The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP), the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO), and Safe and Sound Schools (SASS) have partnered to release updated guidance on conducting armed assailant drills in schools. The author organizations represent key stakeholders in school safety and crisis planning, preparedness, and implementation. This includes school-employed mental health professionals, school security and law enforcement, school administrators, other educators, and families.
The traditional approach to securing cloud access goes against everything that DevOps is about. Regardless of what providers of legacy IAM, PAM, and other security solutions claim about their ability to scale with cloud application dev cycles, they’re concealing the extensive time, effort, and resources required to manage their solutions – three things that are in short supply in DevOps teams. So, the challenge becomes: how can enterprises integrate world class technologies for securing identities and access to cloud environments without bringing DevOps to a grinding halt?
COVID-19 brought with it a massive influx of data, most of it moving from a centralized location to the cloud (and other environments). Now, these businesses are trying to understand how to re-engineer their environment for the next 10+ years, in the advent of Zero Trust, SASE and more. How has COVID-19 impacted the need for cybersecurity consulting, specifically new trends, and Zero Trust? Here, we speak with Todd Waskelis, AVP of AT&T Cybersecurity, who leads AT&T’s cybersecurity consulting services.
Columbus State University in Georgia named Nicol Lewis, its new Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Theodore Laskaris was named Chief Information Officer (CIO). The two positions will work under different offices but work in tandem together on security and risk mitigation.
Now, let’s consider how the pandemic has impacted the world of cybercrime. In the beginning, the move to work from home was swift, with organizations being closed and the workforce being sent home to work with little or no warning. People began stockpiling items and even staples such as toilet paper became a scarce commodity. As schools closed, the students were forced to start doing classes online, something a lot of families were not prepared for. Many found themselves in financial difficulties. For those still working, with daycares closing, childcare became an issue, and many people did not have laptops or computers set up at home to support these changes. Even webcams became nearly impossible to get unless you were willing to pay the scalpers’ prices.
Congress sent some rather clear messages with passage of the American Rescue Plan (ARP), and the importance of education is undoubtedly top of mind. Based on the sheer volume of school safety allocations, protecting our nation’s students is a high priority with the Biden administration and a majority in Congress.
With technology becoming more accessible and complex, prioritizing a defense against insider threats may be the better strategy. After all, the moment an outsider breaches an organization, they become an insider.
Ben Johnson, former NSA and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of SaaS application security firm, Obsidian, has found that businesses around the world are adopting Software as a service (SaaS) apps in droves for collaboration, ease of access to data and business continuity. With this increased adoption, comes the inevitable trend of state-sponsored actors merely logging in to steal data rather than having to break in. Here, Johnson talks to Security magazine about security issues associated with SaaS applications.
We have all been served by a surly retailer whose made us feel that their job and life would be easier, if it weren’t for the customers. Alas, sometimes it feels the same applies in cybersecurity. Life would be so much better, if not for those pesky employees.