Mar 16 2021

On the Insecurity of ES&S Voting Machines’ Hash Code

Category: Election SecurityDISC @ 11:10 pm

Also:

Another gem in Mr. Mechler’s report is in Section 7.1, in which he reveals that acceptance testing of voting systems is done by the vendor, not by the customer. Acceptance testing is the process by which a customer checks a delivered product to make sure it satisfies requirements. To have the vendor do acceptance testing pretty much defeats the purpose.

Tags: Insecurity of ES&S Voting Machines


Mar 16 2021

Risk management in the digital world: How different is it?

Category: Risk Assessment,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 3:33 pm

Prioritizing and communicating risk

Last year, the number of active phishing websites increased 350% from January to March alone. Now that employees are connecting to the office from their own remote networks and not through their office’s secure network, the chance of a security breach is higher than ever. While risk managers know this already, securing company data is essential to customer trust and longevity. To prioritize risk during remote work, risk managers need to involve executives and keep them updated and educated on potential problems and solutions. Prioritizing risk now will pay dividends in the long run.

Executive teams need to buy in — simply relegating all risk-related work to risk managers isn’t enough in the end. Investing time and money to form a risk-aware culture will better educate all employees on how to avoid common scams and prepare for larger-scale problems. Without prioritization and investment in risk, companies may not make it through the next major disruption and risk major security breaches.

A risk-aware culture can’t be created overnight. Risk managers and executives must first identify the risks and find out where the company stands, aligning risk culture with the existing company culture. Then, they can implement new risk management strategies that may require drastic changes, such as new software, revised policies and educational tutorials on risk. IT teams need to be on top of their game for virtual risks, educating employees and preparing them to ask the right questions. With phishing on the rise and data at a very vulnerable point, employees must be able to assess risk on their own.

Risk management in the digital world: How different is it?

Build a Security Culture

Tags: Risk management in the digital world


Mar 16 2021

Magecart hackers hide captured credit card data in JPG file

Category: Information SecurityDISC @ 11:46 am
Crooks devised a new method to hide credit card data siphoned from compromised e-stores, experts observed hackers hiding data in JPG files.

Cybercriminals have devised a new method to hide credit card data siphoned from compromised online stores, experts from Sucuri observed Magecart hackers hiding data in JPG files to avoid detection and storing them on the infected site.

The new exfiltration technique was uncovered while investigating a Magecart attack against an e-store running the e-commerce CMS Magento 2.

“A recent investigation for a compromised Magento 2 website revealed a malicious injection that was capturing POST request data from site visitors. Located on the checkout page, it was found to encode captured data before saving it to a .JPG file.” reads the post published by Sucuri.

The researchers discovered a PHP code that was found injected to the file ./vendor/magento/module-customer/Model/Session.php. The attackers use the getAuthenticates function to load the rest of the malicious code onto the compromised environment.

The code stored the siphoned data in the image file “pub/media/tmp/design/file/default_luma_logo.jpg,” in this way it is easy to hide, access, and download the stolen information without rising suspicious.

The PHP code injected into the site leverages the Magento function getPostValue to capture the POST data within the checkout page, then the captured POST data is encoded with base64 before the PHP operator ^ is used to XOR the stolen data.

“To successfully capture the POST data, the PHP code needs to use the Magento code framework. It relies on the Magento function getPostValue to capture the checkout page data within the Customer_ POST parameter.” continues the post.

“Using the Magento function isLoggedIn, the PHP code also checks whether the victim that sent the POST request data is logged in as a user. If they do happen to be logged in, it captures the user’s email address.”

Customer_ parameter contains almost all of the information submitted by the victim on the checkout page, including full names and addresses, payment card details, telephone numbers, and user agent details.

Sucuri experts pointed out that captured data could be used for credit card fraud, spam campaigns, or spear-phishing attacks.

“Bad actors are always actively searching for new methods to prevent any detection of their malicious behavior on compromised websites.” concludes the post. “The creative use of the fake .JPG allows an attacker to conceal and store harvested credit card details for future use without gaining too much attention from the website owner.”

Source: Magecart hackers hide captured credit card data in JPG file

Codes, Ciphers, Steganography & Secret Messages


Mar 16 2021

Network Penetration Testing: A Primer

Category: Pen TestDISC @ 8:37 am
network penetration F5

What is Network Penetration Testing?

A network penetration test, or pen test, is a method of assessing a network’s security and identifying vulnerabilities in the network by the intentional use of malicious penetration techniques. In simple terms, an ethical hacker tries to hack your organization’s network, with your permission, to reveal underlying security risks to your network.

You may ask, “I have conducted a vulnerability assessment. Do I need to conduct a network penetration test, as well?”

Vulnerability assessment makes use of automated tools that only help pinpoint common security vulnerabilities. In contrast, during penetration testing, security experts act as hackers and simulate a potential cyberattack. They observe how your system will react to a cyberattack by a cybercriminal. They identify security weaknesses, and may provide remediation advice applicable to software, hardware, or even human management of the system.

Although some high-quality vulnerability assessment tools categorize security risks, assign risk levels and offer remediation suggestions, the need for pen testing can not be fulfilled by vulnerability assessment alone.

So, the answer is yes. For a complete picture of your network’s security, network penetration testing is a must.

What are the Benefits of Network Penetration Testing?

Tags: Network Penetration Testing


Mar 16 2021

Using IAM Solutions to Beat Deepfakes and Fraud

Category: 2FA,Access Control,App Security,Identity TheftDISC @ 8:18 am
IAM fraud JumpCloud

AI and ML technologies have made great strides in helping organizations with cybersecurity, as well as with other tasks like chatbots that help with customer service.

Cybercriminals have also made great strides in using AI and ML for fraud.

“Today, fraud can happen without stealing someone else’s identity because fraudsters can create ‘synthetic identities’ with fake, personally identifiable information (PII),” explained Rick Song, co-founder and CEO of Persona, in an email interview. And fraudsters are leveraging new tricks, using the latest technologies, that allow them to slip past security systems and do things like open accounts where they rack up untraceable debt, steal Bitcoin holdings without detection, or simply redirect authentic purchases to a new address.

Some increasingly popular fraud tricks using AI and ML include:

  • Deepfakes that mimic live selfies in an attempt to circumvent security systems
  • Replicating a template across a dozen or more accounts to create fake IDs (these often use celebrity photos and their public data)
  • Mimicking the voice of high-level officials and corporate executives to extort personal information and money
  • Chatbots as phishing tools to gather personal information

“With this pace of evolution, companies are left at risk of holding the bag — they are not only losing money directly through things like loans and fees they can’t recoup and any restitution to impacted customers, but they’re also losing trust and credibility. Fraud costs the global economy over $5 trillion every year, but the reputational costs are hard to quantify,” said Song.

How IAM Tools Can Spot and Prevent High Tech Fraud

Tags: Deepfakes and Fraud, IAM Solutions


Mar 15 2021

Forget Covid, The Global Elites are Now Warning us About a Cyber Pandemic

Category: Information SecurityDISC @ 10:15 pm
Photo by ThisIsEngineering on Pexels.com

The exercise/event is called “Cyber Polygon” and it will take place this July. It is being sponsored by the WEF (World Economic Forum) and this is what they will focus on during the simulated cyber attack. This is from their website.

“Cyber Polygon 2021 will draw together leading global experts to discuss the key risks posed by digitalisation and share best practices in developing secure ecosystems. During the technical exercise, the participants will practise mitigating a targeted supply chain attack on a corporate ecosystem.”

Also from Technocracy news: Last year, the World Economic Forum teamed up with the Russian government and global banks to run a high-profile cyberattack simulation that targeted the financial industry, an actual event that would pave the way for a “reset” of the global economy. The simulation, named Cyber Polygon, may have been more than a typical planning exercise and bears similarities to the WEF-sponsored pandemic simulation Event 201 that briefly preceded the COVID-19 crisis.

Main Article


Mar 15 2021

Password reuse defeats the purpose of passwords

Category: Password SecurityDISC @ 2:27 pm

There are four forms of password reuse and they all are bad

The first and easiest to prevent is the use of the same password on the same account. For example, if my username is michael.schenck, my password is Football123, and the system prompts me to change my password but lets me use Football123 again – then I’m reusing an old password. This is a problem because old password databases may have been stolen and cracked, in which case the Football123 password could be compromised. In this scenario, the credentials (which a hacker now has access to) will still work today. Remember, the internet never forgets.

The most common form of password reuse is the use of the same password and email/account name for multiple sites and services (e.g., using Football123 as the password for your email, Netflix, bank, and personal Microsoft account). If one account is hacked, you must assume all are hacked. This can be especially messy since the average business employee must keep track of 191 passwords and changing all 191 would take several days.

A related form of password reuse blends the last two together – reusing the same password across accounts with different usernames. Most workplace IT configurations won’t let users reuse passwords. However, when an employee changes companies, their former employer’s password history controls no longer apply. This allows older passwords to be used at a new job. This, too, is a bad practice. As the databases of passwords on the dark web and open-source intelligence sources continue to grow, it becomes easier for a hacker to link a password to a person – regardless of the account username or the company they work for.

The last form of password reuse is the use of a common password. Every year numerous publications list the top 10, 20, 100 passwords used in the previous year. For example, in 2020 more than 2.5 million people used the password “123456.” Lists of popular passwords are used by hackers to script – or brute-force – logins to gain access. If you use any of these common passwords, it won’t be long until you get hacked.

More on: Password reuse defeats the purpose of passwords

Tags: Password reuse


Mar 15 2021

ProxyLogon Microsoft Exchange exploit is completely out of the bag by now

Category: Email SecurityDISC @ 10:50 am

A security researcher has released a new proof-of-concept exploit that could be adapted to install web shells on Microsoft Exchange servers vulnerable ProxyLogon issues.

Since the disclosure of the flaw, security experts observed a surge in the attacks against Microsoft Exchange mailservers worldwide.

Check Point Research team reported that that in a time span of 24 hours the exploitation attempts are doubling every two hours.

“CPR has seen hundreds of exploit attempts against organizations worldwide” reads the post published by CheckPoint. “In the past 24 hours alone, CPR has observed that the number exploitation attempts on organizations it tracks doubled every two to three hours.”

Most of exploit attempts targeted organizations in Turkey (19%), followed by United States (18%) and Italy (10%). Most targeted sectors have been Government/Military (17% of all exploit attempts), followed by Manufacturing (14%), and then Banking (11%).

Security experts pointed out that the flaws are actively exploited to deliver web shells, and more recently ransomware such as the DearCry ransomware.

Last week, the independent security researcher Nguyen Jang published on GitHub a proof-of-concept tool to hack Microsoft Exchange servers. The tool chains two of the ProxyLogon vulnerabilities recently addressed by Microsoft.

The availability of the proof-of-concept code was first reported by The Record.

more on: ProxyLogon Microsoft Exchange exploit is completely out of the bag by now

ProxyLogon Microsoft Exchange exploit is completely out of the bagSecurity  Affairs

Microsoft Exchange ProxyLogon attacks spike 10 times in four days

Tags: Microsoft Exchange exploit



Mar 14 2021

America, Your Privacy Settings Are All Wrong

Category: Information Privacy,Security and privacy LawDISC @ 5:00 pm
Using an opt-in approach will help curb the excesses of Big Tech.

Americans have become inured to the relentless collection of their personal information online. Imagine, for example, if getting your suit pressed at the dry cleaner’s automatically and permanently signed you up to have scores of inferences about you — measurements, gender, race, language, fabric preferences, credit card type — shared with retailers, cleaning product advertisers and hundreds of other dry cleaners, who themselves had arrangements to share that data with others. It might give you pause.

But that’s the daily reality on the internet. Every minute a person spends online helps countless companies build a thicker dossier about that person.

Despite what corporations profess, much of this personal data is used not to improve products themselves, but to make those products more attractive to advertisers.

One straightforward solution is to let people opt in to data collection on apps and websites. Today, with few exceptions, loads of personal data are collected automatically by default unless consumers take action to opt out of the practice — which, in most cases, requires dropping the service entirely.

Virginia recently had the opportunity to extend firmer data protection rights to its residents. But the state’s Consumer Data Protection Act, signed into law this month, is a business-friendly package, supported by Amazon and Microsoft, that puts the onus on consumers to opt out of most data collection, except for the most sensitive personal details. Washington State lawmakers are advancing similar legislation.

More on: America, Your Privacy Settings Are All Wrong

Extreme Privacy: What It Takes to Disappear

Tags: Privacy Settings Are All Wrong


Mar 14 2021

India and China’s Conflict Goes Cyber

Category: Cyber WarDISC @ 3:36 pm

RedEcho

China’s RedEcho sent a clear signal to India that, while China may engage in fisticuffs along the line of control, they were willing to escalate the low-intensity conflict into the cyber domain targeting India’s infrastructure.

We talked with Recorded Future’s Insikt Group about the RedEcho activity to learn if neighboring nations, or those involved with the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, were similarly engaged by RedEcho, and learned that the attacks have “been exclusively focused on Indian targets.” With the publication of the report on March 1, the Insikt Group noted that activity “gradually ceased and the last communication identified between the victim organizations and the RedEcho infrastructure was on March 2, 2021.”

The Insikt Group added that the RedEcho team “parked large amounts of their infrastructure, likely in response to the public reporting and incident response efforts.” They opined, “It remains to be seen how the group’s longer term M.O. will evolve following publication, but we believe it is likely that they will attempt to use other methods to attempt to maintain persistent access to the targeted organizations. This highlights the need for a full incident response effort for affected organizations to ensure the group does not maintain other means of network access.”

National Infrastructure

Cyberattacks against national infrastructure are neither unique nor new in a global context.

Dr. Christopher Ahlberg, CEO and co-founder, Recorded Future, tells us, “The impact of a cyberattack targeting the critical infrastructure of a country, whether for espionage or malicious activity, has the potential to be catastrophic with long-term repercussions. We have long seen cyber efforts from China aimed around strategic policies and initiatives, and this campaign from RedEcho is no exception. Accurate and actionable intelligence is vital for preempting such attacks and proactively disrupting adversaries both within an organization and across a nation.”

Chris Blask, global director, applied innovation at Unisys, said, “The findings about RedEcho are another indication that the trend towards using cyber means against national infrastructure for political ends continues to follow its multi-decade curve.”

“Nation-states should continue to develop processes, such as seen in the NERC CIP series of regulations, for lessons,” Blask said. “The timing of NERC CIP 13 last October requiring supply chain strategies for critical electrical operators, the SolarWinds attack, and the Feb. 24, 2021 executive order from U.S. president Joe Biden creating a 100-day window for federal departments to develop supply chain security strategies can be seen as an indication of areas for those working on national defense systems to focus.”

The U.S. focus on supply chain security, especially in the context of national security interests, is further evidenced by two separate projects worthy of approbation: the Digital Bill of Materials (DBoM) architecture and the Software Bill of Materials (SBoM) initiative led by the Department of Commerce.

India and China’s Conflict Goes Cyber

India steps up vigil for cyber attacks from China after apps ban - The  Economic Times

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race

Tags: Conflict Goes Cyber, India vs China


Mar 14 2021

Next-Gen WAF protection for recent Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities

Category: Firewall,next generation firewallDISC @ 11:41 am

We strongly suggest that customers using Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF in front of their Microsoft Exchange servers enable this rule as soon as possible and configure it to block requests if the signal is observed. Additionally, follow all guidance from Microsoft to patch affected systems. The vulnerabilities in question are actively being exploited globally and have severe impact.

Patching Microsoft Exchange systems

We are seeing a large uptick in exploitation attempts in the wild. This is an evolving story and our teams are working continuously to ensure the rules are catching the latest attacks, but this should not be your only line of defense. We strongly recommend that you patch affected systems, perform incident response,  and follow recommendations from Microsoft.

Exploit chain

The observed attacks on Microsoft Exchange systems chain together multiple CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) to carry out the attack. The impact of these attacks range from full system takeover through Remote Code Execution (RCE), as well as email inbox exfiltration and compromise. At a high level, the exploit chain is carried out as follows:

  1. A Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange Server identified as CVE-2021-26855 allows attackers to send HTTP requests to the exposed Exchange server and access other endpoints as the Exchange server itself. This is an unauthenticated step of the attack which makes the vulnerability exceptionally easy to exploit.
  2. An insecure deserialization vulnerability identified by CVE-2021-26857 leverages the SYSTEM-level authentication obtained by the above SSRF attack to send specially-crafted SOAP payloads which are insecurely deserialized by the Unified Messaging Service. This gives the attacker the ability to run code as SYSTEM on the Exchange server.
  3. After CVE-2021-26855 is successfully exploited, attackers can then utilize CVE-2021-27065 and CVE-2021-26858 to write arbitrary files to the Exchange server itself on any path. This code that is uploaded by the attacker is run as SYSTEM on the server. Lateral movement, malware implanting, data loss, escalation, and more can be carried out through these vulnerabilities.

By enabling the Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF templated rule, the first step in the exploit chain cannot be carried out. If you would like to dig deeper into the technical details of this chain of attacks please see this post by the folks at Praetorian. To enable the templated rule, please refer to our documentation for details on how to enable templated rules.

The post Next-Gen WAF protection for recent Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities appeared first on Signal Sciences.

Your best practice guide to configuring Cisco’s Next Generation Firewall

Tags: Next Generation Firewall, Next-Gen WAF protection


Mar 14 2021

Passing a compliance audit in the cloud doesn’t have to be hard

Category: Cloud computingDISC @ 9:30 am

Adding compliance trails in cloud environments

The secret to resolving compliance and security issues before they escalate into costly audit penalties is to proactively add an automated compliance and security management system in the cloud environment. This way your company can take advantage of all the security benefits offered by the cloud provider while also managing other security aspects critical to your company’s operations while also providing an audit trail that can be used to help verify compliance.

In short, your company needs the means to detect specific issues and correct them prior to an official compliance certification audit. The top areas that auditors check are all centered on data access. That’s understandable given that Gartner predicts that “by 2023, 75% of security failures will result from inadequate management of identities, access, and privileges, up from 50% in 2020.”

Cloud security automation can scale along with your workloads in cloud environments and correct compliance issues and security vulnerabilities as they occur. Your company should consider the following when selecting an Identity Access Management (IAM) product to use in cloud environments to automate corrections and ensure compliance.

  • More easily visualize the current IAM posture and get alerts about excessive permissions
  • Get proof of regulatory compliance and data hygiene along with verification that relevant assets can only be accessed from specific areas in the application
  • Monitor any changes in the application that require updates in its security policy
  • If needed, create a new security policy that reflects the needs of each cloud-based asset
  • Ease of deployment in the pre-production and production environments

Source: Cloud services and foggy compliance issues

Cybersecurity for Executives in the Age of Cloud by [Teri Radichel]

Tags: Cloud compliance audit, cloud security


Mar 13 2021

Privacy as a Service can help

Category: Information PrivacyDISC @ 11:04 pm

If you are a business looking to comply with various data privacy laws, look no further. We can help with Privacy as a Service. 👍

The simplest, fastest, and most affordable way to comply with privacy legislation like the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), the CPRA (California Privacy Rights Act), New York’s SHIELD Act, and others. With Privacy as a Service, you can:

 Privacy as a Service

* Achieve scaled privacy compliance quickly
* Remain one step ahead of legislative developments with affordable advice and support
* Reduce privacy risks with one simple subscription service
* Enjoy peace of mind with your own dedicated data privacy manager

Tags: Privacy as a Service


Mar 13 2021

Developing a Strong Security Posture in the Era of Remote Work

Tags: Remote work


Mar 13 2021

What is HTTPS?

Category: Web SecurityDISC @ 5:57 pm

HTTPS secures the connection to the website you are visiting. I’m sure you have seen this in action; look at the address bar in the browser and find the lock icon on the left-hand side. Is the lock closed? Then the connection is secure. Is it open, or is there another type of icon or message? Then it’s not secure and vulnerable to attack. Using a site over a non-secure connection means hackers/criminals could intercept the data you send to the site, like your password and email address. Here, I’ll explain what HTTPS is and why it plays a role in (technical) SEO.

Table of contents

Tags: HTTP, HTTP Secure, HTTPS


Mar 13 2021

The fire in the OVH datacenter also impacted APTs and cybercrime groups

Category: APT,Cybercrime,data securityDISC @ 3:24 pm

OVH, one of the largest hosting providers in the world, has suffered this week a terrible fire that destroyed its data centers located in Strasbourg. The French plant in Strasbourg includes 4 data centers, SBG1, SBG2, SBG3, and SBG4 that were shut down due to the incident, and the fire started in SBG2 one.

The fire impacted the services of a large number of OVHs’ customers, for this reason the company urged them to implement their disaster recovery plans. 

Nation-state groups were also impacted by the incident, Costin Raiu, the Director of the Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) at Kaspersky Lab, revealed that 36% of 140 OVH servers used by various threat actors as C2 servers went offline. The servers were used by cybercrime gangs and APT groups, including Iran-linked Charming Kitten and APT39 groups, the Bahamut cybercrime group, and the Vietnam-linked OceanLotus APT.

Of course, the incident only impacted a small portion of the command and control infrastructure used by multiple threat actors in the wild, almost any group leverages on multiple service providers and bulletproof hosting to increase the resilience of their C2 infrastructure to takedown operated by law enforcement agencies with the help of security firms.
“In the top of ISPs hosting Command and control infrastructure, OVH is in the 9th position, according to our tracking data. Overall, they are hosting less than 2% of all the C2s used by APTs and sophisticated crime groups, way behind other hosts such as, CHOOPA.” Raiu told to The Reg.


“I believe this unfortunate incident will have a minimal impact on these groups operations; I’m also taking into account that most sophisticated malware has several C2s configured, especially to avoid take-downs and other risks. We’re happy to see nobody was hurt in the fire and hope OVH and their customers manage to recover quickly from the disaster.”

The fire in the OVH datacenter also impacted APTs and cybercrime groups

Tags: OVH datacenter


Mar 13 2021

How confidential are your calls? This iPhone app shared them with everyone

Category: Information Privacy,Mobile SecurityDISC @ 12:03 pm

This isn’t a case of secretive nation-state phone interception methodologies (or spying, as it is often called).

It’s not a tale of cybercriminals deliberately trying to listen in to your business discussions so they can divert massive invoice payments or implant ransomware with multi-million dollar blackmail demands.

That’s the good news.

The bug in this case, discovered by Indian cybersecurity researcher Anand Prakash, was merely a matter of poor programming.

The bad news is that the side-effects of the bug could pretty much have been exploited by anyone, anywhere, any time.

How confidential are your calls? This iPhone app shared them with everyone

Tags: iPhone app


Mar 12 2021

What are the best books on data privacy?

Luke Irwin

Looking for affordable ways to keep your data secure? Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best – and nothing beats the simplicity of a book.

With books, you get expert advice at your fingertips. You can study whenever is convenient and the information is always there for you to reference.

So, which books are right for you? That depends on what you want to know. Fortunately, IT Governance has a selection of titles covering everything you need to know, including the GDPR, Cloud security and the CCPA.

Let’s take a look at some of our most popular titles. Below are the four best books on Data Privacy.


EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – An Implementation and Compliance Guide

EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – An implementation and compliance guide, fourth edition

This bestselling guide is the ideal companion for those trying to understand how the GDPR affects their organisation.

It explains the Regulation’s requirements in terms you can understand and helps you understand data subjects’ rights and the way consent requests have changed.

You’ll also gain a deeper understanding of the GDPR’s technical requirements, such as the appointment of a DPO (data protection officer), international data transfers and the obligations of data controllers and processors.

Buy now

Data Protection and the Cloud – Are you really managing the risks?

Cloud computing is becoming a bigger part of the way organisations do business, but you need to understand the privacy risks that come with it.

In this guide, data protection expert Paul Ticher shows you how to use the Cloud safely and in line with the requirements of the GDPR and the NIS (Network and Information Systems) Regulations 2018.

Buy now

EU GDPR: An international guide to compliance

Written by Alan Calder, IT Governance’s founder and executive chairman, this book is an essential introduction to the GDPR.

It’s ideal for anybody who is new to the Regulation or needs a refresher, explaining the legal terminology and compliance in simple terms.

It also provides invaluable advice on how you can meet the GDPR’s requirements.

This includes broad measures that your organisation should implement as well as tips on things you should and shouldn’t do when processing personal data.

Buy now

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA): An implementation guide

If your organisation collects California residents’ personal data, you must comply with the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act).

The law, which took effect on 1 January 2020, applies to certain companies depending on their annual turnover, how much personal data they collect and whether they sell the information for profit.

Written by data protection expert and consultant Preston Bukaty, this handbook provides a comprehensive explanation of the law’s scope and how to achieve compliance.

Buy now

Tags: best books on data privacy


Mar 12 2021

The cyber security risks of working from home

Category: cyber security,Security Risk AssessmentDISC @ 10:13 am
Luke Irwin

Organisations have had to overcome countless challenges during the pandemic, but one that has continued to cause headaches is IT security for home workers.

A remote workforce comes with myriad dangers, with employees relying on their home networks – and sometimes their own devices – and without the assurance of a member of your IT team on hand if anything goes wrong.

But unlike many COVID-19 risks, these issues won’t go away when life eventually goes back to normal. Home working will remain prominent even when employees have the choice to return to the office, with a Gartner survey finding that 47% of organizations will give employees the choice of working remotely on a full-time basis.

Meanwhile, 82% said that employees would be able to work from home at least one day a week.

As such, organisations should reconsider if they’re under the assumption that the defences they’ve implemented to protect remote workers are temporary.

Robust, permanent defences are required to tackle the array of threats they face. We explain how you can get starting, including our remote working security tips, in this blog.

Online work increases cyber security risks

Without the security protections that office systems afford us – such as firewalls and blacklisted IP addresses – and increased reliance on technology, we are far more vulnerable to cyber attacks.

The most obvious risk is that most of our tasks are conducted online. After all, if something’s on the Internet, then there’s always the possibility of a cyber criminal compromising it.

They might attempt to do this by cracking your password. This could be easier than ever if you’re reusing login credentials for the various online apps you need to stay in touch with your team.

Meanwhile, according to CISO’s Benchmark Report 2020, organizations are struggling to manage remote workers’ use of phones and other mobile devices. It found that 52% of respondents said that mobile devices are now challenging to protect from cyber threats.


You can find more tips on how to work from home safely and securely by taking a look at our new infographic.

This guide explains five of the most significant risks you and your organisation face during the coronavirus crisis.

Top 5 remote working cyber security risk

Alternatively, attackers could send phishing emails intended to trick you into either handing over your details or downloading a malicious attachment containing a keylogger.

The dangers of phishing should already be a top concern, but things are especially perilous during the coronavirus crisis.

A recent report found that there has been a 600% increase in reported phishing emails since the end of February, with many of them cashing in on the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic.

Organisations should also be concerned about remote employees using their own devices.

This might have been unavoidable given how quickly the pandemic spiralled and the suddenness of the government’s decision to implement lockdown measures.

Still, where possible, all work should be done on a corporate laptop subject to remote access security controls. This should include, at the very least, 2FA (two-factor authentication), which will mitigate the risk of a crook gaining access to an employee’s account.

This ensures that the necessary tools are in place to defend against potential risks, such as anti-malware software and up-to-date applications.

It also gives your IT team oversight of the organisation’s IT infrastructure and allows it to monitor any malicious activity, such as malware and unauthorised logins.

Control the risk

Any organisation with employees working from home must create a remote working policy to manage the risks.

If you don’t know what this should contain, our Remote Working Policy Template provides everything you need to know.

It includes guidance on storing devices securely, creating and maintaining strong passwords, and an acceptable use policy for visiting websites that aren’t work-related.

Organisations should also explain the technical solutions they’ve implemented to protect sensitive data and how employees can comply. For example, we recommend applying two-factor authentication to any third-party service that you use.

Although it shouldn’t be a concern during the lockdown, your remote working policy should also address the risks that come with employees handling sensitive information in public places.

For example, when business goes back to normal, staff may well use company devices in places such as trains and cafés, where opportunistic cyber criminals can lurk without drawing attention to themselves.

Security incidents are just as likely to occur even if there isn’t a malicious actor. Consider how often you hear about employees losing their laptop, USB stick or paperwork.

Coronavirus: your biggest challenge yet

Disruption caused by COVID-19 is inevitable, and you have enough to worry about without contending with things like cyber security and compliance issues.

Unfortunately, cyber criminals have sensed an opportunity amid the pandemic, launching a spate of attacks that exploit people’s fear and uncertainty.

Therefore, it’s more important than ever to make sure your organisation is capable of fending off attacks and preventing data breaches.

To help you meet these challenges, we’ve put together a series of packaged solutions. Meanwhile, most of our products and services are available remotely, so we don’t need to be on-site to carry out things like security testing.

One virus is enough to worry about. Take action now to protect your business. Implement cyber security measures that help you respond to cyber attacks.

Tags: working from home


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