When a layperson imagines someone who works in cybersecurity, or any area of tech, they probably picture a man. But I'm a female information security professional, and I've had a great time speaking to other women in my industry. Last time, I spoke to Sarah Aoun, who educates journalists and political activists on how to keep their data secure. This...

One of the most exciting aspects of working in technology is change, and security, in particular, requires an agile mind. People who are capable of rapidly acquiring knowledge and developing new skills – the proverbial 'quick studies' – fare best in this landscape. So, what's the best way to learn and grow? Successful on-the-job learning is highly...

In recent posts, The State of Security has interviewed teachers who are helping to bring cyber security education to Canada's schools. We would be remiss, however, if we didn't recognize others' efforts to bring these types of training programs online and to institutions located elsewhere around the world. To cover this broader trend, we'll now...

In the first part of this article, we discussed the popularity, average number and ratio of attacks on web applications. Let's now focus on some examples and sources. Examples of Attacks An example of detecting a Path Traversal attack The attacker intended to go to the root directory of the server and access the /etc/passwd file, which contains a...

Kmart is informing customers that their credit card details may have been stolen after learning of a security breach involving its payment processing systems. Sears Holdings, Kmart’s parent company, confirmed the incident on Wednesday, but did not disclose any information regarding the number of stores affected or when the incident occurred. The...

Identity and access management software vendor OneLogin has suffered a security incident that reportedly compromised customer data. On 31 May, the provider of identity-driven security solutions revealed that an unauthorized party had gained access to OneLogin data in the U.S. region. Alvaro Hoyos, chief information security officer at OneLogin,...

A group of hackers have leaked personal data and photos that belong to patients of a cosmetic surgery clinic based in Lithuania. On 30 May, the bad actors published online some 25,000 private photos, including nude images, from patients of the Grozio Chirurgija clinic. They also included personal information in their dump. Those details ranged from...

A law firm lost more than £100,000 to a business email compromise (BEC) scam around the same time that a serial fraudster received a prison sentence. The law firm in question helped orchestrate the sale of property owned by three individuals, who asked to receive their share of the sales money separately. On the date of sale, two of the entities...

Many businesses live in fear of having their systems hacked. After all, who wants their customers' data to spill out onto the internet or have their confidential plans and intellectual property stolen by online criminals? But more and more organizations like Google, Facebook, and Amazon are actually welcoming attempts to test their security in the...

Hundreds of millions of Americans rely on community water systems for their daily supply of water. But these public services aren't guaranteed. On the one hand, the United States' water infrastructure is in desperate need of an overhaul. In 2012, the American Water Works Association (AWWA) said it would cost over one trillion dollars over the next...

Women are doing very important work in the cybersecurity field, and I've really been enjoying talking to some of the brightest and most interesting minds in my field. In my last interview, I spoke to Kelly Shortridge. She went from a career in high finance to a security-related product manager role for BAE. This time, I get to talk to Sarah Aoun....

With the summer holiday and festival season getting into full swing, you’ll want to stay connected to convenient travel and social media apps more than ever. But it’s important to be hyper-aware that cyber thieves are on the prowl for your personal, financial and location information. When traveling, like many of us will be doing this Memorial Day,...

News of the Google Docs phishing scam is not the first time that shared cloud-based resources have hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Many popular collaboration and IT management tools, such as Teamviewer and Slack, have had their time in the spotlight for compromises and breaches. The truth is these systems unwittingly provide an easy...

It's imperative that organizations protect their industrial control systems (ICS) against intentional and accidental security threats. As I discussed in a previous article, that effort begins with understanding the potential threats confronting their network. Organizations can then leverage that information to create a digital security strategy, or a...

Five hospitals in the Australian state of Queensland have suffered IT outages after a botched attempt to patch their systems against ransomware. On 25 May, Queensland Health Minister Cameron Dick provided some details to The Courier-Mail about the failures: "Over the course of that weekend as part of protecting our systems from cyber-attack, a...

Tripwire Enterprise can gather any number of different kinds of information from a monitored system, such as file and folder changes, registry changes, policy changes, etc. However, cast the net too wide and you can potentially end up with more information coming in than you can react to. This will lead to important changes (the signal) being lost...

InfoSecurity Europe is one of the largest and most respected security events held in Europe. Every year, tens of thousands of students, professionals and experts in information security flock to London's Olympia for this free conference. In 2014, 11,500 visitors from over 70 countries registered for InfoSecurity Europe. The number of attendees...

An updated variant of Jaff ransomware boasts a more professional design and now encrypts victims' data with the WLU extension. On 23 May, Internet Storm Center (ISC) handler Brad Duncan collected 20 malspam emails that all used a fake invoice theme and a spoofed email address. The emails also came with a PDF attachment containing an embedded Word...

Public web applications are an attractive target for hackers. Attacks on web applications open up wide opportunities, including access to internal resources of the company, sensitive information, disruption of the application, and circumvention of business logic. Virtually any attack can bring financial benefits to the attacker and losses, both...

Understandably, a few eyebrows raise up when I suggest today’s cybersecurity challenges started nearly 370 years ago, some 300 years before the invention of ENIAC (the world’s first digital computer). But I stand by this observation because of the unintended clash of two systems: the nation-state and the Internet. Many of the institutions, social...