discussing current trends involving security and technology
Artifical Intelligence (AI), especially with the onset of Large Language Models (LLM)s, offers great potential. It can: read and summarize a document. It can write a biography for a person. It can answer questions such as “what is the circumference of the earth” (Spoiler the answer is complicated. Check out the answer.) Here are some … Continue reading AI, the risks and opportunities →
Oh, the attackers are getting better! The attack Recently, I have seen an increase in phishing emails coming from legitimate email accounts. For example, a recent email that I saw came from the legitimate email of a colleague. This email encouraged me to click on a link to listen to a voicemail that was meant … Continue reading Rising Threat: Understanding the Advanced Office 365 Email Attack →
Happy 2024! I have always been a fan of thinking “out of the box”. In an effort to create more “winners” we can study why winners won, and there is merit to that. There is another way as well, and that is to study why others did not win. Consider, if you will, survivor bias, … Continue reading Creating more winners →
Handling a ransomware event Just the word ransomware can generate fear in many organizations, and understandably so. We have heard the stories of organizations that have lost data forever and have had their operations disrupted for days or weeks. The impacts of a ransomware attack can be devastating. The best options for handling ransomware remain … Continue reading ransomware, let’s talk about it…
Finding good metrics can be extraordinarily helpful in managing a situation. For cybersecurity, finding a decent security metric is a challenge, which I have written about before. And, the cybersecurity field can always learn from biology. After all, nature has come up with some pretty nasty attacks, such as the Covid-19 virus. As this attack … Continue reading Cybersecurity lessons from Covid-19…
Intro In a prior article, I discussed the cycle of inaction. With respect to cybersecurity, the cycle results in managers putting too much faith in protection, which can lead to complacency. To help improve the situation, management needs to get a better understanding of the effectiveness of the cyber defenses. Basically, managers need effective security … Continue reading Security Metrics →
A new ransomware outbreak has captured a lot of press over the past couple of days. So much so that the US Department of Homeland Security has put out a statement on this ransomware. While trying to prevent exposure to this type of malware would be great, it will be difficult to do. Antivirus, content filtering, … Continue reading wannacry ransomware →
All of the highly-publicized breaches last year continue to highlight that organizations are still wrestling with how to get a handle on their cybersecurity[1]. Breaches put the confidentiality and the integrity of your information at risk, as we recently saw with the hack into the Democratic National Committee’s email[2]. A denial of service attack impacts … Continue reading Don’t Let the Press…
The typical method used to create a forensic image is to connect the source disk to a write-blocker. The write-blocker is then connected to a computer and a forensic image is made. This process needs to be updated to keep up with the capacity and speeds of the newest disk drive. By making the process … Continue reading Speed matters. How to make a forensic image as quickly as possible. →
Recently I worked with Acme (the name has been changed to protect their identify), a retail company that had been contacted by their bank. (Let’s call the company Acme.) During an investigation of some credit card frauds, the bank discovered that many of the fraudulent transactions appeared to have one location in common, Acme. The analysis works like this. … Continue reading the latest on credit…