Geek News

In the coming years, organizations’ insatiable desire to understand consumers through behavioral analytics will result in an invasive deployment of cameras, sensors and applications in public and private places. A consumer and regulatory backlash against this intrusive practice will follow as individuals begin to understand the consequences. Highly connected ecosystems of digital devices will enable organizations to harvest, repurpose and sell sensitive behavioral data about consumers without their consent, with attackers targeting and compromising poorly secured systems and databases at will. Impacts will be felt across industries such as retail, gaming, marketing and insurance that are already dependent on behavioral analytics to sell products and services. There are also a growing number of sectors that will see an increased dependency on behavioral analytics, including finance, healthcare and education. Organized criminal groups, hackers and competitors will begin stealing and...

In the coming years, organizations' insatiable desire to understand consumers through behavioral analytics will result in an invasive deployment of cameras, sensors and applications in public and private places. A consumer and regulatory backlash against this intrusive practice will follow as individuals begin to understand the consequences. Highly connected ecosystems of digital devices will enable organizations to harvest, repurpose and sell sensitive behavioral data about consumers without their consent, with attackers targeting and compromising poorly secured systems and databases at will. Impacts will be felt across industries such as retail, gaming, marketing and insurance that are already dependent on behavioral analytics to sell products and services. There are also a growing number of sectors that ...

At one of the last cyber-security events I attended before the Covid-19 enforced lockdowns, I was talking with an IT director about how his organization secures its public cloud deployments. He told me: “We have over 500 separate AWS accounts in use, it helps all our development and cloud teams to manage the workloads they are responsible for without crossover or account bloat, and it also makes it easier to control cloud usage costs: all the accounts are billed centrally, but each account is a separate cost center with a clear owner.” I asked about security, and he replied that each AWS account had different logins, meaning fewer staff had access to each account, which helped to protect each account. While it’s true that having hundreds of separate public cloud accounts will help to keep a closer eye on cloud costs, it also creates huge complexity when trying to manage the connectivity and security of applications and workloads.  Especially when making changes to applications ...

Infosec professionals have always had their work cut out for them, as the threat landscape continuously challenges existing security measures to adapt, improve and cope with the unexpected. As the coronavirus pandemic forced organizations to migrate their entire workforce to a work-from-home context, practically overnight, security professionals faced a new challenge for which half of them had not planned. A recent Bitdefender survey reveal that 83 percent of US security and IT professionals believe the COVID-19 pandemic will change the way their business operates, mostly because their infrastructure had to adapt to accommodate remote work. Another concern for companies is that employees tend to be more relaxed about security (34 percent) and that working remotely means they will not be as vigilant in identifying and flagging suspicious activity and sticking to security protocols (34 percent). Lessons learned Having managed the initial work-from-home technology transition challen...

Learning from the experiences of others should be a key job requirement for all cybersecurity, AppSec, DevSecOps, CISO, CRMO and SecSDLC professionals. The recent attack against Twitter where high-profile accounts were compromised to promote a Bitcoin scam is one such opportunity. As new information comes to light (and I sincerely hope that Twitter continues to provide meaningful details), everyone within the cybersecurity realm should look to both their internal IT and application development practices as well as those of your suppliers for evidence that this particular attack pattern couldn’t be executed against your organization. What we know as of now is that on July 15th, an attack was launched against Twitter that targeted 130 accounts . Of those 130, 45 had their passwords reset and eight had their Twitter data downloaded. While the initial public focus was on Twitter Verified accounts, those eight accounts were not verified. The attack itself was based on the concept of so...

At one of the last cyber-security events I attended before the Covid-19 enforced lockdowns, I was talking with an IT director about how his organization secures its public cloud deployments. He told me: "We have over 500 separate AWS accounts in use, it helps all our development and cloud teams to manage the workloads they are responsible for without crossover or account bloat, and it also makes it easier to control cloud usage costs: all the accounts are billed centrally, but each account is a separate cost center with a clear owner." I asked about security, and he replied that each AWS account had different logins, meaning fewer staff had access to each account, which helped to protect each account. While it's true that having hundreds of separate public cloud accounts will help to keep a closer...

Learning from the experiences of others should be a key job requirement for all cybersecurity, AppSec, DevSecOps, CISO, CRMO and SecSDLC professionals. The recent attack against Twitter where high-profile accounts were compromised to promote a Bitcoin scam is one such opportunity. As new information comes to light (and I sincerely hope that Twitter continues to provide meaningful details), everyone within the cybersecurity realm should look to both their internal IT and application development practices as well as those of your suppliers for evidence that this particular attack pattern couldn't be executed against your organization. What we know as of now is that on July 15th, an attack was launched against Twitter that targeted 130 accounts . Of those 130, 45 had their passwords reset and eight had their T...

Infosec professionals have always had their work cut out for them, as the threat landscape continuously challenges existing security measures to adapt, improve and cope with the unexpected. As the coronavirus pandemic forced organizations to migrate their entire workforce to a work-from-home context, practically overnight, security professionals faced a new challenge for which half of them had not planned. A recent Bitdefender survey reveal that 83 percent of US security and IT professionals believe the COVID-19 pandemic will change the way their business operates, mostly because their infrastructure had to adapt to accommodate remote work. Another concern for companies is that employees tend to be more relaxed about security (34 percent) and that working remotely means they will not be as vigilant in identifying an...