Articles by tag
Cyber Threat Research: Nuclear Power Plant Cyber Attack
In early September 2019, the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu, India suffered a cyber intrusion. On September 3, a local security expert and former member of the Indian signals intelligence agency received a tip that there had been a malware attack and informed the Indian CERT on September 4. Mission Critical Systems Effected by Cyberattack The attack was [...]
5 Reasons Technological Debt Increases the Risk of Cyber Attack
Failing to keep software and hardware up-to-date can put your business at risk for cyber attacks. The following issues frequently leave businesses exposed to cyber threats and vulnerabilities. The Culprits Behind Technological Debt Most technological debt is unintentional, the by-product of efforts to save money and resources. This focus inadvertently derails cybersecurity by shifting resources away from critical infrastructure and [...]
Revue de mi-année 2021
Comme nous venons de passer la première moitié de 2021, j’ai décidé de revoir le top 5 des menaces que nous avons détectées durant cette période de 6 mois. À tous les quarts, nous produisons des rapports de tendance pour certains clients. Pour ce faire, nous creusons dans notre base de données d’incidents pour générer des statistiques. Un de nos [...]
2021 Mid-Year Threat Review
As the first half of 2021 comes to a close, I decided to look back at the top 5 threats we detected during this 6-month period. Every quarter, we produce trend reports for some clients. To do so, we dig back in our incident database to generate reports. One of our clients (who doesn’t receive a lot of alerts; they [...]
Check Your {User} Privileges
User privileges settings in commercial software frequently (and inadvertently) expose your business to privilege escalation attacks. Monitoring for access rights changes can help to proactively mitigate the risks. The team at CYDEF advocates for the principle of minimum privileges; according to which users should have only the minimal access rights to perform their jobs. A big part of the goal of minimum privileges is to ensure that users do not casually operate their machines with administrator privileges. After all, [...]
WFH Cybersecurity Best Practices for SMEs
WFH cybersecurity best practices are virtually non-existent in 49 percent of businesses. The sudden shift to remote working in early 2020 caught many businesses off guard, with most businesses prioritizing ‘getting things done’ over IT security. WFH Cybersecurity Threats Continue to Grow Working from Home (WFH) suddenly became the new normal at the beginning of the pandemic. According to many [...]
What is an Incident Response Plan: Basic Guidelines for SMEs
An incident response plan provides detailed steps for crisis management in the face of a cyber attack. Planning for When a Cyber Attack Strikes Incident response planning may seem like the projection of the worst-case scenario. That’s because it actually is. An incident response plan provides Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with the guidelines to react and recover when a [...]
4 Hurdles Facing MSPs When a Client is Breached
MSPs face considerable hurdles when a client experiences a data breach. 97% of MSPs experience churn after a client ransomware incident. Will Your Business Survive a Client Breach? Your Client’s May Not. When a client’s business suffers from a ransomware attack on their MSP’s watch, they may not survive. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are twice as likely to [...]
Monitoring for Insider Threat
Insider threat incidents account for 34% of data breaches. CYDEF’s detection capabilities are not limited to external cyber attacks. They are also valuable detection controls that detect unusual activity on the inside of an organization. What is Insider Threat? Cybersecurity is focused on keeping malicious attackers out of business systems. But what if the malicious attacker is already inside the business, with access [...]
Law Firm Size Doesn’t Insulate Against Cyber Attack
100% of law firms participating in a cybersecurity experiment had been targeted by cyber threats. Some without even knowing it. With an estimated worth approaching $1 trillion, law firms present an attractive target to cybercriminals. Not only do they host sensitive personal data within their networks, they also host data on ongoing litigation. Now that cyber attackers are ransoming data [...]
Phishing Campaigns Bypass Reputation Engine
The team at CYDEF observed an increasing proportion of phishing attempts that leverage trusted sites to bypass filtering resources. The following post addresses some of the detected campaigns and addresses security awareness programs. Phishing Off the River In recent posts we took an in-depth look at anti-virus bypass, especially living-off-the-land techniques. The general concept of these techniques is that, by abusing trusted resources, an attacker can capitalize on the trusted resource’s good reputation to execute malicious code. [...]
Medical Practices: A Steady Target for Cyber Attack
Medical practices are falling prey to cyberattacks at an exponential rate. Some outlets report that medical data is 10 times more likely to be targeted than banking information. Medical Practices: A Steady Target for Cyber Attack The more than 85% of physicians relying on electronic medical records, and approximately 1 million active physicians in the United States (not including nurse [...]