While NIST frameworks are typically not mandatory for most organizations, they are still being called on to do some heavy lifting to bolster the nation’s cybersecurity defenses.Under the January 2025 Executive Order (EO) on Strengthening and Promoting Innovation in the Nation’s Cybersecurity, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was charged, along with several other agencies,...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s February 2025 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-1143 as soon as coverage is completed. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEsCVE-2025-21391A vulnerability in Windows Storage could lead to elevation of privilege, however, it is important to note that this would not give complete access to the file...

The energy sector is the cornerstone of modern infrastructure, powering essential services and supporting the daily operations of economies worldwide. However, it also faces unique cybersecurity challenges, particularly in complying with the North American Electric Reliability Corporation's Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP) standards.Cyber threats keep growing in sophistication and...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s January 2025 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-1139 as soon as coverage is completed.In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEsCVE-2025-21333The first of three Hyper-V vulnerabilities this month is a heap-based buffer overflow that leads to privilege escalation to SYSTEM. Microsoft has reported this...

Maintaining compliance with the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) standards is a complex process that can put significant strain on security and compliance teams. Easing this strain and ensuring compliance relies on effective preparation. As the old adage goes, fail to prepare, prepare to fail.The NERC CIP preparation process is best...

One of the hardest parts of managing an organization’s cybersecurity is patch management.Just as one patch cycle is completed, another set of patches are released. When compounded with the highly regulated energy industry, governed by the NERC CIP Standards, the task becomes even more daunting. Fortunately, Fortra’s Tripwire Enterprise (TE) can ease the process.Some of the specified requirements...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s December 2024 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-1136 as soon as coverage is completed. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEsCVE-2024-49138The only vulnerability that has been publicly disclosed and exploited this month is CVE-2024-49138, a vulnerability in the Windows Common Log File System...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s November 2024 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-1132 as soon as coverage is completed. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEsCVE-2024-43451A vulnerability that allows for NTLMv2 hash disclosure has been both publicly disclosed and actively exploited. According to Microsoft, only minimal...

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...

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...

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...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s September 2024 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-1123 as soon as coverage is completed. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2024-38217Windows uses the Mark of the Web (MoTW) to identify files downloaded from the Internet. This is done by setting the NTFS Zone.Identifier alternate Data...

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...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s August 2024 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-1119 as soon as coverage is completed.In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEsCVE-2024-38178CVE-2024-38178 describes a vulnerability in the Microsoft Edge scripting engine when run in Internet Explorer Mode. On top of requiring Edge be running in...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s July 2024 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-1114 as soon as coverage is completed. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEsCVE-2024-38112A vulnerability in the Windows MSHTML Platform could allow spoofing to occur. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires that the attacker convince...

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP) regulations often make exacting demands of Fortra Tripwire's customers, requiring them to update or create new change processes and document those processes in order to comply. In any NERC CIP-centered IT\OT project, there are always crucial indicators of success - even before the project gets...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s June 2024 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-1110 as soon as coverage is completed. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2023-50868 The only disclosed vulnerability we have this month, is CVE-2023-50868, a DNSSEC protocol level vulnerability that can lead to denial of service. The...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s May 2024 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-1106 as soon as coverage is completed. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2024-30040 Up first this month, we have a security feature bypass in MSHTML. More specifically, we have an Object...