Information Security
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Shadow IT and Rogue Applications
Authored by Lindsay Timcke
The last ten years have shown an unprecedented growth in application development and deployment. Presently there is pretty much an application for anything and everything you can imagine. From a corporate standpoint what this has led to is a dramatic increase in groups or even individuals within companies purchasing software that meets their department needs. Over time this application will grow in size and complexity while the user community and importance to the group for completing their daily tasks will also increase. From a compliance and audit standpoint the above introduces many points of concern.
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Vendor Management – Outsourcing the Task, Not the Risk
Authored by Lindsay Timcke
One of the most overlooked areas of Cybersecurity and creating a solid defensible cybersecurity posture for your firm is vendor management. With most firms in the 21st century being heavily invested in relationships with outside vendors who monitor, develop, deploy, extract, and oversee many aspects of our network infrastructure, it is imperative that each firm approach these outside resources as just an extension of their own organization. This means the controls you have in place at your organization should also be in place at each of your vendors.
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Microsoft 365 Security: Is Your Organization’s Data Safe?
Authored by David Sun
Microsoft 365 came of age just as organizations quickly adopted remote work during the pandemic. In their urgency to migrate, many IT departments did not have the time to fully research the new platform and all its security features, opting to use the default settings. Once migration was complete and systems running reliably, organizations — fearing disruption — may not have gone back to change the settings.
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2022 Cybersecurity Awareness Month at CLA!
Welcome to the 2022 Cybersecurity Awareness Month – “See Yourself in Cyber!”
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Ransomware that Your Cybersecurity Insurance Can’t Cover
The latest alert from various US government agencies through the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warns that actors affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are targeting vulnerabilities in Fortinet networking equipment and Microsoft Exchange email software. Like other threat actors, they leverage vulnerabilities to deploy tools and encrypt systems and exfiltrate data, creating significant business interruption and consumer risk, while demanding a large ransom payment.
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Education Sector Being Targeted for Cyber Attacks
Back to school apparently also applies to hackers. Educational institutions are currently being targeted for ransomware attacks. The FBI, Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a warning on September 6, 2022 about the increase in ransomware attacks by hacking group Vice Society. This group has been using compromised credentials to exploit internet-facing applications to gain access, explore the network, exfiltrate sensitive student data and deploy ransomware. In the past, we have seen this disruptive activity lead to classes being cancelled, exams being delayed, to schools being shut down permanently.
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NIST’s Current Challenges to AI Risk Assessments
While artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are integrating day to day life, from digital assistants to image, video, and language processing, there is still no formal and finalized risk assessment process for the technology – but NIST is in the process of changing that.
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Uptick in Phishing Attacks on LinkedIn
Regular users of the professional networking and social working platform have noticed an increase of threat actors trying to steal critical personal information through phishing attacks using false LinkedIn accounts to trick unsuspecting victims to give up confidential information.
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Cybersecurity Education Series for Nonprofits – Security Basics
Please check out the post below written by Javier Young where he highlights how to protect your hard drives, hardware and software decommissioning, and device configuration. Cybersecurity Education Series for Nonprofits – Security Basics
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FBI-Ransomware Impacting Local Governments
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a Private Industry Notification (PIN) last week related to new and evolving cybersecurity threats. In particular, the FBI confirmed that ransomware attacks have been specifically targeted against local government entities. The impact could be “significant due to the Public’s dependency on critical utilities, emergency services, educational facilities and other services overseen by local government”.