Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

August 2022

How To Respond To Tough Questions From Leadership Teams Faster and Better

Have you ever been asked difficult questions from your leadership teams that you couldn’t answer? How do you intelligently and succinctly respond to the following questions and have the supporting data to back up your metrics and business outcomes? Regardless of your role in compliance, risk management or information security, these questions can potentially trigger a mild case of anxiety or even a full on panic attack, depending on your organization’s level of control maturity.

Should You Worry About Ransomware Attacks?

Over $800,000 - that’s the cost of the average ransomware payout last year. 66% of mid-sized organizations and about 37% of global organizations got hit. (Sources cited below) Attackers have developed new techniques that a lot of companies aren’t aware of or prepared for. For example, the demand for ransomware as a service has hugely increased, resulting in many more organizations being hacked every day.

UpGuard Reporting Improvements Demo // Chris Schubert, Senior Product Manager

Hear from UpGuard's Senior Product Manager, Chris Schubert, as he introduces you to UpGuard's new Reporting Improvements Our new reports library which centralizes a variety of frequently used reports for you to explore and generate. Some updates we’ve made to both BreachSight and Vendor Risk reports; making it easier for you to generate either executive level summary reports or detailed reporting.

UpGuard Vendor Risk Matrix Demo // Annie Luu, Product Marketing Manager

Hear from UpGuard's Product Marketing Manager, Annie Luu, as she introduces you to UpGuard's new Vendor Risk Matrix. The new vendor risk matrix, that measures vendor security ratings by business impact, has been added to the Vendor Risk Executive Summary. This feature will help drive action where it matters most, highlighting your vendors of most concern in the top right of the matrix.It’s now easier to quickly focus on the most impactful areas of your third party risk management program, by visualizing your vendor portfolio risk by Security Rating and Tier.

Why Vendor Risk Management is Critical for Indian Businesses

Few Indian businesses are included in the ever-increasing list of major data breaches. But data suggests that this streak of luck could soon be reaching its end. Increasing third-party security risks and a deficiency of security controls addressing them create the perfect conditions for a large-scale global supply chain attack facilitated by breached Indian business.

Automation of Risk and Security Compliance Is No Longer a Choice

Risk, security and compliance executives have many choices and decisions on their respective plates, and whether or not to automate is not among them. I’ve been seeing a trend in the marketplace: more and more organizations are investing in risk management and compliance technology tools1. But why? The answer may be as simple as supply and demand dynamics.

How to Implement an Enterprise Risk Management Framework

Managing individual business risks is difficult when silos exist. An enterprise risk management (ERM) framework consolidates risk management strategy across an entire organization, enabling better visibility, measurement, and management of business objectives. With a unified focus on addressing risk, compliance teams can universally improve regulatory compliance, governance, and risk management processes.

6 Ways to Manage Regulatory Risk in Cybersecurity

Keeping up with ever-changing regulatory requirements for cybersecurity can prove difficult for many organizations, which may unknowingly become non-compliant if they fail to adapt to new laws and regulations. Healthcare organizations and financial services must be even more vigilant with compliance. Both sectors are subject to even stricter requirements due to the large quantities of personally identifiable information (PII) they manage.

5 Common Risks Involved in Mergers and Acquisitions

The total global value of corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&A) reached $5.9 trillion in 2021. For 2022, the figure is expected to reach $4.7 trillion. This would make 2022 the second-best year on record for the M&A market after 2021. Clearly, robust M&A opportunities exist for companies looking to stimulate growth, increase market share, and influence supply chains. Despite those potential benefits, however, M&A deals are also fraught with serious risks.

A 7-Step Process for Strategic Risk Management

Modern-day enterprise risk management (ERM) is a disciplined, organization-wide approach to identifying and addressing a wide range of enterprise risks, such as operational risk, financial risk, compliance risk, and strategic risk. Organizations with robust ERM programs can better manage and mitigate risk and minimize the potential for losses or damage. ERM incorporates different strategies, tactics, and plans for each type of risk because those risks affect the organization in different ways.

A pragmatic approach to risk management & resilience

Cybersecurity starts with the ability to recognize your cyber risk. We will explore several topics related to taking a practical approach to managing risk and achieving cyber resilience. This is a blog series with collective thoughts from Bindu Sundaresan, Director AT&T Cybersecurity, and Nick Simmons, AVP, Cybersecurity. Cybercrime has become increasingly frequent, complex, and costly, posing a risk to all businesses regardless of size. How do you plan to respond when falling victim to a breach?

Reducing Risks of Real-Time Payments Adoption

2023 might be a really important year for real-time payments (RTP) development in North America. FedNow, a real-time payments service, is on track to go operational in 2023 in the USA, while the Real-Time Rail (RTR) payment system will be fully launched in Canada, also in 2023. Currently, in their test phases, these payment systems will go mainstream next year, making faster payments more accessible to smaller financial institutions and businesses.

CISOs Need to Speak the Language of Board Members

"I understand the pitfalls of cyber security, but my boss just won't support me with the budget I need.” Does this sound familiar to you as a CISO? I have 3 pieces of advice for you: Speak their language I like to say that CISOs are from Mars, while CEOs and board members are from Venus. It’s because they don't speak the same language. You might go to your board and say, “I installed Akamai Prolexic.1.4.4.3.1./24 subnet to mitigate an SYN flood attack.”

How Integrated Risk Management Solutions Protect Organizations

Risk awareness, mitigation, and management are integral to solid cybersecurity and business performance in the modern business climate. Organizations need an active approach that supports risk-informed decision-making at every level to succeed at risk management. This is where integrated risk management comes into action.

What Is Management Override of Internal Controls?

Internal controls are the processes, procedures, tasks, and activities meant to protect an organization from fraud, financial information misreporting, cybercrime, and accidental losses. A strong internal control system is also vital to maintain compliance with all applicable laws and regulations. Internal controls do, however, have one nagging weakness: management override of those controls.

Managing Work-Life Balance as a Founder

Here are 3 tips for founders and CEOs to have a work-life balance: As a founder/CEO, there are always 500 more things you could do at the end of the day, the next day, and the day thereafter. So you’ve to ask questions like:“What can I do that will deliver 10x results?”“What can I do to move the needle the most?”“What areas will the results be the same unless I get involved?” Before each day starts, I ask myself, “What are the top few things I need to accomplish?”

Making the Vendor Questionnaire Process More Efficient (in 2022)

Vendor security questionnaires are frustrating, both to the organizations sending them and the vendors receiving them. While these frustrations remain unaddressed, they will only continue to impede the efficiency of vendor risk management programs. Fortunately, suffering through security assessments isn’t an unavoidable by-product of a Vendor Risk Management program. With the correct strategies, you can streamline the entire assessment questionnaire lifecycle. Read on to learn how.

4 Ways Using SecurityScorecard Can Help You Monitor Vendor Risk

According to a Gartner report, 60 percent of organizations work with more than 1,000 third parties that connect to their internal systems, and nearly 58 percent of organizations believe they have incurred a vendor-related breach. Many third parties require more access to organization data assets and are increasingly working with their own third parties, further multiplying the size and complexity of the third-party network.

8 Ways to Implement an Effective GRC Framework

Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) is a broad organizational strategy that aims to align an entire organization’s focus on the achievement of business objectives, the management of business risks, and regulatory compliance. A solid foundational framework enables your organization to continue strengthening and refining its GRC strategy over time. It ensures each department’s objectives align with the business as a whole.

Assessing Cybersecurity in M&A Diligence

Here’s why you should check a company’s overall cyber security health before acquiring it: You could be doing a great job protecting your company. But then, if you merge with a business with holes and attackers are already inside it, their problem becomes your problem. So you need to build a rigorous methodology and a playbook to assess the security of your target during the M&A diligence. Here’s how you can do it.

Gather Your Team and Conquer Dystopian Vendor Security Reviews

Let’s talk about vendor security reviews. If you felt some form of unpleasant emotion just reading the phrase “vendor security review,” I understand. You and I are not so different. You have likely participated in completing at least one vendor security review in your career. During the process you may have questioned humanity, your career choice or at least whether or not your company should be doing business with the procuring organization.

Don't Hack the Computer - Hack the Person! Recently Observed Social Engineering Attacks

When most people think about the origin of a cyberattack, the image is that of a hacker using some kind of exploit against software or hardware in order to gain unauthorized access to systems. The hacker is seeking data to exfiltrate and monetize, either through re-sale on the darknet or extortion through ransomware.

Vulnerability Scans Are a Must but Not Enough

Vulnerability scans test for different misconfigurations and report the vulnerabilities. But they have 2 big drawbacks: You need to get consent from a company before you do a vulnerability scan on them. You may get a very rigorous readout from a vulnerability scan. But then a sleep-deprived IT administrator misconfigured the system, making your report irrelevant. On the other hand, security ratings don’t need anybody’s consent and provide continuous, real-time monitoring.

SecurityScorecard Is One of Only Five Organizations to Partner with the Institute for Security and Technology's Ransomware Task Force to Create the Blueprint for Ransomware Defense

On August 4, the Institute for Security and Technology’s (IST) Ransomware Task Force (RTF) announced the release of its Blueprint for Ransomware Defense - a clear, actionable framework for ransomware mitigation, response, and recovery aimed at helping organizations navigate the growing frequency of attacks.

Federal and Local Government Agencies Continue to Use Section 889 Prohibited Products

Section 889 of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 prohibits the procurement or use of Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision, or Dahua telecommunication and video surveillance products and services by federal agencies, government contractors, and the recipients of any federal grants or loans (this latter category includes many state and local governments).

Using Business Analytics for Risk Performance Management

Risk management is the process of identifying, evaluating, and controlling risks to an organization’s operations and financial performance. These dangers can be caused by several things, such as economic unpredictability, legal responsibilities, technological problems, strategic management blunders, accidents, and natural calamities. An effective risk management program helps a business navigate all potential hazards.

All You Wanted to Know About Data Security Fabric

Data is one of the most valuable assets for modern organizations. The right type and quality of data allows companies to resolve problems and improve business performance; it guides enterprise decision-making and drives business strategy. Data is also vital to improve cybersecurity, maintain regulatory compliance, and strengthen the competitive posture. In short, data matters. Organizations must protect their data assets from unauthorized access, compromise, and theft.

Looking for a Digital Forensics Expert Witness? Guidelines and Procedures for Testimony

In 2022, a lot of crime involves a digital element. The digital element can be anything from text messages to complex cyber attacks on organizational networks. If you're prosecuting, a digital forensics expert can help you build a stronger case by gathering and documenting evidence and testifying in court on their findings.

Was the Explosion at Freeport LNG a Result of a Russian Cyber Attack?

On June 8, an explosion took place at Freeport LNG’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility in Quintana, Texas. The company later explained that the explosion resulted from a rupture in an over-pressurized pipeline, but did not comment as to how the pressure built up enough to cause such a rupture. In the wake of the explosion, Freeport reported that the outage resulting from it would persist until September, after which the facility would only resume partial operations.

What is the Internet of Things (IoT)? Definition and Critical Risks

The internet of things (IoT) is a system of interconnected computers, devices, digital machines, and objects, all marked with unique identifiers (UIDs) and enabled to transfer and share data over a network. It was first coined by Kevin Ashton in 1999 when he envisioned a future where things communicated with each other, apart from human interaction With the evolution of web-enabled smart homes and smart devices in nearly every corner of life, IoT attack surfaces begin to emerge.