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...

  Compliance is an essential aspect of every organization, and in business terms, it entails ensuring that organizations of all sizes, and their personnel, comply with national and international regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and SOX. When guaranteeing compliance, many firms frequently overlook security. Gary Hibberd states that compliance with...

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...

Law firms owe their clients several types of duties, such as the duty of care, duty to provide competent representation, as well as other ethical responsibilities. Their duties even extend to former clients and must be upheld long after they no longer have a formal attorney-client relationship. More specifically, lawyers have a duty to not disclose any...

In the past, teams incorporated security testing far after the development stage of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). Security testing would influence whether the application would to proceed to production, or get passed back to the developers for remediation. This process caused delays while teams worked on remediation or, worse yet, it...

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...

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...

Penetration testing is something that more companies and organizations should be considering 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 2021,” the average cost of a breach has increased 10%...

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 succeeded in...

The way in which we interact with applications has changed dramatically over 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 organizations applications against it to...

In recent years, cyber espionage has been growing in magnitude and complexity. One of the most common targets is Industrial Control Systems (ICS) within critical infrastructure sectors. With many organizations relying more heavily on ICS networks, there has been an increase in threats and cyberattacks aimed at these systems. Not only do these attacks...

Cloud adoption has come a long way from its early days where corporate executives questioned the stewardship of their data. The initial suspicions of “where’s my data” have been laid to rest, as administrative tools and contractual obligations have emerged to give better visibility to, and accountability of, data custodianship. Even the capabilities of...

  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 15 Identify your business needs and create a...

Earlier this year, I wrote about what’s new in Version 8 of the Center for Internet Security’s Critical Security Controls (CIS Controls). An international consortium of security professionals first created the CIS Controls back in 2008. Since then, the security community has continued to update the CIS Controls to keep pace with the evolution of...

Change is prolific in organizations’ IT environments. Hardware assets change. Software programs change. Configuration states change. Some of these modifications are authorized insofar as they occur during an organization’s regular patching cycle, while others cause concern by popping up unexpectedly. Organizations commonly respond to this dynamism by...

Users who do not have the appropriate security awareness training are considered a weak link in the security of an enterprise. These untrained users are easier to exploit than finding a flaw or vulnerability in the equipment that an enterprise uses to secure its network. Attackers could convince unsuspecting users to unintentionally provide access to...

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 13 Enterprises should understand that...

Networks form a critical core for our modern-day society and businesses. These networks are comprised of many types of components that make up the networks’ infrastructure. Network infrastructure devices can be physical or virtual and include things such as routers, switches, firewalls, and wireless access points. Unfortunately, many devices are shipped...

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...

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...