CyberSecurity Updates

IBM has purchased application security startup Polar Security, in an attempt to address the security of application data in the cloud and help organizations track vulnerable information. In a statement issued this morning, IBM said that the increased cloud adoption driven by the pandemic has strained organizational capacity to track certain aspects of their application frameworks, including certain types of app data, permissions and more. The company said that this has led to “shadow data,”…

With organizations increasingly adopting cloud-based services and applications, especially collaboration tools, attackers have pivoted their attacks as well. Microsoft services consistently rank at the top of statistics when it comes to malicious sign-in attempts, and Microsoft Teams is one application that recently seems to have attracted attackers’ interest. Researchers from security firm Proofpoint investigated how attackers could abuse access to a Teams account and found some interesting attack vectors that could allow hackers to move…

Entro, the Israeli cybersecurity company focused on protection for secrets and programmatic access to cloud services and data, has exited stealth with its first-ever product offering context-based secrets management. The new offering is the first and only holistic secrets security platform that detects, safeguards, and provides context for secrets stored across vaults, source code, collaboration tools, cloud environments, and SaaS platforms, Entro claimed. “Entro implements proactive measures to secure secrets, such as real-time discovery, end-to-end visibility,…

Financially motivated threat actor UNC3944 is using phishing and SIM swapping attacks to take over Microsoft Azure admin accounts and gain access to virtual machines (VM), according to cybersecurity firm Mandiant. Using access to virtual machines the attackers employed malicious use of the Serial Console on Azure Virtual Machines to install third-party remote management software within client environments, Mandiant said in a blog. UNC3944 has been active since May 2022. The threat actor has been…

Over three-quarters (77%) of organizations across US critical national infrastructure (CNI) have seen a rise in insider-driven cyberthreats in the last three years, according to new research from cybersecurity services firm Bridewell. The Cyber Security in CNI: 2023 report surveyed 525 cybersecurity decision makers in the US in the transport and aviation, utilities, finance, government, and communications sectors. It revealed that increased insider threat could be linked to heightened economic pressures and remote working. Threats…

As digital transactions with customers, employees, suppliers, and other stakeholders grow, digital trustworthiness is set to become one of the most important enterprise-wide initiatives with the biggest potential impact (both negative and positive), even though it often has the smallest budget allocation. “Organizations are focusing on security and privacy, but if your customers don’t trust you, they will go elsewhere,” says Mark Thomas president of Escoute Consulting, which specializes in compliance. This view is borne…