Researchers at Check Point have recently found eight malicious apps containing malware on the Google Play app store, despite Google forming the App Defense Alliance in November 2019 to improve security of apps in the store.

The apps were camera utilities and kids' games and all carried the Haken malware. Check Point estimates the apps had been installed on over 50,000 Android devices before they were analyzed and removed from the Play store.

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Microsoft has released a public preview of its Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) for various Linux distributions.

The company says that the tool will also be coming to iOS and Android later this year, and more details of these mobile editions are due to be revealed at next week's RSA Conference. The spread to additional platform comes after Microsoft rebranded Windows Defender as Microsoft Defender last year.

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Today's employees have access to a vast range of apps on their personal devices, but this can serve to undermine enterprise security because it's hard for IT teams to understand or control where sensitive corporate IP is going and how it's getting there.

The threat research team at Wandera has discovered a number of document management apps from Cometdocs that fail to use encryption when transferring files between the user and the backend service.

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The personal details of 10.6 million people have been posted in a hacking forum after MGM Resorts hotels suffered a data breach. The data includes dates of birth, email addresses, names, phone numbers and physical addresses, and celebrities such as Justin Bieber and Twitter's Jack Dorsey are among those affected.

While the data has only just been leaked, it stems from a security breach that took place last year. Data dating back to 2017 was found accessible on an unsecured cloud server.

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For organizations in the EMEA region, the 'dwell time' between the start of a cyber intrusion and it being identified, has fallen from 177 days to 54 days since the introduction of GDPR.

A new report from FireEye Mandiant also shows a decrease in dwell time globally, down 28 percent since the previous report. Median dwell time for organizations that self-detected their incident is 30 days, a 40 percent decrease year on year.

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With Windows 7 now at its end-of-life, the need to update outdated systems is of the utmost importance. This is especially true for Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Control System (ICS) environments, as vulnerabilities in these older systems can lead to attacks that result in costly downtime, catastrophic safety and environmental incidents, and theft of sensitive intellectual property.

We spoke to Phil Neray, vice president of industrial cybersecurity at CyberX, to find out more about why updating these systems is so imperative and to hear some recommendations about how organizations can go about doing so.

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Healthcare data breaches affected over 27 million people in the US last year, with the number of records breached having more than doubled compared to 2018. Indeed the total number of records breached has more than doubled each year, from 4.7M in 2017 to 11.5M in 2018, and to 27.5M in 2019.

Cloud security company Bitglass has released its latest healthcare breach report analyzing data from the US Department of Health and Human Services.

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There's a growing trend towards data breaches caused by cloud misconfigurations, leading to 33.4 billion records being exposed in breaches in 2018 and 2019, amounting to nearly $5 trillion in costs to enterprises globally, according to a new report.

The study from cloud security and compliance specialist DivvyCloud finds the number of records exposed by misconfigurations rose by 80 percent from 2018 to 2019 and this trend is expected to persist.

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Increased availability of sophisticated attack toolkits, along with threats aimed at embedded technologies in connected vehicles, manufacturing and mobile devices, and those taking advantage of misconfigurations in cloud computing deployments are all causing concern for business.

The 2020 Annual Threat Report from BlackBerry Cylance says the search to find and exploit vulnerabilities has seen a shift in the industries most targeted, particularly towards the automotive sector.

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New research from cybersecurity company BullGuard reveals that one in three SMBs in the US and UK rely on free consumer cybersecurity tools and one in five has no endpoint protection at all.

The study also finds 43 percent of SMB owners have no cybersecurity defense plan in place -- leaving their most sensitive financial, customer and business data, and ultimately their companies, at significant risk.

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In the year to November 2019, 75 percent of all credential abuse attacks against the financial services industry targeted APIs directly, according to a new report.

The research from Akamai observed 85,422,079,109 credential abuse attacks. Nearly 20 percent, or 16,557,875,875, of these were against host names that were clearly identified as API endpoints. Of these, 473,518,955 attacked organizations in the financial services industry.

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Following a series of privacy-related controversies, smart doorbell maker Ring is making two-factor authentication (2FA) mandatory on all of its devices. In addition, the company is also giving users more control over personalized advertising.

Ring also says that it is temporarily pausing the use of most third-party analytics services in its apps and on its website. The company is working on giving users the ability to limit the sharing of data with third parties.

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Concerns that quantum computing could place current encryption techniques at risk have been around for some time.

But now cybersecurity startup Active Cypher has built a password-hacking quantum computer to demonstrate that the dangers are very real.

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January's Global Threat Index from Check Point Research shows that Emotet remains the top threat for the fourth month in a row. But it’s now being spread by a spam campaign exploiting people's worries about the coronavirus.

The emails appear to be reporting where Coronavirus is spreading, or offering more information about the virus, encouraging the victim to open the attachments or click the links which, if opened, attempt to download Emotet on their computer. Emotet is primarily used as a distributor of ransomware or other malicious campaigns.

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Half of respondents to a new survey report that they have experienced a breach because one or more of their security tools wasn't working as expected.

The Security Operations Effectiveness survey from Keysight Technologies  questioned over 300 individuals involved in enterprise security solutions and found that only just over half (57 percent) of security professionals are confident their current security solutions are working as intended.

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