The rapid growth of Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) has huge implications for cybersecurity specialists, who can use it to reduce human error, improve efficiency and spot security issues. But, while these AI tools have many benefits, there have also been many concerns raised with respect to data security.

As the age-old adage goes, any new technology brings its own advantages and disadvantages.

While AI is predominantly used by IT specialists to heighten cybersecurity, malicious actors are using AI, specifically generative AI, to boost their hacking game. To maintain the integrity and security of their data, everyone—from individuals to organizations—must be up to date with today’s rapidly evolving IT security trends.

When cybersecurity infrastructures are compromised, passwords are most often the first line of defense to be breached. As generative AI is advancing in its ability to facilitate identity theft, this only makes it even more important to implement a strong password hygiene routine.

There are several password cracking tools that malicious actors employ to breach security infrastructures, ranging from those that use basic data models to those that use generative adversarial networks (GANs) to crack passwords more quickly and effectively, like PassGAN, a password cracking tool currently making waves on the internet.

Could PassGAN Crack Your Password?

A portmanteau of the word “password” and the acronym “GAN”, PassGAN is a newer kind of tool that uses AI to swiftly crack passwords.

Unlike other password-cracking software which employs straightforward data models and presumptions regarding password patterns, PassGAN has the capacity to evaluate and learn from data to become increasingly intelligent.

According to a Home Security Heroes study, PassGAN could decipher 51% of popular passwords in under a minute; complex passwords take a bit more time, but not much, with 65% deciphered in under an hour, 71% deciphered in under a day, and 81% deciphered in under a month. The study also found that passwords that incorporated both perfect length (more than eight characters) and complexity (special characters) turned out to be the most secure.

Is Your Data in Danger From PassGAN?

It is worth noting that similar password-cracking tools have been doing the rounds since 2017. Despite appearing to employ innovative, password-cracking technology, it is not a ground-breaking tool.

Only when there is a data breach can these tools be used to crack passwords. Hackers do not immediately obtain access to password details the moment a website is compromised; they will only be able to access the passwords’ encrypted “hash,” which is different from accessing accounts directly. Additionally, they would need to compromise a server to access accounts and effectively breach the network.

How Can You Secure Your Data?

Although password free alternatives and biometrics have recently become all the rage, the best way we can defend ourselves and the integrity of our data is by using proper password hygiene.

These tools aren’t devoid of errors of biases, so for now passwords continue to be the primary and easiest method of authentication. Implementing a set of basic security hygiene procedures—such as ensuring and enforcing strict password policies, compliance with NIST and GDPR regulations, incorporating MFA controls, periodic vulnerability scanning and patching of endpoints, changing passwords on a regular basis, and never using the same password—can make a world of a difference.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

The post Is Generative AI a Game-changer for Password Security? appeared first on AiThority.

Over the past week, Blizzard reported that their systems were repeatedly targeted with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS attacks). Their servers went down and became available only for users in certain locations.

Players are getting frustrated because they can’t access many of the games they normally would. For many, the gaming experience has been negatively affected due to exasperating lag. Some users reported that their email addresses even got hacked in the midst of a DDoS attack.

On April 20, the company shared that its systems are still being targeted with DDoS threats on a daily basis.

Also known as botnet attacks, DDoS are common threats to businesses that rely on versatile applications and networks — meaning most companies operating today.

The longer a botnet attack compromises the company’s infrastructure, the more financial and reputational damage the business suffers in the long run.

What is a botnet attack exactly, and what is the role of artificial intelligence in avoiding, detecting, and ceasing this malicious cyber threat?

What Is a Botnet Attack?

Botnets are groups of devices that connect to the internet. Whether we talk about mobile, desktop or IoT devices, threat actors who control botnets (AKA botmasters) hijack them to initiate botnet attacks.

The users whose devices are being exploited by a botnet group are often not aware their computers and mobile phones are part of the process. Botmasters can use the same device to attack multiple networks at the same time.

Generally, botnets are deployed to spam a specific website or to crash entire servers. Hackers’ intentions can be to harm the company’s reputation, finances, or both.

How does a botnet attack happen, exactly?

A robotic army controlled by the online criminal is used to send a large volume of traffic to the victim’s network or application.

As a result, the company can lose access to its network, or their application might crash — depending on the capacity of a botnet and how much traffic is used to flood the target. 

The volume of DDoS attacks on the application level is measured in RPS (requests per second). On the network level, the attack is more severe and is measured in PPS (packets per second).

The attacks can last a few minutes, days, or even months. Depending on the hacker’s intention and the power of the botnet, the network or application can completely crash or slow down to the point where users get frustrated and leave the service.

AI-Powered Botnet Attack Protection

How to protect the network or an application from malicious botnet attacks? Due to the large volume and an increasing number of threats, cybersecurity teams delegate repetitive security tasks to artificial intelligence.

Some of the tasks that can be automated with the use of AI in cybersecurity include:

• Detection of signs of a cyberattack
• Analysis of data generated from the security tools
• Blocking of traffic that is deemed malicious
• Generating reports that depict the state of security and provide actionable tips on how security teams can mitigate the issues at hand

With AI, analysis of traffic and mitigation are possible in real time. The processes are repeated at all times, and security analysts have an insight into the state of security 24/7.

AI-Based DDoS Protection

To fight botnet attacks, cybersecurity teams rely on cloud-based DDoS attack prevention tools — they are designed to detect and block unwanted traffic.

How does DDoS protection work in practice?

It identifies a large number of versatile DDoS attacks — which is important since hackers are developing new and more complex methods every day.

For instance, that could mean the detection of attacks that occur on the application, Domain Name System (DNS) or network levels.

The traffic is inspected before reaching the network of a user. It’s compared with the ever-growing database that lists versatile hacking techniques and malicious IP addresses. Within the network, packets are triple-checked to ensure that the traffic is legitimate.

When the botmaster targets an application, the automated DDoS solution automatically identifies the signature of the botnet to differentiate it from genuine human activity.

Only the traffic that is deemed “clean”, genuine and safe will reach the system of a company. The rest are blocked.

Layered AI Cybersecurity Architecture

In many cases, a botnet attack is just the start. Threat actors tend to team them up with other hacking techniques. It goes without saying that companies today need a layered and comprehensive security system to protect themselves from such versatile and depleting attacks.

In the case of Blizzard, players shared that their email addresses got compromised during the DDoS attack that occurred.

DDoS attacks are also often paired with ransomware. Once the file-encrypting malware is deployed on the network and the ransom is requested, criminals can initiate DDoS attacks to add more pressure on their victims.

Therefore, having other automated security solutions that can detect and mitigate threats in time is essential. Most businesses have layers of 40–90 cybersecurity solutions to protect their most valuable assets. 

Final Word

Botnet attacks are difficult to eradicate completely. These “zombie armies” tend to come back every year — on a larger scale and more advanced than the year before.

As mentioned, even major enterprises such as Blizzard aren’t immune to DDoS attacks — let alone companies that don’t have the same resources but rely on applications and networks in their day-to-day.

To prevent and stop threats such as botnet attacks today, artificial intelligence has a key role in cybersecurity. AI can keep up with the incoming data and continually scan the traffic to detect malicious activity, such as a vast amount of traffic fast.

As companies are up against more cyber attacks than ever before, and threats are getting more and more sophisticated as well as hitting the servers with more volume, organizations have to prepare beforehand — with streamlined technology that can detect issues in real-time.

The post How Do AI-Based Cyber Tools Prevent and Mitigate Botnet Attacks? appeared first on AiThority.

Ransomware appears to be rampant. Organizations all over the world are trying their best to defend against these malicious software attacks that compromise organizational data at a price. One of these measures is using encryption to defend the company from hackers. Although encryption cannot prevent ransomware, it ensures that the attackers cannot read sensitive data.

By converting critical data into code, encryption prevents an organization from being further exploited by ransomware attackers.

Encrypted Emails

According to Mimecast, encryption of all forms should be encouraged, particularly encrypted email.

Sensitive content such as customer information, financial information, and business plans are shared through an organizational email system. Protecting that information from data loss can avoid fines, legal fees, public relations disasters, and loss of revenue.

In the modern-day workplace, email is utilized heavily and is one of the first methods used to gain access to unauthorized information. Therefore, setting up encrypted emails may seem like a simple measure but it is needed if an organization wants to build a secure system.

Latest AI ML Insights: KEVANI’s Neuroscience-based Report Decodes Role of OOH Technologies in Ad Retention

Thinking Beyond Encryption 

Information security goes beyond encryption. Protecting an organization against ransomware requires a layered approach. Encryption is a start. However, there are other pathways that must be explored to create a safe and secure environment.

Exploring Solutions 

First, there are some simple, required steps that any organization should take to guard themselves against ransomware exploits:

• Installing anti-virus software and firewalls
• Conducting security awareness training for employees
• Maintaining software updates

These steps may seem basic but one missed software update or successful phishing attempt can allow ransomware hackers to gain access to the company’s data.

Beyond the basics, there must be a strategy in place and data security requires an overarching system. There are many effective cyber security systems that halt email-borne ransomware infections before they start and have cloud technology, which restores data instantly to keep an entity running.

With superb cloud technology, critical data can be restored without any infected files. Clean data restoration promotes resiliency, as the organization is not reliant on the hacker if crucial data can easily be regained.

There are a variety of ways to backup organizational data, such as creating an image backup before encryption. This backup is a single file of the operating system and all associated data. Backups must be done frequently either on-site or through the cloud.

By having backups off-site and unconnected to the organizational network, the company is again, not reliant on the hacker for critical files and does not have to pay the ransom.

The Bottom Line 

Encryption is a defense against ransomware, but it is simply the first layer of a multi-layer defense. It cannot be the only source of protection. Robust cyber security systems with cloud technology can protect data and limit any negative impact ransomware may have on the organization.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

The post Is Encryption a Defense Against Ransomware? appeared first on AiThority.

A latest data breach, speculated to be a ransomware, has affected Chicago Public Schools. The data breach has compromised over 100k accounts belonging to students and CPC staff. This is one of the first major data breach targeting a school in the US. This incident has been reported as a data breach. A data breach is an unauthorized attempt to acquire, misuse, sell or duplicate digital data that occurs due to loopholes in security defense, breach of confidentiality, or disruption in technology framework that is providing data security. In CPS’ case, Battelle for Kids has been found wanting as far as detecting, reporting and taking appropriate steps are concerned.

According to an official statement released by Chicago Public Schools, the data breach has affected current and past data related to personal biodata, student performance, teacher’s evaluation and CPS email addresses. The attackers apparently targeted important data types labeled as NAME, DOB, Gender, Grade Level, Student ID numbers, Scores and Assignments, and School Employee ID and email addresses. However, attackers haven’t managed to misuse, extort or post any of these data in the dark web, as per CPS.

At the time of reporting this incident, we spoke to cybersecurity experts.

Chris Hauk, consumer privacy champion, Pixel Privacy said, “This data breach appears to have affected both students and faculty equally. While no social security information, home addresses, or financial information was reportedly exposed, enough data was exposed that would provide a leg up for bad actors looking to gain additional information. Students and faculty must remain on the alert for any phishing attempts that use the gleaned information to acquire additional info.”

Erfan Shadabi, cybersecurity expert with data security specialists comforte AG informed, “Ransomware attacks have become a growing threat to education centers across the United States. Schools are becoming more dependent on a computing infrastructure to support their daily functions, and they also hold a vast amount of sensitive information. This provides criminals with high-profile targets to infiltrate and hold data for ransom or steal and sell it.”

Erfan added, “School districts and universities need to understand that they are high-profile targets, and they need to assume that a cyber-attack is imminent. With that in mind, as the first step, they need to invest in a dynamic security awareness training program for both faculty and students so they can better identify security risks such as phishing emails and suspicious links. And then, they need to protect their data not just with enhanced perimeter security but with data-centric security such as tokenization applied directly to that data. Only robust data-centric security can help mitigate the situation if the wrong hands get ahold of sensitive data.”

What the Chicago Public Schools Said?

According to the official statement published by CPS, 495,448 student records containing Name, date of birth, gender, grade level, school, Chicago Public Schools student ID number, State Student ID number, information about the courses students took, and scores from performance tasks used for teacher evaluations during school years 2015-2016, 2016-2017, 2017-2018 and/or 2018-2019.

56,138 staff records containing Name, school, employee ID number, CPS email address, Battelle for Kids username, course information from school years 2015-2016, 2016-2017, 2017-2018 and/or 2018-2019.

As an added measure to inform the students and staff affected by the data breach, CPS is sending personalized emails with the subject line – “Notification of Unauthorized Disclosure of Student/Staff Information.”

The post Chicago Public Schools Suffers Major Data Breach Affecting 100K Accounts appeared first on AiThority.

Today is World Password Day — an event dedicated to strengthening the cybersecurity frameworks, data privacy and compliance related to passwords and their management in personal and professional lives. Last year, we revealed how the pandemic affected password security trends in the industry.

In a year, a lot has changed.

For years, password analysts and security experts have been predicting the ominous extinction of passwords. But, no one can predict for sure, when that’s going to happen! The agents, companies and firewalls that we trust the most to protect our data, are realizing that biometrics and other passwordless technologies have enormous potential to prevent data breaches. But, sadly, users still stay afar from the basics of password management and assets protection. Even today, most business professionals use rudimentary methods to save their passwords. For instance, Uswitch.com had found these:

• 1 in 4 people write their passwords down on paper.
• Nearly 1 in 3 people have included their birth year in their password.
• Almost half of people use the same password across multiple platforms.
• More than a quarter of people don’t change their passwords regularly.
• More than 1 in 5 of people have had their passwords hacked

Quite astonishing, isn’t it considering we are now living in an era where everything else is automated and AI rocks the world.

The problem with passwords is that they are hard to retain. 1Password recently issued research that found workers – especially security pros – are really burned out and that’s putting companies at risk. More top points from their “State of Access Report.” It says:

• 84% of security professionals and 80% of other workers are feeling burned out, which has led to serious backsliding around security protocols.
• Employees experiencing burnout were three times as likely as others to acknowledge thinking security rules and policies “aren’t worth the hassle.
• 6 in 10 security professionals say their company encountered an emerging security threat last year, with social media spoofing, sophisticated phishing and DDoS attacks being the most common.
• Over half (57%) of employees say they’ve recently encountered an email that they weren’t sure was phishing or not.

Similarly, The Identity Theft Resource Center’s 2021 Annual Data Breach Report revealed a new record of attacks and vulnerabilities that left companies compromised in 2021.

And more specific to passwords… Research from Bitwarden, showed that while there seems to be a very high percentage of people that state they are ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ familiar with password security best practices (98%). There remains doubt about whether those best practices are being used. Bitwarden’s research revealed that more than 8 in 10 (85%) of Americans reuse passwords across multiple sites, a number comparable to the rest of the globe (84%). And, almost half of U.S. respondents (49%) rely simply on their memory, to manage passwords. Not surprisingly, almost 1 in 4 (24%) said they need to reset their passwords every day or multiple times a week.

To understand how Password management helps organizations and individuals, we spoke to industry experts.

This article features insights from

• Surya Varanasi, CTO of StorCentric
• JG Heithcock, GM of Retrospect, a StorCentric Company
• Dirk Schrader, VP of Security Research at Netwrix
• Miles Hutchinson, Chief Information Security Officer of Jumio
• Entrust experts
• Neil Jones, director of cybersecurity evangelism, Egnyte
• Aaron Sandeen, CEO and co-founder, Cyber Security Works (CSW)
• Ricardo Amper, CEO of Incode
• Keith Neilson, Technical Evangelist at CloudSphere
• Chris Brooks, founder of CryptoAssetRecovery.com
• Jonas Karklys, the CEO of NordPass
• Manoj Srivastava, General Manager of ID Agent and Graphus
• Geoff Bibby, SVP, OpenText

Password Remains Ideal First Line of Data Protection Defense

Surya Varanasi, CTO of StorCentric

“Few would argue the fact that a strong password is an ideal first line of data protection defense. Without this basic security measure, you are leaving the door wide open to a multitude of cybercrime risks. Unfortunately however, while highly sophisticated password support tools are available, today’s cybercriminals also have extremely advanced password hacking technology at their fingertips. This means, an increased risk of your passwords being leapfrogged, and your data being compromised…

The ideal cybercrime defense is a layered defense that starts with a powerful password, and continues with Unbreakable Backup. As backup has become today’s cyber criminals’ first target via ransomware and other malware, an Unbreakable Backup solution can provide you with two of the most difficult hurdles for cyber criminals to overcome – immutable snapshots and object locking. Immutable snapshots are by default, write-once read-many (WORM) but now some vendors have added features like encryption where the encryption keys are located in an entirely different location than the data backup copy(ies). And then to further fortify the backup and thwart would be criminals, with object locking layered on top of that, data cannot be deleted or overwritten for a fixed time period, or even indefinitely.”

Many People Now Personally Know a Colleague Whose Business Was Attacked

JG Heithcock, GM of Retrospect, a StorCentric Company

“Ransomware is a huge global threat to businesses around the world. Beyond the high-profile attacks, including Colonial Pipeline, JBS, Garmin, and Acer, many people now personally know a colleague whose business was attacked. In fact, a Coveware research study revealed that most corporate targets are small and medium businesses (SMBs), with 72% of targeted businesses having fewer than 1,000 employees, and 37% fewer than 100.

There are likely a few reasons for this continuing trend. Certainly one is that today’s ransomware is attacking widely, rapidly, aggressively and randomly – especially with ransomware as a service (RaaS) becoming increasingly prevalent – looking for any possible weakness in defense. The second is that SMBs do not typically have the technology or manpower budget as their enterprise counterparts.

It is therefore critical that in addition to powerful passwords, which anyone would agree is an indispensable first line of defense, there must be additional measures taken. The first is that all organizations regardless of size must be able to detect anomalies as early as possible in order to remediate affected resources. The next is SMBs and large enterprises alike need a backup target that allows them to lock backups for a designated time period. Many of the major cloud providers now support object locking, also referred to as Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM) storage or immutable storage. Users can mark objects as locked for a designated period of time, preventing them from being deleted or altered by any user – including internal bad actors.”

Watch out for the Cybersecurity Fatigue

Phishing Attacks Growing Complex in Digital Era

Entrust, a leading provider of trusted identities, payments, and data protection solutions, outlines the growing need for passwordless technologies to secure personal data. Previous reports have highlighted the issues around passwords and security that include:

1. Successful phishing attacks on organizations increased 46% between 2020 and 2021
2. The number of stolen usernames and passwords increased 300% from 2018 to 2020
3. 81% of hacking-related breaches use stolen or leaked passwords
4. The average cost of a data breach in 2021 was $4.24 million, up 10% from 2020

According to Dirk Schrader, VP of Security Research at Netwrix, there are many means of authentication today and there is one for every use case:

“We often hear about so-called ‘strong’ passwords and how difficult it is for cybercriminals to discover them or brute force them, based on their length and complexity. In the meantime, the prevailing sentiment in the cybersecurity space is that passwords are becoming a thing of the past due to the spread of multi-factor authentication (MFA) and the implementation of biometrics as an access code.

The truth is somewhere in between. MFA and the requirement of a secondary verification method through a separate communication channel, are significant security enhancements for important data. However, this approach adds another level of complexity not only to the attacker but to the user. One-time password via SMS is easily tolerated when it comes to a user’s personal bank account but becomes annoying if they need to verify their access rights this way 30 times a day. This is what we call cybersecurity fatigue. Security administrators should not overlook this and should consider it as a threat vector.

Passwords will therefore not disappear because of the human factor. They are here to stay for non-sensitive or, let’s say, not-that-sensitive accounts. IT teams shouldn’t neglect employee training to nurture the proper cyber hygiene among their fellow colleagues. Every user has to take the same precaution with passwords as with the keys to their home: do not share them, keep an eye on them, and change the lock in case of loss.

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) suggests that companies use a password manager to help their employees and stakeholders encrypt and generate strong passwords. NIST password guidelines say you should focus on length, as opposed to complexity when designing a password. Paradoxically, using complex passwords (adding special characters, capitalization, and numbers) may make it easier to hack your code, and this mostly has to do with user behavior. Complex passwords are harder to remember, which means users may need to update their passwords more often, making minor changes, which makes them easier prey for cyber attacks. NIST requires an 8-character minimum for passwords.

Password Protection Goes Beyond Just Fixing Passwords

Miles Hutchinson, Chief Information Security Officer of Jumio

“When it comes to protecting business data and enhancing overall security, passwords play a critical role — but not the one you might think. World Password Day highlights the importance for enterprises to use more robust, secure and reliable authentication methods that go far beyond passwords.

Passwords are one of the top vulnerabilities for organizations, especially those that deliver privileged access to organizational systems or networks. Sixty-one percent of data breaches in 2021 were attributed to leveraged credentials, according to Verizon. Traditional authentication methods are no longer reliable and secure, therefore it is crucial for organizations to adopt new authentication methods by leveraging AI coupled with biometrics.

Traditional authentication measures like knowledge based authentication (KBA) and SMS out-of-band authentication can be vulnerable to imposters, credential phishing, large-scale data breaches, dark web user data dumps and man-in-the middle attacks. Selfie and video-based authentication allows for organizations to leverage biometric user data captured during enrollment and to re-verify that data in the future, effectively combining identity proofing and ongoing authentication in one solution. By leveraging AI and biometric data for initial identity proofing and ongoing user authentication, organizations can protect their business from fraudsters and provide users with an online experience that is fast, secure, accurate and easy to use, thus replacing traditional passwords altogether.”

Password + 2FA = TOTAL Security

Geoff Bibby, SVP, OpenText

“World Password Day is an excellent time for individuals, channel partners and businesses to reflect on their current password practices and ensure they are building the safest habits to protect themselves and their company from cybercriminals. Many are under the assumption that if they are taking the steps to create unique passwords for each platform and application, they are secure.

But it’s not enough.

The number of headline-grabbing breaches that have taken place over the last year highlight the critical need for safeguards across the entire company network. While there are a few different ways to protect login credentials beyond a simple username and password, one of the most popular and effective options is two-factor authentication (2FA). Implementing 2FA provides an extra layer of security by making users confirm their identity, most often via a unique code sent to the user’s phone, email address or through an authenticator app, after entering their username and password. It’s getting easier for cybercriminals to breach even the most complex password, which is why implementing 2FA is critical.

Email is a common point of attack because it often contains sensitive and valuable communications. Organizations should also consider implementing an email security solution that conducts a security audit to analyze its admins, users, mailboxes, and rules for vulnerabilities such as outdated passwords so they can be resolved before a breach happens. This is especially true for ensure partners so that they can ensure the customers they support are protected against today’s cyberthreats and vulnerabilities. Organizations should use World Password Day to evaluate their internal Password Policies and send reminders to employees and customers alike about the importance of good password hygiene.”

Password Manager Should Be a Default Implementation

Joseph Carson, chief security scientist & advisory CISO at Delinea

“World Password Day is a time to stop and reflect on current password hygiene. Passwords remain one of the biggest cyber challenges for both consumers and businesses around the world as a poor password choice can make it extremely easy for cybercriminals to steal and spy on your data. As humans, we continually gravitate towards creating passwords that are easy to remember and simplistic. Incorporating a birthday or special date within a password is a common denominator, one that cybercriminals are all too aware of. Dangerously, we continue to leave it up to humans to create strong and secure passwords, despite the fact that most people have already been victims of borderline password disclosures from a person’s history of password choices. Having already had your previous password decisions and choices exposed means that an attacker can simply take that as the baseline and from there create variations of that. An effective password should include passphrases, a sequence of random words for added security. Regular consumers should consider deploying and utilizing a password manager to enhance and regularly rotate their log-in credentials.

For organizations, a password manager should be a default implementation. If you are a business leader then you must move beyond just having password managers and start using privileged access security to control and protect privileged access. Privileged access security will help automate, rotate and secure your passwords for you and your business, eliminating a significant amount of cyber fatigue. Taking it a step further, organizations should look beyond just their internal password hygiene and take a deeper dive look into their suppliers and contractors to ensure password protection. Are they using a password manager, do they have MFA deployed and how do they protect access to their privileged accounts? We’ve seen the catastrophic domino effect that one poor password choice can have within a supply chain.

Organizations can enhance their password posture by understanding that security starts with the social network around you. Why not encourage your employees’ families to use a password manager and reward them? They see that you’re not just taking care of the company but that you’re actually extending security to the social sphere, so that their family and kids can even extend to using password managers and reduce the threats, because attackers can and will target them first as stepping stones to get into your organization. So it makes you think, why not extend your perimeter to the social sphere around the organization. Your supplier, your contractor, partners, your customers and everybody.”

A Password Alone Is Not Enough to Protect You

Patrick Beggs, CISO, ConnectWise

“In the early days of the world wide web, you were probably able to get away with a password as simple as ‘12345’. Times have changed since then, but humans remain predictable. Research has found that women typically include personal names in their passwords while men often use their hobbies. And experienced hackers also know the common vowels, numbers, and symbols that often appear in passwords. Cybersecurity breaches are at an all-time high, but there are three simple things we can all do to protect ourselves. First, prioritize length over complexity, because we aren’t very good at remembering complex passwords, and longer ones are more secure. Second, only use platforms with multi-factor authentication — a password alone is not enough to protect you. And finally, never reuse. Most breaches happen when a password from one platform is used with another system that shares the same password. If you follow these three simple steps, your passwords should be strong enough to stop a determined hacker from causing damage.”

How Strong and Secure is your Password Ecosystem?

Manoj Srivastava, General Manager of ID Agent and Graphus

“World Password Day is a good reminder for IT professionals to take a closer look at the security of their environment. Though having the right security solutions in place is crucial, it’s often the small habits that can make or break an organization’s security posture. One of the most important things an organization can do is foster a security-first culture that provides employees with the “why” behind aspects like multi-factor authentication (MFA) and frequent password changes that can often seem like a hindrance to their productivity. Short, frequent security awareness training around topics like the importance of strong passwords and why to use a password manager can help break employee bad habits that threaten the entire IT environment.

When assessing their technology stack, IT professionals should look for identity and access management (IAM) solutions that combine single sign-on (SSO), MFA, and password management to ensure better protection against cyberthreats. Organizations should discourage reuse of passwords and set strong password requirements for the solutions that employees use daily to avoid the use of some of the most common passwords like 123456 or password—which unfortunately are still frequently used, according to data from ID Agent.”

Raise Public Awareness

Tyler Farrar, CISO, Exabeam

“Colonial Pipeline, SolarWinds, Twitch. All of these organizations have one thing in common: they suffered data breaches as a result of stolen passwords and credentials. Credential theft has become one of the most common and effective methods cyber threat actors use to infiltrate organizations of all sizes and access sensitive data.

We strongly support efforts, like World Password Day, that raise public awareness and can help to combat this pervasive issue. We advocate for the best practices that ensure cyber hygiene and protect personal and professional passwords and credentials to prevent credential-based attacks from continuing.

Credential-driven attacks are largely exacerbated by a ‘set it and forget it’ approach to credential management, but organizations must build a security stack that is consistently monitoring for potential compromise. Organizations across industries can invest in data-driven behavioral analytics solutions to help detect malicious activity. These analytics tools can immediately flag when a legitimate user account is exhibiting anomalous behavior indicative of credential theft, providing greater insights to SOC analysts about both the compromised and the malicious user, which results in a faster response time.”

Prevent Brute Force Password Attacks

Neil Jones, director of cybersecurity evangelism, Egnyte

“For as long as I can remember, easily-guessed passwords such as 123456, qwerty, and password have dominated the global listing of most commonly-used passwords. Unfortunately, weak passwords can become a literal playground for cyber-attackers, particularly when they gain access to your organization’s remote access solution and can view corporate users’ ID details.

Similarly, not a day goes by where I don’t hear another customer in a public setting like a pharmacy or a supermarket vocally share his/her email address and/or personal or business phone number, to obtain affinity club credit for a transaction or to earn a discount. That private contact information – combined with weak password administration – can represent a data breach just waiting to happen.

In commemoration of World Password Day, here are practical tips to protect your company’s mission-critical data:

Institute Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) – One of the most effective ways to prevent unauthorized access is by requiring additional validation of login credentials during a user’s authentication process. This can be as straightforward as a user providing his/her password, then entering an accompanying numeric code from an SMS text.

Educate your employees on password safety – Educate your users that frequently-guessed passwords such as 123456, password, and their favorite pets’ names can put your company’s data and their personal reputations at risk. Reinforce that message, by reminding users that passwords should never be shared with anyone, including your IT team.

Inform users about the dangers of social engineering and spear-phishing – Remind users that unanticipated email messages, texts, and phone calls can be attempts to capture their login and password credentials. When proper login credentials are entered, malware can be initiated that will place your organization at risk of an even wider and more destructive cyber-attack.

Keep personal and business contact information separate – Remind your users that maintaining separate email accounts and contact details for affinity clubs and discount programs protects their personal privacy and your company’s valuable data. Users should never provide business login credentials (such as their email addresses) in public forums, particularly within earshot of others.

Establish mandatory password rotations – Discourage the usage of system default passwords and easily-guessable employee credentials, by forcing employees to change their passwords on a routine basis.

Update your account lockout requirements – Prevent brute force password attacks, by immediately disabling users’ access after multiple failed login attempts.”

Why should Organizations Invest in Identity Management Systems?

Gunnar Peterson, CISO, Forter

“It is especially fitting that we collectively celebrate World Password Day in light of recent breaches this quarter that have resulted in terabytes of stolen proprietary data and untold financial cost. The day is a reminder that the simplest of defenses in our toolbelt, credential and identity management, can be the difference between a secure system or an unimaginable incident.

Most of the breaches we hear about in the news are a result of businesses relying on automated access control and realizing too late when a user has been hijacked. Once an account is compromised, identity-based fraud can be extremely difficult to detect considering the advanced tactics and randomness of different crime groups like LAPUS$ and Conti.

To succeed against dynamic cybercriminals and account takeover (ATO) attacks, organizations must build robust identity management systems and invest resources into building a learning system that evolves to identify anomalous user activity. These techniques can ebb and flow with the sophisticated threat landscape we’re witnessing today.”

Have you Head About Password Reset Poisoning?

Aaron Sandeen, CEO and co-founder, Cyber Security Works (CSW)

“World Password Day is a day set aside not just to promote better password use, but to draw attention to the numerous password-related assaults. Tackling every password-related attack would be difficult, but addressing the problem of Password Reset Poisoning plays an important role in increasing organizational knowledge about better password use and vulnerability management.

Every online application with a login gateway has password reset capabilities. When a user forgets his password, this reset password option is useful. However, in many organizations, password reset poisoning is an attack in which the attacker obtains a victim’s password reset token and is now able to reset the victim’s password. The problem occurs when the program uses the host header to create the password reset link and then adds the user-supplied host header to the password reset link. It is crucial for companies to inform themselves of this type of password attack to protect the privacy of their employees and the business as a whole. While addressing similar password-related attacks, more vulnerabilities can be addressed and give security teams peace of mind.”

Remembering Passwords is One of the Most Irritating Things

Ricardo Amper, CEO of Incode 

“Consumers today are using their smartphones for dozens of activities – from banking to shopping t and sending personal information – all while passwords that are simple to compromise.

With cyberattacks and data breaches more prevalent than ever, the idea of a “password” is becoming increasingly obsolete. They are time-consuming to retrieve, easy to forget and create a less than ideal customer experience. According to a study by Incode, consumers say that updating/creating and remembering passwords is one of the most irritating things when proving their identity online.

On this World Password Day, we recommend implementing a new version of the “password” to ensure optimal security and customer experience: identity verification via biometrics. Using biometric technology to verify someone’s identity instead of passwords can eliminate friction and is more accurate and secure than other mechanisms. Your face is your unique digital identity and is more challenging for cybercriminals to hack. As the shift to a digital-centric era continues, I expect in less than five years’ time our faces will become our passwords – and ultimately create more trust between consumers and the sites they use.”

“When it comes to protecting business data and enhancing overall security, passwords play a critical role. World Password Day serves as a reminder for enterprises to use stronger passwords as a safeguard. Allowing databases to be accessible without even basic password protection is an all-too-common source of data leaks, but it is easily preventable with solutions that provide security guardrails and automated remediation of such misconfigurations.

However, instead of putting emphasis primarily on the best practices for passwords, we must shift the attention over to secure access and next-generation authentication. This involves the development of new and improved alternatives to password management, which will need the implementation of robust cyber asset management systems. Cyber asset management that enables authentication will become a greater priority when challenging authentication methods such as behavioral biometrics and liveness detection become more prevalent, since they need a far more sophisticated collection of cyber assets and rules.

In the end, World Password Day is a good occasion to observe the importance of strong passwords and password protection as part of overall security. While newer ways will undoubtedly replace the traditional password, they will continue to be used as a fallback and “master key.” Enterprises will increasingly adopt more advanced authentication methods and the cyber asset management capabilities that support this evolution.”

Passwords Continue to Be Used as a Fallback And “Master Key.”

Keith Neilson, Technical Evangelist at CloudSphere

“When it comes to protecting business data and enhancing overall security, passwords play a critical role. World Password Day serves as a reminder for enterprises to use stronger passwords as a safeguard. Allowing databases to be accessible without even basic password protection is an all-too-common source of data leaks, but it is easily preventable with solutions that provide security guardrails and automated remediation of such misconfigurations.   

However, instead of putting emphasis primarily on the best practices for passwords, we must shift the attention over to secure access and next-generation authentication. This involves the development of new and improved alternatives to password management, which will need the implementation of robust cyber asset management systems. Cyber asset management that enables authentication will become a greater priority when challenging authentication methods such as behavioral biometrics and liveness detection become more prevalent since they need a far more sophisticated collection of cyber assets and rules.    

In the end, World Password Day is a good occasion to observe the importance of strong passwords and password protection as part of overall security. While newer ways will undoubtedly replace the traditional password, they will continue to be used as a fallback and “master key.”

Enterprises will increasingly adopt more advanced authentication methods and the cyber asset management capabilities that support this evolution.”   

Passwords only Work Because They Are Secrets — but in 2021 More Than 16 Million Accounts Were Known to Have Been Breached Every day

Chris Brooks, founder of CryptoAssetRecovery.com

The point of World Password Day is to remind people to change their passwords. Think of a password like the oil in your car — if you don’t change it every three months, it becomes less effective — and failing to change it can destroy your engine.  Passwords only work because they are secrets — but in 2021 more than 16 million accounts were known to have been breached every day.  It’s extremely likely that some of your passwords are already known to hackers, and they’re learning more of them every day.  Keep your digital life tuned, and change those passwords!

People often think that adding symbols to a password makes it more secure. Given the firepower that hackers have at their disposal today, that isn’t necessarily true.  Short complex passwords can be cracked in fractions of seconds.  Complexity + Length is what makes passwords secure.

How to Manage Your Passwords: Tips by Entrust Experts on Account of World Password Day 2022

Experts at Entrust provided their tips:

Set up MFA

To increase your online security, consider implementing Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). This is the process of authenticating your identity when accessing one of your online accounts, usually by receiving a unique code via text message or email to confirm you are who you say you are. In the event of a password leak, MFA will prevent hackers from accessing your account.

Embrace biometrics

The added security measure of MFA is undoubtedly essential but can often be frustrating. To increase both security and user experience, consider adopting user biometrics, such as fingerprint and facial recognition technologies when authenticating with secure personal devices. These technologies have been around for a number of years and have recently seen a rapid growth in popularity, yet many continue to distrust them, perhaps through a lack of understanding of how they can potentially enhance cybersecurity and personal privacy.

Become vigilant to unfriendly requests

Phishing schemes are one of the most common ways for hackers to get hold of a user’s password to access their accounts. Nowadays, the schemes are becoming more and more difficult to spot, meaning users are unknowingly giving away sensitive information.

void using the same password for multiple accounts

Most people use the same password for multiple or even all of their online accounts due to the convenience of only having to remember one password. Whether you have an incredibly unique password, this is something that should be avoided as one compromised password will allow intruders to access all of your accounts. Instead, create unique passwords for all accounts so that if one account is compromised, you can rest assured knowing that only one account is put at risk.

Change your password on a regular basis

Some of us are guilty of having used the same password for online accounts for multiple years. However, simply changing your password on a regular basis will increase your online security drastically. In the case of a security breach and your password was lost to a hacker, the easiest way to secure your account is to change your password before they can gain access. The issue here is that it is often hard to know if your password has been leaked, therefore regularly changing your password may protect your account in the event of a leak.

What You Should Avoid This Password Day

High-ranking business executives have healthy password habits as many other internet users do, according to new research by NordPass.

While experts continuously urge companies to take cyber risks seriously, business owners, CEOs, and other C-suite executives continue typing “123456,” which, even after many warnings, remains the most popular password to date.

NordPass, in partnership with independent researchers specializing in the analysis of cyber incidents, compiled an extensive list of top passwords used by top-level executives.

“Michael,” “Jordan,” and other widely picked passwords

Among different executive roles that researchers examined — CEOs, C-level executives, management, and business owners — is a visible trend to use easily hackable passwords that mainly include sequence combinations of numbers or letters.

These include but are not limited to “1q2w3e,” “12345,” “11111,” and “qwerty.” The winner in all categories remains “123456” (used over 1.1 million times), with the password “password” (used over 700 thousand times) coming in second.

Research suggests that top-level executives also extensively use names or mythical creatures as an inspiration when creating passwords. Among the most popular are “dragon” and “monkey.” The most widely chosen names used in passwords are “Tiffany,” “Charlie,” “Michael,” and “Jordan,” which may or may not hint at the legendary basketball player.

Different industries and countries affected

This research was conducted in partnership with independent researchers who analyzed over 290 million data breaches worldwide. They grouped passwords according to job title and industry — among many fields affected, technology, finance, construction, healthcare, and hospitality were shown to experience the most security incidents.

Amidst the countries that experienced breaches examined in this study, France and the United Kingdom were listed among the most breached, accounting for 200 million and 600 million passwords leaked respectively.

The analysis findings demonstrate that business owners, C-suite, and other high-ranking executives, expected to be more conscious about their security online than the average internet user, have similarly poor password habits. This significantly increases the risks of cyberattacks at both the person and company level.

Data breach costs increase

Last year, NordPass presented similar studies, delving into the Top 200 Most Common Passwords people use online and those of Fortune 500 companies. Interestingly, the comparison of research shows that business executives are as likely to use easy-to-crack passwords as general internet users: “123456” and “123456789” rank in the top five among both audiences.

“It is unbelievable how similar we all think, and this research simply confirms that — what we might consider being very original, in fact, can place us in the list of most common,” says Jonas Karklys, the CEO of NordPass.

Jonas added, “Everyone from gamer teenagers to company owners are targets of cybercrimes, and the only difference is that business entities, as a rule, pay a higher price for their unawareness.”

The IBM report reveals that in 2021, the average global cost of a data breach reached 4.24 million USD, which is 10% more compared to 2020. The attacks that happen due to compromised credentials cost even more at 4.37 million USD and account for 20% of all breaches.

Tips to ensure your passwords are safe

According to Karklys, people can avoid many data breaches by following simple steps to improve password security:

Deploy a password manager. Password managers allow you to store all the passwords in end-to-end encrypted digital storage locked with a single keyword for the most convenience. Most password managers have additional features to check passwords’ strength and automatically generate unique passwords. For organizations, they can come in handy when sharing passwords with employees or managing their access.
Introduce cybersecurity training. Since simple human mistakes remain the leading cause of data breaches, it is worth investing in cybersecurity training sessions for employees. Starting from the basics might be a good idea given that people have different technology background levels.
Enable multi-factor authentication. Known as MFA, it serves as an extra layer of security. It is an authentication method that uses two or more mechanisms to validate the user’s identity – these can be separate apps, security keys, devices, or biometric data.

Password managers like NordPass, powered by the latest technology for the utmost security, allow users to access passwords securely on desktop, mobile, and browsers.

Thank you everyone for sharing your insights with us!

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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Thursday, 5 May 2022 is World Password Day. Intel created World Password Day in 2013, designating the first Thursday of May each year to raise awareness about the role strong passwords play in securing our digital lives. The objective of this day is to raise awareness of the importance of using a unique password for each account you have and promoting better habits of password management, both for individuals and organizations.

Passwords have been used for the authentication of users for over 60 years, and while alternatives like biometrics and facial recognition are becoming more mainstream, passwords still remain the go-to method of authentication, even though they’re vulnerable to brute-force attacks.

Passwords are an integral security measure for your digital identity and provide access to several online services. However, many people still use the same password for all their accounts and store this password in an insecure manner.

In the spirit of World Password Day, ManageEngine, the IT management division of Zoho, is offering its top four best practices for password management to keep your data and devices secure from cybercriminals.

Invest in a Reliable Password Vault

The passwords you use to access your online accounts should be strong and shouldn’t be used across multiple accounts. If you’ve used the same credentials across different accounts and a cybercriminal manages to crack your password, they’ll be able to access all your accounts. It’s impossible to remember dozens of different passwords and which one you chose for which account, which is why so many people use a variation of the same password across different accounts.

But this habit is also a dangerous practice because variations of the same password are not hard to crack if one of them has been identified.

Organizations are home to a vast number of privileged accounts that give users elevated access to sensitive business information. Safeguarding access to privileged data and resources is critical given the omnipresent nature of passwords across corporate networks. Manually maintaining spreadsheets of classified information, including passwords, keys, and signatures, is not only time-consuming but presents a huge risk to security should a malicious insider or outside attacker gain access to this documentation.

Recommended: World PASSWORD DAY 2022: Are You Investing in Password Managers and Biometrics?

Password vaulting refers to taking highly privileged accounts and passwords out of the hands of users and storing them safely in a secure vault. User access is controlled via a role-based control mechanism. Once the user logs out, the password is rotated, ensuring that the privileged accounts are secured.

A password vault:

• Secures credentials in a digital vault without exposing them in hard-coded format.
• Gives access only to administrators and authorized users.
• Rotates passwords both by schedule and on-demand.
• Generates random passwords for one-time, user-based access.
• Allows the sharing of passwords with various permission levels.

Make Sure Your Passwords are Complex and Hard to Guess

Weak passwords, including the most commonly used passwords, can be cracked in seconds. The longer and more unusual your password is, the harder it is for a cybercriminal to crack. Using three random words out of context along with making your passwords complex (i.e., creating passwords full of random characters, symbols, and numbers) is a good way to set a strong password.

Don’t give away clues to your password via social media and personal activities

Avoid creating passwords from significant dates (like a loved one’s birthday or your own birthday), and don’t use the name of your favourite sports team or a pet’s name. Most of these details about you can be easily discovered on your social media profiles. Never write down your passwords and leave them on a note near or on your laptop. If you work in a busy environment with multiple people around your workstation, you don’t want to leave any nearby clues or prompts to your passwords that may attract a malicious insider to attempt brute-forcing your account.

Adopt Two-Factor or Multi-Factor Authentication as Part of Your Security Protocol

Complex and regularly-updated passwords are a reliable form of security; however, even the strongest password can eventually be cracked with enough time. To fully mitigate the threat of a brute-force attack, you need to enable two-step verification or multi-factor authentication on all your online platforms. This way, even if an attacker correctly guesses your username and password, they’ll still need to complete the second factor of authentication, like entering a one-time password sent to your email, before they gain access to your account.

Mitigating the Risk of Password-Only Authentication

Kumaravel Ramakrishnan, technology director at ManageEngine, says, “According to Verizon’s 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report, over 70% of security breaches involved passwords and credentials.

With the rapid adoption of hybrid work culture, the amount of remote privileges a person requires is ever-increasing, emphasizing the need to secure passwords and control unauthorized access. A compromised password is an easy way for hackers to infiltrate critical information systems and access sensitive data without being detected. Passwords are an extremely effective tool, but only when they’re properly managed. A mix of password policies and technology can bolster defenses against infiltrators and privilege abuse. This applies to both individual employees and organizations as a whole.”

This World Password Day, take time to think about protecting your passwords and the data your passwords protect. Begin your journey of securing your passwords today.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

The post Secure Your Data the Right Way with Password Management This World Password Day appeared first on AiThority.

In its Q4 2021 evaluation, RevBits Endpoint Security moves closer to 100% Detection by Achieving a 99.8% Capability

RevBits announces that it has maintained its ICSA Labs Advanced Threat Defense (an Independent Division of Verizon) certification, reported in its Q4 2021 evaluation of RevBits Endpoint Security (RevBits EPS).

Testing was performed under the “Advanced Threat Detection” protocol, which focuses on evaluating endpoint security products for protection against new and little-known threats across all types of malware. Over thirteen hundred test runs containing both malicious samples and innocuous applications were executed in a period of thirty-two consecutive days.

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With an overall detection rate of nearly one hundred percent and zero false positives, RevBits EPS clearly surpassed the seventy-five percent detection rate required to maintain certification.

“Based on a unique architecture and patented technologies, RevBits Endpoint Security has been developed to provide best-in-class protection,” said Mucteba Celik, CTO “We were thrilled with solution’s detection capability and that we reported zero false-positives. Additionally, the precision of the product was further revealed in our 100% detection of threats that were four hours old or less.”

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“Maintaining this certification is important to our company and our customers.” says David Schiffer, CEO “The scourge of malware and ransomware must be defeated and helping to protect organizations of all types is a priority at RevBits – our endpoint security solution is achieving that goal, that makes us proud.”

About RevBits

Established in 2018, RevBits is an innovative cybersecurity company that is dedicated to providing its customers with superior protection based on expert knowledge. RevBits is headquartered in Mineola, NY with offices in Princeton, NJ, Boston, MA, London, England, and Antwerp, Belgium.

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[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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Attivo Networks, the experts in identity security and lateral movement attack prevention, announced the availability of its Endpoint Detection Net (EDN) Suite on SentinelOne’s Singularity XDR Marketplace, a first-of-its-kind application ecosystem that unifies prevention, detection, and response data and actions across attack surfaces with a few simple clicks.

Attivo Networks is the leader in detecting lateral movement by protecting credentials on endpoints and preventing attackers from leveraging Active Directory (AD) to execute their campaigns, two key targets for modern cyberattacks within the enterprise. The EDN solution provides SentinelOne customers with effective ways to reduce the risk associated with credential theft, attacks against Active Directory, and privilege escalation while reducing the attack surface by removing exposed credentials.

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“A new report from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) and Attivo revealed that 50% of organizations experienced an attack on Active Directory in the last 1-2 years, with over 40% indicating the attack was successful,” said Carolyn Crandall, Chief Security Advocate at Attivo Networks. “The Attivo EDN suite perfectly complements the SentinelOne Singularity XDR platform by adding the ability to map how adversaries execute their attacks, deny them access to the data they seek, detect their activity quickly, and derail them with misinformation along each step of the attack.”

The Singularity Marketplace represents frictionless integration for mutual customers, seamlessly extending the power of the SentinelOne Singularity XDR platform across the entire IT ecosystem, and empowering security teams to unify best-in-breed technologies — regardless of vendor — to autonomously action data and protect against machine-speed threats in real-time.

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“The Marketplace is a pivotal part in delivering SentinelOne’s vision of enabling the world’s leading enterprises to ingest and action diverse data,” said Nicholas Warner, Chief Operating Officer, SentinelOne. “With our XDR technology partners, we’re able to make automation simple and scalable, so security teams can easily navigate the best course of action to remediate and defeat high-velocity threats.”

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[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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The Cybersecurity Outlook for 2022 is a massive opportunity for the IT and dependent industries. There are several trends that have dominated the global market, especially the African cybersecurity landscape in 2021. The continent remains a point of investment interest as connectivity and mobility continue to grow – with only 38% of the population connected, there is massive opportunity compared with developed markets. This situation has seen a subsequent surge in investor attention, particularly in the FinTech and telco spaces, and an equally high, but concerning surge in cybercriminal activity.

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“Cybercriminals see the opportunity in this new and formative market too,” says Anna Collard, SVP Content Strategy & Evangelist at KnowBe4 Africa.

Anna added, “Considering that nearly half of the world’s 1.2 billion people registered for mobile money are based in Sub-Saharan Africa, and that 63% of the mobile dollar value is spent in this region, it makes sense that it has become a hot zone for investors and cybercriminals alike.”

Recently, Kaspersky found out more than 30 million web threats were seen across South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria combined between April – June 2021.

As part of the cybersecurity outlook for the region, Bethwel Opil, Enterprise Sales Manager at Kaspersky in Africa said, “The IT threat landscape is evolving as more sophisticated technology becomes available. The increase of malicious URLs in Kenya and Nigeria also indicates how phishing and related malware have grown in popularity by threat actors in these regions, who are targeting people working outside of the relative safety of the office network.”

Web threats (attacks launched from online resources) are a category of cybersecurity risks that may cause an undesirable event or action via the Internet. A broad scope of dangers fits into this category, including well-known threats like phishing and computer viruses. However, other threats, like offline data theft, can also be considered part of this group. Web threats are not limited to online activity but ultimately involve the Internet at some stage for inflicted harm.

This trend towards Africa as the lucrative shores upon which these modern-day pirates beach their ships is one that will likely continue into 2022. Most countries in the region do not have adequate cybercrime regulations in place and face significant skills shortages. A low level of general awareness means most consumers do not know how to ensure that their online behavior is secure and smart.

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“Another issue is that a significant number of African businesses operate without basic cybersecurity controls in place” says Collard. “This makes them all ripe for the picking. A recent study undertaken by Sophos found that 58% of South African organizations experienced an increase in cyberattacks since the pandemic and KnowBe4’s September 21 survey showed that 32% suffered a ransomware attack. What is also a concern is that identity fraud has seen a 337% increase over the past two years.”

Add to this the recent SABRIC survey that underscored the growing threats of social engineering across online and mobile banking, and a complex and worrying picture emerges. The statistics, across the board, point to a consistent increase in attack numbers and sophistication. They also draw a red line under Africa – 2022 needs to be the year when the continent ramps up its cybersecurity efforts to protect citizens and economies.

“Another trend is public awareness,” says Collard. “This has remained consistent for many years, but it is becoming increasingly clear that educating people about the risks, and giving them the tools they need to combat the risks, is critical. If you look at mobile banking fraud, in most cases, the successful crimes were because of phishing and social engineering tactics.”

“Cyber extortion crime is another major trend. If you look at the ransomware events that dominated local headlines in 2021 the message is not just that ransomware can be lucrative, but that cybercriminals are combining various methods to make their cyber extortion more effective,” says Collard. “Demands are getting bigger and the impact more pernicious to our economy and society as a whole.”

In 2022, these attacks are going to worsen and their impact will become increasingly expensive as criminals up the ante. The groups that perpetrate the attacks know that this is a lucrative gig, so why would they stop? For the organization, it could cost them money and reputation. For the public sector, it could cost citizens access to critical infrastructure, and worryingly, the public sector is extremely vulnerable.

“Only 30% of the South African public sector feels prepared for the cyber extortion onslaught,” says Collard. “The fact that the sector admits it is not prepared for this, and the fact it is an attractive target, means that its security has to become a priority. There also needs to be more of a focus on mobile malware and cryptocurrency attacks. These are set to become more targeted and capable over the next year, so users need to be aware of the risks and the scams.”

Read more on Cryptocurrency attacks here. 

Finally, 2022 will very likely come with more deep fake technology in social engineering attacks such as phone phishing. Likewise, the increased use of IoT devices, often implemented with default passwords and gaping vulnerabilities, will put organizations at risk.

“What this means for the future is that individuals and organizations need to expect more high-impact extortion attacks and more data breaches,” concludes Collard. “It is critical that there is more investment into upskilling and focuses on collaboration between public and private sectors. Initiatives such as South Africa’s cybersecurity alliance aim to achieve exactly that.

Uriel Maimon, senior director of emerging technologies at cybersecurity company PerimeterX, said, “Initially, this appeared to be an issue with malicious Shadow Code implemented via the WordPress site’s supply chain. However, in actuality, this is an example of a credential stuffing or brute force attack against the WordPress admin panel. These bot attacks can lead to non-obvious implications such as ransomware. To combat attacks like this, companies need a solution that detects malicious behavior on websites in real time, identifies sophisticated bot techniques, and blocks automated web attacks. This includes using machine-learning models, behavior-based and predictive analytics to detect modern account takeover attacks with the sensitivity to see patterns in traffic. Leveraging intelligence on your customer account credentials can be crucial in stopping these attacks before they occur.”

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

The post From 2021 to 2022: The Cybersecurity Outlook, by KnowBe4 appeared first on AiThority.

With 99% of companies going hybrid post-pandemic, broad endpoint security and data integrity concerns are on the rise

Teradici, the creator of industry-leading PCoIP technology and Emmy Award-winning Cloud Access Software (CAS), announced results from its first-annual Corporate Cybersecurity Report – Securing the Hybrid Workplace in 2022 and Beyond. The survey, which polled more than 8,000 respondents across a range of industries, found that hybrid workplaces are the new norm, with 99% of respondents’ reporting their workforces will split time between the office and remote settings post-pandemic. The survey also found that concerns about endpoint security and data integrity are skyrocketing as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) makes a comeback and employees commute with their devices.

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“As a result of the enormous security concerns associated with unmanaged devices, as well as BYOD, organizations are changing how they think about securing their corporate assets. Expect to see companies move away from traditional VPNs to Zero Trust architectures to shore up their endpoints and protect their data.”

“The pandemic has caused a fundamental shift in how people work, and the ‘office’ will never be the same,” said Ziad Lammam, Global Head of Teradici Product Management, HP. “As a result of the enormous security concerns associated with unmanaged devices, as well as BYOD, organizations are changing how they think about securing their corporate assets. Expect to see companies move away from traditional VPNs to Zero Trust architectures to shore up their endpoints and protect their data.”

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Key Findings

According to the survey:

• Hybrid work is here for the long term: Virtually all respondents (99%) reported their companies will have a hybrid workforce, and nearly 40% expect half of their workforce to operate remotely at least twice a week post-pandemic. This will precipitate a number of changes to network environments and architecture due to significant security concerns. Device authentication and authorization must be taken seriously.

• Even with fewer commuting days, workers’ treks are a security concern: The survey showed that 53% of respondents plan to enable employees to commute with endpoint devices, and this is a hot button of concern for IT. Nearly all respondents (98%) are concerned about security and/or data integrity as a result of employees commuting with endpoint devices.

• BYOD is back: Of survey respondents, 90% say their companies are using a mix of employee- and corporate-owned devices; only 10% are predominantly using corporate-owned devices. The mix of devices will likely continue to escalate, with 74% of respondents reporting they expect more use of BYOD, and nearly 25% seeing increased need for device authorization to protect against data breaches.

• To combat security concerns, organizations will move to remote access and Zero Trust architectures. Companies have largely relied on VPNs for employees to connect remotely, as many organizations have not yet completed their migration to the cloud. As hybrid work becomes the norm over the long term, remote desktop technologies with Zero Trust architectures will replace VPNs in an effort to better protect corporate networks. On top of this, IT will need to enhance the security awareness of employees to prevent human leaks and breaches.

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[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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