On May 6, 2022, a critical CVE was published for RubyGems, the primary packages source for the Ruby ecosystem. This vulnerability created a window of opportunity for malicious actors to take over gems that met the following criteria: Because RubyGems provides data dumps that include a lot of information, it is unfortunately relatively simple to create an automated mining process for these criteria.

Data is an integral part of any organization and hence it is important to respond to and recover it from any crisis. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for data security and cyber resiliency is evident. Cyber resiliency is the ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from cyber-attacks and data breaches while continuing to operate effectively.

“Approximately 64% of global CISOs were hired from another company” according to the 2021 MH Global CISO Research Report. The reasons are because of talent shortages, the role is still new to some companies, and companies have not created a succession plan to support internal promotions. To overcome these challenges, companies can look to Virtual Chief Information Security Officer (vCISO) or a vCISO as a service provider.

In early April, the tech industry witnessed a major GitHub security incident targeting GitHub organizations using Heroku and Travis CI. GitHub was made aware of this threat via an attack leveraging AWS API keys to GitHub’s own npm production infrastructure. As upstream security risks within SaaS platforms become more common, organizations that leverage these platforms are relying on tools like Nightfall to protect themselves.

Cyber attacks on state and local governments continue to be on the rise. With more attacks targeting municipalities, there needs to be a push toward boosting cyber preparedness. Even though the risks remain at an all-time high for municipalities, the lack of budget and knowledge has caused officials to put cybersecurity on the back burner.

Gartner’s introduction of the Security Service Edge (SSE) Magic Quadrant in February of 2022 has been an impetus for organizations to reassess their cloud access security broker (CASB) solutions. CASB is one of the three core components of SSE and the piece of the puzzle that handles cloud security for SaaS and IaaS applications.

Remediating vulnerabilities efficiently is the cornerstone of a great vulnerability management program. Prioritizing becomes paramount as resources are often limited. Sometimes teams might pinpoint specific vulnerability types that are particularly risky for their attack surfaces, such as a misconfigured Amazon S3 bucket or even a new XSS vulnerability. Users can now filter the /Vulnerabilities view by title, such as a specific type of XSS or even the CVE name.

Cyber security risks have never been more apparent and costly. According to the survey data, the average cost to the U.S. organizations that experienced a cybersecurity breach in 2020 was approximately 8.64 million dollars per incident, up almost a half-million dollars from 2019. Rates of cyber security attacks and identity theft have significantly increased and seem to be only becoming easier for hackers and cybercriminals.