26 percent still not using strong and unique passwords for work applications
A new study finds that 26 percent of UK respondents admit to not using strong and unique passwords for their various work applications.
Worse still, the report, from MFA provider Beyond Identity, shows 11 percent never change their work password, while almost a quarter (24 percent) maintain the same personal passwords.
Smartphone use linked to decline in mental wellbeing for young adults
Smartphones have made a significant change to the way we live our lives, giving us access to information on the go and keeping us in touch wherever we are.
But the benefits they offer are only part of the story. An alarming new study from non-profit research organization Sapien Labs suggests that a decline in the mental health of younger generations has occurred alongside smartphone use and an increase in social isolation.
Ensuring compliance in the modern enterprise [Q&A]
An increasing volume of regulations surrounding the security and privacy of data have been implemented in recent years. This represents a challenge for businesses that need to ensure they remain compliant.
The challenge has become even greater due to the pandemic and the consequent shift in working patterns. So how can enterprises ensure that they remain compliant and don't fall foul of the rules?
Open source security plan aims to deliver on development, patching and more
White House officials, The Linux Foundation, OpenSSF and 37 private sector tech companies have announced a 10-point open source and software supply chain mobilization plan and $150 million of funding over two years.
At a summit meeting yesterday several participating organizations came together to collectively pledge an initial tranche of funding towards implementation of the plan. Those companies are Amazon, Ericsson, Google, Intel, Microsoft, and VMWare, pledging over $30M.
Emotet rockets to the top of the malware charts in Q1
The latest Threat Insights Report from HP Wolf Security shows a 27-fold increase in detections resulting from Emotet malicious spam campaigns in the first quarter of 2022.
Based on findings from millions of endpoints running HP Wolf Security, this makes Emotet the most seen malware family in the period accounting for nine percent of all malware captured.
The challenge of guarding against supply chain attacks [Q&A]
In recent years we've seen a trend towards attacks targeting the software supply chain rather than being directly against businesses.
Attacks can include poisoning the software components, stealing secrets to compromise an account, or modifying code repositories to allow for exploits.
Enterprises struggle to discover cloud access policies
Cloud use is commonplace among large enterprises, with 82 percent of organizations with $1B or more in revenue using three or more clouds, up from 66 percent last year.
However, with the majority of companies (70 percent) using two or more identity systems, 75 percent of respondents say they lack the ability to easily discover all existing access policies, according to a new study conducted by Osterman Research for Strata Identity.
UK consumers willing to give up social media rather than part with more data
A new study shows that 63 percent of the UK population distrust social media due to privacy concerns and what's more as a result of privacy issues or other public scandals involving social media, 30 percent of consumers have either disabled social media (17 percent) or plan to within the next 12 months (13 percent).
The research, from digital experience company Acquia, shows only 27 percent say they would be willing to part with more data to retain access to platforms. While 48 percent indicate that recent revelations about data sharing practices have led to them using social media less often.
Five years on from WannaCry -- what have we learned?
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the notorious WannaCry ransomware attack which hit a number of large organizations around the world and was many people's first encounter with ransomware.
Five years on then, what have we learned from the attack and what long-term effect has it had on the industry?
LinkedIn targeted in 52 percent of global phishing attacks
New analysis by AtlasVPN of primary data from Check Point shows business social network LinkedIn was related to over 52 percent of all phishing scams globally in the first quarter of 2022.
This is the first time that a social media network has been seen in campaigns much more often than any tech giant brand name like Apple, Google and Microsoft.
New start-up aims to boost personal cybersecurity for business execs
Enterprises are able to put considerable resources into securing their networks, which has led hackers to target executives via their personal accounts on social media and elsewhere outside the organization.
A survey by Influential Executive shows that in 2020, 94 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs were on LinkedIn and 62 percent on Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter, up from 39 percent five years before.
NewProfilePic -- From Russia with security risks [Updated]
The NewProfilePic app has been taking Facebook by storm in recent days, allowing users to upload a photograph and have it turned into a piece of digital artwork.
However, it's sparked concern in the cybersecurity community because it collects data and sends it to Russia. Linerock Investments, the company behind the app, is based in Moscow alongside Russia's defense ministry.
Over 80 percent of companies are relying on stale data to make decisions
Despite the fact that the world has become increasingly data-driven, a new global study shows that organizations increasingly face problems getting the right data in the right place for making critical business decisions.
The research, conducted by Dimensional Research for data integration specialist Fivetran, finds that 82 percent of companies are making decisions based on stale information.
Why the time is right for enterprises to consider edge computing [Q&A]
The technology world never stands still for very long and keeping in touch with trends is important if you're not to be left behind.
In recent years we've seen moves to the cloud and to DevOps, trends which show no signs of slowing down. But there's now a trend towards putting computing power at the edge, closer to the users.
Old botnets make a comeback
Several older botnets have seen a resurgence in activity in the first quarter of 2022, including Mirai, STRRAT and Emotet, according to the latest threat report from Nuspire.
Mirai, known for co-opting IoT devices to launch DDoS attacks and first seen in 2016, showed a spike in activity in February of this year. This corresponded with the discovery of Spring4Shell, a zero-day attack on popular Java web application framework, Spring Core. The attack allows for unauthenticated remote code execution, and data show Mirai exploited this vulnerability to its botnet.
Ian's Bio
Ian spent almost 20 years working with computers before he discovered that writing about them was easier than fixing them. Since then he's written for a number of computer magazines and is a former editor of PC Utilities. Follow him on Mastodon
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