Universities not delivering the right skills for cybersecurity


Over three quarters of cybersecurity professionals in the UK and US don't believe university courses are preparing graduates adequately for the working world, according to new research.
The study of 3,000 IT and cybersecurity professionals in the UK and the US, from cybersecurity upskilling, certification, and talent assessment platform Hack The Box, shows 78 percent of cybersecurity and IT professionals believe a traditional university education in cybersecurity is not doing enough to prepare graduates for the modern workforce.
Financial services businesses see spike in vendor email compromise


A new report from Abnormal Security shows that vendor email compromise (VEC) attacks against financial services organizations increased by 137 percent in 2023.
This is an industry that handles a wide array of sensitive personal and financial information of the type hackers love to get their hands on. This makes organizations within the financial services sector particularly susceptible to cyberattacks, including socially-engineered email attacks.
What is a vCISO and why would you want to hire one? [Q&A]


As the profile of cybersecurity has increased within enterprises, so has the challenge of finding people to fill senior roles and then hanging on to them.
Recent research suggests that CISOs don't stay in the job for more than three years on average. One answer is to use a virtual CISO (vCISO) to advise on current issues and relieve the strain on the in-house team.
New collaboration helps organizations defend against AI and quantum risks


One of the key recent concerns for security teams has been developing the ability to adapt to advancements in technology and innovations such as AI and quantum computing.
A new partnership between Accenture and SandboxAQ aims to give organizations the ability to scan all of their files, applications and network traffic to ensure that all of their data -- whether on-premise or hosted via major cloud providers -- is secure even if attackers break through firewalls and network endpoints.
94 percent of organizations suffer email security incidents


According to a new study, 94 percent of global organizations have experienced email security incidents last year, up two percent from the year before.
The latest Email Security Risk Report from Egress looks at attitudes and approaches to email security, the evolution of risks, and the impact of incidents, based on responses from 500 cybersecurity leaders.
Balancing risk and reward with low-code and no-code platforms [Q&A]


In recent years, enterprises have increasingly turned to low-code and no-code platforms in order to streamline their development processes.
With the introduction of AI, this sector is evolving even faster and Wing To, general manager of Intelligent DevOps at Digital.ai, believes this needs organizations to develop a cautious approach. We spoke to him to find out why.
How AI is set to transform the legal sector [Q&A]


The use of generative AI is becoming common across many industries, but while it undoubtedly offers benefits it can lead to problems too.
Legal firms in particular can fall foul of poor results, one firm was fined $5,000 after a court found that one of its lawyers had used ChatGPT to write a court brief which included false citations.
IBM and SAP team up to offer consumer goods and retail AI solutions


Industry giant IBM is today announcing a collaboration with ERP specialist SAP to develop solutions to help clients in the consumer packaged goods and retail industries enhance their supply chain, finance operations, sales and services using generative AI.
This involves embedding IBM's watsonx enterprise-ready AI and data platform and AI assistants, into SAP solutions to create new generative and traditional AI solutions focused on addressing the complexities of the direct store delivery business process and product portfolio management.
Generative AI use in the workplace leads to added risks


More than 10 percent of enterprise employees access at least one generative AI application every month, compared to just two percent a year ago, but there are security risks as a result.
New research from Netskope shows ChatGPT was the most popular generative AI application in 2023, accounting for seven percent of enterprise usage. The number of cloud apps the enterprise accessed also increased by an average of 19 percent per year, with users jumping from 14 to 20 different apps in just two years.
Up to a third of companies could fall foul of new bulk email rules


New research from cyber resilience company Red Sift shows that 33 percent of publicly traded companies worldwide are not protected by the DMARC email standard, though this is down from 70.5 percent in 2022.
However, in light of Google and Yahoo's new rules for bulk senders -- those sending over 5,000 emails daily -- which come into force on February 1st and are aimed at reducing spam, not using DMARC is a problem.
Who will win the battle of open vs closed AI? [Q&A]


Closed AI products like Bard and ChatGPT (ironically from OpenAI) have already delivered a practical, powerful chatbot experience and are being employed by many businesses.
Open AI by contrast is still in its early stages and has not seen wide adoption. We spoke to Mike Finley, CTO and co-founder of AnswerRocket, to find out the differences between the two and how they're set to develop.
SecurityScorecard launches industry-specific ratings for the telecoms sector


Some industries make more attractive targets for cybercriminals than others, thanks to the type of data they hold and the services they provide. The telecoms sector is one such. 85 percent of the top telecom companies in the US, UK, France, Italy, Denmark, and Germany experienced a third-party data breach in the past 12 months alone.
Which is why SecurityScorecard is introducing a new set of security ratings developed especially for telecommunications companies, internet service providers, and cloud providers.
Brazilians exposed in massive data leak


Researchers at Cybernews have uncovered a huge data leak which could potentially put the entire population of Brazil at risk.
They uncovered a publicly accessible Elasticsearch instance which contained more than 223 million records-worth of private data belonging to Brazilian individuals -- the country's current population is only around 217 million.
Enterprises struggling with more vulnerabilities than they can handle


According to new research 82 percent of companies report an increase in the gap between the number of vulnerabilities/exposures in their environment and their ability to remediate them.
The 2024 State of Security Posture Survey from XM Cyber is based on a survey of 300 CISOs and security decision-makers from large organizations in the US and UK, and shows 62 percent of security and IT teams actively engage in the remediation of exposures or vulnerabilities, handling an average of 12 per week.
Ditching passwords in favor of passwordless, phishing-resistant authentication [Q&A]


According to the FIDO (Fast Identity Online) Alliance, passwords are the root cause of more than 80 percent of data breaches. And yet, many organizations -- both big and small -- continue to use this antiquated approach to authentication. In fact, recent research from Yubico, which surveyed more than 16,000 employees across eight countries, found 59 percent of respondents still rely on usernames and passwords as their primary method of authentication.
Why do we continue to see the same old same old, especially when the authentication industry has made such significant strides in not only passwordless but also phishing-resistant authentication? We spoke with Axiad founder and co-CEO Bassam Al-Khalidi to get an answer to this question and find out how companies can make the move to a passwordless, phishing-resistant future. Read on to hear what he had to say.
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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