Introduced to the market nearly two decades ago, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are a uniquely enduring cornerstone of modern security. Most large organizations still employ a VPN solution to facilitate secure remote access, while millions of consumers rely on similar products to bolster their online privacy, secure public Wi-Fi connections, and circumvent site blocks. By now, most of us know that a VPN assigns us a new IP address and transmits our online traffic through an encrypted tunnel.

With access to more resources than ever before, cybercriminals are rapidly scaling their operations, making every organization a potential target for a cyberattack. And, they are constantly shifting their tactics to exploit new vulnerabilities and slip past perimeter-based controls undetected. Meanwhile, the longer a threat goes undetected in a network environment, the greater the potential for damage through a security breach, data loss, or business downtime and disruption.

Across the board, security teams of every industry, organization size, and maturity level share at least one goal: they need to manage risk. Managing risk is not the same as solving the problem of cybersecurity once and for all, because there is simply no way to solve the problem once and for all. Attackers are constantly adapting, developing new and advanced attacks, and discovering new vulnerabilities.

Here is a short communication tip that may help you in your daily interactions. How often have you “resent” an E-Mail? How often have you told a person that you will “send an invite”? You may be wondering why I am bringing this up in a post usually reserved for cybersecurity. Am I just being overly pedantic? Am I just a rigid grammarian? One could easily assert that (and my friends do so all the time, so feel free to jump on that bandwagon).

The elderly population in the U.S has been on a steady incline for the past few decades. With more seniors living longer new challenges arise. Unfortunately, many seniors become vulnerable to different types of abuse, neglect, and exploitation as they age. The National Council on Aging estimates that financial fraud and abuse against seniors costs older Americans up to $36.5 billion each year.

Welcome back to the next edition of “Hacking WordPress”. Find Part 1 if you missed it. Let me start with a PSA message. It is illegal to hack, log in to, penetrate, take over or even hack, a system or network of systems without the explicit permission of the owner. Criminal hacking is illegal and punishable under Federal Law. I am describing methods to learn more about WordPress so you can protect your sites better.

Currently, we’re in a period of growth for supply chain management. With the digital revolution bringing industry players around the globe closer together, business operations have expanded for companies big and small. As both business owners and consumers, we’re experiencing the changes every step of the way as well. Each change brings with it a new set of challenges and benefits.

Alien Labs has identified an unreported and ongoing malware campaign, which we attribute with high confidence to the adversary publicly reported as “StrongPity”. Based on compilation times, infrastructure, and public distribution of samples - we assess the campaign operated from the second half of 2018 into today (July 2019). This post details new malware and new infrastructure which is used to control compromised machines.

The cloud certainly offers its advantages, yet as with any large-scale deployment, the cloud can offer some unforeseen challenges. The concept of the cloud just being “someone else’s data center” has always been a cringe moment for me because this assumes release of security responsibility since ‘someone else will take care of it’.

Being proactive is the key to staying safe online, especially for businesses and organizations that operate websites and mobile applications. If you wait for threats to appear, then in most cases it is too late to defend against them. Many data breaches come about this way, with hackers uncovering security gaps that had gone previously undetected. The average web developer wants to assume that their code and projects will always function in the intended manner.

With the commercialization of cybercrime, malware variations continue to increase at an alarming rate, and this is putting many a defender on their back foot. Malware analysis — the basis for understanding the inner workings and intentions of malicious programs — has grown into a complex mix of technologies in data science and human interpretation. This has made the cost of maintaining a malware analysis program generally out of reach for the average organization.

Ransomware attacks increased by 105% in the first quarter of 2019, according to Beazley’s tally of insurance claims and data analytics. Other alarming reports show that new variants of Ransomware keep appearing almost every month. In addition, two years after the WannaCry Ransomware attacks, 1.7 million computers still remain at risk in 2019 according to TechCrunch. Fortunately, there are cybersecurity solutions that can protect your data during file transfer and file storage.

The results are in, and once again AT&T’s Cybersecurity is recognized as an industry leader by securing its third consecutive ranking of “very strong” in Global Data’s annual product report. AT&T is the only company to achieve this hat-trick rating in all of Global Data’s seven categories of assessment. AT&T’s bold acquisition of AlienVault has reaffirmed its position as the cybersecurity leader with both competitive and qualitative edges.

Remember when you were younger, and you wanted to do something that all your friends were doing, yet you knew your parents would never approve? Perhaps it was skating in that home-made “Half-Pipe”, or that time you wanted to try some equally dangerous stunt? Of course, your parents disapproved, to which you probably responded with the time-honored refrain: “But everyone is doing it!” That was never a convincing argument.