Hybrid cloud computing enables organizations to deploy sensitive workloads on-premise or in a private cloud, while hosting less business-critical resources on public clouds. But despite its many benefits, the hybrid environment also creates security concerns. AlgoSec’s co-founder and CTO, Prof. Avishai Wool shares his expert insights on these concerns and offers best practices to boost hybrid cloud security.

Five worthy reads is a regular column on five noteworthy items we’ve discovered while researching trending and timeless topics. In this edition, we’ll learn about the evolution of video conferencing since the 2020 pandemic, the security challenges faced by video conferencing tools, how companies and governments have acknowledged the risks, and the best practices to avoid such attacks.

You can’t protect your system if you don’t know where the vulnerabilities lie or what aspects of your security architecture are being targeted by threats. Intelligence is everything in security — it’s how CISO’s make large-scale operational decisions, how IT teams prioritize projects, and how responders restore and remediate a system during and after an incident.

Some organizations might think they’re saving money by not investing in proper cybersecurity solutions, but one data breach could bankrupt a company. In fact, the average cost of a data breach has reached an all-time high of $4.35 million, according to a 2022 report by IBM and the Ponemon institute. Companies must take measures to secure their data and avoid potentially dire financial consequences.

When you choose to work with a third party, there's always the risk that they will cause your business harm. The right tools can help you make better-informed decisions about the vendors you choose and spot problems before they occur. Third-party vendors are an important part of any business, but it's important for employers to understand what the risks are when working with these partners.

A focus of this year’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month theme – “See Yourself in Cyber” – are the simple actions that individuals and organizations can take to better protect themselves against cybercrime. Two of those steps are using strong passwords and enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA). It’s easy to see why.

Rclone is a data syncing tool often used by threat actors to exfiltrate data during a ransomware attack. Typically, the actors deploy Rclone after gaining remote access to the victim’s network. However, recently, Kroll experts have noted the use of Rclone in M365, using credentials stolen through network compromises or phishing attacks with minimal privileges to stealthily exfiltrate large amounts of SharePoint/OneDrive data.

Ransomware’s first documented attack was relatively rudimentary. It was delivered via floppy disk containing a malware program in 1989 that told its victims to pay $189 in ransom to a PO Box in Panama. Today ransomware criminals are significantly more sophisticated, thanks to advances in cyber methods and cryptocurrencies. Not all Ransomware is created equally. Like all malware, malicious codes vary in sophistication and modularity. As such, not all ransomware codes are made the same.