In September 2023, cybercriminals launched an extensive ransomware attack that disrupted several major businesses in the Las Vegas Casino Business/District. The attack shook the city and stopped consumer goods and services for several hours. The attack influenced security, visitor services, and financial activities. Businesses lost money and long-term reputational risks ensued.

Not all hackers are bad. A subset known as white hat hackers, or ethical hackers, use their knowledge and skills for good, testing companies' defenses and discovering vulnerabilities for them.

Okta, a provider of identity and authentication management services, reported that threat actors were able to access private customer data by obtaining credentials to its customer support management system. According to Okta’s Chief Security Officer, David Bradbury, the threat actor had the capability to view files uploaded by specific Okta customers in recent support cases.

In recent years, blockchain technology has garnered significant attention thanks to its remarkable tamper-proof features and robust security. It is also expected that the blockchain technology market will exceed 1.2 billion US dollars by 2030, with an annual growth rate of 82.8 percent. However, recent headlines have exposed numerous vulnerabilities and cyberattacks targeting blockchain technology.

An exploit kit is a toolkit that cybercriminals use to attack the security vulnerabilities of a system or device to distribute malware. An exploit is a bit of code that takes advantage of security vulnerabilities found within software and hardware. Cybercriminals collect these bits of code and compile them into a kit that can target multiple security vulnerabilities at once, and secretly install malware on devices.

The past half-decade has been a particularly tumultuous one for cybersecurity. It has borne witness to some of the most damaging attacks in history, unprecedentedly high data breach rates, and a staggering number of emerging threat groups. However, a new report from cyber insurance provider Coalition suggests that things are beginning to stabilize.

According to a recent Yerbo survey, 40% of IT professionals are at high risk of burnout. In fact, and perhaps even more alarming, 42% of them plan to quit their company in the next six months. And yet, according to Deloitte, 70% of professionals across all industries feel their employers are not doing enough to prevent or alleviate burnout. CIOs should take this statistic seriously.

In late August, Microsoft published its analysis of espionage activity tied to a new threat actor group called Flax Typhoon, which is believed to operate on behalf of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The group mainly targets Taiwanese critical infrastructure, including: government, education, manufacturing, and information technology sectors.

In sports, the most successful teams master the art of strategic combinations. The same is true within the cybersecurity arena. In today’s expanding and complex threat landscape, trying to beat cyber opponents with a starting lineup of disparate point solutions is a losing strategy. How much better would your cyber defenses be with correlated threat intelligence across each of your key security solutions?

Within your incident response plan, there typically is (or should be) a trigger to notify your executive team of an impending crisis. While many organizations believe they’ve worked out the logistics of gathering leadership on the phone, getting decisions made, and garnering their support for your proposed response plan, they often find out in the heat of an incident that the leadership team is miles apart in your understanding of what happens next.