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Data is growing faster than ever. Remember when petabytes (that's 1,000,000 gigabytes!) were only for tech giants? Well, that's so last decade! Today, businesses of all sizes are swimming in petabytes. But this isn't just about storage anymore. This data is ALIVE—it's constantly accessed, analyzed, shared, and even used to train the next wave of AI. This creates a huge challenge: how do you secure such a vast, ever-changing landscape? That's why we've brought together a powerhouse panel of industry experts who have not only faced these challenges but conquered them. Join us for an exclusive webinar, " Data Security at the Petabyte Scale ," and gain insights from the best in the field: Shaun Marion: Former CISO of McDonald's, a global brand with data security demands on a massive scale. Robert Bigman: Former CISO at the CIA, where protecting classified information at the highest levels is paramount. Asaf Kochan: Former head of Unit 8200

The security risks posed by the Pickle format have once again come to the fore with the discovery of a new "hybrid machine learning (ML) model exploitation technique" dubbed Sleepy Pickle. The attack method, per Trail of Bits, weaponizes the ubiquitous format used to package and distribute machine learning (ML) models to corrupt the model itself, posing a severe supply chain risk to an organization's downstream customers. "Sleepy Pickle is a stealthy and novel attack technique that targets the ML model itself rather than the underlying system," security researcher Boyan Milanov said . While pickle is a widely used serialization format by ML libraries like PyTorch , it can be used to carry out arbitrary code execution attacks simply by loading a pickle file (i.e., during deserialization). "We suggest loading models from users and organizations you trust, relying on signed commits, and/or loading models from [TensorFlow] or Jax formats with the from_

Want to know what's the latest and greatest in SecOps for 2024? Gartner's recently released Hype Cycle for Security Operations report takes important steps to organize and mature the domain of Continuous Threat Exposure Management, aka CTEM. Three categories within this domain are included in this year's report: Threat Exposure Management, Exposure Assessment Platforms (EAP), and Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV). These category definitions are aimed at providing some structure to the evolving landscape of exposure management technologies. Pentera, listed as a sample vendor in the newly defined AEV category, is playing a pivotal role in increasing the adoption of CTEM, with a focus on security validation. Following is our take on the CTEM related product categories and what they mean for enterprise security leaders. The Industry is Maturing CTEM, coined by Gartner in 2022, presents a structural approach for continuously assessing, prioritizing, validating, and remediating expo

As many as 165 customers of Snowflake are said to have had their information potentially exposed as part of an ongoing campaign designed to facilitate data theft and extortion, indicating the operation has broader implications than previously thought. Google-owned Mandiant, which is assisting the cloud data warehousing platform in its incident response efforts, is tracking the as-yet-unclassified activity cluster under the name UNC5537 , describing it as a financially motivated threat actor. "UNC5537 is systematically compromising Snowflake customer instances using stolen customer credentials, advertising victim data for sale on cybercrime forums, and attempting to extort many of the victims," the threat intelligence firm said on Monday. "UNC5537 has targeted hundreds of organizations worldwide, and frequently extorts victims for financial gain. UNC5537 operates under various aliases on Telegram channels and cybercrime forums." There is evidence to suggest tha

Staying Sharp: Cybersecurity CPEs Explained Perhaps even more so than in other professional domains, cybersecurity professionals constantly face new threats. To ensure you stay on top of your game, many certification programs require earning Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits. CPEs are essentially units of measurement used to quantify the time and effort professionals spend on maintaining and enhancing skills and knowledge in the field of cybersecurity, and they act as points that demonstrate a commitment to staying current. CPEs are best understood in terms of other professions: just like medical, legal and even CPA certifications require continuing education to stay up-to-date on advancements and industry changes, cybersecurity professionals need CPEs to stay informed about the latest hacking tactics and defense strategies. CPE credits are crucial for maintaining certifications issued by various cybersecurity credentialing organizations, such as (ISC)², ISACA, and C

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has disclosed that it's in possession of more than 7,000 decryption keys associated with the LockBit ransomware operation to help victims get their data back at no cost. "We are reaching out to known LockBit victims and encouraging anyone who suspects they were a victim to visit our Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov," FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director Bryan Vorndran said in a keynote address at the 2024 Boston Conference on Cyber Security (BCCS). LockBit, which was once a prolific ransomware gang, has been linked to over 2,400 attacks globally, with no less than 1,800 impacting entities in the U.S. Earlier this February, an international law enforcement operation dubbed Cronos led by the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) dismantled its online infrastructure. Last month, a 31-year-old Russian national named Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev was outed by authorities as the group's administrator and developer, a

Zyxel has released security updates to address critical flaws impacting two of its network-attached storage (NAS) devices that have currently reached end-of-life (EoL) status. Successful exploitation of three of the five vulnerabilities could permit an unauthenticated attacker to execute operating system (OS) commands and arbitrary code on affected installations. Impacted models include NAS326 running versions V5.21(AAZF.16)C0 and earlier, and NAS542 running versions V5.21(ABAG.13)C0 and earlier. The shortcomings have been resolved in versions V5.21(AAZF.17)C0 and V5.21(ABAG.14)C0, respectively. A brief description of the flaws is as follows - CVE-2024-29972 - A command injection vulnerability in the CGI program "remote_help-cgi" that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute some operating system (OS) commands by sending a crafted HTTP POST request CVE-2024-29973 - A command injection vulnerability in the 'setCookie' parameter that could allow a

The online criminal bazaar BreachForums has been resurrected merely two weeks after a U.S.-led coordinated law enforcement action dismantled and seized control of its infrastructure. Cybersecurity researchers and dark web trackers Brett Callow , Dark Web Informer , and FalconFeeds revealed the site's online return at breachforums[.]st – one of the dismantled sites – by a user named ShinyHunters, who has since offered for sale a 1.3 TB database containing details of allegedly 560 million Ticketmaster customers for $500,000. This includes full names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, ticket sales and event information, and the last four digits of credit cards and their associated expiration dates. However, in an interesting twist, visitors of the site are now being asked to sign up for an account in order to view the content. The development follows a joint law enforcement action that seized all the new domains belonging to BreachForums (breachforums[.]st/.cx/.is/.

You're probably familiar with the term "critical assets". These are the technology assets within your company's IT infrastructure that are essential to the functioning of your organization. If anything happens to these assets, such as application servers, databases, or privileged identities, the ramifications to your security posture can be severe.  But is every technology asset considered a critical asset? Moreover, is every technology asset considered a  business -critical asset? How much do we really know about the risks to our  business -critical assets?  Business-critical assets are the underlying technology assets of your business in general – and we all know that technology is just one of the 3 essential pillars needed for a successful business operation. In order to have complete cybersecurity governance, organizations should consider: 1) Technology, 2) Business processes, and 3) Key People. When these 3 pillars come together, organizations can begin to understand the

Conversations about data security tend to diverge into three main threads: How can we protect the data we store on our on-premises or cloud infrastructure? What strategies and tools or platforms can reliably backup and restore data? What would losing all this data cost us, and how quickly could we get it back? All are valid and necessary conversations for technology organizations of all shapes and sizes. Still, the average company uses  400+ SaaS applications . The same report also uncovered that 56% of IT professionals aren't aware of their data backup responsibilities. This is alarming, given that 84% of survey respondents said at least 30% of their business-critical data lives inside SaaS applications.  SaaS data isn't like on-premises or cloud data because you have no ownership over the operating environment and far less ownership of the data itself. Due to those restrictions, creating automated backups, storing them in secure environments, and owning the restoration proces

Taiwanese company QNAP has rolled out fixes for a set of medium-severity flaws impacting QTS and QuTS hero, some of which could be exploited to achieve code execution on its network-attached storage (NAS) appliances. The  issues , which impact QTS 5.1.x and QuTS hero h5.1.x, are listed below - CVE-2024-21902  - An incorrect permission assignment for critical resource vulnerability that could allow authenticated users to read or modify the resource via a network CVE-2024-27127  - A double free vulnerability that could allow authenticated users to execute arbitrary code via a network CVE-2024-27128, CVE-2024-27129, and CVE-2024-27130  - A set of buffer overflow vulnerabilities that could allow authenticated users to execute arbitrary code via a network All the shortcomings, that require a valid account on NAS devices, have been addressed in QTS 5.1.7.2770 build 20240520 and QuTS hero h5.1.7.2770 build 20240520. Aliz Hammond of watchTowr Labs has been credited with  discoverin

Cybersecurity and compliance guidance are in high demand among SMEs. However, many of them cannot afford to hire a full-time CISO. A  v CISO can answer this need by offering on-demand access to top-tier cybersecurity expertise. This is also an opportunity for MSPs and MSSPs to grow their business and bottom line. MSPs and MSSPs that expand their offerings and provide vCISO services will cater to SME requirements and concerns. By answering this market gap, they can grow their customer base as well as upsell to existing clients. This will lead to recurring revenue and increased profitability. Developing and scaling vCISO services requires a well-thought-out plan. This will help guide you through the required processes, anticipate and overcome challenges and optimize resource use. To aid you, we introduce a comprehensive and actionable  guide: "How to Scale Your vCISO Services Profitably" . The guide was developed based on the experience of industry leader  Cynom i, who has helped hun

Researchers have discovered two novel attack methods targeting high-performance Intel CPUs that could be exploited to stage a key recovery attack against the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm. The techniques have been collectively dubbed  Pathfinder  by a group of academics from the University of California San Diego, Purdue University, UNC Chapel Hill, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Google. "Pathfinder allows attackers to read and manipulate key components of the branch predictor, enabling two main types of attacks: reconstructing program control flow history and launching high-resolution Spectre attacks," Hosein Yavarzadeh, the lead author of the  paper , said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. "This includes extracting secret images from libraries like libjpeg and recovering encryption keys from AES through intermediate value extraction." Spectre is the name given to a  class of side-channel attacks  that exploit  branch prediction

Cybercriminals are vipers. They're like snakes in the grass, hiding behind their keyboards, waiting to strike. And if you're a small- and medium-sized business (SMB), your organization is the ideal lair for these serpents to slither into.  With cybercriminals becoming more sophisticated, SMBs like you must do more to protect themselves. But at what price? That's the daunting question many SMBs are forced to ask. Amidst your everyday challenges, the answer seems obvious: forgo investing in a robust cybersecurity solution for the time being. However, the alternative is to cross your fingers and hope hackers don't find you. That, of course, isn't the most prudent strategy, as the uncomfortable truth is threat actors now see your organization as a quick path to profit. Therefore, if your defenses are weak—or just not there—these digital crooks are likely to disrupt your operations, access sensitive data, and extort a heavy ransom. In this article, we'll explore the financial burdens