Enterprises and small businesses alike are facing challenges that impact their ability to maintain adequate cybersecurity. Budget constraints and limited staff are just a couple of reasons why businesses have become more susceptible to cyberattacks. Hackers are becoming smarter, and the tools that teams deploy are growing in number, leading to fragmentation and increased vulnerabilities.
We live in a technological society, and cyber attacks are on the rise. Much of this fraudulent activity is linked to malicious actors or gangs of cyber criminals who are trying to exploit anything they can get their hands on. By using tools like Cobalt Strike or customized alternatives, they attempt to penetrate an organization's defenses in order to gain leverage, exfiltrate PIIs, plant ransomware or CnC beacons, or perform other kinds of malicious acts.
Controlling access to sensitive data is tough. Be too restrictive, and your employees run into too many roadblocks to do their jobs effectively. Too loose, and you are effectively guaranteeing that your organization will find itself on the front page as a victim of one of the many data breaches happening every day. That is why it is important to craft an effective data security strategy: one that relies on automation and oversight to ensure the privacy of your users’ data.
Maintaining an online business presence nowadays means that malicious actors are going to target and likely exploit any application vulnerabilities they can find sooner or later. According to the 2021 Mid Year Data Breach Report, although the number of breaches has declined by 24%, the staggering number of records that were exposed (18.8 billion) means that there is still room for improvement.
When we discuss cybersecurity and the threat of cyber attacks, many may conjure up the image of skillful hackers launching their attacks by way of undiscovered vulnerabilities or using cutting-edge technology. While this may be the case for some attacks, more often than not, vulnerabilities are revealed as a result of careless configuration and inattention to detail. Doors are left open and provide opportunities for attacks.
It has been argued that automation in the workplace tends to be misunderstood. Analysts are keen to point out that, despite myths to the contrary, automation isn't going to put most people out of work, for instance. Nor is AI going to become a real substitute for actual human intelligence. These are compelling arguments for rethinking the way we think about automation in general. But you can take the points further if you analyze the impact of automation on specific domains, such as cybersecurity. Indeed, automation is perhaps nowhere more misunderstood than in the realm of cybersecurity. To prove the point, here are five common myths about automation's impact on security, and why they're wrong.
Recently, I started to read the invaluable book Software Engineering at Google. It’s a great book by Google, describing their engineering practices across many different domains. One of the first chapters discusses the matter of making a “scalable impact,” which I find very interesting, and something that I believe has been overlooked by many organizations.
