As device fingerprinting becomes more challenging new risk signals emerge
At Incognia, we speak with experts in the fields of risk, trust & safety, security, and data science every day, and in almost every one of these conversations, one or all of these recurring themes are mentioned:
1) Fraudsters and scammers are innovating at an accelerated pace, 2) Fraud detection technologies that were once extremely reliable have become less effective, specifically device fingerprinting, 3) Evaluating new risk signals is critical in an effort to continuously stay ahead of the fraudsters and scammers.
Why agentless security is not real security
Many security professionals have been misled into believing in the overhyped promise of agentless security. But it looks like the long-lasting 'agentless vs. agent' debate is finally over and the result is finally in -- if you want great cloud workload security, you need an agent.
This noteworthy outcome arose when two of the leading agentless-only vendors finally gave in and announced partnerships with agent-based runtime security and CWPP (cloud workload protection platform) vendors. This is big news, because both of these companies had previously, and persistently proclaimed, that agents are 'old school' and that 'agent-based security is dead'.
The persistent accountant shortage sees firms struggling and SMBs turning to software as a savior
Within the last two years, droves of accountants and auditors across the U.S. have exited the financial field, severely limiting the services and expertise that accounting firms provide many small and midsize businesses (SMBs).
Unfortunately, America’s accountant shortage shows no signs of stopping, and many SMBs continue to face significant challenges when partnering with outside accounting firms. In fact, according to Capterra's Accounting Shortage Survey, 64 percent of SMBs are struggling to find outside firms that can handle their accounting and finance needs.
Databases on Kubernetes -- Support your cloud native strategy with open source Kubernetes operators
Today, developers are used to running applications in the cloud. They are accustomed to using software containers and building applications using microservices components connected by APIs. Gartner estimates that more than 90 percent of global organizations will be running containerized applications in production by 2027, up from less than 40 percent in 2021. Similarly, the company has predicted that 70 percent of organizations will complement continuous delivery for their applications with continuous infrastructure automation to improve business agility by 2025.
From an infrastructure perspective, this means Kubernetes. However, Kubernetes was initially built to manage stateless application components rather than the rest of the infrastructure that goes to make up IT systems. For the other elements involved, such as databases, containerization had to be made to fit.
Creating a cybersecurity risk assessment
Most businesses will complete regular risk assessments as standard practice. They’re crucial to reducing the threat of financial or reputational loss and give you an overview of the high-risk areas you must address.
One type of risk analysis that is critical but sometimes overlooked is a cybersecurity risk assessment. In today’s digital-first world, it’s difficult to overstate the importance of analyzing and addressing threats to your IT security. Making it a regular occurrence is also advised because cybercriminals are finding new holes in your defenses every day.
To address these threats, full and frequent cybersecurity audits are necessary to review:
The most important factors in modern enterprise backup
Technology and the data that powers it are continually evolving. This is particularly true with enterprise organizations, which are more focused than ever on protecting and securing their data across increasingly complex IT environments. Against this backdrop, what do enterprises need to focus on?
Firstly, a Modern Data Protection strategy and the deployed backup solution supporting it must be able to protect workloads across any IT environment. The rise of cloud migration and affiliated services has meant that the physical data center is no longer the heart of the IT infrastructure. The Veeam Data Protection Trends Report 2023 found that the average breakdown of servers is 28 percent in physical servers within a data center, 25 percent on virtual machines (VMs) hosted within the data center and 47 percent on VMs hosted within a hyperscaler or Managed Service Provider (MSP). This means that the modern environment is heavily dispersed, highly virtualized and mostly cloud-hosted.
From a hacker's cheat sheet to malware… to bio weapons? ChatGPT is easily abused, and that's a big problem
There's probably no one who hasn't heard of ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot that can generate human-like responses to text prompts. While it's not without its flaws, ChatGPT is scarily good at being a jack-of-all-trades: it can write software, a film script and everything in between. ChatGPT was built on top of GPT-3.5, OpenAI’s large language model, which was the most advanced at the time of the chatbot's release last November.
Fast forward to March, and OpenAI unveiled GPT-4, an upgrade to GPT-3.5. The new language model is larger and more versatile than its predecessor. Although its capabilities have yet to be fully explored, it is already showing great promise. For example, GPT-4 can suggest new compounds, potentially aiding drug discovery, and create a working website from just a notebook sketch.
Defense in the cloud: Embracing technology for a competitive edge
The UK Defense sector is poised for a significant shift towards cloud services in 2023, aimed at unlocking the potential of data and attracting top talent to drive the initiative.
Over the past few years, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) has made great strides in cloud adoption through its MODCloud program, resulting in cost savings and improved data accessibility and security. However, the true value lies in the 24/7 cloud services on offer. The recently published Cloud Strategic Roadmap for Defense sets out the ambition.
The value of a partner in bridging the gap between organizational IT strategy, implementation, and management
The most important aspect of identifying an IT strategy is gaining an understanding of common strategic goals across the organization while simultaneously keeping the participating business units top of mind. When bridging the gap between organizational IT strategy, implementation and management efforts, legacy IT applications will undoubtedly be impacted. Because of this, there must be a vital analysis of the "AS-IS" state and the "TO-BE" state to ensure comprehension from a technology and process perspective. By engaging stakeholders, organizations can ensure that necessary resource allocations have been made to meet strategic IT goals. This type of tactical partnership helps keep the company's vision at the forefront, even amid a complex and large-scale digital transformation.
Once the implementation stage begins, the deployed technologies should seamlessly align with the organization’s top business objectives. Whether strategic goals fall under the tier of scalability, performance or customer experience, the proper partner can help to identify and achieve business-driven results. The organization also needs to ensure all siloed legacy applications are factored in and shifted into the "TO-BE" state along with any data migration viewpoints. This means that movement strategy must be defined as being big-bank or incremental implementation from application delivery all the way to data migration.
How to avoid phishing scams as we approach this year's tax deadline
U.S. taxpayers beware! Tax scams and malware attacks are running rampant as we approach this year's tax deadline -- mostly driven by phishing scams.
With the looming April 18 US tax deadline, cybercriminals have sprung into action. For one, a devious Emotet malware phishing campaign has been launched, masquerading as official W-9 tax form emails sent from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and companies that may be connected to your work life. A malicious group known as Tactical#Octopus is also on the prowl and looking to spread malware through fake file downloads claiming to be related to taxes.
Growing digital ecosystems, increasing cybersecurity risk, fragmented regulations and economic challenges emphasizes need for holistic API security
The challenges that the global business community has faced in the last few years have been unprecedented. A pandemic, inflation, an energy crisis, war, an economic downturn, and fragmented and delayed supply chains have all created issues for organizations and have left no industry, market, or region untouched.
Yet, despite these issues, our digital ecosystems and footprint grows ever bigger and increasingly complex. The global digital transformation market was worth $731.13 billion in 2022, and it is now expected to grow at a CAGR of 26.7 percent by 2030; driven in the main by businesses trying to gain competitive advantage. However, it is the size and intricacy of our digital world that makes cyber risks and threats both more present and more potent.
Recovering from ransomware is a long-term commitment -- and a long-term expense
According to Forrester, nearly two-thirds of organizations (63 percent) were breached by ransomware in 2021, up 4 percent from the previous year. Recovery was a long, hard road for many of those enterprises -- while for others, the downstream effects of ransomware were ultimately insurmountable. The alarming rise in ransomware must guide IT leaders' cybersecurity decisions in 2023.
Why is ransomware on the rise? For one, bad actors are becoming far more advanced and prolific. Ransomware gangs continued to make headlines in 2022 for their high-profile attacks and advancements in post-breach encryption. On the other end of the spectrum, the barrier to entry for ransomware is lower than ever before. Ransomware as a service (RaaS) -- which allows bad actors to deploy ransomware for a fee -- has ushered in a new generation of hackers who can target enterprises of all sizes despite their relative inexperience with cybersecurity protocols.
Automation challenges unpacked -- Part 2: Process complexity
In my last article about automation challenges, I covered how to manage endpoint diversity -- all of the people, systems and devices that execute tasks within an end-to-end automated process. In this piece, I’ll focus on process complexity, which is closely intertwined with endpoint diversity.
Many organizations share the ambitious goal of automating their processes as much as possible. However, in reality, processes are often automated “locally,” or within a single software system, team, or group of devices. To execute a process, you need to coordinate the execution of all of its tasks, based on a certain logic. Most processes -- even if they sound simple -- follow a more complex logic than the straightforward series of steps involved in a confined local process.
Locking cyber doors: How organizations can be cyber safe in 2023
Our tech-filled lives put us at daily risk of cybercrimes, as we spend the majority of our time interacting with devices that could give hackers access to our personal data. In fact, according to DataProt, nearly 60 Percent of Americans say they have experienced cybercrime or somehow fell victim to a hacker. As every aspect of our lives becomes more connected, the opportunities for bad actors rise.
Businesses are not immune to these persistent threats. Reports show that 70 Percent of small businesses are unprepared for a cyberattack, and almost 90 Percent of professional hackers can penetrate a company within 12 hours. It is no surprise that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has officially ranked cybercrime as one of its agency’s most important interests.
Automation challenges unpacked -- Part 1: Endpoint diversity
Overall, 96 Percent of IT leaders in the State of Process Orchestration report say process automation is critical to helping them accelerate their digital transformation goals. Even so, 72 Percent agree that their real-world, business-critical processes are becoming more difficult to maintain. Why is that the case? For many companies, process automation challenges tie to two core concepts: endpoint diversity and process complexity.
I’ll cover process complexity in part two of this series, but for now, let’s dig into some of the challenges that stem from endpoint diversity and how to solve them.
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