Financial sector concerned about third-party cyber risk
Many organizations work with hundreds of third parties, creating new risks that must be actively managed. The financial industry, in particular, has a massive business ecosystem made up of legal organizations, accounting and human resources firms, management consulting and outsourcing firms, and information technology and software providers.
A new study into the financial services sector from security ratings company BitSight finds that 97 percent of respondents say cyber risk affecting third parties is a major issue.
Companies overconfident in management of sensitive data
A new study into how enterprises manage sensitive data reveals overconfidence in knowing where private data resides, and the use of inadequate tools such as spreadsheets to track it.
The research from Integris Software shows 40 percent are 'very' or 'extremely' confident in knowing exactly where sensitive data resides, despite only taking inventory once a year or less. Yet a mere 17 percent of respondents are able to access sensitive data across five common data source types.
Taxpayers worry about online fraud but offline habits could be putting them at risk
As we approach the tax return season, a survey from document destruction and information security company Shred-It reveals that 38 percent of US taxpayers say they are worried they will become a victim of tax fraud or tax identity theft.
Yet according to the study 45 percent admit to storing tax paperwork in a box, desk drawer or unlocked cabinet at home or work. What's more, 19 percent admit they don't shred tax paperwork or physical documents containing sensitive information before throwing them away.
85 percent of organizations don't meet basic levels of PAM security
While 78 percent of organizations now include privileged credential protection as part of their cyber security policies, their privileged access management (PAM) security practices are still lacking.
According to a new study by PAM specialist Thycotic, 85 percent of respondents are still struggling to get beyond the initial phase of PAM maturity.
Attackers target supply chains using 'island hopping'
Around half of recent cyberattacks use 'island hopping' techniques, seeking to target not just one network but those along the supply chain too.
This is one of the findings of the latest Global Incident Response Threat Report from Carbon Black. It also finds that 70 percent of attacks now attempt to move laterally around the network.
Vulnerabilities leave financial mobile apps open to attack
A new report reveals widespread security inadequacies and protection failures among consumer financial applications.
The research for Arxan Technologies, carried out by Aite Group, says these vulnerabilities can lead to the exposure of source code, sensitive data stored in apps, access to back-end servers via APIs, and more.
IoT attacks increase but rely on the same old weaknesses
Internet of Things devices have proved to be problematic in their vulnerability to cyber attacks. This is underlined by a new report from F-Secure which finds that threats and the number of attacks continue to increase, but still depend on well-known security weaknesses, such as unpatched software and weak passwords.
The number of IoT threats observed by F-Secure Labs doubled in 2018, growing from 19 to 38 in the space of a single year.
Continuous response needed to combat cyber attacks
As the threat landscape continues to rapidly evolve, businesses need to be able to react quickly and have an effective strategy to deal with attacks.
Security specialist F-Secure is calling for greater emphasis on both preparing for a breach as well as fast and effective containment that has the correct balance of people, process and technology.
90 percent of tech companies are vulnerable to email spoofing
Phishing is a major problem for large organizations, but while there are standards to authenticate email and prevent phishers from spoofing domains with fake emails, a majority of companies have not made full use of them.
The tech sector has moved faster than some but while they are beginning to implement protection many companies in this sector are still at an early stage with the result that 90 percent are still vulnerable to impersonation.
We're getting better at backing up our data -- but we're also losing more
A new study released by Acronis ahead of Sunday's World Backup Day shows 92.7 percent of consumers are backing up their computers -- an increase of more than 24.1 percent from last year and the largest ever year-on-year increase.
This could be because the report also shows that 65.1 percent of those surveyed say either they or a family member has lost data as a result of an accidental deletion, hardware failure or software problem -- a jump of 29.4 percentage points from last year.
Large enterprises face problems with unsecured applications
A new survey of more than 200 CISOs in the US and Canada finds that large enterprises typically operate 1,300 or more complex applications but only protect 60 percent of them, leaving more than 500 applications unprotected at a time where adversarial attacks are increasing.
The study from crowdsourced security company Bugcrowd along with the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), also shows strong interest in using DevOps to automate security.
Encryption backdoors raise the likelihood of attack
Countries with government-mandated encryption backdoors are more susceptible to nation-state attacks according to 73 percent of security professionals.
A survey from machine identity protection company Venafi also finds 69 percent believe countries with encryption backdoors suffer economic disadvantages in the global marketplace as a result.
More than half of internet users think complete digital privacy is impossible
According to a report from Kaspersky Lab, 56 percent of internet users feel that complete privacy in the modern digital world is impossible.
For many people, their worries about digital privacy may come from personal experience. Kaspersky's research finds that 26 percent of people have had their private data accessed by someone without their consent, rising to almost a third (31 percent) among 16- to 24-year-olds.
Data breaches more common than rain in the UK
The UK has something of a reputation for its wet climate, and its citizens for constantly talking about the weather. So it may come as a surprise to find that in the UK the chance of experiencing a data breach is higher than that of encountering a rainy day.
A survey by technology services company Probrand shows 43 percent of UK businesses having suffered a cyber breach or attack in the last 12 months as against just 36.4 percent chance on average of encountering a wet day.
Need for data portability is driving cloud strategies
The rise in container use and demands for data portability are driving decisions on cloud adoption according to a new report.
Workload automation specialist Turbonomic surveyed over 800 IT professionals to examines the underlying dynamics fueling cloud-native/container and multicloud adoption.
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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