At Splunk, we’re constantly on the hunt for new and emerging threats — tirelessly developing detection techniques to zero in on bad actors, while sharing key intelligence around cybercrime activity. But because threat intelligence can relate to so many different things — ranging from spear phishing campaigns to dark web dealings — it can be a challenge to cover and define all the specifics of what (or who) to look out for.
On June 2nd, 2021, the White House released a memo from Anne Neuberger, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology. The subject? “What We Urge You To Do To Protect Against The Threat of Ransomware.” It outlines several recommendations on how to protect your organization from ransomware. The memo was a follow-up to President Biden’s May 12th Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity Order (EO14028).
If you’re an active Splunk Phantom user, it’s safe to assume you know what a playbook is. If not, here’s a quick summary: Phantom playbooks allow analysts to automate everyday security tasks, without the need for human interaction. Manual security tasks that used to take 30 minutes can now be executed automatically in seconds using a playbook. The result? Increased productivity and efficiency, time saved, and headaches avoided.
When running Splunk Phantom with AWS services, it can be tricky to make sure Splunk Phantom has the right access. When you’re managing multiple AWS accounts, the effort to configure Splunk Phantom’s access to every account can feel insurmountable. Fortunately, Amazon has the Security Token Service to solve this problem with temporary credentials, so we’ve integrated it with Splunk Phantom!
The great Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights once said, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.” Whether we’re talking about a NASCAR race or responding to a security alert, being able to quickly discover attacks and adversaries and respond rapidly is critically important to reducing risks and managing threats to your organization. How do we suggest you do that? With a SOAR (Security Orchestration Automation & Response) tool.
The ransomware campaign against the Colonial Pipeline highlights the dangers and real-life consequences of cyberattacks. If you want to understand how to use Splunk to find activity related to the DarkSide Ransomware, we highly recommend you first read “The DarkSide of the Ransomware Pipeline” from Splunk’s Security Strategist team. In short, according to the FBI, the actors behind this campaign are part of the “DarkSide” group.
Every career has defining moments. Most are spread out over years or even decades, but the cybersecurity world has had two career-defining moments just in the past year. It started with the global shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Overnight, many organizations were forced to support employees working remotely. CISOs, like me, were expected to keep both our company and its employees safe in a completely unpredictable world.
Despite the myriad pathways to initial access on our networks, phishing remains the single most popular technique for attackers. The open nature of email and our reliance on it for communication make it difficult for defenders to classify messages, so it is no surprise that suspicious email investigation is a top use case for automation. Today, we are releasing a new community playbook for Splunk SOAR (previously Splunk Phantom) to help enrich suspicious email events.
Clop Ransomware has been active since 2019 and has been mostly associated with financially-driven criminal groups. However, lately this ransomware payload has been observed in campaigns against universities and other institutions in the education vertical.
