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8 Tips to Harden Your Joomla Installation

Joomla arrived on the scene in 2005 as a fork of the Mambo content management system (CMS). Downloaded over 91 million times, it has since eclipsed Mambo to become a ubiquitous platform for websites of all sizes. According to last year's Hacked Website Report from Sucuri, which used insights from over 36,000 compromised sites, Joomla is the second...
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Phishers Leveraging GDPR-Themed Scam Emails to Steal Users' Information

Phishers are using scam emails that leverage the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as a theme in an attempt to steal users' information, a security firm found. Researchers at managed threat detection solutions provider RedScan came across one such phishing message that appeared to originate from Airbnb. The scam email, which...
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Man Pleads Guilty to Sicking Army of Spambots on Twitch

A 20-year-old man has pleaded guilty to targeting more than a thousand members of streaming video platform Twitch with an army of spambots. On 1 May, Brandan Lukas Apple confessed to a charge of "mischief in relation to computer data" before a Port Coquitlam provincial court judge. The court responded by handing down a four-month conditional...
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Lending Website Cites GDPR Concerns as Reason Why It Shut Down

A lending website ceased all operations over concerns with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Chris Beach, the founder of Streetlend.com, decided to shut down the service after five years of operation due to uncertainty and risk created by the GDPR. He explained in a message posted to the site that the penalties...
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Security Controls: The Key to Ensuring 'Security in the Cloud'

Organizations face a number of security challenges when migrating to the cloud from on-premise data centers. Their work isn't done once they've completed the move, either. At that stage, enterprises must decide on the best approach to fulfill their end of the Shared Responsibility Model and ensure "security in the cloud" with respect to protecting...
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Canadian Government Unveils New Data Breach Regulations

The government of Canada has unveiled new regulations that specify how organizations must report and respond to a data breach. The Canadian Parliament in Ottawa, Canada. (Source: Wikipedia) On 18 April, the Governor General of Canada released the Breach of Security Safeguards Regulations (SOR/2018-64...
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Blockchain and GDPR: Between a Block and a Hard Place

Blockchain and other emerging distributed ledger technologies offer the promise of increased security, transparency and resilience based on the use of distributed, immutable records. At the same time, the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which takes effect May 25, 2018, governs the use and protection of personal data...
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The MITRE ATT&CK Framework: Defense Evasion

Defense Evasion has the most techniques of any of the other tactics discussed in the MITRE ATT&CK Framework so far. What I find interesting about these techniques is that they expose the tradecraft of the various threat actors behind malware attacks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDT2qnpvKTk Another interesting piece of this tactic is some malware,...
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A Look Inside the April Update to the MITRE ATT&CK Framework

The MITRE ATT&CK Framework is an excellent resource when it comes to defining threat intelligence. The hundreds of techniques mapped across various tactics help define an adversary’s behaviors in enterprise networks. What’s better is that it provides prescriptive level guidance on how to both mitigate and detect the techniques. While it is not...
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GDPR Is Coming, So What Now for WHOIS Domain Registration Data?

When the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force on May 25, 2018, what will happen to currently-available domain registration data in WHOIS? The GDPR restricts how personal data about natural persons residing in the European Union can be collected, used and transferred, and it defines “personal data” very broadly....
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DevSecOps Survey Reveals Heightened Interest In Automated Security

The 5th annual DevSecOps community survey for 2018 from Sonatype reveals heightened interest in DevSecOps practices after the recent surge of high profile breaches, as well as highlights security integration statistics among teams with mature DevSecOps workflows. In this blog post, we’ll discuss some of the important findings from the survey of 2...
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How the Blockchain Is Helping Secure IoT Technology

For those reading this who were cognizant of such topics as the Internet of Things (IoT) and security architecture back in 2016, you may have had some passing knowledge of the Mirai botnet attacks that showed us all just how risky the present client-server model of IoT can be. At issue is the reality that the vast majority of these kinds of networks...
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ISO/IEC 27001 and Why It Matters for Your Business

ISO/IEC 27001 is a set of standards for information security management systems (ISMS) created by the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission, both independent, and non-governmental organizations. ISO/IEC 27001 is part of the broader ISO/IEC 27000 family, a set of standards designed to “[help]...
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Mark Zuckerberg Doesn't Plan to Extend GDPR to All Facebook Users

UPDATED 05/04/18: Zuckerberg has since refuted this story in a call with reporters. As quoted by TechCrunch: Overall I think regulations like this are very positive. We intend to make all the same controls available everywhere, not just in Europe. Is it going to be exactly the same format? Probably not. We’ll need to figure out what makes sense in...
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Payment Gateways – What Are the Risks Lurking Around?

Online businesses of all sizes need to be able to accept payments today. This really is the only way in which you can buy and sell products and services without a physical presence. It's convenient and economical but there are also some risks associated with it because of the information being shared. Payment gateways are something that you must watch...
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Cambridge Analytica: The Devil Is in the (Contractual) Details

It appears we reached a global level of moral outrage surpassing a high warp factor during the week commencing 19th March 2018 with widespread news coverage of the machinations of Cambridge Analytica (CA). [I write as a long-time cynic who did not need to experience last week to know that “I am the product.”] We are all making choices daily – for...
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Securing Your SME in an Online World

On average, UK businesses lose around £30 billion every year as a result of cyber crime. Unfortunately, the risks are only getting greater and more prominent. Now is the time for you to act. Here are four vital tips for securing your SME in an online world. Identify All Threats “Cyber Risk Reviews must consider your IT in your facilities such as...