From credential theft to network vulnerability exploitation and ransomware incidents on highly secure organizations, the year 2020 has been surprisingly rough on IT security. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies around the world are reporting more cyberattacks than ever before, and although the techniques used or the method of attack may be new, the vectors of attack over the years remain unchanged.
Most of us can think of a time when we received a phishing email. In fact, most phishing emails are easy to identify, and automatically go to spam. However, in this ongoing pandemic, hackers are adopting advanced tactics that cleverly conceal their malicious intentions, and fly under the radar by leveraging the victim’s fear, anxiety, or plain negligence.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) scores have been viewed as the de facto measure to prioritize vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities are assigned CVSS scores ranging from one to 10, with 10 being the most severe. However, they were never intended as a means of risk prioritization. If you’ve relied on CVSS scores alone to safeguard your organization, here’s why you’re probably using them incorrectly.
A critical Active Directory vulnerability (CVE-2020-1472) has been making headlines for being the most notorious elevation of privilege bug because it can affect all computers and domain controllers in an organization. This high-risk vulnerability, dubbed Zerologon, gives threat actors easy, instant access to domain controllers without requiring any additional privileges. This attack does not even require a user to be authenticated; the user just needs to be connected to the internal network.
More organizations than ever before have shifted to a hybrid work culture to reduce the impact of COVID-19. This unprecedented change has not only given rise to new security challenges, but has also considerably increased the surface area available for an attack. A blend of personal and corporate endpoints in use, geographical spread of resources, and a sharp spike in the overall number of security threats have further complicated the already labor-intensive security landscape.
Five worthy reads is a regular column on five noteworthy items we’ve discovered while researching trending and timeless topics. Organizations on a global scale observe Cybersecurity Awareness Month to educate and instruct their employees on cybersecurity best practices. This week we highlight some cybersecurity trends that are shaping the industry today.
