Like other organizations that are adopting a permanent hybrid or remote-first work environment, Lookout is using our Secure Access Services Edge (SASE) platform to implement cybersecurity that is not tied to the physical office spaces where employees used to work. SASE is a security framework defined by Gartner that has been adopted by many organizations to enable intelligent Zero-Trust access from anywhere without hindering productivity.

A few months ago, the largest U.S. pipeline operator, Colonial Pipeline, was forced to halt operations for nearly a week due to a ransomware attack. While it ultimately didn’t stop consumers from buying gasoline, the incident forced the company to pay $4.4 million in ransom payment and illustrated just how vulnerable energy organizations are to cyberattacks.

Security researchers at the Lookout Threat Lab have identified a new rooting malware distributed on Google Play and prominent third-party stores such as the Amazon Appstore and the Samsung Galaxy Store. We named the malware “AbstractEmu” after its use of code abstraction and anti-emulation checks to avoid running while under analysis. A total of 19 related applications were uncovered, seven of which contain rooting functionality, including one on Play that had more than 10,000 downloads.

There’s a great scene in the 1997 film “Contact” where the protagonist Dr. Eleanor Arroway, played by Jodie Foster, is informed that her lab’s funding has just been revoked. Arroway’s lab partner explained that the government lost faith in the project due to concerns of her engaging in questionable activities, such as watching static on TV for hours.

In early 2020, almost every government agency embraced telework in response to the pandemic. With telework, employees operate outside the security perimeter that was put in place to protect them and the agency’s data. As a result, telework has had significant cybersecurity ramifications. Lookout has a long history of collaborating with the public sector to secure agency employees.

I’m excited to announce that Lookout has extended its partnership with Microsoft to ensure our threat telemetry data is easily accessible via the Microsoft Azure Sentinel Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution. With this integration, Azure Sentinel users can leverage a rich mobile dataset within the Lookout Security Graph. When it comes to increasing productivity, we want to work smarter.

Every once in a while, an industry term will get overused by marketing to the point of becoming a cliche. I think “Zero Trust” may have reached this threshold. In some ways, I understand why this is happening. Security perimeters have become obsolete as people use mobile devices and cloud applications to work from anywhere.

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).

The work-from-anywhere economy has opened up the possibility for your human resources team to source the best talent from anywhere. To scale their operations, organizations are leveraging the cloud to accelerate essential HR functions such as recruiting, onboarding, evaluating and more. SAP is leading this HR transformation with its human capital management (HCM) solution, SAP SuccessFactors.

It seems as if everything is happening in the cloud now — whether I’m sharing a document with a colleague or backing up family photos. This is happening in cybersecurity as well, where the storage flexibility and computing power of the cloud have enabled new ways to secure organizations.