COVID-19 has completely changed our world from six months ago, as we continue to battle the grave health implications, face extended stay at home orders, and grapple with the insurmountable ramifications on our economy. The pandemic has also forever changed the cyber threat landscape, with our workforce becoming more dispersed, and potentially more vulnerable, than ever as organizations switch out of the confines of their offices and move entire data streams to their laptops and home offices. On top of this, Salesforce has announced it is ending its Data Recovery service on July 31st, which is putting all of the data protection responsibilities, and the dire consequences that comes along with it, on the backs of the customer.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced the addition of two leading cybersecurity experts to support the agency’s COVID-19 response efforts. Josh Corman is joining CISA as a Visiting Researcher, and Rob Arnold will join CISA’s National Risk Management Center as a Senior Cybersecurity and Risk Management Advisor.
As the head of information security for a technology company with more than a thousand (now mostly-remote) employees, the COVID-19 pandemic has been — among other adjectives — an educational experience. And while it hasn’t been completely smooth sailing, I believe one of the reasons we were able to transition so quickly to remote work with relatively few hiccups is that we established practices to withstand precisely this type of scenario long before the virus swept through our community.
The National Cyber Security Centre – a part of GCHQ – has announced that Lindy Cameron will become its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Her role will include overseeing the organization’s response to hundreds of cyber incidents each year, improving the cyber resilience of the UK’s critical national infrastructure, identifying the risks and opportunities for the UK in emerging technologies and leading the NCSC’s ongoing response to the coronavirus pandemic.
As consumers increasingly turn to online shopping for essential and non-essential goods while at home, fraudsters have adapted their technique to use more sophisticated tactics against consumers, banks and merchants.
Though organizations have changed their IT environments to accommodate remote workers, 39 percent of respondents have not changed their security programs as a result of COVID-19, potentially exposing their organizations to cyber risks from new and more sophisticated attacks, reveals a new Crowdstrike report.
A new Rapid7 research found that the security of the internet overall is improving. The number of insecure services such as SMB, Telnet, rsync, and the core email protocols, decreased from the levels seen in 2019. However, vulnerabilities and exposures still plague the modern internet even with the increasing adoption of more secure alternatives to insecure protocols, like Secure Shell (SSH) and DNS-over-TLS (DoT).
With telecommuting here to stay, now is the perfect time to re-examine just how much network access you are giving your users and machines. You might be shocked to see how open your network really is. Most organizations allow more access than their users or machines will ever need or should ever have – this excessive trust is what allows attackers who get into the network to spread and cause a lot of damage.
The United States Department of Justice charged two Chinese hackers with global computer intrusion campaign to target intellectual property and confidential business information, including COVID-19 research.