As the head of information security for a technology company with more than a thousand (now mostly-remote) employees, the COVID-19 pandemic has been — among other adjectives — an educational experience. And while it hasn’t been completely smooth sailing, I believe one of the reasons we were able to transition so quickly to remote work with relatively few hiccups is that we established practices to withstand precisely this type of scenario long before the virus swept through our community.
U.S. Rep. John Katko introduced legislation to require the federal government to report to Congress on their preparation planning to address the effects of a potential COVID-19 resurgence.
Get to know James Carder, CSO at LogRhythm, who has more than 19 years of experience working in corporate IT security and consulting for the Fortune 500 and U.S. Government. At LogRhythm, he develops and maintains the company’s security governance model and risk strategies; protects the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information assets; and oversees both threat and vulnerability management as well as the security operations center (SOC). Carder previously led criminal and national security related investigations at the city, state and federal levels, including those involving the theft of credit card information and Advanced Persistent Threats (APT).
As the financial services industry moves toward an ever-greater dependence on technology, we must always keep an eye on the future to ensure that any new technological advancement or implementation delivers the same, if not better, benefits and risk management capabilities. One emerging area that has garnered a lot of attention in recent years is Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). While DLT holds great promise, there is currently no clear path around how to implement the technology in a way that addresses documented and evolving security risks.
Counterfeiters do not take time off. At its core, counterfeiting preys upon our vulnerabilities and takes advantage of the average customer at any cost. This is particularly true right now during the coronavirus pandemic, the most inconvenient and vulnerable moment in generations. In the midst of mass shortages and colossal demands for certain products, especially in the health field, the counterfeit community has seen a golden opportunity. Over the past few months, tens of millions of new counterfeit products have been seized or identified on the web. These include fraudulent face masks, ventilators, disinfectants and testing kits.
As consumers increasingly turn to online shopping for essential and non-essential goods while at home, fraudsters have adapted their technique to use more sophisticated tactics against consumers, banks and merchants.
The EDPB’s FAQs resolve some open questions, such as whether there will be a grace period for companies relying on Privacy Shield, but raise other questions, such as what “supplementary measures” companies need to put in place to use Standard Contractual Clauses and Binding Corporate Rules.
In the wake of the Court of Justice of the European Union’s Schrems II judgment, on July 23, 2020, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) adopted a Frequently Asked Questions document to “provide initial clarification and give preliminary guidance to stakeholders on the use of legal instruments for the transfer of personal data to third countries, including the U.S.” The EDPB stated that the document will be updated, and further guidance provided, as it continues to examine and consider the judgment. The six-page FAQs provides the following guidance.
Though organizations have changed their IT environments to accommodate remote workers, 39 percent of respondents have not changed their security programs as a result of COVID-19, potentially exposing their organizations to cyber risks from new and more sophisticated attacks, reveals a new Crowdstrike report.
Zero Trust model creator John Kindervag puts it like this: “The point of Zero Trust is not to make networks, clouds, or endpoints more trusted; it's to eliminate the concept of trust from digital systems altogether.” He came up with the model in 2010, at a time when many businesses were just beginning to put foundational cybersecurity controls in place and over-relied on the assumed security inside their enterprise-owned network boundaries.