Will new CISA guidelines help bolster cyber defenses?

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Do you know what IT devices are in your business or on your network right now? If not, it’s not just cybercriminals that might be knocking on your door very soon, but the White House.

Binding Operational Directive 23-01, or BOD 23-01, is a new directive from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. CISA has issued a Binding Operational Directive (BOD) that orders federal agencies in the country to keep track of their IT assets and any vulnerabilities on their networks.

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Top security advice on keeping cyber-scares at bay this Halloween

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As suggested by historical data, October has, over the last few years, shown an 'exponential growth' in cyber-attacks, ironically it is also Cyber Security Awareness month, and Halloween. As we approach the end of this year's security awareness month, and head to Halloween, it’s important that close attention is paid to proactive insights and advice offered by industry leaders.

Here is some critical advice in terms of how organizations can maintain a resilient security infrastructure in today’s target-rich environment and potentially avoid a cyber horror.

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Defending against critical infrastructure attacks [Q&A]

industrial skyline

Critical infrastructure is a prime target for cybercriminals and nation state actors. It often operates on legacy operational technologies (OT) which have vulnerabilities that can't be fixed easily or directly. 

We spoke to John Moran, technical director, business development at Tufin, to discuss how organizations can protect themselves. John is a former incident response consultant and is a cybercrime forensics expert.

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Phishing volumes increase over 30 percent with well-known brands as favorite targets

Phishing

The latest report from email security and threat detection company Vade shows the volume of phishing emails up 31 percent in the last quarter compared to Q2.

Volumes peaked in July (79.2 million), dipping in August (57.5 million), and rebounding in September (67.2 million). If this pace continues through Q4, phishing volumes in the second half of 2022 are set to exceed those reached in the first half (315 million).

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How far will you go to protect your personal data?

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No longer shop with a brand? Pay more for goods and services from a company with a better privacy record? Stop using an app?

All of these and more are actions people are prepared to take if they find out organizations aren't keeping their data safe, according to a new report from DataGrail.

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Popular vulnerability scanners are only 73 percent accurate

software scanning

New research from Rezilion finds that there's a high level of inaccuracies and noise created by the market's most popular commercial and open-source scanning technologies.

Researchers examined 20 popular containers on DockerHub, ran them locally, and scanned them using six different, popular vulnerability scanners in the commercial and open-source market. Taking false negatives into account the scanners returned only 73 percent of relevant results out of all vulnerabilities that should have been identified, including those the scanners failed to detect.

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Phishing attacks increase 61 percent over last year

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A new report analyzing billions of link-based URLs, attachments and natural language messages in email, mobile and browser channels over six months in 2022, finds more than 255 million phishing attacks -- a 61 percent increase compared to 2021.

The study from messaging security company SlashNext shows earlier security strategies, including secure email gateways, firewalls, and proxy servers are no longer stopping threats, as bad actors increasingly launch these attacks from trusted services and business and personal messaging apps.

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Application security best practices and trends [Q&A]

Padlock

Businesses today face a wider and more dangerous array of cybersecurity threats than ever before. In the UK alone there were more than 400,000 reports of fraud and cybercrime in 2021. Those crimes come with significant costs too. In addition to the reputational damage that comes with cybersecurity incidents, data breaches cost UK companies an average of US$4.35 million.

That makes it critical that organizations have the best possible cyber defences in place, not just for the threats they face today but also for those of tomorrow. This is especially true for business-critical applications like ERP systems that need to be run continuously in order for the organization to keep operating smoothly and servicing its customers.

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Visibility into communications remains a worry for compliance and security chiefs

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Two-thirds (66 percent) of security and compliance leaders are worried that their employees are using unmonitored communications channels, according to a new report.

The study from Theta Lake finds 67 percent of respondents expect the usage of collaboration tools and popular platforms like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Webex, Slack and RingCentral to increase.

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67 percent of UK IT decision makers are concerned about supply chain issues

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A new survey of UK IT decision makers from cybersecurity company WithSecure looks at global supply chain issues, with 67 percent of respondents believing that these issues will either remain the same (28 percent) or get worse (39 percent) within the next year.

As issues around inflation and supply shortages remain high in the news agenda, 43 percent believe they are very knowledgeable in their understanding of supply chain issues. However, few are confident of quick fixes to these global issues, and 60 percent of respondents believe that they will last for two years or more.

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Why SBOMs are key to securing the software supply chain [Q&A]

supply chain

Attacks on the software supply chain have become more common in recent years. Part of the key to tackling them lies in understanding what components are in your software and where they originate.

This is why the software bill of materials (SBOM) has become a vital tool for organizations seeking to secure their software. We spoke to Alex Rybak, senior director, product management at Revenera to learn more about SBOMs and what advantages they offer.

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Cloud security is complex -- but most vulnerabilities fall into three key categories

Secure cloud

With most enterprises leveraging at least one type of cloud deployment today, the question arises: is the cloud more or less secure than on-premise solutions?

The reality is that for on prem or even private cloud environments, the approach to security largely relies on a barrier defense. When organizations are compromised within this barrier, it can basically become open season for malicious actors, which we’ve seen in marquee incidents such as the Target data breach, the Home Depot hack in 2014, or the recent Uber breach, which exploited an unpatched security vulnerability.

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CNAPP -- what is it and why should you care about it? [Q&A]

Cloud data security

The IT world is littered with acronyms and one of the latest is CNAPP, standing for Cloud Native Application Protection Platform. If you haven't heard about it already you almost certainly will do soon.

We spoke to Stanimir Markov, CEO at Runecast, about CNAPP, what it is and how it can benefit modern enterprises and their cloud environments.

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Attackers aren't as clever as you think when it comes to finding passwords

Hacker typing username and password

Although we've been told for years that their days are numbered, passwords are still a major part of our security defenses.

New research from Rapid7 looks at two of the most popular protocols used for remote administration, SSH and RDP, to get a sense of how attackers are taking advantage of weaker password management to gain access to systems.

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Ransomware attacks are down in the third quarter

ransomware laptop

The period from July to September this year has seen 27 ransomware variants used to conduct 455 attacks according to cybercrime intelligence company Intel 471's Spot Reports and Breach Alerts.

This represents a decrease of 38 attacks from the second quarter of 2022 and 134 from the first quarter of 2022.

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