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Extreme weather events will soon become more frequent and widespread, devastating areas of the world that typically don’t experience them and amplifying the destruction in areas that do. We have already seen devastating wildfires and an increase in hurricane activity this year in the United States. Uncovering shortcomings in technical and physical infrastructure, these events will cause significant disruption and damage to IT systems and assets. Data centers will be considerably impacted, with dependent organizations losing access to services and data, and Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) will be put at risk. Extensive droughts will force governments to divert water traditionally used to cool data centers, resulting in unplanned outages. In coastal areas and river basins, catastrophic flooding, hurricanes, typhoons or monsoons will hit key infrastructure such as the electrical grid and telecommunication systems. Wildfires will lead to prolonged power outages, stretching contin...

If you want to improve the security of your software—and you should—then you need the Building Security In Maturity Model (BSIMM) , an annual report on the evolution of software security initiatives (SSIs). The latest iteration, BSIMM11, is based on observations of 130 participating companies, primarily in nine industry verticals and spanning multiple geographies. The BSIMM examines software security activities, or controls, on which organizations are actually spending time and money. This real-world view—actual practices as opposed to someone’s idea of best practices—is reflected in the descriptions written for each of the 121 activities included in the BSIMM11. Since the BSIMM is completely data-driven, this report is different from any earlier ones. That’s because the world of software security evolves. The changes in BSIMM11 reflect that evolution. Among them: New software security activities  BSIMM10 added new activities to reflect the reality that some organizations wer...

The last several months have been the ultimate case study in workplace flexibility and adaptability. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and widespread emergency activation plans through March and April, businesses large and small have all but abandoned their beautiful campuses and co-working environments. These communal, collaborative and in-person working experiences have been replaced by disparate remote environments that rely on a combination of video, chat and email to ease the transition and keep businesses productive. The embrace of remote collaboration, and specifically video collaboration, has been swift and robust. In the first few months of the pandemic, downloads of video conferencing apps skyrocketed into the tens of millions, and traffic at many services surged anywhere from 10-fold to 100-fold. While uncertainty remains on what exactly a post-pandemic working experience will look like, it is without a doubt that video will remain a fundamental part of the collabor...

Over the coming years, organizations will experience growing disruption as threats from the digital world have an impact on the physical. Invasive technologies will be adopted across both industrial and consumer markets, creating an increasingly turbulent and unpredictable security environment. The requirement for a flexible approach to security and resilience will be crucial as a hybrid threat environment emerges. While robots may seem like the perfect helpers, by 2022, the Information Security Forum (ISF) anticipates that a range of robotic devices, developed to perform a growing number of both mundane and complex human tasks, will be deployed in organizations and homes around the world. Friendly-faced, innocently-branded, and loaded with a selection of cameras and sensors, these constantly connected devices will roam freely. Poorly secured robo-helpers will be weaponized by attackers, committing acts of corporate espionage and stealing intellectual property. Attackers will exploi...

The global shift to a remote workforce has redefined the way organizations structure their business models. As executives reestablish work policies to accommodate remote employees well beyond the initially anticipated duration, a new era of work will emerge: the hybrid workforce, one more largely split between office and remote environments. While this transition brings a wave of opportunity for organizations and employees, it also opens new doors for bad actors to capitalize on strained IT departments who have taken on additional responsibility to ensure sensitive data remains secure, whether on or off the corporate network. While threats to company data range in attack method, ransomware continues to be the most prominent risk known to organizations worldwide, with a 41% increase in 2019 alone. It’s important that companies focus on acknowledging this threat and deploying strategies to prepare, defend and repair incidents, before adapting to a hybrid workforce model. This process...

Anyone whose business depends on online traffic knows how critical it is to protect your business against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. And with cyber attackers more persistent than ever – Q1 2020 DDoS attacks surged by 80% year over year and their average duration rose by 25% —you also know how challenging this can be. Now imagine you’re responsible for blocking, mitigating, and neutralizing DDoS attacks where the attack surface is tens of thousands of websites. That’s exactly what HubSpot, a top marketing and sales SaaS provider, was up against. How they overcame the challenges they faced makes for an interesting case study in DDoS response and mitigation. Drinking from a Firehouse HubSpot’s CMS Hub powers thousands of websites across the globe. Like many organizations, HubSpot uses a Content Delivery Network (CDN) solution to help bolster security and performance. CDNs, which are typically associated with improving web performance, are built to make content ava...

Anyone whose business depends on online traffic knows how critical it is to protect your business against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. And with cyber attackers more persistent than ever – Q1 2020 DDoS attacks surged by 80% year over year and their average duration rose by 25% —you also know how challenging this can be. Now imagine you’re responsible for blocking, mitigating, and neutralizing DDoS attacks where the attack surface is tens of thousands of websites. That’s exactly what HubSpot, a top marketing and sales SaaS provider, was up against. How they overcame the challenges they faced makes for an interesting case study in DDoS response and mitigation. Drinking from a Firehouse HubSpot’s CMS Hub powers thousands of websites across the globe. Like many organizations, HubSpot uses a Content Delivery Network (CDN) solution to help bolster security and performance. CDNs, which are typically associated with improving web performance, are built to make content ava...

COVID-19 may be complicating organizations’ cybersecurity efforts as they shift more of their operations online, but that doesn’t lessen the pressure to comply with government regulations that are placing increased scrutiny on data privacy. Despite the pandemic, companies are obligated to comply with many laws governing data security and privacy, including the two most familiar to consumers -- the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). With CCPA enforcement set to begin July 1, organizations’ regulatory responsibilities just got tougher. The CCPA is similar to GDPR in that it is designed to improve privacy rights and consumer protection, giving Californians the right to know when their personal data is being collected, whether their personal data is being disclosed or sold, and to whom. It allows them to access their personal data, say no to its sale, and request that a business delete it. The law applies to any...

The official Call for Presentations (speakers) for   SecurityWeek’s 2020 Industrial Control Systems (ICS) Cyber Security Conference , being held October 19 – 22, 2020 in SecurityWeek’s Virtual Conference Center, has been extended to August 31st. As the premier ICS/SCADA cyber security conference, the event was originally scheduled to take place at the InterContinental Atlanta, but will now take place in a virtual environment due to COVID-19. “Due to the impact of COVID-19 and transition to a fully virtual event, we have extended the deadline for submissions to allow more time for speakers to put together their ideas under the new format,” said Mike Lennon, Managing Director at SecurityWeek. “Given SecurityWeek’s global reach and scale, we expect this to be the largest security-focused gathering of its kind serving the industrial and critical infrastructure sectors.”  The 2020 Conference is expected to attract thousands of attendees from around the world, including large c...

Enterprise Security Professional to Discuss Latest Cloud Security Trends and Strategies Via Fully Immersive Virtual Event Experience SecurityWeek will host its 2020 Cloud Security Summit virtual event  on Thursday, August 13, 2020. Through a fully immersive virtual environment, attendees will be able to interact with leading solution providers and other end users tasked with securing various cloud environments and services. “As enterprises adopt cloud-based services to leverage benefits such as scalability, increased efficiency, and cost savings, security has remained a top concern,” said Mike Lennon, Managing Director at SecurityWeek. “SecurityWeek’s Cloud Security Summit will help organizations learn how to utilize tools, controls, and design models needed to properly secure cloud environments.” The Cloud Security Summit kicks off at 11:00AM ET on Thursday, August 13, 2020 and features sessions, including: Augmenting Native Cloud Security Services to Achieve Enterprise-gr...

We all know that the prices of key commodities such as oil, gold, steel and wheat don’t just impact individual business sectors as they fluctuate according to supply and demand:  they also power international trading markets and underpin the global economy. And it’s exactly the same with cyber-crime. The prices of key commodities in the cyber-crime economy – such as stolen credentials, hacked accounts, or payment card details – not only reflect changes in supply and usage, but also influence the types of attack that criminals will favor.  After all, criminals are just as keen to maximise return on their investments and create ‘value’ as any legitimate business. A recent report  gave the current average prices during 2020 for some of these cyber-crime commodities on the Dark Web. Stolen credit-card details start at $12 each, and online banking details at $35. ‘Fullz’ (full identity) prices are typically $18, which is cheaper than just two years ago due to an oversupply...

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...