A US-based power company has agreed to pay a $2.7 million penalty after inadvertently exposing sensitive data online and violating energy industry cybersecurity standards. According to an electronic filing by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) on Feb. 28, the unnamed utility reached the settlement with power regulators...

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is the glue that holds the internet together. As the internet has developed into a multi-faceted ecosystem with every single ‘thing’ now considered an internet-connected endpoint, PKI has also had to develop quickly in order to meet the demands of the market. Back in the early 2000s, there weren’t many regulations out...

This article is part 3 of 3 in the “Insider Enterprise Threats” series, outlining effective policies and practices for combating insider cyber security threats (human behavior) to the modern enterprise. Over the course of this series, we’ve broadly examined the dangerous but highly-overlooked cybersecurity threat of malicious insiders. As...

Cloud computing has revolutionized the way businesses operate, and it is growing exponentially. The main advantages provided by this technology include cost optimization where there is no need for a capital expenditure upfront anymore and costs being further reduced by using economies of scale where a large number of organizations are sharing service...

On January 12, 2018, GSA (General Services Administration) posted a request for public comment regarding updates to the General Services Administration Acquisition Regulation that will include new cybersecurity compliance and reporting requirements for federal contractors that access data on unclassified systems. Two regulations in particular will...

Data exposure reports have reached a dizzying pace in the past few months, and the security community has been focused on the risk from multiple angles. Now, a new study from HTTPCS gives us new insight into rates of vulnerable S3 configurations. HTTPCS scanned s3.amazonaws.com addresses looking for storage “buckets” and logged data on those that were...

Many people view the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 as unnecessary and burdensome, but its introduction has had a dramatic impact on reducing accidents in the workplace, particularly within industrial settings. Today, it controls the safety of equipment used on process plants, the time professional drivers may spend behind the wheel, and even...

Everyone in Silicon Valley and the tech industry, in general, is talking about “The Cloud.” “The Cloud” is something that’s not only trendy but also very useful for business. Why deal with the burden of running your own datacenters when companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft offer third-party cloud services that will be less expensive for your...

The Council of Economic Advisers recently released a report that examines the cost of malicious cyber activity to the U.S. economy. The report cites many of the usual findings from the Verizon DBIR and Ponemon reports—nothing new to those of us who live and breathe cybersecurity. However, the report caught my eye because it offers some very...

In these times of unabated data breaches, the typical Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) must feel like a moving target in a shooting gallery. It’s not a matter of whether an attack and possible breach will occur, it’s a matter of when. Being a CISO is a fascinating and important job. Often, though, it’s a thankless one. Unfortunately for...

There were 978 million victims of cybercrime last year and these people lost a combined $172 billion, according to Norton. Those numbers alone should be enough to make businesses sit up and take notice. It’s important, too, to stress that it isn’t just the large corporations that suffer at the hands of online criminals. About half of small...

App security isn’t a feature or a benefit – it is a bare necessity. One breach could cost your company not just millions of dollars but a lifetime of trust. That is why security should be a priority from the moment you start writing the first line of code. While you were busy developing the most intuitive, innovative and exciting apps, security...

A new variant of the Android Remote Access Tool (AndroRAT) is exploiting a vulnerability to escalate privileges on unpatched Android devices. The malware disguises itself as a utility app called "TrashCleaner" and waits for users to download it from a malicious URL. Upon running for the first time, the malicious app forces the device to install what...

NameCheap has said it intends to notify customers of a misconfiguration issue that allowed customers to create subdomains for any hosted account. Richard Kirkendall, CEO for the ICANN-accredited registrar, said on Twitter that the company is currently conducting an audit and plans on "contacting any affected customers directly" following the...

There's a growing trend spreading through many different organizations in which automated and advanced security features are being developed, capabilities which were previously in the realm of more traditional security vendors. There’s now more security in more places than ever before, with much of it owing to infrastructure and software-as-a...

You’ve probably been hearing about the cloud a lot, and with the increasing number of businesses moving their data online, it’s obvious that cloud computing and security are here to stay. With a number of benefits like data security, minimized risks, regulatory compliance, flexibility, round-the-clock availability, uninterrupted maintenance and...

Some of the most common phrases that come out of information security professional mouths include: “Well, that did not work” and “The project fell apart, and I don't know what I could have done better.” The pain of not knowing what security best practices your team can/should implement can cost the company time and money. It could also end up...

The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect this May, and lawmakers in the U.S. are proposing stricter data breach legislation. With the pressure on to better protect data and improve notification procedures in the event of a data breach, Tripwire surveyed 406 cybersecurity professionals to see how prepared...