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...

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...

NIST SP 800-53 is a framework developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that provides guidelines and best practices for securing federal information systems and protecting the privacy of individuals whose information these systems handle.The Special Publication has gone by several different names. NIST initially released Special Publication 800-53 in 2005 under the...

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), published by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is a widely used set of guidelines for mitigating organizational cybersecurity risks. It contains recommendations and standards to help organizations identify and detect cyberattacks and advice on how to respond, prevent, and recover from cybersecurity incidents.Since Version 1.0’s...

From more broad laws like GDPR to industry-specific regulations like HIPAA, most organizations today must comply with some kind of data protection guideline. Some businesses may even have to comply with numerous data protection regulations. As such, compliance with data protection regulations has become increasingly complicated. National Institute...

One of the most common factors that can lead to cybersecurity incidents is a security misconfiguration vulnerability in software or application settings. The default settings that come with the implementation of these tools and solutions are often not configured securely, and many organizations do not invest the time and resources into ensuring that...

Organizations looking to protect their sensitive data and assets against cyberattacks may lack the ability to build a cybersecurity strategy without any structured help. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has a free, public framework to help any organization mature its IT security posture. Recently, the institute published an...

The then-new 2014 NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) was designed to plug security gaps in operational technology. It’s still in use today and more relevant than ever. Fortra’s whitepaper provides a cohesive review of this security staple and how to glean the best out of it for your strategy. A Brief History of NIST CSF “The full maximum NIST...

The distribution systems of the U.S. energy grid — the portions of the grid that carry electricity to consumers — are growing more susceptible to cyber-attacks, in part due to the advent of monitoring and control technology and their reliance on them. However, the magnitude of the possible consequences of such attacks is not fully understood. Reports...

Have you ever walked up to an ATM after another person finished with the machine only to find they left it on a prompt screen asking, “Do you want to perform another transaction?” I have. Of course, I did the right thing and closed out their session before beginning my own transaction. That was a mistake an individual made by careless error which...

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework was meant to be a dynamic document that is continuously revised, enhanced, and updated. These upgrades allow the Framework to keep up with technological and threat developments, incorporate lessons learned, and transform best practices into standard procedures. NIST created the Framework in 2014 and updated it with...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

Digital attackers are increasingly launching sophisticated campaigns in an effort to target U.S. federal agencies and other organizations. Two recent examples demonstrate this reality. These are the SolarWinds supply chain attack and the HAFNIUM Exchange exploit campaign. The SolarWinds Supply Chain Attack In mid-December 2020, the security...

Tony Sager, Senior Vice President and Chief Evangelist at CIS (Center for Internet Security) joins us to discuss the best approaches to the changing security landscape in the wake of COVID-19. Tony is a lifelong defender, with more than 44 years of experience. He spent most of his career at the NSA and now leads the development of the CIS Controls,...

Why is cybersecurity important to Education? Acknowledging recent reports of ransomware targeting educational institutions, it is no wonder that there have also been articles that attempt to lure in readers with “free” tools. What is disappointing is that these “free” tools are little more than marketing pieces that direct you to click on readily...