version 8 of the top 18 CIS Controls – Inventory and Control of Software Assets . Version 7 of CIS Controls had 10 requirements, but in version 8, it's simplified down to seven safeguards. I will go over those safeguards and offer my thoughts on what I’ve found. Key Takeaways for Control 2 Reusability . The tools that were mentioned in CIS Control 1...

Since 2008, the CIS Controls have been through many iterations of refinement and improvement, leading up to what we are presented with today in CIS Controls version 8. CIS Controls reflect the combined knowledge of experts from every part of the ecosystem (companies, governments, and individuals). The controls reflect consideration by people in many different roles such as threat analysts...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s August 2021 Security Updates . VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-959 on Wednesday, August 11th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-36948 This privilege escalation vulnerability that affects the Windows Update Medic Service (WaasMedic) has been actively exploited. Medic Service is a feature of modern...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s July 2021 Security Upd ates . VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-954 on Wednesday, July 14th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-34527 The vulnerability dubbed PrintNightmare was patched prior to the Tuesday patch drop, but it is still worth including here. This vulnerability also generated a bit of...

Back in 2018, the State of Security spent a lot of time going over v7 of the Center for Internet Security’s Critical Security Controls (CIS Controls). We noted at the time how the Center for Internet Security shuffled the order of requirements for many of the existing controls in that version. It also cleaned up the language of the CIS Controls, simplified some working, removed duplicate...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s June 2021 Security Updates . VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-947 on Wednesday, June 9th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-31955 This is one of two vulnerabilities fixed in today’s patch drop which were reported by Kaspersky Lab after detecting exploitation by threat actor PuzzleMaker. This Windows...