Enterprises take cautious approach to security spending
Nearly two-thirds of CISOs report increasing budgets this year, with average growth rising from six percent in 2023 to eight percent this year, but this is only about half of growth rates in 2021 (16 percent) and 2022 (17 percent).
A study from IANS Research and Artico Search shows that a quarter of CISOs are experiencing flat budgets while 12 percent face declines.
UK public worried about over reliance on IT following CrowdStrike problems
Following the July 2024 CrowdStrike IT outages, over 78 percent of people in the UK now worry about the heavy reliance of global organizations on IT systems and software providers.
A new survey of 2,000 UK adults by One Poll for Nineteen Group, organizers of the International Cyber Expo shows that 44 percent of respondents were in some way impacted by the outages. 18 percent were affected themselves and 26 percent knew someone who was.
Bitdefender launches new protection solution for YouTubers
Attacks on content creators and online influencers have surged alongside the growing accessibility of deepfake technologies, posing a significant threat.
To combat these threats Bitdefender is launching a new Security for Creators package that safeguards content channels and social media accounts from takeovers and supports Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.
How IT leaders can address online privacy risks [Q&A]
Enterprises are facing a rapidly changing privacy landscape, in which some laws contradict each other, while struggling to reduce costs and gain visibility into their privacy risks.
Indeed there’s been a recent increase in lawsuits against companies for online privacy violations that is putting significant strain on C-level executives and they're looking to their IT leaders to address all of this risk with technology.
Number of active ransomware groups increases over 50 percent
A new report from dark web intelligence specialist Searchlight Cyber shows a 56 percent increase in the number of active ransomware groups this year compared to the first half of 2023, reflecting a diversification of the ransomware landscape.
LockBit has retained its top position despite the disruption caused by Operation Cronos, though its number of listed victims has fallen compared to H1 2023.
Average cost of industrial data breaches soars
In 2024, the average cost of a data breach skyrocketed to $4.88 million, up from $4.45 million in 2023, showing a 10 percent spike and the highest increase since the pandemic.
Some industries though have seen even bigger increases. Data from a Stocklytics survey of 604 organizations across 17 industries and in 16 countries between March 2023 and February 2024 shows the industrial sector has seen the biggest data breach cost growth in the past year.
Switching broadband in the UK is about to get easier
Changing your broadband service provider has always been a hassle. Usually it takes around 10 days, not to mention that you have to put up with phone calls and emails from your old supplier offering you better deals and pleading with you not to go.
For people in the UK, however, things are about to get a whole lot simpler. The One Touch Switching Company (TOTSCo) is a non-profit organization that has set up a messaging platform called the TOTSCo Hub.
The future of data analytics in business intelligence [Q&A]
In a little more than a decade, data analytics has been through several big transformations. First, it became digitized. Second, we witnessed the emergence of 'big data' analytics, driven partly by digitization and partly by massively improved storage and processing capabilities.
Finally, in the last couple of years, analytics has been transformed once again by emerging generative AI models that can analyze data at a previously unseen scale and speed.
Vulnerabilities surge by 43 percent over 2023
Published vulnerabilities have increased by 43 percent compared to H1 2023, with 23,668 vulnerabilities reported in H1 2024 according to a new report from Forescout.
The average number of new CVEs per day is 111 or 3,381 per month, and 20 percent of exploited vulnerabilities affected VPN and network infrastructure.
The rise of third-party browser script attacks [Q&A]
Third-party browser scripts are the code snippets that organizations put into their websites to run ads, analytics, chatbots, etc -- essentially anything that isn't coded by the organization itself.
Which sounds innocuous enough, but these scripts are increasingly being used as a vector for cyberattacks. We spoke to Simon Wijckmans, CEO of c/side, to understand how these attacks operate and what can be done to defend against them.
Job applications written by AI create challenges for recruiters
Admit it, you have at some time or other exaggerated your skills when applying for a job. But a new survey finds that this is becoming much more of a problem since the advent of AI.
The survey by Capterra of 3,000 job seekers around the world shows that 58 percent say they are using AI tools as part of their job search.
LLMs vulnerable to prompt injection attacks
As we've already seen today AI systems are becoming increasingly popular targets for attack.
New research from Snyk and Lakera looks at the risks to AI agents and LLMs from prompt injection attacks.
UK government wants the AI to eat your homework
The UK government has announced the launch of a new scheme that will encourage the building of new generative AI tools to help teachers when they’re planning lessons or marking homework.
This will involve the creation of a 'data store' for education data including the national curriculum, guidance for teachers, lesson plans and more. The £3m ($3.96m) data store will help tech companies build AI tools that teachers can trust to help in their work by making this data machine readable.
Publicly available GenAI development apps open to exploitation
New research from Legit Security shows that widely available GenAI development services risk sensitive information exposure, or leakage of secrets.
Legit's analysis of unprotected vector databases finds that 30 servers investigated contained corporate or private data, including company email conversations, customer PII, product serial numbers, financial records, resumes, and contact information.
The critical gap in zero trust [Q&A]
As network boundaries can no longer be relied on to define the limits of cybersecurity, zero trust has become the overarching framework that now guides enterprise security strategies.
However, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) has its limitations, especially in application security, and this can open up risk for organizations heavily reliant on SaaS systems.
Ian's Bio
Ian spent almost 20 years working with computers before he discovered that writing about them was easier than fixing them. Since then he's written for a number of computer magazines and is a former editor of PC Utilities. Follow him on Mastodon
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