US is top source of spam emails
The latest Email Threat Trends report from VIPRE Security Group identifies the US as the top source of spam emails globally, followed by the UK, Ireland, and Japan. The US, UK, and Canada are the top three countries most subjected to email-based attacks.
Looking at targets, the manufacturing, government, and IT sectors are the most attacked by malicious actors. In Q1 2024, the manufacturing sector suffered 43 percent of email-based attacks, with government (15 percent) and IT (11 percent) trailing well behind. This is a change from Q1 2023, when attackers targeted the financial (25 percent), healthcare (22 percent), and education (15 percent) sectors most often.
Third-party data breaches rise almost 50 percent
A new study from Prevalent shows third-party Breaches have risen 49 percent year-on-year, increasing threefold since 2021.
The survey of IT professionals conducted in February and March this year shows 61 percent of companies experienced a third-party data breach or cybersecurity incident last year.
Companies not ready for new European accessibility regulations
In 2025, a new European Accessibility Act comes into force with the aim of ensuring equal access to digital products and services across the EU.
This will apply to all businesses that wish to trade in Europe, but a new report from testing specialist Applause shows that while a third of global companies are on track to comply with the EAA, over third of European companies are trailing behind.
AI driving increase in modernization spend
A study of 500 senior IT decision makers finds investment in IT modernization is set to increase by 27 percent in 2024, as enterprises look to take advantage of new technologies, such as AI and edge computing, while meeting increasing productivity demands.
But the study from Couchbase finds 59 percent of respondents are worried their organizations' ability to manage data won't meet GenAI's demands without significant investment.
DDoS attacks shift from mobile to computers
Computers and servers made up 92 percent of DDoS targets in 2013, compared to just eight percent for mobile devices. The split the previous year was 32 percent computers and 68 percent mobile. At the same time the DDoS attack count decreased 55 percent in 2023, but the average attack size grew 233 percent.
The latest DDoS trends report from Nexusguard also finds that shorter attacks lasting 90 minutes increased by 22 percent and made up 81 percent of all DDoS attacks.
The next era of information management [Q&A]
With the emergence of generative AI technology, information management is undergoing rapid transformation.
The productivity of knowledge workers is critically important to the growth and profitability of businesses, and organizations are turning to solutions that help automate mundane, time-consuming tasks. We talked to Antti Nivala, founder and CEO of M-Files, to find out more aboput this new era of information management.
New solution helps enterprises secure Gen AI APIs
As enterprises increasingly integrate generative AI into critical applications they, often unwittingly, expose those applications to attacks that exploit the unique characteristics of AI, such as prompt injection, insecure outputs, and sensitive data disclosure.
API security company Traceable AI is announcing an early access program for its new Generative AI API Security capability, aimed at specifically targeting the security risks of integrating Gen AI into applications.
Traditional vulnerability management overlooks risky systems
A new report from Claroty finds that that 38 percent of the riskiest the cyber-physical systems (CPS) assets are overlooked by traditional approaches to vulnerability management.
CPS systems -- which integrate physical and computational components to monitor and control the physical processes -- represent a blind spot that is ripe for exploitation by threat actors.
Complexity leads to trade-off between risk and innovation
A new report finds that 85 percent of executives surveyed believe computing innovation is
increasing risk.
The report from LevelBlue also shows 74 percent think the opportunity of computing innovation outweighs the corresponding increase in cybersecurity risk -- making cyber resilience nearly impossible to achieve.
SQL turns 50 this month -- why is it still going strong? [Q&A]
Data management language SQL (originally published as SEQUEL) first appeared in May 1974, so this month marks its 50th anniversary.
We spoke to Peter Zaitsev, founder at Percona, to find out why SQL has survived for the last 50 years, and is still the third most used language for programmers and software developers according to Stack Overflow.
80 percent of security exposures involve misconfigurations
A new report based on data gathered from over 40 million exposures presenting high-impact risks to millions of critical business entities, finds that identity and credential misconfigurations represent 80 percent of security exposures across organizations.
The report, from exposure management specialist XM Cyber based on data analyzed by the Cyentia Institute, shows a third of these exposures put critical assets at direct risk of breach -- an attack vector actively being exploited by adversaries.
2023 saw a global rise in ransomware and hacktivism
A new report from threat intelligence company Intel 471 shows a global rise in ransomware and hacktivism.
The report notes 4,429 ransomware attacks in 2023, almost double the 2,344 observed in 2022, with the most prominent variants being LockBit 3.0, ALPHV, CLOP, Play and 8BASE. North America saw a notable 125.3 percent increase in ransomware, followed by Europe with 67.7 percent, Asia with 46.8 percent, South America with 40.9 percent.
CI/CD and how data is the gatekeeper of productivity [Q&A]
Using CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous deployment) is supposed to streamline and speed up application development.
However, outdated cloud-based approaches negate many of the benefits. Buildkite's co-founder and CEO, Keith Pitt helped pioneer the hybrid CI/CD approach, which combines elements of both managed and self-hosted CI/CD. With hybrid, users control the build environment and can customize their needs. We spoke to Keith to learn more
New solution helps companies prepare for 90-day TLS standard
Google's proposal to cut TLS certificate lifespans to 90 days -- down from the current 398 -- was aired last year and has caused something of a stir in security circles.
According to a recent Venafi study, 83 percent of organizations have been hit by certificate-related outages in the past 12 months, and 57 percent of organizations have experienced security incidents involving compromised TLS certificates. Shortening certificate lifespans will therefore help businesses reduce the risk of compromise.
All you wanted to know about passkeys but were afraid to ask
Yesterday's coverage of World Password Day sparked some discussion among the BetaNews team about passkeys and how they work.
We figured that if we're confused about them then some of you probably are too, so here's a FAQ look at passkeys, how they work and why you should consider using them.
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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