News

Check Point to Acquire SASE Security Firm Perimeter 81 for $490 Million

Network security giant Check Point Software (NASDAQ: CHKP) on Thursday said it has agreed to acquire Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solutions provider Perimeter 81 for roughly $490 million in “cash free, debt free” deal. Perimeter 81 launched in 2018 and offers a platform that helps businesses to secure remote access, network traffic, and endpoint devices with its cloud-delivered Zero Trust Network Access, Firewall as a Service, and Secure Web Gateway (SWG) offerings.…

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White House Offers Prize Money for Hacker-Thwarting AI

The White House on Wednesday launched a competition offering millions of dollars in prize money for creating new artificial intelligence systems that can defend critical software from hackers. Competitors vying for some of the $18.5 million in prize money will need to design novel AI systems that quickly find and fix software vulnerabilities in electric grids, subways or other key networks that could be exploited by hackers, President Joe Biden’s administration said. “This competition will…

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Rapid7 Announces Layoffs, Office Closings Under Restructuring Plan

Rapid7 (NASDAQ: RPD) is the latest cybersecurity vendor to announce layoffs, with the Boston-based firm announcing a restructuring plan late Tuesday that will result in an 18% reduction in employee headcount. In total, approximately 500 employees could be impacted based on the roughly 2,700-person headcount at the end of 2022, with more than 700 people in its Boston headquarters. The company also said in and SEC filing that it would close certain office locations, but…

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Cyberinsurance Firm Resilience Raises $100 Million to Expand Its Cyber Risk Platform

Resilience Cyber Insurance Solutions has raised $100 million through a Series D funding round to support global expansion of its cyber risk platform that was launched earlier this year. By connecting leaders in finance, risk, and security, the Resilience Solution helps cyberinsurance policyholders to quantify their cyber risk and prioritize their security program based on a return-on-investment (ROI) analysis of their controls. “The increase in ransomware attacks proves that there are longstanding gaps in today’s cybersecurity and cyber…

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A Cyberattack Has Disrupted Hospitals and Health Care in Five States

A cyberattack has disrupted hospital computer systems in several states, forcing some emergency rooms to close and ambulances to be diverted, and many primary care services remained closed on Friday as security experts worked to determine the extent of the problem and resolve it. The “data security incident” began Thursday at facilities operated by Prospect Medical Holdings, which is based in California and has hospitals and clinics there and in Texas, Connecticut, Rhode Island and…

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In Other News: Cybersecurity Funding Rebounds, Cloud Threats, BeyondTrust Vulnerability

SecurityWeek is publishing a weekly cybersecurity roundup that provides a concise compilation of noteworthy stories that might have slipped under the radar. We provide a valuable summary of stories that may not warrant an entire article, but are nonetheless important for a comprehensive understanding of the cybersecurity landscape. Each week, we will curate and present a collection of noteworthy developments, ranging from the latest vulnerability discoveries and emerging attack techniques to significant policy changes and…

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Threat Actors Abuse Cloudflare Tunnel for Persistent Access, Data Theft

Threat actors have been observed abusing an open source tool named Cloudflared to maintain persistent access to compromised systems and to steal information without being detected, cybersecurity firm GuidePoint Security reports. Cloudflared is a command-line client for Cloudflare Tunnel, a tunneling daemon for proxying traffic between the Cloudflare network and the user’s origin. The tool creates an outbound connection over HTTPS, with the connection’s settings manageable via the Cloudflare Zero Trust dashboard. Through Cloudflared, services…

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CISA Calls Urgent Attention to UEFI Attack Surfaces

The US government’s cybersecurity agency CISA is calling attention to under-researched attack surfaces in UEFI, warning that the dominant firmware standard presents a juicy target for malicious hackers. “UEFI is a critical attack surface. Attackers have a clear value proposition for targeting UEFI software,” the agency said in a call-to-action penned by CISA technical advisor Jonathan Spring and vulnerability management director Sandra Radesky.  Noting that UEFI code represents a compilation of several components (security and…

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Microsoft Catches Russian Government Hackers Phishing with Teams Chat App

Software giant Microsoft on Wednesday sounded an alarm after catching a known Russian government-linked hacking group using its Microsoft Teams chat app to phish for credentials at targeted organizations. According to a research report from Redmond’s Threat Intelligence team, the hacking team is linked to the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (also known as the SVR) and has been caught targeting government, non-government organizations (NGOs), IT services, technology, discrete manufacturing, and media sectors.…

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Forgepoint Capital Places $15M Series A Bet on Converge Insurance

Venture capital outfit Forgepoint Capital has placed another bet in the cyber-insurance sector, leading a $15 million funding round for New York tech startup Converge Insurance. The $15 million Series A investment is Forgepoint’s second push into the cyber-insurance sector following last year’s incubation of Surefire Cyber, a startup selling incident response services specifically to cyber insurers, brokers and legal firms. Converge Insurance describes itself as a modern managing general agent (MGA) that fuses cyber…

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