Tag: Defending Infrastructure
Looking at cloud breaches over the last few years, it’s easy to get the impression that most were easily avoidable events that occurred due to silly misconfigurations, ugly failure modes, or borderline negligent architectures. To put it bluntly, these cloud breaches look stupid. But the people and the organizations designing and running these systems—both the…
Read MoreEMEA’s mainstream media’s spotlight on ransomware attacks may have dimmed over the last 18 months but that doesn’t mean the threat has disappeared. There is certainly no room for complacency, and we would do well to pay attention to recent events across the pond. Far from diminishing in disruptive impact, ransomware attacks appear to have…
Read MoreDifficult security incidents are unique and valuable opportunities. They are the sort of testing you can’t buy: real-world, un-simulated, and direct. No pen-test or code review is going to do what a serious incident will. They are priceless jewels, but only if you use them for all they’re worth. Capturing that value is only possible…
Read MoreLooking back at 2020, it was obvious even at the time that everything had changed forever. The COVID-19 pandemic left nothing as it was. It brought disruption and loss to everyone. For security and IT staff, it also ushered in the Great Remote Access Experiment. Our work was suddenly thrust into the limelight, but without…
Read MoreInteresting and innovative technology is disrupting the financial services market in a good way. Open Banking is one such initiative that can put the customer’s data to use to serve the user’s needs while also extending financial services to populations with no previous access to banking services. The positive impacts of Open Banking are leading…
Read MorePredictions are a risky business. If you play it too conservatively, you tell everyone what they already know and just get an eye roll for your trouble. If you go out on a limb and get it wrong, people stop listening to you. That’s why, as we unwisely return to the task of predicting the…
Read MoreThe conflict in Ukraine brings the possibility of increased cyberattacks targeting the public infrastructure of NATO nations and their allies, and could easily extend to corporations and other entities within those countries as well. The US CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) has provided technical guidance and reporting methods at https://www.cisa.gov/shields-up which is an excellent…
Read MoreSingle points of failure are the bane of engineering, and engineers put great effort into eliminating them from the systems they design. Increasingly, however, companies are handing over large amounts of their IT infrastructure and application portfolios to third-party providers. This reveals an interesting form of the single point of failure. If an organization uses…
Read MoreThe 2021 Application Protection report notes that ransomware was a factor in roughly 30 percent of U.S. breaches in 2020. Looking at the breach analyses, we found some of the most important controls were user account management, network segmentation, and data backup. We realize that implementing these controls can be difficult, so this article goes…
Read MoreYou also need to restrict administrative access at the application level. This can mean that only certain individuals have administrative privileges in the app, or it can mean that administrators can only access the control surfaces from specific subnets. Data sources for the application, whether internal or external, need to be treated to the same…
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