Latest Technology News

Cyberwarfare is a threat to their organization according to 71 percent of CISO, yet just over a fifth (22 percent) admit to not having a strategy in place to deal with this risk.

However, Bitdefender's latest global study shows that the threat is being taken seriously, with 51 percent and 48 percent respectively stating that they believe they will need a strategy against cyberwarfare in the next 12-18 months.

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By 2021, it's estimated that more than four million job openings in cybersecurity will be unfilled. Cybersecurity career development platform Cybrary has conducted a skills gap survey of more than 800 security and IT professionals in order to understand growing skills gap.

Among key findings are that 68 percent of respondents say they have to invest their own free time -- either before and after work (48 percent) or at weekends (20 percent) -- to improve their cyber skills.

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Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has taken the extraordinary steps of issuing an emergency alert about a critical vulnerability in Windows.

CISA issued the warning to government departments, saying it "has determined that this vulnerability poses an unacceptable risk to the Federal Civilian Executive Branch and requires an immediate and emergency action". With Emergency Directive 20-04, the CISA requires agencies to install the August 2020 Security Update to mitigate against a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows Netlogon Remote Protocol.

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While the pandemic has driven a shift to remote working, a new report from cyber security vendor Netwrix shows that that 85 percent of CISOs admit they've sacrificed cybersecurity to enable it to happen.

One in four organizations feels that they are exposed to more risks than before the pandemic. Of these, 63 percent report an increase in the frequency of cyberattacks and 60 percent have found new security gaps as a result of the transition to remote work.

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If you have installed KB4568831 for Windows 10 on your Lenovo ThinkPad, you may well have encountered the crashing issues caused by the update. Those affected by the problem have been hit by SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED error messages, and 0xc0000005 Access Denied messages in log files and memory dumps.

Microsoft has now acknowledged that there is an issue and has offered details of a workaround -- although you may want to think about whether you really want to follow the mitigation advice because of the security implications.

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A new report shows that India is increasing its cyber capabilities and becoming a growing cyber powerhouse with its cybersecurity market expected to rise from $1.97 billion in 2019 to over $3 billion by 2022.

But the study from threat intelligence platform IntSights also shows that the country has a growing cybercriminal underground. A young, tech-savvy population with limited access to careers in the domestic tech sector is at risk of being lured into cybercriminal activities to provide for their families.

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Accounts that have privileged access are a problem when it comes to data breaches, so securing them effectively is essential.

But things are complicated by the fact that where privileged access was once designated only for system administrators it has now been expanded to HR, finance, legal and many more parts of the organization, as well as to non-human users like machines and applications.

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Want to know a secret? Solid state drives can get hot. Very hot, actually. Super-fast M.2 drives in particular can generate quite a bit of heat, so sometimes, manufacturers will put heatsinks on them. Are these heat spreaders "snake oil" rather than something truly useful? Believe it ort not, no. Not only will a heatsink help the drive to last longer, but it can improve performance too. You see, when the drive gets hot, its read and write speeds can throttle down. By adding some metal to pull away some of the heat, your drive can perform better when under heavy load.

Today, ADATA launches its latest solid state drive, and it is a speed demon. Called "GAMMIX S70," this NVMe PCIe Gen4x4 M.2 2280 SSD is being released under the company's XPG brand, which is designed for gamers and enthusiasts. The drive is so insanely fast, that ADATA has put an absolutely massive heatsink on it. The company calls it "CoolArmor," and it claims the "terraced" design will allow it to provide superior cooling. While I don't doubt it will do a great job keeping heat at bay, I do worry that its huge heatsink may make it impossible to fit inside some computers -- it could end up impeding the installation of other components, such as a GPU. You can, of course, forget about putting it into any laptop.

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The financial services sector is experiencing significant commercial disruption coupled with rapid innovation as established institutions strive to become more agile and meet evolving customer demand. As a result, financial services organizations are undergoing rapid digital transformation to meet changing customer needs and preferences, and to compete with a new generation of digital-native competitors. Hybrid cloud environments play a key role in this strategy, allowing greater speed, flexibility, and visibility over application delivery than on-premises data centers while also reducing costs.

But the move to hybrid cloud introduces new challenges as well. So, as financial services organizations plot their strategy for transformation, firms must make critical technical decisions about the clouds and form factors best suited to host their hybrid environment. They also need to consider how they will secure web applications against evolving threats such as ransomware, data theft, and DDoS attacks through measures such as DDoS protection and using a Zero Trust model. At the same time, they must also maintain regulatory compliance, governance, and auditability across complex, fast-evolving infrastructures.

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Choosing a Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) provider can be an overwhelming task, especially if your organization is using DRaaS as a first step into cloud services. There are many solutions to choose from including large providers like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, and also smaller or more focused providers.

The decision to work with a cloud provider for DRaaS can be clearly defined by classifying your requirements and confirming that the provider that you choose completely meets those requirements. Large cloud service providers, or "hyperscalers," may seem like the best choice for your cloud needs. However, choosing a provider based solely on the size of the organization is not always the best criteria. Hyperscalers do provide certain advantages, but keep in mind that there are also benefits to choosing smaller cloud providers that will offer individual attention and deliver more customized services. Doing your due diligence while investigating all of your options can benefit you in the following ways.

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Laptop trackpads have gotten much better over the years, but let's be honest -- nothing beats a quality mouse. Whether you use a laptop running Windows, Linux, or macOS, a wireless mouse should be part of your life.

Logitech is one of the best makers of mice, and today, the company launches its newest pointing device. Called "MX Anywhere 3," this wireless compact mouse offers DPI options ranging from 200 to 4,000. It can connect over Bluetooth, but if you prefer, it also comes with one of Logitech's unifying USB receivers. It has two thumb buttons, which can be programmed to do pretty much anything, but I like them for forward and back in web browsers. Best of all, the scroll wheel has a dedicated button, allowing you to switch between ratcheted and smooth/fast scrolling.

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Credential theft and forgery are among the leading stealthy cyber threats. The 2014 eBay breach that exposed the personal details of 145 million users is one of the high-profile cases of such surreptitious cyber-attacks. Bad actors obtained the usernames and passwords of legitimate users to steal information and compromise the organization’s database.

What makes credential theft and forgery more serious than most other cyberattacks is that the illicit access to systems or databases usually remains unnoticed for a long time. A successful attack is difficult to detect and resolve. In the case of the 2014 eBay incident, the hackers managed to maintain complete access to the user database for 229 days.

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The second quarter of 2020 has seen a massive 570 percent increase in 'bit-and-piece' DDoS attacks compared to the same period last year, according to the latest threat report from Nexusguard.

Bit-and-piece attacks target ASN-level communication service provider (CSP) networks by dispersing small pieces of junk traffic across a diverse pool of IP addresses across hundreds of IP prefixes.

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Ransomware is a persistent problem, with cybercriminals always looking for new ways to evade detection and infect systems. Attacks have increased 20 percent in the first half of this year.

Endpoint detection and response company Nyotron is launching a new, free online tool called Ransomwiz that allows allows security professionals to check their defenses by generating actual ransomware samples using a variety of real-world attack techniques.

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USB flash drives are "old hat" in 2020, right? Yes and no. True, they are no longer particularly interesting, but they are still quite necessary for some people. While cloud storage has largely made them irrelevant to the average consumer, there are still many cases where one is necessary. I like to use them for operating system installations, for instance -- I keep Windows and Linux install drives at the ready. Believe it or not, many businesses and education institutions still rely on USB flash drives too.

For whatever reason, I still have a big place in my heart for USB flash drives, so when a new  model is announced, I get interested. Transcend has released a new such drive, and while it looks fairly unremarkable, it is worth noticing for its impressive speed and build quality. Called "JetFlash 920," it uses the USB 3.2 Gen 1 interface, which is just a fancy way of saying USB 3.0. With that said, it can do up to 420MB/s read and 400MB/s write -- not bad at all. It also features an aluminum body for improved cooling and durability. Unfortunately, it does utilize a cap to protect the USB-A connector -- I prefer capless designs as there is no cap to lose. A cap is hardly the end of the world, however.

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