Because they don’t see themselves as targets, small-to-midsize businesses (SMB) have for a long time believed that their security programs are good enough. They have a firewall, antivirus, maybe they even use two-factor authentication.

The mistake is believing that this is enough because they have nothing of value to an attacker. While they may have a smaller attack surface, they are no less vulnerable than a major enterprise.

Not only are small businesses growing as the favored targets for ransomware attacks, they are also the most impacted, with 60 percent shutting down within six months of a breach, according to the US National Cyber Security Alliance.

To read this article in full, please click here

At this year's Infiltrate Security Conference in Miami, John Grigg walked the audience through a common target network where a known and commonly used SIEM had been integrated in order to show participants how to exploit onto the SIEM, find intel, and cover their tracks.

Though SIEM technologies are supposed to help secure the networks, Grigg said that they are often misconfigured, which creates more vulnerabilities.

Even though some of the legacy tools are pretty cool, Grigg said the problem is that no one really knows the platform that well. "The vendor who built it knows it from a design standpoint. Then there's the re-selllers, the guys who install it, the internal IT guys who inherit the systems, but they tend to never really focus on it." 

To read this article in full, please click here

Today's CISOs are undoubtedly overwhelmed with trying to make the most informed, efficient, and economical decisions about securing the most valuable assets in the enterprise. In the days of old, those decisions were a little bit easier because investing in prevention provided decent protection.

That's not true today, which is why Ira Winkler president of Secure Mentem and author of Advanced Persistent Security said that trying to protect against every threat is not cost efficient.

Shifting the mentality of those defenders who came to age in the world of preventative protection has been slow going. As a result, some security programs are failing, "Not because the bad guys got in, but because they got out," Winkler said.

To read this article in full, please click here

As the digital enterprise struggles to find the best security solutions to defend their ever-expanding networks, many are looking to next generation tools that offer interoperability capabilities.

Software defined networking (SDN) holds lots of promises. By consolidating the control planes of multiple devices into a single controller, that controller becomes the omnipotent decision maker over the entire network.

That's a lot of power, yet developers still don't have security at the forefront of their minds when building SDN products, which is why there are weaknesses in SDN that can compromise enterprise security.

To read this article in full, please click here

Mobile devices have transformed the digital enterprise allowing employees to access the information they need to be most productive from virtually anywhere. Has that convenience come at a cost to enterprise security, though? 

According to Forrester's The State of Enterprise Mobile Security: 2016 to 2017, by Chris Sherman, "Employees are going to continue to purchase and use whatever devices and apps they need to serve customers and be highly productive, whether or not these devices are company-sanctioned."

To read this article in full, please click here

For those who pursue forensic analysis with the hope of identifying and prosecuting an attacker, they likely will find that the time spent on attack attribution is fruitless.

If, however, they are looking to use what they gain through attack attribution to inform their overall security procedures from prevention to response, the effort yields valuable results.

Many experts in the industry have questioned whether there is any value to attribution. SafeBreach CTO & co-founder Itzik Kotler said, "The only interesting aspect in attribution itself is to classify and put information in a box and use it over and over again."

Kolter offered a hypothetical in which right now CNN gets hacked by the Chinese. "That someone can or cannot attribute it to the Chinese doesn't matter. It does matter if we can say we think this is from China," Kolter said.

To read this article in full, please click here

As-a-service offerings for things such as DDoS and malware -- including ransomware -- via exploit kits has seriously lowered the bar for entry into the criminal market. Hackers no longer need to have sophisticated skills in order to gain entry into the world of cybercrime.

According to Geoff Webb, vice president of strategy at Micro Focus, the industrialization of the processes and the availability of the tools has created this expanded forum that allows non-technical people, anyone really, to enter into the digital crime market. 

To read this article in full, please click here

Like him or hate him, there's no debating that President Trump loves to tweet. What is up for debate, though, is whether his tweet storms will complicate what is already stressful work for the Secret Service.

Enormous effort goes into protecting the President and his staff from hackers, and any tweets that could be deemed argumentative, hostile, or reactionary could elevate the risk of a targeted cyber attack on the White House.

In the same way, executives at major enterprises also need to be cautious in how they choose to represent the company through social media.

This type of security, said Larry Johnson, ex Secret Service agent and CSO of CyberSponse, is not just protecting the individual. Whether it's the Secret Service or the security team, "They’re protecting the company, the country, the assets."

To read this article in full, please click here

Macs are really no more secure than a PC, but for many years there just weren’t as many out there because of the expense of the hardware and other issues. They've historically been a much less popular choice among both consumers, enterprises, and hackers alike.

The PC attack surface is much wider; therefore, criminals develop malware that works on PCs because the payout is much higher. James Plouffe, lead solutions architect at mobile-security company MobileIron, said there are, however, a couple of oft-overlooked things that also protect Macs.

First, Plouffe said, "MacOS is actually BSD Unix derivative. Granted, it's heavily customized but this meant that, unlike Windows (which had a long tail of viruses reaching back to the days of MS-DOS), bad actors had a lot more heavy lifting to do to be able to attack macOS."

To read this article in full, please click here

Larger enterprises have the resources to not only afford the technology needed to grow in the digital age, but they also have the budget and manpower to build security into their overall ecosystems.

Does the K-12 education sector have the means to do the same? As the use of technology becomes more prevalent in public schools, will collecting more data potentially increase the cybersecurity risks for the K-12 sector?

Earlier this fall, the Center for Data Innovation released a report, Building a Data-Driven Education System in the United States, in which they said 93 percent of teachers are regularly using digital tools to assist classroom instruction in some capacity.

To read this article in full, please click here

While the San Francisco 49ers are leading the NFL in defense, the New Orleans Saints currently hold the number one slot for total offense. In the overall league rankings, though, neither of those two teams rank in the top 10. 

What's the takeaway? Winning isn't strictly about strong offense or impenetrable defense. NFL league leaders advance to the top because they know how to balance the two; they know how to play the game.

To address the growing number of attacks on the US government and private sector systems, President-elect Donald Trump's cybersecurity plan aims to, "Develop the offensive cyber capabilities we need to deter attacks by both state and non-state actors and, if necessary, to respond appropriately."

To read this article in full, please click here

Depending on the size of the organization, the person who has the most impact on driving security advancement could be a C-level or board member, but non-executive administrators, and sometimes the one man IT/security show is the person paving the path.

Whoever it is, every business needs someone who makes security not only a line item on the budget but also a part of the overall culture. More often than not, though, organizations prioritize security for one of two reasons.

Josh Feinblum, vice president of information security at Rapid7 said,"Companies that care about security have either a progressive leadership team that believes it is important, or it is a company that has gone through a major event."

To read this article in full, please click here

Since Edward Snowden leaked classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, the FBI and Apple had a public battle around privacy, Shadow Brokers leaked some of the NSA's hacking tools, and Hal Martin, an ex-NSA contractor was arrested for stealing classified information.

To read this article in full, please click here

Big data has proven to be a big asset for corporations who are trying to collect information and make informed business decisions, but if the proper strategies for protecting that data are not in place, the risks to the enterprise can be costly.

Earlier this year Cisco reported that worldwide mobile traffic is expected to grow eightfold from 2015 to 2020 reaching 30.6 exabytes, monthly. Planning for that data inflation raises a very important question: “How can organizations ensure their data is an asset and not a liability?” 

To read this article in full, please click here