October is cybersecurity awareness month, and this year, the overarching theme is “Do Your Part. #BeCyberSmart.” When considering what “cybersmart” means in application security, we realized we unearthed some data this year that made us a little cybersmarter and could help other security professionals and developers increase their AppSec smarts as well. We’re sharing those data gems below.

Over five years ago, Adrian Bridgwater wrote a Forbes article pronouncing that “If Software Is Eating The World, Then Open Source Will Chew It Up (And Swallow).” That statement is just as true today. Open source components have become a basic building block for software developers, providing them with ready-made solutions from a vast community that help them keep up with today’s speedy and frequent release cycles.

Emotet originally arrived on the scene as a new banking trojan in 2014. In the past 12 months, however, it has evolved from a standalone threat into a prolific distributor of other trojans, including TrickBot, Zeus Panda Banker, IcedID, Qakbot, and Dridex.

Every day we discover new vulnerabilities in our systems, cracks in the fence the adversaries take advantage of to get into your organization and wreak havoc. Understanding what you have in your environment (e.g., types of devices, systems equipment, etc.) is very important in order to make sure the controls in place are working and more importantly, keeping up with the threat landscape.

This latest update to EventSentry improves your security posture with validation scripts, simplifies IT troubleshooting for both administrators and users, gives you visibility into installed browser extensions along with many other usability improvements in the web reports.

Companies are leveraging the power of Kubernetes to accelerate the delivery of resilient and scalable applications to meet the pace of business. These applications are highly dynamic, making it operationally challenging to securely connect to databases or other resources protected behind firewalls.

With telemedicine, cloud storage, and electronic record-keeping on the rise, patient data has found itself a common target for hackers. As a result, healthcare organizations must adapt and become even more diligent in their protection of sensitive patient and financial data. Fortunately, the right technology and protocols can minimize your risk of attack and help keep your patient data secure. This post covers the most important security factors for collecting and storing patient information.

The past two years have seen a 391% rise in fraudulent attempts that target digital transactions around the world. The research carried out by TransUnion also saw a specific increase of 347% in relation to account takeover so the average consumer needs to up their understanding of financial fraud risks. When data breaches and cyberattacks occur, it impacts society in various ways like lowering consumer trust and damaging foreign politics.