Ransomware groups have generated so much damage that the United States Federal government has made it a top priority to thwart such efforts including, hosting a major international summit on the topic, setting up a ransomware task force and repeatedly urging organizations to improve their cyber resilience.

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.

Cyberattacks against businesses of all sizes are at all-time highs. Data from 2021 and projections for the future of cybersecurity suggest that the frequency and intensity of these attacks will only continue to grow. At the forefront of most cyberattacks in 2020 was ransomware, a type of malicious malware attack where attackers encrypt your organization’s data and demand payment in exchange for a decryption key to restore access.

In its Interagency Report 7695, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defined an application as “a system for collecting, saving, processing, and presenting data by means of a computer.” This broad term covers enterprise applications, consumer applications, and even phone apps. Security is important in all these types of applications, but the focus is not always the same. Let’s explore how below.

When the subject is cybersecurity compliance, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is often the first reference that comes to mind. NIST has been around for decades, and its standards for the development of cybersecurity risk management programs are considered the gold standard. There is, however, another standard that applies to service providers that handle customer data, as well as to those firms’ business partners: the SOC 2 audit.

On May 12, 2021, President Biden announced an executive order to improve the nation’s cybersecurity. The order, which outlines security initiatives and timelines, calls for the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to enhance the security of the software supply chain.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is part of the US Department of Commerce and was founded in 1901. NIST was originally established to help the U.S. industry become more competitive with economic rivals and peers, such as the UK and Germany. NIST prioritizes developing measurements, metrics, and standards for technology used in different industries.

You don’t have to spend a long time in the cybersecurity and information technology world before someone brings up NIST compliance. Since the agency’s inception in 1901 — yes, it’s that old — the National Institute of Standards and Technology has been trusted as the guardian of all proper measurements and standards, including cybersecurity standards meant to increase data security. NIST, which these days is part of the U.S.

The Risk Management Framework (RMF) is most commonly associated with the NIST SP 800-37 guide for “Applying the Risk Management Framework to Federal Information Systems: A Security Life Cycle Approach,” which has been available for FISMA compliance since 2004. It was updated in December 2018 to revision 2. This was the result of a Joint Task Force Transformation Initiative Interagency Working Group; it’s something that every agency of the U.S.