There is a story from years ago about a warehouse network of computers that was separated from the main network. Those machines were running older OSes. But since they weren't connected to the company network, didn't hold company data, and only ran the warehouse machines, they were deemed secure. One day, the sysadmin noticed that all of those...

Gone are the days when security teams could focus all of their efforts on keeping attackers out of the network. There’s no inside or outside anymore. The modern network is porous; it allows greater numbers and types of devices to connect to it from all over the world. This characteristic might serve organizations’ evolving business needs as they...

Accidents or mistakes are bound to happen. Even if healthcare providers and business associates are compliant to HIPAA Standards, there is always a possibility of unintentional or accidental disclosure of Protected Health Information (PHI). Accidental disclosure of PHI includes sending an email to the wrong recipient and an employee accidentally...

A friend of mine received an interesting piece of snail mail the other day. It was one of those inheritance scam letters that usually arrive in E-Mail. An image of the letter is shown below: In summary, the author, a high-ranking bank official, has an unclaimed inheritance that he is willing to split...

Digital attackers can compromise a system in a matter of minutes. But it generally takes organizations much longer to figure out that anything has happened. In its 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), for instance, Verizon Enterprise found that more than half of large organizations took days or even months to detect a security incident....

Information security should be at the heart of every system launched. In accordance with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), an information technology system is granted an Authority to Operate (ATO) after passing a risk-based cybersecurity assessment.The ATO ProblemHowever, the ATO process can pose several challenges to the modern...

Technology and cyber systems have become essential components of modern society. Despite the benefit of cyber technologies, insecurities arise. These could affect all systems and infrastructures. More than that, the threat of a cyberattack could very well have a transnational component and effect as worldwide systems become increasingly...

In its Vision 2030 development plan, Saudi Arabia included a National Transformation Program whose purpose is to diversify the Kingdom’s income away from the oil industry. One of the core tenets of that program is to enable the growth of the private sector by developing the digital economy. Specifically, Saudi Arabia set out its intention to increase...

COVID-19 forced organizations all over the world to transition their employees to a work-from-home policy. That change came at a time when organizations’ connected infrastructure is more complex than ever. Such complexity doesn’t just extend across IT environments, either. Indeed, machines and production processes are also becoming increasingly...

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been in effect for two years in the European Union (EU). As Americans continue to become attentive to GDPR and their own data privacy, it’s not surprising that some data protection guidelines are emerging in the United States. Indeed, it's safe to assume that California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)...

“Cybersecurity is the leading corporate governance challenge today, yet 87% of C-suite professionals and board members lack confidence in their company’s cybersecurity capabilities. Many CISOs and CSOs focus on implementing standards and frameworks, but what good is compliance if it does not improve your overall cybersecurity resilience?” – The CMMI...

The demand for cloud computing has skyrocketed in recent years. Lower costs, a faster time to market, increased employee productivity, scalability, and flexibility are some of the beneficial factors motivating organizations to move to the cloud. It’s not likely that organizations will slow down with their migration plans, either. According to market...

Being a cybersecurity company in these turbulent times puts us at Tripwire, to some degree, on the front-line. Working with the largest organisations in government, finance and critical national infrastructure, we see good and bad every day. In a confusing hybrid war where APT groups launch attacks that could potentially turn out the lights, it is...

For healthcare organizations that handle a lot of patient data, including very sensitive information, cloud computing is a revolution to data storage. Cloud computing in healthcare lowers data storage costs (compared to the old paper-storage era), enables easy retrieval of patient data and also improves the privacy of patient information. This has...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s July 2020 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-895 on Wednesday, July 15th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2020-1463 A vulnerability in the SharedStream Library could allow a locally authenticated attacker to run a malicious...

What is the Windows Store? The Windows Store is a digital platform that allows for the distribution of applications. This platform offers both free and paid. Users use the Window Store to install applications that are of interest to them. Can you disable the Windows Store? Windows Store can be disabled via group policy to prevent users from...

Hackers are once again finding unsecured MongoDB databases carelessly left exposed on the internet, wiping their contents, and leaving a ransom note demanding a cryptocurrency payment for the data's safe return. As ZDNet reports, ransom notes have been left on almost 23,000 MongoDB databases that were let unprotected on the public internet without a...

What are the brakes on a car designed to do? I have asked this question many times when speaking to customers or organizations who were dipping their toes into the audit space. Invariably, their answer was, “To stop the car.” At this point, I would then ask, “Then how do you get where you want to go?” What Is the Purpose of Controls and a...

Building the Case for IoT Security FrameworkThe Internet of Things (IoT) is growing in technical, social, and economic significance. ENISA defines the increasingly complex IoT systems as “cyber-physical ecosystem[s] of interconnected sensors and actuators, which enables intelligent decision making.” These technologies collect, exchange and process...