American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” All experienced security practitioners learn to master this mental trick. On the one hand, they believe efforts to prevent and detect breaches will be effective. On the other hand, they diligently prepare for the day when their efforts will fail.
The consensus on the state of cybersecurity professionals tends to fall somewhere between “burdened by high volumes of responsibility” and “dangerously understaffed and suffering from unhealthy levels of stress,” depending on how optimistic your source is.
In Q1 2022, Kroll observed a 54% increase in phishing attacks being used for initial access in comparison with Q4 2021. Email compromise and ransomware were the two most common threat incident types, highlighting the integral part played by end users in the intrusion lifecycle.
JavaScript supply chain attacks are a bit like rolling thunder. The boom starts in one location and then reverberates along a path, startling folks, shaking windows, and—if there is a significant enough storm to accompany the thunder—leaving varying degrees of devastation in its wake.
Third-party data breaches are one of the most concerning issues in cybersecurity today. You need your third parties to do business, but you can’t always trust (or verify) that their cybersecurity controls are as strong as they say, no matter how many questionnaires you send out. And of course, cybercriminals know that by hitting vendors rather than every single company separately, they can get the most ill-gotten gains for their effort.
