BetaNews Staff

As news of Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) collapse continues to dominate the headlines, cybercriminals are running phishing campaigns impersonating SVB and other financial institutions, including M-F-A and Bloomberg.

Responding quickly to the 24-hour news cycle, cybercriminals aim to leverage their victims’ potential distress over their financial situation to make them more susceptible to this type of attack.

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In an increasingly crowded business environment, businesses need to stay at the forefront of innovation to get ahead. And the best way for companies to do that is by looking inward -- specifically at their own, preexisting data. Data is every business’ most valuable asset, holding insights that can unlock undiscovered potential. Whether you’re building out fraud detection or working to gain a competitive advantage with new market opportunities, the artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) training engines that drive this kind of innovation are only as effective as the data they are given.   

Where challenges arise in this process is with the management of data flows. In the past, data has been kept primarily on highly secure, on-premise systems. But more businesses have since been migrating operations to cloud systems, with many opting for a hybrid approach. Research firm Forrester reported that more than 94 percent of U.S. enterprise decision-makers are using at least one type of cloud deployment, with the majority being hybrid or multi-cloud. By modernizing mainframe systems and implementing the right data intelligence tools enterprise leaders can take advantage of all their company data without exposing it to undue threats along the way.

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The recent fascination with AI, fueled by the release of ChatGPT and Google and Bing trying to catch up with their own language models, has SaaS developers and designers intrigued by the possibilities of what they can do with the burgeoning technology.

But the AI explosion in progress underscores a question that must be asked about any innovation: What place do humans hold in the development of technology intended to benefit them?

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As cyber threats continue to evolve and grow, it is increasingly clear that a coordinated and comprehensive approach to cybersecurity is necessary. Governments around the world have recognized the need for national cybersecurity strategies to protect their citizens, businesses, and critical infrastructure. In this article, we will explore the importance of a national cybersecurity strategy from the perspective of a cyber threat intelligence team.

The increasing frequency and severity of cyberattacks have highlighted the importance of having a comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy. Cyberattacks can result in the loss of sensitive data, disruption of critical services, financial losses, reputational damage, and even loss of life. A national cybersecurity strategy is essential to protect against cyber threats, safeguard national security, and maintain economic stability. It provides a framework for coordinating and prioritizing efforts to address cyber threats, promotes information sharing and collaboration, and enables rapid response to incidents.

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Earnings season in January 2023 was a bit of a mixed bag for cloud providers. The latest financial reports show that, following a dip in cloud revenue, Microsoft’s earnings missed Wall Street estimates at the end of 2022. The negative economic climate that took hold in 2022 is clearly having an impact, forcing users to make difficult decisions about their cloud spending.

But as always, the best of Silicon Valley is relentlessly planning for the future -- not focused on present uncertainty. So enters ChatGPT. The news that Microsoft had put $10 billion additional investment into OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, shook the tech industry.

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The cybersecurity industry has long been very male dominated. However, the sector is finally starting to be made up of more and more female faces. Research showed that globally in 2022, women held 25 percent of cybersecurity jobs -- up from 20 percent in 2019 and 10 percent in 2013.

The rise in the number of women joining the industry is not expected to slow down anytime soon. It is predicted that by 2025 women will represent 30 percent of the global cybersecurity workforce, and by 2031 it will be 35 percent.

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The underlying technologies behind SASE and SSE must be made to work together if they are to secure the enterprise.

While alphabet soup is a staple of cybersecurity, if each acronym is tied to a clear use case the resulting thesaurus can actually be helpful. It gets tricky when vendors try to combine technologies that don’t really work together.

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In the midst of the biggest cost-of-living crisis in decades, the looming threat of recession, and an unprecedented energy crisis, organizations of all sizes are trying to find ways of cutting costs and saving money. While there are any number of measures organizations can take on that front -- from relatively small ones such as asking people to work from home to save on energy to more drastic measures such as layoffs -- the impact they have is variable at best. One measure that consistently saves organizations money, however, is investing in a proper cybersecurity solution.

In some ways, that might seem counterintuitive. After all, it’s an additional cost that the organization might not otherwise have to deal with. But it really is an investment that can pay off in a big way. That’s because the best cybersecurity solutions not only protect organizations from the threat of cyber attacks but also help mitigate their damage when they do occur.

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Getting value from data is not something that can be done in a (data) snap. The journey is often long and tumultuous. According to a recent survey, 99 percent of companies recognize that data is crucial for success; however, 97 percent face challenges in using data effectively.

The spread of data sources, volume, and too few resources prevent organizations effectively managing the growing demand for trusted data at the speed required by businesses. And that means little data -- if any -- can be relied upon to make critical business decisions. But there are simple key steps that every company can make to help them ensure a sustainable data management practice that will enable them to accelerate time to value.

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Proper patch management is an important component of cybersecurity hygiene. If organizations don’t apply fixes to software bugs in a timely manner, they risk exposing themselves to a variety of threats. But scrambling to fix bugs identified by the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program is not a complete solution. Organizations need to be doing much more.

The CVE and CVSS programs are essential components of information security management systems (ISMS) at most organizations, but they clearly have issues. The CVE program offers a reference for publicly known vulnerabilities and exposures. CVSS provides a way to capture the main characteristics of a vulnerability and produce a numerical score that reflects its severity. Among the many challenges with these programs, CVSS is not a true indication of the risk a CVE represents to an organization. That’s because it attempts to take the environment into consideration but only has limited success doing so.

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In 2023, regulators will throw down a 'reporting gauntlet', and mandate listed companies to disclose cyberattacks in record time. This legislative sea change will not only intensify the need for adequate protections against attacks, but will require companies to identify and report an incident to their shareholders and the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within 72 hours.

Regulators have taken note that businesses are fighting a losing battle against foreign and domestic cyber criminality, and by introducing more stringent cybersecurity regulation, their focus is to ensure companies treat cyberattacks as an increasingly systemic threat.

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Organizations have a critical part to play in combating climate change through more sustainable supply-chains, the source of approximately 70 percent of business carbon emissions. Not only will this prevent them from being caught off-guard in the short and long term, but it will also be significant for laying out the company's green future. Failure to do so could see businesses alienate customers, lose sales and become irrelevant in an eco-driven world. Businesses in the UK must wake up -- it's time to think sustainably about supply chains.

In the face of upcoming sustainability regulations, there is more emphasis than ever for UK businesses to renew their focus on ESG. We've already begun to see changes following the creation of the Green Claims Code, which aims to ensure that organizations are not misleading consumers by making claims about sustainability without actually having a concrete plan in place. The green agenda has also been bolstered by upcoming requirements for listed UK businesses to publish net zero plans.

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From healthcare and education to housing, transport, energy, and so much more, governmental departments across the UK are the critical components of the country’s democratic system which ensures continued good governance through the dispensations of services that meet citizens' needs while representing their interests.

Alongside extraordinary financial challenges, the local government sector has had to grapple with a quickly-changing environment brought on by the disruption of the pandemic, rising geopolitical tensions, and a rapidly digitizing global society. This has driven the need for the digital transformation of the UK’s public sector in order to not only keep pace with the shifting landscape, but also take advantage of the opportunities that emerging technologies have to offer in improving efficiencies and enhancing service delivery.

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A recent Statista report revealed the financial consequences of cybercrime in 2022 were higher than ever, with the average cost of data breaches in the U.S. totaling more than $9 million. With 2023 poised to be the year of reduced spending given an uncertain economy, protection against the rise of cyber incidents and data breaches will impact numerous industries and become more costly due to inflation. The human cost, however, is just as great, as businesses face increasing pressures to protect employees’ and customers’ personal information as well as their time and trust.

When a data breach occurs there’s little room and time for error: victims, as well as employees and stakeholders, expect a swift and appropriate incident response. Companies that handle mass amounts of personal data, especially in the legal sector where PII-containing case data is at stake, should look to new solutions rooted in artificial intelligence to complete similar tasks at faster speeds and reduced price points. This will also provide senior leadership much-needed peace of mind amid security-compromised induced stress.

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Knowledge management (KM) -- a concept first established in the 1980s -- is now witnessing both a rapid comeback and a transformation. A perfect storm of factors is contributing to these trends, including the shift to remote and hybrid work; dramatic changes in customer and employee perceptions; "The Great Resignation" that took place in 2021 and the wave of tech company layoffs that followed it; and most notably, the continued explosion in the amount of unstructured content -- scattered across a growing number of siloed applications.

Knowledge Management has made its way back on the CIO agenda as one of the most important initiatives for business resiliency in the years ahead. And, now IT leaders assess how best to implement technologies that discover, cultivate and protect the collective knowledge of an organization and seamlessly disseminate it to employees where and when they need it. This new version of KM promises that the latest technology can help tame content chaos; however, doing that successfully means addressing a number of challenges.

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