Financial institutions are one of the most heavily regulated industries around, and for good reason. Access to the personal information and funds of their customers makes banks a popular target with hackers, and a dangerous location for a cybersecurity breach. With all of the regulations a bank needs to obey, it’s possible you may have overlooked the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or PCI DSS.

A risk assessment is a multi-step process that catalogs all the potential threats to your business. In the same way a person might check the air pressure in a car’s tires or that the office elevator was recently serviced, CISOs should conduct regular risk assessments. Consider it a part of your standard safety management routines.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a growing concern for today’s digitally-focused businesses. Every connected device you own can add another security concern to your list. If it collects and stores personal information and data, you’ve just added another attractive target for criminals to access your network. In fact, 57% of IoT devices are vulnerable to medium or high-severity attacks.

No company is free from risks and vulnerabilities. No matter how robust the digital infrastructure or how strict the cybersecurity measures are, some level of residual risk will always remain. That’s why many organizations include penetration testing in their risk assessment and security program.

According to a study conducted by Ropes & Gray, 57% of senior-level executives rate “risk and compliance” as the top two categories they feel the least prepared to address. There are a lot of misconceptions about compliance and risk management. Both help to prevent security threats to the organization’s legal structure and physical assets. And often, when people hear the terms compliance and risk management, they assume the two are the same.

Here’s an obvious statement for you: mobile applications are essential to how we go about our lives. From sharing files with colleagues to managing finances and connecting with family and friends, they seem to be able to do everything we need. But here’s the catch: developers rarely build apps from scratch and security is not typically their top priority. To quickly add features, they often rely on prepackaged code known as software development kits (SDKs).

Everything connected to your network poses a security risk. Every application on every device poses a threat to that device which then increases your security risk profile. Ultimately, organizations need visibility into all users, applications, and devices on their networks. Whether arising from employees using personal devices or downloading applications to corporate devices, shadow IT is becoming a bigger problem for organizations.

In enterprise networks, endpoint devices refer to end-user devices such as laptops, servers, desktops, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and mobile devices. Such devices enable users to access the corporate network, and are therefore indispensable for day-to-day operations. Endpoints also, however, expand a company’s attack surface, since each one can be exploited by malicious threat actors to launch cyberattacks via ransomware, phishing emails, social engineering, and so forth.

A third-party risk assessment is an analysis of the risk introduced to your organization via third-party relationships along the supply chain. Those third parties can include vendors, service providers, software providers and other suppliers. Risks to be considered include security, business continuity, privacy, and reputation harm; as well as the risk that regulatory compliance obligations might force you to stop working with a party until its issues are addressed.

In most companies today, there is a critical divide between the Chief of Information Security (CISO) and their board of directors. Our new book, The Perfect Scorecard: Getting an ‘A’ in Cybersecurity from your Board of Directors , is an attempt to close that gap. The Perfect Scorecard features insights from 17 leading CISOs and executives known for their leadership skills and their ability to communicate across roles and sectors.

A Service Organization Controls (SOC) report provides independent validation over a company’s internal financial reporting controls. They were originally used to validate compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. When the SEC released the “ Commission Statement and Guidance on Public Company Cybersecurity Disclosures ,” SOC reports started to include cybersecurity. Understanding what a SOC Type 2 report is can give insight into why it is important to your organization.

Third-party risk is any risk brought on to an organization by external parties in its ecosystem or supply chain . Such parties may include vendors, suppliers, partners, contractors, or service providers, who have access to internal company or customer data, systems, processes, or other privileged information. While an organization may have strong cybersecurity measures in place and a solid remediation plan, outside parties, such as third-party vendors , may not uphold the same standards.

Businesses face an endless range of security concerns. Internal controls and security procedures help, but not every risk can be managed out of existence. To build a sustainable security program, then, executives need to rely on risk acceptance and security exceptions to keep operations running and to appease stakeholders as best as possible.

Even the most secure IT system can have vulnerabilities that leave it exposed to cyber attacks. Constantly changing network environments, social engineering schemes, and outdated or unpatched software are all threats that call for routine vulnerability testing. Vulnerability testing, also called vulnerability assessment or analysis, is a one-time process designed to identify and classify security vulnerabilities in a network.

Every year, more than 34 percent of organizations worldwide are affected by insider threats. For that reason, cybersecurity needs to be a priority and concern for each employee within an organization, not only the upper-level management team and IT professionals. Employees tend to be the weakest link in an organization’s security posture, often clicking on malicious links and attachments unintentionally, sharing passwords, or neglecting to encrypt sensitive files.

Headlines coming out of Sweden in July gave IT departments around the world a jolt: one of the country’s largest grocery chains, COOP, had been hit by ransomware and had to temporarily shut down hundreds of stores. Cybercriminals had infiltrated the software as a service (SAS) company Kaseya, a client management platform used by as many as 40,000 organizations (including COOP).

To get a better understanding of how RDP works, think of a remote-controlled toy car. The user presses buttons on the controller and makes the car move forward or backwards. He can do all that and control the car without actually contacting it; the same is the case while using RDP. This article shall help you become aware of RDP security encompassing threats, vulnerabilities and encryption practices.

Higher education has increasingly been attracting the attention of cybercriminals. In March, the FBI released an advisory in response to a barrage of ransomware attacks on schools, and Inside Higher Education recently reported that colleges and universities are becoming favorite victims of bad actors. It's not just colleges themselves that are being targeted; their vendors and third parties are being attacked in the hopes of compromising an institution’s data.

Cybersecurity attacks come in all sorts of ways and from all directions, so perhaps we should not be surprised at one of the latest trends in thieves trying to steal your organization’s data — “vishing” attacks, where they use the plain old telephone.

A vulnerability assessment is the process of identifying IT security weaknesses in your network, operating systems, firewalls, and hardware, and then taking steps to fix them. Penetration testing, also known as “pen testing,” is an intentional, simulated cyberattack against your IT systems to find vulnerabilities and test the efficacy of cybersecurity controls. Both are essential components of a comprehensive vulnerability management and network security protocol.

The internet of things (IoT) is a highly developed space that is home to a vast amount of sensitive data, making it a very attractive target for cybercriminals. Threats and risks continue to evolve as hackers come up with new ways to breach unsecured systems -- posing a threat to the ecosystem itself. Let’s take a look at the leading threats and risks to the IoT and the associated vulnerabilities that must be secured.

We all know how cyber security has become an increasingly important issue as the reliance on internet-connected devices has increased. This is why some companies are looking for third-party providers to handle their IT security needs to free up resources and reduce costs. Find out what you should be looking for in a provider, as well as why outsourcing cyber security can be a good option for some businesses.

When exploringhttps://securityscorecard.com/admin/entries/blog/154640?draftId=2332&fresh=1# top network security breaches, many think of the obvious: banks or large consumer institutions. However, healthcare organizations are on the rise as a top target for hackers, with the number of data breaches rising 36% in the second half of 2020.

With more colleges and universities incorporating Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms to support registrars, admissions, and financial aid offices, schools are collecting more electronic student information than ever before. Combine that with weak networks and systems, however, and the state of cybersecurity in higher education earns an F. Higher education needs to focus more efforts on protecting this information from cybercriminals.