Red, purple and blue -- security teams keeping the hackers at bay
Regardless of how much money is spent on cybersecurity, the likelihood of getting hacked, is steadily increasing. The threat landscape is constantly evolving with new ransomware and extortion attacks being reported daily, in addition to adversarial nation states stealing personal information and intellectual property for nefarious purposes.
The reasons are manifold and complex. IT infrastructures are becoming increasingly more complicated, with new software development programs that introduce new vulnerabilities. Cyber criminals are becoming more sophisticated and better organized, with new advanced persistent threats (APTs) continually being discovered. Compounded by state-sponsored cyber espionage seeking anything that can be used for economic or political advantage.
Distributed Denial of Service attack: Prevention and best practices
As one of the easiest attacks to launch and often devastatingly effective, a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is one of the most common threats in today’s cybersecurity landscape. In simple terms, a DDoS attack seeks to disrupt a target’s connectivity or user services by flooding its network with an overwhelming volume of fraudulent traffic, typically through a botnet.
The damage from a DDoS attack can be devastating. In one recent survey, 98 percent of respondents reported costs of more than $100,000 for each hour of downtime, while over one-third estimated costs in excess of $1 million. The average DDoS attack causes $218,000 in direct damage (around £179,601), in addition to any accompanying extortion, data theft, business disruption, or harm to the victim’s reputation and business and customer relationships.
How to build a security operations center from the ground up
Building a security operations center (SOC) is a tall feat. With the global technology talent shortage estimated at 85 million workers by 2030, it is clear that talent is, and will continue to be, hard to find.
Organizations must learn to create a SOC in an adaptable way that makes scaling to meet varying demands of clients simple while addressing the cybersecurity talent shortage. Special considerations should be made regarding tool selection, proper staffing, organizational needs and performing a gap/risk analysis utilizing outside consultation when applicable. Let’s explore a few best practices.
It's time for better data protection: Why the 3-2-1 rule isn't enough
With reports showing that 90 percent of organizations were impacted by ransomware over the past twelve months, policies ensuring that data is both safeguarded and recoverable have become a necessity rather than an option.
However, changes to the data security landscape in the intervening years since methods such as the 3-2-1 backup rule were first adopted means these approaches may no longer be fit for purpose when it comes to mitigating against data loss.
Rise of security champions: Application development's long-awaited evolution
Application development can be linked closely to Newton’s Third Law of Motion: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Developers simply want to develop, but seemingly whenever they want to develop, application security (AppSec) teams fire back with concerns ensuring the safety of the application, breeding tension and slowing development. In the wake of this tension, we must ask ourselves how we can go about ensuring security while maintaining a streamlined development process -- enter the rise of "security champions."
A security champion program is the process of spreading awareness around best security practices for organizational behavior in order to reduce overall security risk. Security champions are individuals who otherwise would not be involved in security, but receive additional training and incentives to represent security on their teams. The rise of security champions truly developed as a trend from the concern that the average developer is not being measured on security, and therefore is not focused on maintaining it. There is a popular belief, particularly in the use of open-source code, that security is not a part of the development process because it is not the responsibility of the developer to ensure the code is secure -- thus banking on the assumption that the code used is reliable. In fact, security teams, while necessary, are often viewed as bottlenecks in the process, preventing developers from constantly churning out code.
Top 4 cloud trends that will affect your business
Over recent years, Cloud computing has boomed in popularity, receiving a global spend of £46.3 billion within the first quarter of 2022, according to research by Canalys. As well as that, Statista had also conducted a survey that investigated the increase use of cloud services and discovered that storing and creating files and office documents was the main reason for implementing cloud technology to their business.
Utilizing cloud services to their fullest is a great way of helping push your business in a more tech-savvy direction. But like all technology, it will continue to evolve and provide new ways of making your processes more efficient.
Understanding static and dynamic data
Data collection practices receive increasingly more attention and sophistication. Web scraping, and automated acquisition processes in general, changed the nature of data collection so much that old challenges were solved and new problems emerged.
One of them is the selection of data in regards to dynamicity. Since now we’re able to collect unthinkable volumes of information in mere seconds, getting some particular sample is no longer an issue. Additionally, in business, we will often scour the same sources over and over to monitor competition, brands, and anything else that’s relevant to the industry.
Top 5 holiday season fraud trends
With International Fraud Awareness Week and the holiday shopping season officially underway, analysts and retailers are diving into customers’ shopping habits. But it’s not just legitimate customers retailers need to be aware of, as fraudsters are just as keen on holiday shopping -- and they're already hitting online stores.
Here are some of the top trends I'm seeing as we enter the peak of the holiday shopping season.
Federal agencies continue to confront cloud migration challenges a decade on
Most U.S. federal agencies began the process of moving their data to cloud-based services about ten years ago. In 2011, the White House issued their Cloud-First strategy, requiring agencies to evaluate safe and secure cloud technologies. This marked the first step taken to accelerate cloud adoption amongst government agencies in a bid to help reduce costs and improve the efficiency of services provided to citizens.
Since then, many agencies have begun moving more and more of their infrastructure to cloud platforms. Recent research revealed that nearly two-thirds of federal IT leaders are either using or starting to use the cloud for mission critical applications. However, despite this uptick in adoption, many federal agencies continue to grapple with cloud migration challenges.
Does eSIM solve a chip shortage problem?
Smartphones today feature an array of cutting-edge technologies, from folding touchscreens to automatic crash detection. One less flashy but equally exciting of these innovations is the eSIM. While still new, this concept is catching on quickly and could dramatically alter the smartphone market.
Some people hope eSIM technology will help address one of smartphones' most significant challenges today -- the chip shortage. As phone manufacturers across the globe struggle to meet demand, will eSIM be the answer to their supply chain woes? Here’s a closer look at this technology and its potential impact.
Your monitoring strategy is a money pit, according to new research
Business leaders have relied on monitoring tools since the advent of computing. In an ideal world, these tools help engineers improve their technology’s continuous availability. Modern tools should give teams a real-time understanding of how their digital apps and services are performing, so they can attend to incidents and outages.
There’s another promise of modern monitoring tools. They should free up time for business-motivated innovation. By providing rapid incident detection, tools should relieve engineers from tedious monitoring activities so they can provide the bigger, better, smarter technologies that make consumers’ lives more convenient and more fun, whilst improving the visibility of what innovation will matter. But are monitoring tools living up to this promise? And are investments paying off?
Single sign-on authentication solutions with RFID and mobile technologies
The pandemic has permanently changed the way we work. But regardless of whether it's in the office or at home, data and networks must be always protected against unauthorized access.
One approach to improve security is to use single sign-on (SSO)/PC logon systems that combine middleware with RFID (radio frequency identification) or smartphone-enabled technologies for user authentication.
The psychology of building a resilient cybersecurity team
Cyber resilience has been a high-profile issue across industries, especially since the pandemic. As organizations were forced to adopt hybrid working, they had to reconsider infrastructural configuration. Facilitating remote working meant that businesses needed to consider a plethora of new endpoint devices connecting to the enterprise network. This increasing digital landscape is creating a wide range of complexities for businesses around network management and device visibility.
The ever-evolving IT estate is only a part of the cyber-security team’s challenges. It is almost impossible to 'solve' the complexity it brings with it because the requirements of dealing with and handling the technology keep changing. The security team's preparedness, ability to work under pressure, and people skills will determine how resilient an organization is, and how well it can detect, defend, and respond to a new or emerging attack. It is therefore vital to give teams the capabilities they need adapt to the ever-changing threat landscape. security teams.
Driving greater legal efficiency with automation
The term 'time is money' is particularly true for law firms. In fact, productivity is critical to their success especially with the growing popularity of fixed-fee billing, where every minute counts against profitability.
With a finite amount of time and growing workloads, law firms of all sizes need to find better ways to become more efficient and make lawyer’s lives easier. Doing this will not only help them to become more profitable but will also improve the legal experience for both employees and clients.
Embracing the latest technological developments in the tax industry
Amidst enormous digital changes in the tax industry, the upcoming 2026 deadline for Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Corporation Tax (CT) has the potential to give tax departments a headache -- with no magic pill to cure it. The required changes to VAT and CT data and processes has created a growing desire for dedicated technology to build more efficient and cost-effective operations.
As research from Deloitte indicates that 93 percent of tax functions will be offered the same or a reduced budget over the next three years, senior tax executives are challenged to do more with less. Investing in the right tech and securing the necessary skills is critical to stay compliant, whilst securing and generating business value. New technologies have begun to dominate in an increasingly virtual landscape and, as with any business changes, many struggle to get started and overcome the implementation challenges. Yet, the benefits of embracing these new opportunities far outweigh the initial hurdles.
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