The art and science known as risk management has been around for years. It is applied in a broad array of areas, including insurance, credit risk ratings, stock and other market risk ratings, foreign policy decisions, military responses and many others. The true irony is that, although risk management has been applied to many aspects of IT, such as change ma

This season’s featured cybersecurity nightmare may be ransomware, but breaches of all kinds are going up in both numbers and cost. In response, security vendors are offering sophisticated — and costly — solutions to defend against evermore sophisticated attackers. However, the most effective protective measures have nothing to do with specific software

The principle of security by design suggests that security needs to be aligned with business objectives. But what, exactly, does that mean and where should security professionals start? Below are some factors to consider when aligning security with business objectives. Best Practices for Aligning Security With Business Objectives First and foremost, give

According to a recent Forrester report, enterprise cloud computing adoption accelerated in 2016 and will do so again in 2017. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) remains the largest portion of the public cloud market, with global spending expected to reach $105 billion in 2017 and $155 billion by 2020. Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (

Penetration testing — the process of trying to break into one’s own system to find vulnerabilities before cybercriminals do — is an integral part of information security. The data gleaned from these evaluations can help companies remediate flaws in their security infrastructure before fraudsters have a chance to expose them. Dispelling Eight Penetratio

Companies need to do more than just scan for known problems and provide huge vulnerability reports to system and network administrators for remediation. According to Gartner, known vulnerabilities still comprise 99 percent of all known exploit traffic. Furthermore, malware, ransomware and exploit kits target vulnerabilities that are six months or older on av

With all the industry studies, articles and literature related to insider threats, it is baffling to see that very few have focused on how insider threats are acquired — in fact, paid for — during a merger and acquisition process. Organizations are so fixated on driving profits and staying competitive that they gobble up any tangible asset they can. Compani

Risk management is the essence of what we do as information security professionals. We identify key security risks and analyze those risks in the context of the business. We then communicate the confirmed or potential outcomes to management. Finally, we decide — or wait for decisions — on how to respond. Misguided Decisions Many security challenges begin at

A computer generation or two ago, IT managers fought a futile uphill battle to prevent rogue PCs from infiltrating the workplace, a battle fought largely in the name of data security. Their thinking was that if IT couldn’t manage it, they couldn’t secure it. Is history repeating itself with health care IoT devices? Fast forward to the present h

reader comments 53 Share this story Google Play, the official market for Android apps, was caught hosting a ransomware app that infected at least one real-world handset, security researchers said Tuesday.The ransomware was dubbed Charger and was hidden inside an app called EnergyRescue, according to a blog post published by security fi

reader comments 43 Share this story A security researcher has unearthed evidence showing that three browser-trusted certificate authorities (CAs) owned and operated by Symantec improperly issued more than 100 unvalidated transport layer security certificates. In some cases, those certificates made it possible to spoof HTTPS-protected w

reader comments 59 Share this story Shadow Brokers, the mysterious group that gained international renown when it published hundreds of advanced hacking tools belonging to the National Security Agency, says it's going dark. But before it does, it's lobbing a Molotov cocktail that's sure to further inflame the US intelligence community.

reader comments 62 Share this story More than 10,000 website databases have been taken hostage in recent days by attackers who are demanding hefty ransoms for the data to be restored, a security researcher said Friday.The affected data is created and stored by the open source MongoDB database application, according to researchers who h

Badware purveyors trying to capitalize on the ongoing Pokémon Go frenzy have achieved an important milestone by sneaking their fake wares into the official Google Play marketplace, security researchers said Friday.Researchers from antivirus provider Eset report finding at least three such apps in the Google-hosted marketplace. Of the three, the one titled "P

As if people didn't already have cause to distrust the security of Juniper products, the networking gear maker just disclosed a vulnerability that allowed attackers to eavesdrop on sensitive communications traveling through customers' virtual private networks.In an advisory posted Wednesday, Juniper officials said they just fixed a bug in the company's Junos