With connectivity to the outside world growing, cyber attacks on industrial computers constitute an extremely dangerous threat, as these types of incidents can cause material losses and production downtime for a whole system. Moreover, industrial enterprises knocked out of service can seriously undermine a region’s social welfare, ecology and macroeconomics. Not surprisingly, cybersecurity is therefore becoming more and more important across the board.

Online trading is on the rise as many consumers take control of their own investments or work with brokers virtually rather than in person or over the phone. At the same time, cybersecurity attacks are on the rise as hackers also try to take advantage of gaps in the system, stealing identities and even money.

The previous year (2018) witnessed an overwhelming number of cyber-attacks and data breaches that affected millions of customers across companies, including customers of household names like Uber, Facebook, Reddit, British Airways, and the Marriott hotel chain. Even governmental organizations were no exception.

67% of small and micro businesses have experienced a cyber attack, while 58% have experienced a data breach within the last 12 months, according to a study conducted by the Ponemon Institute. Cybersecurity has become one of the major questions that plague the 21st century, with numerous businesses reporting significant losses resulting from loss of private customer data, denial of service (DoS) attacks.

This article covers the main techniques cybercriminals use at the initial stage of attacks against enterprise networks. There are several dangerous phases of cyberattacks targeting the corporate segment. The first one encountered by businesses boils down to getting initial access into their systems. The malefactor’s goal at this point is to deposit some malicious code onto the system and make sure it can be executed further on.

Healthcare is under fire and there’s no sign of the burn slowing. Look, it’s no secret that hackers have been targeting hospitals and other healthcare providers for several years — and probably no surprise that healthcare is one of the top target industries for cybercrime in 2018. In the US alone, in fact, more than 270 data breaches affecting nearly 12 million individuals were submitted to the U.S. HHS Office for Civil Rights breach portal (as of November 30, 2018).

Data breach is a major player when it comes to causing financial as well as reputational losses to a business. With the implementation of laws such as GDPR and a plethora of privacy debates going across the globe, unethical data collection or poor coding practices are the new players in the town. In the last two weeks, Microsoft and Instagram have been in the news – one for collecting MS Office user data while other for displaying passwords in the plain text.

Recently, an AlienVault customer reached out to ask how AlienVault handles the detection of zero-day attacks, which are exploits against previously unknown vulnerabilities. In this blog, I shed light on how we approach this.

When election interference is discussed, you probably think of “fake news” social media plots or hacked voting machines that manipulated outcomes. The truth is much more complicated. Election interference can come in many forms and have consequences that last long after an election cycle. Fortunately there are security measures elected officials, campaigns, and anyone with access to voter information can – and should – take to defend against election interference.

We all know information security is complicated and multi-faceted. You have plans to defend you from countless types of attacks and threats, but the risk is still there. Spear phishing is a common threat and your organization should have a plan of how to respond in the event of this type of attack.