You can’t predict the future, but you can prepare for it. When it comes to IT (and OT), security validation is the closest to predicting the future as you can get. This is the second post in our series “Demystifying Security Validation Technologies: What You Need to Know,” in which we break down a number of security validation methods available today, provide the strengths and weaknesses of each, and explain how each functions in different IT environments.

Earlier this month, state employees in the US state of New Jersey began receiving emails that falsely represented themselves as originating with the state’s attorney general. “At first blush, the communiques appeared to come from the state Attorney General's Office and sported a convincing njoag.gov domain.

SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation and Response) refers to the combination of three different technologies: security orchestration and automation, security incident response platforms (SIRP) and threat intelligence platforms (TIP). SOAR technologies allow organisations to collect and aggregate vast amounts of security data and alerts from a multitude of sources.

The Verge came out with an article that got my attention. As artificial intelligence continues to advance at an unprecedented pace, the potential for its misuse in the realm of information security grows in parallel. A recent experiment by data scientist Izzy Miller shows another angle. Miller managed to clone his best friends' group chat using AI, downloading 500,000 messages from a seven-year-long group chat, and training an AI language model to replicate his friends' conversations.

Electrical grid security has been getting a lot of attention recently. It started fairly quietly, and then when it was a featured story on a news program, it rose to the top of the collective consciousness. However, the news stories that followed were focused entirely on the physical vulnerabilities of the US power grids. Few, if any stories covered the cybersecurity angle of securing the grids.

When developing applications, organizations rely heavily on the software development lifecycle (SDLC) to engrain security into the development process early and continuously. The SDLC lays out how to build security into early steps as developers are creating and testing applications. As such, organizations are able to embed security practices when it matters most.