A Target store in Richmond, Texas (Photo: Target)

Two Weekend Outages, Neither a Cyberattack

Mathew J. Schwartz • June 17, 2019

Not all that crashes has been hacked. To wit, this past weekend there were multiple major outages, including much of Argentina and Uruguay going dark, as well as U.S. retailer Target's system problems leaving customers unable to pay for goods. But none of these outages were due to cyberattacks.

Cybercrime

GoldBrute Botnet Brute-Force Attacking 1.5M RDP Servers

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Critical Infrastructure Security

Xenotime Group Sets Sights on Electrical Power Plants

Scott Ferguson • June 17, 2019

Xenotime, the group suspected of launching the Trisis malware attack in Saudi Arabia during 2017, has over the past few months shifted its focus beyond the oil and gas industry to target electrical plants and utilities, security firm Dragos reports.

Governance

How Organizations Can Reduce Their Data Risk Footprint

Scott Ferguson • June 14, 2019

Data in non-production environments represents a significant percentage of total enterprise data volume. Non-production environments also carry more risk than production environments because there are more direct users, says Ilker Taskaya of Delphix, who discusses how organizations can reduce that risk.

Cybercrime

10 Highlights: Infosecurity Europe 2019 Keynotes

Mathew J. Schwartz • June 14, 2019

Data breaches, incident response and complying with the burgeoning number of regulations that have an information security impact were among the top themes at this year's Infosecurity Europe conference in London. Here are 10 of the top takeaways from the conference's keynote sessions.

Fraud Management & Cybercrime

Instagram Shows Kids' Contact Details in Plain Sight

Jeremy Kirk • June 14, 2019

Tens of thousands of minors on Instagram expose their email addresses and phone numbers, which child-safety and privacy experts say is worrisome. The kids have turned their profiles from personal ones to business ones, which Instagram mandates must have contact details. But is that appropriate for a child?

Geo Focus: The United Kingdom

Fusing Security With Digital Transformation for SMBs

Nick Holland • June 13, 2019

Digital transformation impacts the way that organizations deal with cybersecurity risk, says Tim Wilkinson of Avast Business, who provides advice how to place security at the center of the transformation.

Training & Security Leadership

Addressing the Human Element in Cybersecurity

Nick Holland • June 13, 2019

James Mackay of MetaCompliance explains techniques for educating and motivating employees to be more aware of cyber risks.

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

Empower Employees While Preventing Insider Data Breaches

Mathew J. Schwartz • June 13, 2019

Carelessness, a lack of security awareness, unclear data ownership and poor toolsets are root causes of insider breaches, says Tony Pepper, CEO of Egress, which recently surveyed CISOs and employees to trace the cause of insider breaches resulting from both intentional and unintentional loss.

Endpoint Security

Top Drivers for Privileged Account Management

Mathew J. Schwartz • June 13, 2019

When it comes to drivers for implementing and maintaining privileged access management programs, Wallix's Grant Burst says that demonstrating compliance and safety remain top priorities. Another driver, he says, is the sheer interconnectedness of devices - driven by the rise of IoT.

Fraud Management & Cybercrime

Best Practices for Session-Based Fraud Detection/Prevention

Mathew J. Schwartz • June 13, 2019

Numerous industries, including financial services, rely on transaction-based controls to help spot and block fraud. But increasingly, organizations are also using session-based fraud detection and prevention as an "early warning" alert system, says Kaspersky's Tim Ayling.

Governance

Beyond Bug Bounties: Crowdsourced Security Testing Evolves

Mathew J. Schwartz • June 13, 2019

Crowdsourced bug bounty programs help organizations identify severe vulnerabilities in their apps and infrastructure. But that gamification model has been evolving to supply not only penetration testing but also deep dives by single researchers, says Bugcrowd CSO David Baker.

Next-Generation Technologies & Secure Development

Proactive Mitigation: A Cybersecurity Imperative

Mathew J. Schwartz • June 13, 2019

A top cybersecurity imperative for organizations is to "take proactive mitigation before an event even occurs" by tracking attack trends and mitigating against emerging types of attacks, says Akamai's Jay Coley.