Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

March 2022

SecurityScorecard Analysis of Lapsus$ Threat Group

SecurityScorecard’s CISO Mike Wilkes and Threat Researcher Ryan Slaney discuss their latest insights on the Lapsus$ threat group, the recent Okta breach, and what CISOs should do to protect their organizations. SecurityScorecard is the global leader in cybersecurity ratings and the only service with over 12 million companies continuously rated. The company is headquartered in New York and operates in 64 countries around the globe.

Things to Remember While Scaling Your Business

Here are 2 things that helped us successfully scale SecurityScorecard: Having a customer-first mentality: You need to understand your customers deeply. You need to adopt Amazon’s empty-chair approach where the most important voice is the customers’ voice, not the CEOs’. Beginning with the right foundation: Here’s what most companies get wrong: When they start up and have 10-20 people, they focus on their customers.

Driving Business Results with a Strategic Approach to Risk - and with ZenRisk

Every business activity involves risk, so simply viewing and measuring risk at a high level isn’t enough. InfoSec teams also need to identify and categorize risks as they relate to individual business activities and the context around them. Managing risk is all about delivering insights so that key stakeholders – including executives and the board – can better understand their IT risk posture and use that knowledge to make better business decisions. But where to start?

Cybersecurity Risk Management: Introduction to Security Analytics

It’s mid-morning. You’re scanning the daily news while enjoying a coffee break. You come across yet another headline broadcasting a supply chain data breach. Your heart skips a quick, almost undetectable, beat. You have the technology in the headline in your stack. You set aside your coffee and begin furiously scanning through the overwhelming number of alerts triggered across all your technologies.

Working with At-Risk Businesses: How It Can Dismantle Your Zero Trust Strategy

Nowadays, building a zero-trust network has become a standard protocol in the era of evolving business models, multiple workforce platforms, cloud adoption, and increased device connectivity. But, if a business continues to work with at-risk organizations, the zero-trust policy crumbles. Working with well-secured third parties that uphold a zero-trust strategy is crucial for optimal cybersecurity within any business.

How to Mitigate Risks in Software Supply Chain Security

In this session, Mic McCully and Jake Williams explore the software supply chain as an attack vector – by identifying risks and mitigation strategies throughout the software development processes and environment. Watch this to learn how you can meet new requirements and protect your software from these attacks. Snyk helps software-driven businesses develop fast and stay secure. Continuously find and fix vulnerabilities for npm, Maven, NuGet, RubyGems, PyPI and more.

Move aside, Conti, Lapsus$ coming through!

-In the hours after news broke that Lapsus$ claimed to have breached Okta, an enterprise identity and access management firm, SecurityScorecard’s Threat Research and Intelligence team conducted a rapid investigation into Lapsus$ to provide customers and partners with the very latest in actionable security intelligence and insights related to this emerging cybercrime group. -Lapsus$’s targets have quickly evolved from Brazilian and Portuguese organizations to high-profile U.S.

SEC's Proposed Disclosure Amendments: Are You Impacted?

On March 9, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced proposed rules and amendments to enhance and standardize disclosures regarding cybersecurity risk management, strategy, governance, and incident reporting. These proposed amendments impact all public companies subject to the reporting requirements of the Security Exchange Act of 1934. To summarize this proposal and learn how to successfully prepare for them, read on.

How Managed Risk Best Addresses the Three Pillars of Cybersecurity

Comparing and contrasting the effectiveness of Vulnerability Assessment (VA), Vulnerability Management (VM), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (RBVM), and Managed Risk®. Performing a vulnerability assessment (VA), implementing a vulnerability management (VM) program, and upgrading your proactive security program with a risk-based vulnerability management (RBVM) approach may help your organization effectively deal with cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

What Sets SecurityScorecard Apart!

According to Forrester and Gartner, we are the leader in the security rating space. 3 reasons why: Massive data set: We’ve rated 12 million organizations worldwide. If an organization is not on the data set, it takes us just a few minutes to rate it while our competitors take days to do the same. Huge marketplace of applications and services: We have 100s of partners that enrich the value of our platform.

The 3G network shutdown impacts more than just phones

As you have probably heard, 3G is phasing out. On February 22, AT&T shut down its 3G network. T-Mobile Sprint will retire its 3G network next week on March 31, 2022. Verizon, the last of the pack, will retire 3G by the end of 2022. What does this mean for your business and your security? The obvious answer is that older phones should be replaced as soon as possible, but the 3G shutdown’s impact will reach beyond phones, and that reach may affect your organization’s security.

Alleged Okta Breach - What Can You Do?

Early in the morning of March 22nd a threat group known as LAPSUS$ posted screenshots on their Telegram account that allegedly show access to Okta internal systems such as Slack, Cloudflare, Jira, Salesforce and other “Okta cards.” Okta’s CEO Todd McKinnon apparently confirmed an event in January in a tweet:: “In late January 2022, Okta detected an attempt to compromise the account of a third party customer support engineer working for one of our subprocessors.

Building a risk management program? Start with compliance - and Reciprocity ZenComply.

Businesses are constantly adapting to changing circumstances. Yet, many are strapped for resources and view compliance as nothing more than a checklist of requirements to satisfy regulators or auditors which could short-change their business. At the same time, the pandemic has highlighted the necessity of risk management for every organization, and exposed the gaps that exist in many governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) programs today.

Meeting ISO 27001 Third-Party Risk Requirements

ISO 27001 compliance provides greater assurance that an organization is adequately managing its cybersecurity practices, such as protecting personal data and other types of sensitive data. Third-party risk management (TPRM) programs can benefit immensely from implementing the relevant ISO 270001 controls to mitigate the risk of significant security incidents and data breaches.

How to Prevent Whaling Attacks: A Complete Guide

Senior-level executives handle sensitive data and information daily – making them an enticing target for cybercriminals. One of the most complex schemes to date is the whaling attack, in which hackers impersonate high-ranking employees to gain access to computer systems and networks. Whaling attacks have seen a dramatic 131% increase between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021, costing enterprises around $1.8 billion in damages.

What Are Attack Surfaces and How to Protect Them

Attack surfaces are the different endpoints, subsidiaries, business units, and devices that a hacker could go after. For example: We have a client who had a Japanese subsidiary that spun up a server for QA testing. They used it for a couple of years and then forgot about it and stopped maintaining it. But the server was still there. And the attackers found it and tried to use it to break into the client’s infrastructure.

Banish Shadow IT With Digital Footprint

It’s out there. In the deep, dark corners of your IT estate, it’s been hiding. Maybe it’s that “killer app” one of the department heads brought back from a trade show. Or maybe it’s that campaign microsite that marketing had a contractor develop for a “skunkworks” launch. Shadow IT is more than an asset management problem. It’s a security problem because you can’t secure what you can’t see.

This Is the Reason Behind 70% Of Data Breaches

70% of the data breaches involve the negligence of a 3rd party. Let’s understand this with Target’s classic example. In 2013, they were using a contractor, Fazio, to do maintenance of their air conditioning systems. The hackers got into the Fazio systems and used it as a jumping pod to infiltrate and hack into Target’s infrastructure. Big companies like Audi and Volkswagen have also suffered such cyberattacks due to 3rd party negligence.

SecurityScorecard Discovers new botnet, 'Zhadnost,' responsible for Ukraine DDoS attacks

SecurityScorecard (SSC) has identified three separate DDoS attacks which all targeted Ukrainian government and financial websites leading up to and during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Details of these DDoS attacks have not yet been publicly identified.

Understanding the Basics of Cyber Insurance: What You Need to Know

Data breaches and cybercrime are all too common. And in recent years, ransomware attacks have caused many organizations to face hefty extortion payments, legal fees, and reputational damage – not to mention the major headache that comes with each. Cyber insurance has become a powerful tool in the world of cyberattacks to help protect organizations from the implications of a ransomware attack, but many don’t understand what a cyber insurance policy actually covers.

Breach Costs - Millions of Lost Revenue

At the end of 2021, Capital One agreed to pay a settlement of $190 million to 98 million customers whose personal data was stolen in a 2019 data breach. Similar class-action lawsuits were filed in 2021 against T-Mobile, Shopify, and Ledger. When it comes to the cost of breaches, however, those are just the legal fees. Every year, businesses lose millions of dollars in revenue to cyberattacks and data breaches.

Improving FedRAMP: Federal Procurement & Risk Management

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) has been in place for just over a decade (2011). Its purpose is to provide a “cost-effective, risk-based approach for the adoption and use of cloud services” by the federal government. This is to equip and enable federal agencies to utilize cloud technologies in a way that minimizes risk exposure through security and protection of federal information and processes.

Mitigating Risks in Software Supply Chain

By 2025, 45% of organizations worldwide will have experienced attacks on their software supply chains (Gartner) which are only becoming increasingly complex due to the changes in how modern software is built. These trends, together with new federal regulations, require organizations to take action to ensure the security and integrity of their software. But this is easier said than done.

Strategies For Vendor Third Party Risk Management

Vendor Third-Party Risk Management is an essential part of most regulatory and compliance programs. Tracking and monitoring vendor risk are important as it helps businesses make critical business decisions and mitigate risk from time to time. As organizations mostly outsource some parts of their operations to vendors or third-party service providers, it has become mandatory in certain standards and regulations to establish Vendor third-party risk management as a part of the compliance process.

How to Protect From Potential Cyber Threats Stemming From Russian/Ukrainian Crisis

The following organizations should raise their INFOCON levels and be prepared for cyber-attacks because of this conflict: Our threat intelligence teams continue to enhance Obrela’s technology with new threat intel information as soon as it becomes available. We are conducting threat hunting activities to proactively detect and respond to emerging threats.

VIP Identity Breaches Demo with UpGuard's Senior Product Manager, Chris Schubert

Learn from UpGuard's Senior Product Manager, Chris Schubert, as he introduces you to UpGuard's new VIP Identity Breaches feature. Ensure that you're the first to know if any of your organization's executives are exposed to a data breach by adding them to a VIP list.

Gain a full view of your vendor ecosystem with Automatic Vendor Detection

SecurityScorecard is the global leader in cybersecurity ratings, empowering you with trusted data and the confidence to make smarter and faster decisions. Security ratings give you an outside-in view of the cybersecurity posture of any organization in the world across ten key risk factor groups. Our Automatic Vendor Detection (AVD) instantly gives you a view of your entire third and fourth-party ecosystem, enabling you to visualize and take proactive steps to mitigate risk.

What is Cyber Hygiene? Definition, Benefits, & Best Practices

You’ve likely been practicing good personal hygiene since childhood, but have you heard of cyber hygiene? Similar to personal hygiene practices which maintain good health and well-being, cyber hygiene practices maintain the health and well-being of your sensitive data and connected devices. This blog will define cyber hygiene, discuss the importance of maintaining cyber hygiene and explore best practices for ensuring cybersecurity.