Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

A firewall can be considered a digital shield that helps protect your network from unwanted or potentially harmful traffic. It lies between a trusted network and external connections, such as the internet, where it checks network traffic against predefined security rules. Based on those rules, it decides which connections to allow and which to block.

One of the most common questions organisations ask when planning a security assessment is how long a penetration test will take. The answer depends heavily on scope, but there is also an important distinction between the time spent actively testing and the overall project timeline. When buyers ask how long a penetration test takes, they may be referring to several different stages.

In the race to bring a new therapy to market, information is your most valuable currency. But at many life sciences organizations, that currency is locked away in data silos. When your clinical data lives in one place, your lab results in another, and your regulatory filings in a third, your team isn't just working in different departments, they’re working in different worlds.

Proactive security means measuring your posture against clear policies on a steady rhythm and fixing risk before it becomes an alert or an audit finding. Most teams still work reactively: they wait for an auditor or an alert, investigate, and then act. SOC 2, ISO 27001, and NIST CSF already expect ongoing improvement. Getting there takes a shift in mindset and tools that make the rhythm easy to keep.

Looking ahead to next year, major technology providers are adopting stronger, phishing-resistant authentication methods. Among them is Microsoft, which is phasing out its native SMS and voice authentication services in favor of more secure alternatives, including passkeys, beginning February 1, 2027. The change will initially affect most Microsoft Entra ID users, then extend to Global Administrators and external users on July 1, 2027.

When managing more than one computer in a local area network (LAN), Windows network file sharing lets users access files from another machine without copying data manually or relying on removable media. Windows handles this through the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. This guide explains how to share a folder in Windows 10 and Windows 11, configure users and permissions, connect to a shared folder, map a network drive and resolve common SMB access errors.

A machine identity is the set of credentials a non-human entity, such as an application, device, workload, or service, uses to authenticate itself and communicate securely with other systems. Just as an employee proves who they are with a username and password, a machine proves who it is with cryptographic credentials like a digital certificate, an API key, or a service account token.

A field employee's laptop crashes, or a server in another office needs a patch, or a remote worker gets locked out of their workstation. For all these situations, the IT team needs to get in, fix it, and move on, without being there. Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is Microsoft's answer to that problem. It's a network protocol that lets you connect to another computer over a network and control it as if you were sitting right in front of it.

Three LevelBlue security experts put their investigative skills to the test in the SentinelOne Threat Hunting competition, with Jodie McDonald earning the top spot in EMEA and advancing to the Grand Final at OneCon. Threat hunting requires more than knowing your way around a security platform. It takes curiosity, analytical thinking, and the discipline to follow the evidence, even when it leads somewhere unexpected.