Are you aware of the risks involved in doing business with parties sanctioned by the Office of Financial Assets Control (OFAC)? How does this impact your vendor management? OFAC stands for Office of Foreign Assets Control within the Treasury Department. As part of the U.S. government measure to enforce anti-money laundering/counter terrorism financing regulations, OFAC oversees economic and trade sanctions. These sanctions are against countries, individuals, or outfits engaged in disreputable actions.

In today’s ever changing cyber risk landscape, your organization must adopt a vulnerability management framework to control exposure and remediate risks in a timely manner. In an earlier blog, we explained the vulnerability management process. Here, we explore a key part of that process – vulnerability monitoring – in greater depth.

The threat of ransomware has been ever present in 2020, especially within the high-stakes industries like healthcare and those involved in the election. According to Verizon's 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report, 24% of security incidents that involved specific malware functionality exhibited ransomware functionality.

New security vulnerabilities are emerging every day. The number of new disclosed cyber vulnerabilities jumped 25 percent in 2022, and the number of known exploited vulnerabilities—ones observed to be exploited by malicious actors in the wild—nearly doubled from 2021 to 2022. Remediating vulnerabilities rapidly and effectively reduces the likelihood of your organization becoming the victim of a cyber attack. Consider.

Vulnerabilities are on the rise, and it's not just the number that's growing; the severity of these vulnerabilities is also increasing. Cybercriminals are taking advantage of these vulnerabilities to launch sophisticated attacks, leading to data breaches, ransomware, and other devastating cyber incidents.

In January 2023, PrivateLoader, a malware loader from a pay-per-install malware distribution service called “ruzki”, started to distribute Tofsee (a.k.a. Gheg), a modular spambot. Spambots are typically utilized by cybercriminals to spread malware and phishing emails, and this particular one has been in operation since at least 2008.

Imagine you've alerted your IT team to a critical infrastructure error plaguing your network. You ask them to drop their current work and focus on immediate remediation of this detected vulnerability. After further investigation, however, it is found to be a false positive. Unfortunately, these incidents are commonplace – and they cost your organization valuable time and manpower. More worrying, they distract from legitimate security issues.

Recently, we discussed the most effective cybersecurity frameworks to reduce the risk of cyber threats. One of the most important systems is the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). This act applies to certain organizations, and is imperative to help protect them against data breaches. Let’s take a look at four things to know about FISMA, from what it is to how to monitor FISMA compliance.

The other week, BitSight published research identifying thousands of organizations using internet-facing and exposed webcams with many video and audio feeds susceptible to spying. The potential consequences are serious – an attacker could potentially view private activities and eavesdrop on sensitive conversations, presenting a variety of privacy and security concerns. Below are some of the screenshots BitSight captured from exposed devices (blurred for privacy).

The more technology your organization adopts, the more exposed it becomes to third-party risks. Consider these statistics: Organizations have responded to these risks by implementing robust third-party risk assessment procedures. However, a common mistake is to view vendor risk management as a one-time activity, typically conducted prior to onboarding a new vendor. Since third-party risks are constantly evolving, it's crucial to evaluate vendor security at every phase of the vendor lifecycle.