It’s all too common to see “fear appeals” used to motivate users to keep their guards up against the vast amount of cybercriminal activity that occurs online daily. The term FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) was originally coined in the 1970s in reference to IBM’s marketing technique of spreading scary rumors about a competitor’s new product. Ever since, it’s been a mainstay used by security practitioners to try to win budget and to scare employees into following the rules laid down by IT. As cybersecurity research Karen Renaud put it in a recent Wall Street Journal piece, “Companies often turn to a powerful emotion to get employees to be vigilant about cybersecurity. They scare them.”
Mimecast released an incident response report on their internal investigation of the SolarWinds supply chain attack. The investigation was supported by third-party forensics and cyber incident response experts at Mandiant, a division of FireEye, and in coordination with law enforcement to aid their investigation into this threat actor.
The education space has become a major target for cybercriminals. In fact, CISA and the FBI recently issued a joint statement warning K-12 schools of worsening dangers in 2021 after a recent 57% spike ransomware attacks in the sector. So, how can teachers and students stay safe? Here, we speak with Kelvin Coleman, Executive Director, National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) about how educators and K-12 cybersecurity leaders can better protect students’ privacy during distance learning sessions.
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center has released its annual report. The 2020 Internet Crime Report includes information from 791,790 complaints of suspected internet crime—an increase of more than 300,000 complaints from 2019—and reported losses exceeding $4.2 billion. State-specific statistics have also been released and can be found within the 2020 Internet Crime Report and in the accompanying 2020 State Reports.
Veeam Data Protection Report 2021 finds that COVID-19 has significantly impacted Digital Transformation (DX) spending, with 40% of global organizations viewing economic uncertainty as the greatest barrier to DX in the next 12 months and one-third having slowed or halted initiatives in the past year
March 18, 2021
Data protection challenges are undermining organizations’ ability to execute Digital Transformation (DX) initiatives globally, according to the Veeam Data Protection Report 2021, which has found that 58% of backups fail leaving data unprotected. The report revealed that against the backdrop of COVID-19 and ensuing economic uncertainty, which 40% of CXOs cite as the biggest threat to their organization’s DX in the next 12 months, inadequate data protection and the challenges to business continuity posed by the pandemic are hindering organizations’ initiatives to transform.
Security teams need an ally that can help them make meaningful progress, no matter where they are in their maturity. In other words, you need vendors who support your mission—an Alfred Pennyworth to your Batman, if you will. While your organization is out serving society, you need to have someone watching your back, making sure operations run like clockwork.
Meet Kevin Bocek, who is responsible for security strategy and threat intelligence at Venafi. He brings more than 16 years of experience in IT security with leading security and privacy leaders, including RSA Security, Thales, PGP Corporation, IronKey, CipherCloud, NCipher, and Xcert. Most recently, Bocek led the investigation that identified Secretary Hillary Clinton’s email server did not use digital certificates and encryption for the first three months of term. Here, we talk to Bocek about a topic he is passionate about: machine identity management.
Google has released an update for its Chrome web browser that fixes five security flaws, including a zero-day vulnerability known to be exploited by malicious actors. The bugs affect Windows, macOS and Linux versions of the browser.
Vectra AI released its global survey of 1,112 security professionals working in mid to large sized organizations using Microsoft Office 365. The results confirm that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated cloud migration and digital transformation amongst 88% of companies and that 71% of Microsoft Office 365 deployments have suffered an account takeover of a legitimate user’s account, not once, but on average seven times in the last year.
HP threat intel team reveals rising web browser exploits, RAT-infested delivery alerts, DOSfuscation and other hacker activity
March 17, 2021
HP Inc. released its new Quarterly Threat Insights Report, providing analysis of real-world attacks against customers worldwide. The report found that 29% of malware captured was previously unknown* – due to the widespread use of packers and obfuscation techniques by attackers seeking to evade detection. 88% of malware was delivered by email into users’ inboxes, in many cases having bypassed gateway filters. It took 8.8 days, on average, for threats to become known by hash to antivirus engines – giving hackers over a week’s ‘head-start’ to further their campaigns.