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Imagine you’re driving down a highway to get to work. There are other cars on the road, but by and large everyone is moving smoothly at a crisp, legal speed limit. Then, as you approach an entry ramp, more cars join. And then more, and more, and more until all of the sudden traffic has slowed to a crawl. This illustrates a DDoS attack.
DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service, and it’s a method where cybercriminals flood a network with so much malicious traffic that it cannot operate or communicate as it normally would. This causes the site’s normal traffic, also known as legitimate packets, to come to a halt. DDoS is a simple, effective and powerful technique that’s fueled by insecure devices and poor digital habits. Luckily, with a few easy tweaks to your everyday habits, you can safeguard your personal devices against DDoS attacks.
The expansion of 5G, proliferation of IoT and smart devices, and shift of more industries moving their operations online have presented new opportunities for DDoS attacks. Cybercriminals are taking advantage, and 2020 saw two of the largest DDoS offensives ever recorded. In 2020, ambitious attacks were launched on Amazon and Google. There is no target too big for cybercriminals.
DDoS attacks are one of the more troubling areas in cybersecurity, because they’re incredibly difficult to prevent and mitigate.. Preventing these attacks is particularly difficult because malicious traffic isn’t coming from a single source. There are an estimated 12.5 million devices that are vulnerable to being recruited by a DDoS attacker.
DDoS attacks are fairly simple to create. All it takes are two devices that coordinate to send fake traffic to a server or website. That’s it. Your laptop and your phone, for example, could be programmed to form their own DDoS network (sometimes referred to as a botnet, more below). However, even if two devices dedicate all of their processing power in an attack, it still isn’t enough to take down a website or server. Hundreds and thousands of coordinated devices are required to take down an entire service provider.
To amass a network of that size, cybercriminals create what’s known as a “botnet,” a network of compromised devices that coordinate to achieve a particular task. Botnets don’t always have to be used in a DDoS attack, nor does a DDoS have to have a botnet to work, but more often than not they go together like Bonnie and Clyde. Cybercriminals create botnets through fairly typical means: tricking people into downloading malicious files and spreading malware.
But malware isn’t the only means of recruiting devices. Because a good deal of companies and consumers practice poor password habits, malicious actors can scan the internet for connected devices with known factory credentials or easy-to-guess passwords (“password,” for example). Once logged in, cybercriminals can easily infect and recruit the device into their cyber army.
These recruited cyber armies can lie dormant until they’re given orders. This is where a specialized server called a command and control server (typically abbreviated as a “C2”) comes into play. When instructed, cybercriminals will order a C2 server to issue instructions to compromised devices. Those devices will then use a portion of their processing power to send fake traffic to a targeted server or website and, voila! That’s how a DDoS attack is launched.
DDoS attacks are usually successful because of their distributed nature, and the difficulty in discerning between legitimate users and fake traffic. They do not, however, constitute a breach. This is because DDoS attacks overwhelm a target to knock it offline — not to steal from it. Usually DDoS attacks will be deployed as a means of retaliation against a company or service, often for political reasons. Sometimes, however, cybercriminals will use DDoS attacks as a smokescreen for more serious compromises that may eventually lead to a full-blown breach.
DDoS attacks are only possible because devices can be easily compromised. Here are three ways you can prevent your devices from participating in a DDoS attack:
Now that you know what a DDoS attack is and how to protect against it, you’re better equipped to keep your personal devices and safe and secure.
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The post What Is a DDoS Attack and How to Stay Safe from Malicious Traffic Schemes appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
In the eyes of hackers, scammers, and thieves, your online privacy and identity look like a giant jigsaw puzzle. One that they don’t need every piece to solve. They only need a few bits to do their dirty work, which means protecting every piece you put out there—a sort of holistic view on your personal security. One that protects you, not just your devices.
Here’s what’s at stake: we create and share loads of personal information simply by going about our day online, where each bit of information makes up a piece of that giant jigsaw puzzle. Some pieces directly identify us, like our tax returns, bank account information, or driver’s licenses. Other pieces of information indirectly identify us, like the IP addresses assigned to our computers, tablets, and phones—or device ID numbers, location information, and browsing history. And bad actors only need a few key pieces to do you harm, such as committing identity crime in your name or selling your personal information on sketchy websites or the dark web.
While people show great concern about their personal information, who has it and what’s done with it, our research shows that 70% of people feel like they have little or no control over the data that’s collected about them. However, you have plenty of ways that you can indeed take control—ways that can prevent, detect, and correct attacks on your privacy and identity. That’s where holistic protection comes in.
You can think of holistic protection as layers of shields that protect you and the devices you use. It gives you three layers in all—a Prevention Layer, Detection Layer, and a Correction Layer.
A holistic and comprehensive security solution like McAfee+ combines those three layers in a way that protects your personal information and keep your identity private, showing you how it does it along the way, so you can see exactly how safe you are. Let’s take a quick look of some of the protections you’ll find in each layer …
In the Prevention Layer, you’ll see:
In the Detection Layer, you have …
In the Correction Layer, several other protections have your back …
These are just a few examples of the protections in each layer. And you’ll find our most comprehensive holistic protection in McAfee+ Ultimate, covering your privacy, identity, and devices.
While your online privacy and identity may look a jigsaw puzzle, protecting it shouldn’t be as complicated. With a holistic security solution for your personal protection, you can minimize your exposure with layers of security that do much of the work for you.
Antivirus on your PC is not enough. It has not been enough for many decades now. And this becomes more evident as we continue to spend more time online, with the average person spending 6 hours and 54 minutes online each day, leaving clouds of personal information in their wake.
While standalone apps like a password manager, a VPN app, and an identity solution from different vendors can be piecemealed together with your device security, these are difficult to keep track of and burdensome to maintain.
We have combined the important tools you need into a seamless and comprehensive experience because good security software is something that you use daily to feel safer online. This is why we are working on your behalf to redefine security, so you can enjoy your connected life with confidence.
The post True Security Requires a Holistic Approach appeared first on McAfee Blog.
Seems like the internet follows us wherever we go nowadays, whether it tags along via a smartphone, laptop, tablet, a wearable, or some combination of them all. Yet there’s something else that follows us around as well—our PII, a growing body of “personally identifiable information” that we create while banking, shopping, and simply browsing the internet. And no doubt about it, our PII is terrifically valuable.
What makes it so valuable? It’s no exaggeration to say that your PII is the key to your digital life, along with your financial and civic life as well. Aside from using it to create accounts and logins, it’s further tied to everything from your bank accounts and credit cards to your driver’s license and your tax refund.
Needless to say, your PII is something that needs protecting, so let’s take a look at several ways you can do just that.
What is PII? It’s information about you that others can use to identify you either directly or indirectly. Thus, that info could identify you on its own, or it could identify you when it’s linked to other identifiers, like the ones associated with the devices, apps, tools, and protocols you use.
A prime example of direct PII is your tax ID number because it’s unique and directly associated with your name. Further instances include your facial image to unlock your smartphone, your medical records, your finances, and your phone number because each of these can be easily linked back to you.
Then there are those indirect pieces of PII that act as helpers. While they may not identify you on their own, a few of them can when they’re added together. These helpers include things like internet protocol addresses, the unique device ID of your smartphone, or other identifiers such as radio frequency identification tags.
You can also find pieces of your PII in the accounts you use, like your Google to Apple IDs, which can be linked to your name, your email address, and the apps you have. You’ll also find it in the apps you use. For example, there’s PII in the app you use to map your walks and runs, because the combination of your smartphone’s unique device ID and GPS tracking can be used in conjunction with other information to identify who you are, not to mention where you typically like to do your 5k hill days. The same goes for messenger apps, which can collect how you interact with others, how often you use the app and your location information based on your IP address, GPS information, or both.
In all, there’s a cloud of PII that follows us around as we go about our day online. Some wisps of that cloud are more personally identifying than others. Yet gather enough of it and PII can create a high-resolution snapshot of you—who you are, what you’re doing when you’re doing it, and even where you’re doing it too—particularly if it gets into the wrong hands.
Remember Pig-Pen, the character straight from the old funny pages of Charles Schultz’s Charlie Brown? He’s hard to forget with that ever-present cloud of dust following him around. Charlie Brown once said, “He may be carrying the soil that trod upon by Solomon or Nebuchadnezzar or Genghis Khan!” It’s the same with us and our PII, except the cloud surrounding us, isn’t the dust of kings and conquerors, they’re motes of digital information that are of tremendously high value to crooks and bad actors—whether for purposes of identity theft or invasion of privacy.
With all PII we create and share on the internet, that calls for protecting it. Otherwise, our PII could fall into the hands of a hacker or identity thief and end up getting abused, in potentially painful and costly ways.
Here are several things you can do to help ensure that what’s private stays that way:
Square One is to protect your devices with comprehensive online protection software. This will defend you against the latest virus, malware, spyware, and ransomware attacks plus further protect your privacy and identity. In addition to this, it can also provide strong password protection by generating and automatically storing complex passwords to keep your credentials safer from hackers and crooks who may try to force their way into your accounts.
Further, security software can also include a firewall that blocks unwanted traffic from entering your home network, such as an attacker poking around for network vulnerabilities so that they can “break-in” to your computer and steal information.
Also known as a virtual private network, a VPN helps protect your vital PII and other data with bank-grade encryption. The VPN encrypts your internet connection to keep your online activity private on any network, even public networks. Using a public network without a VPN can increase your cybersecurity risk because others on the network can potentially spy on your browsing and activity.
If you’re new to the notion of using a VPN, check out this article on VPNs and how to choose one so that you can get the best protection and privacy possible.
In the U.S., the Social Security Number (SSN) is one of the most prized pieces of PII as it unlocks the door to employment, finances, and much more. First up, keep a close grip on it. Literally. Store your card in a secure location. Not your purse or wallet.
Certain businesses and medical practices may ask you for your SSN for billing purposes and the like. You don’t have to provide it (although some businesses could refuse service if you don’t), and you can always ask if they will accept some alternative form of information. However, there are a handful of instances where an SSN is a requirement. These include:
Be aware that hackers often get a hold of SSNs because the organization holding that information gets hacked or compromised itself. Minimizing how often you provide your SSN can offer an extra degree of protection.
Protecting your files with encryption is a core concept in data and information security, and thus it’s a powerful way to protect your PII. It involves transforming data or information into code that requires a digital key to access it in its original, unencrypted format. For example, McAfee Total Protection includes File Lock, which is our file encryption feature that lets you lock important files in secure digital vaults on your device.
Additionally, you can also delete sensitive files with an application such as McAfee Shredder, which securely deletes files so that thieves can’t access them. (Quick fact: deleting files in your trash doesn’t actually delete them in the truest sense. They’re still there until they’re “shredded” or otherwise overwritten such that they can’t be restored.)
Which Marvel Universe superhero are you? Does it really matter? After all, such quizzes and social media posts are often grifting pieces of your PII in a seemingly playful way. While you’re not giving up your SSN, you may be giving up things like your birthday, your pet’s name, your first car … things that people often use to compose their passwords or use as answers to common security questions on banking and financial sites. The one way to pass this kind of quiz is not to take it!
A far more direct form of separating you from your PII are phishing attacks. Posing as emails from known or trusted brands, financial institutions, or even a friend or family member a cybercrook’s phishing attack will attempt to trick you into sharing important information like your logins, account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on under the guise of providing customer service.
How do you spot such emails? Well, it’s getting a little tougher nowadays because scammers are getting more sophisticated and can make their phishing emails look nearly legitimate. However, there are several ways you can spot a phishing email and phony web pages as outlined here.
Comprehensive security offers another layer of prevention, in this case by offering browser protection like our own Web Advisor, which will alert you in the event you come across suspicious links and downloads that can steal your PII or otherwise expose you to attacks.
With social engineering attacks that deceive victims by posing as people the victim knows and the way we can sometimes overshare a little too much about our lives, you can see why a social media profile is a potential goldmine for cybercriminals.
Two things you can do to help protect your PII from being at risk via social media: one, think twice about what PII you might be sharing in that post or photo—like the location of your child’s school or the license plate on your car; two, set your profile to private so that only friends can see it. Review your privacy settings regularly to keep your profile information out of the public eye. And remember, nothing is 100% private on the internet. Never post anything you wouldn’t want to see shared.
The “S” stands for secure. Any time you are shopping, banking, or sharing any kind of PII, look for “https” at the start of the web address. Some browsers will also indicate HTTP by showing a small “lock” icon. Doing otherwise on plain HTTP sites exposes your PII for anyone who cares to monitor that site for unsecured connections.
By locking your devices, you protect yourself that much better from PII and data theft in the event your device is lost, stolen, or even left unattended for a short stretch. Use your password, PIN, facial recognition, thumbprint ID, what have you. Just lock your stuff. In the case of your smartphones, read up on how you can locate your phone or even wipe it remotely if you need to. Apple provides iOS users with a step-by-step guide for remotely wiping devices, and Google offers up a guide for Android users as well.
Theft of your PII can of course lead to credit cards and other accounts being opened falsely in your name. What’s more, it can sometimes be some time before you even become aware of it, until perhaps your credit score takes a hit or a bill collector comes calling. By checking your credit, you can address any issues that come up, as companies typically have a clear-cut process for contesting any fraud. You can get a free credit report in the U.S. via the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and likewise, other nations like the UK have similar free offerings as well.
Consider identity theft protection as well. A strong identity theft protection package pairs well with keeping track of your credit and offers cyber monitoring that scans the dark web to detect for misuse of your PII. With our identity protection service, we help relieve the burden of identity theft if the unfortunate happens to you with $1M coverage for lawyer fees, travel expenses, lost wages, and more.
The post Take It Personally: Ten Tips for Protecting Your Personally Identifiable Information (PII) appeared first on McAfee Blog.
And just like that, the holidays are here! That means it’s time to grab your devices and credit cards for some online holiday shopping. But while you plan to share the merry and shop for gifts, criminals are preparing some not-so-festive tricks of their own.
Let’s unwrap the top four phishing scams that users should beware of while making online purchases this week and through the rest of the year. Remember, there’s still time to shop for cybersecurity protection this holiday season.
It might surprise you to see that a tactic as old as email phishing is still so widely used today. Well, that’s because many people still fall for email phishing scams, as the criminals behind these attacks up the ante every year to make these threats more sophisticated.
Scammers also tend to take advantage of current events to trick unsuspecting consumers into falling for their tricks. Take earlier this year, for example, when many users received phishing emails claiming to be from a government entity regarding financial support due to the global health emergency. Cybercriminals will likely use similar, timely tactics leading up to the holidays, posing as famous retailers and promising fake discounts in the hope that a consumer will divulge their credit card details or click on a malicious link.
Like email phishing, spear phishing has been around for quite some time. With spear phishing attacks, hackers pretend to be an organization or individual that you’re familiar with and include a piece of content—a link, an email attachment, etc.—that they know you’ll want to interact with. For example, cybercriminals might claim to be charitable organizations asking for donations, knowing that many families like to donate during the holidays. The email might even include the recipient’s personal details to make it seem more convincing. But instead of making a generous contribution, users find that they infected their own system with malware by clicking on the fraudulent link.
No, that’s not the sound of Santa coming down the chimney – it’s the sound of voice phishing! “Vishing” attacks can be highly deceiving, as hackers will call a user and trick them into giving up their credentials or sharing other personal information. For example, a scammer could call an individual telling them that they won a large amount of cash as part of a holiday contest. Overjoyed with the thought of winning this so-called contest, the user may hand over their bank information to the criminal on the other end of the phone. But instead of receiving a direct deposit, all they find is that their banking credentials were used to make a fraudulent purchase.
SMS phishing, or “SMiShing,” is another threat users should watch out for this holiday season. This tactic uses misleading text messages claiming to come from a trusted person or organization to trick recipients into taking a certain action that gives the attacker exploitable information or access to their mobile device.
Due to the current global health emergency and the desire to do more digitally, consumers will likely rely on online shopping this holiday season. To take advantage of this trend, scammers will probably send fraudulent text messages disguised as online retailers. These messages will likely contain fake tracking links, shipping notices, and order confirmations. But if an unsuspecting user clicks on one of these links, they will be directed to a fake website prompting them to enter their credentials for the attackers to further exploit.
To prevent cybercriminals from messing with the festive spirit via phishing schemes, follow these tips so you can continue to make merry during the holiday shopping season:
If you receive an email, call, or text asking you to download software or pay a certain amount of money, don’t click on anything or take any direct action from the message. Instead, go straight to the organization’s website. This will prevent you from downloading malicious content from phishing links or forking over money unnecessarily.
If someone sends you a message with a link, hover over the link without actually clicking on it. This will allow you to see a link preview. If the URL looks suspicious, don’t interact with it and delete the message altogether.
Instead of clicking on a link in an email or text message, it’s always best to check directly with the source to verify a holiday shopping offer or track a package’s shipment.
Use a comprehensive security solution, like McAfee Total Protection, which can help protect devices against malware, phishing attacks, and other threats. It includes McAfee WebAdvisor, which can help identify malicious websites.
The post Top Phishing Lures to Look Out for This Holiday Season appeared first on McAfee Blog.
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which is led by the U.S. government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in conjunction with the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA)—a national non-profit focused on cybersecurity education & awareness. McAfee is pleased to announce that we’re a proud participant.
Fitness trackers worn on the wrist, glucose monitors that test blood sugar without a prick, and connected toothbrushes that let you know when you’ve missed a spot—welcome to internet-connected healthcare. It’s new realm of care with breakthroughs big and small. Some you’ll find in your home, some you’ll find inside your doctor’s office, yet all of them are connected. Which means they all need to be protected. After all, they’re not tracking any old data. They’re tracking our health data, one of the most precious things we own.
Internet-connected healthcare, also known as connected medicine, is a broad topic. On the consumer side, it covers everything from smart watches that track health data to wireless blood pressure monitors that you can use at home. On the practitioner side, it accounts for technologies ranging from electronic patient records, network-enabled diagnostic devices, remote patient monitoring in the form of wearable devices, apps for therapy, and even small cameras that can be swallowed in the form of a pill to get a view of a patient’s digestive system.
Additionally, it also includes telemedicine visits, where you can get a medical issue diagnosed and treated remotely via your smartphone or computer by way of a video conference or a healthcare provider’s portal—which you can read about more in one of my blogs from earlier this year. In all, big digital changes are taking place in healthcare—a transformation that’s rapidly taking shape to the tune of a global market expected to top USD 534.3 billion by 2025.
Advances in digital healthcare have come more slowly compared to other aspects of our lives, such as consumer devices like phones and tablets. Security is a top reason why. Not only must a healthcare device go through a rigorous design and approval process to ensure it’s safe, sound, and effective, it also held to similar rigorous degrees of regulation when it comes to medical data privacy. For example, in the U.S., we have the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), which sets privacy and security standards for certain health information.
Taken together, this requires additional development time for any connected medical device or solution, in addition to the time it takes to develop one with the proper efficacy. Healthcare device manufacturers cannot simply move as quickly as, say, a smartphone manufacturer can. And rightfully so.
However, for this blog, we’ll focus on the home and personal side of the equation, with devices like fitness trackers, glucose monitors, smart watches, and wearable devices in general—connected healthcare devices that more and more of us are purchasing on our own. To be clear, while these devices may not always be categorized as healthcare devices in the strictest (and regulatory) sense, they are gathering your health data, which you should absolutely protect. Here are some straightforward steps you can take:
Many medical IoT devices use a smartphone as an interface, and as a means of gathering, storing, and sharing health data. So whether you’re an Android owner or iOS owner, get security software installed on your phone so you can protect all the things it accesses and controls. Additionally, installing it will protect you and your phone in general as well.
Some IoT devices have found themselves open to attack because they come with a default username and password—which are often published on the internet. When you purchase any IoT device, set a fresh password using a strong method of password creation. And keep those passwords safe. Instead of keeping them on a notebook or on sticky notes, consider using a password manager.
You’ve probably come across two-factor authentication while banking, shopping, or logging into any other number of accounts. Using a combination of your username, password, and a security code sent to another device you own (typically a mobile phone) makes it tougher for hackers to crack your device. If your IoT device supports two-factor authentication, use it for extra security.
This is vital. Make sure you have the latest updates so that you get the latest functionality from your device. Equally important is that updates often contain security upgrades. If you can set your device to receive automatic updates, do so.
Your medical IoT device will invariably use your home Wi-Fi network to connect to the internet, just like your other devices. All the data that travels on there is personal and private use already, and that goes double for any health data that passes along it. Make sure you use a strong and unique password. Also change the name of your router so it doesn’t give away your address or identity. One more step is to check that your router is using an encryption method, like WPA2, which will keep your signal secure. You may also want to consider investing in an advanced internet router that has built-in protection, which can secure and monitor any device that connects to your network.
Similar to the above, another way you can further protect the health data you send over the internet is to use a virtual private network, or VPN. A VPN uses an encrypted connection to send and receive data, which shields it from prying eyes. A hacker attempting to eavesdrop on your session will effectively see a mish-mash of garbage data, which helps keep your health data secure.
One recent study found that 25% of U.S. homeowners with broadband internet expect to purchase a new connected consumer health or fitness device within the next year. Just be sure yours is secure. Read up on reviews and comments about the devices you’re interested in, along with news articles about their manufacturers. See what their track record is on security, such as if they’ve exposed data or otherwise left their users open to attack.
Bottom line, when we speak of connected healthcare, we’re ultimately speaking about one of the most personal things you own: your health data. That’s what’s being collected. And that’s what’s being transmitted by your home network. Take these extra measures to protect your devices, data, and yourself as you enjoy the benefits of the connected care you bring into your life and home.
The post Seven Tips for Protecting Your Internet-Connected Healthcare Devices appeared first on McAfee Blog.
In July 2015, I did my first threat webinar. I had planned to do it on a monthly basis, and never imagined I would still be doing it five years later, but here I am, still creating monthly webinars. I still do. I started the webinar series to help people understand the different threats targeting our customers and I have always tried to focus on three areas:
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This last point, discussing technologies versus solutions, has been one of the key items I try to follow as much as possible – after all, the goal of my webinars is to be educational, not a sales pitch.
Coming from a technical background, BS in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University (Go Spartans!!), I enjoy learning about the new technologies being used to detect the latest threats and to ensure you know what to look for when selecting a vendor and/or a security solution. Over the years, I’ve discussed everything from APTs, coinminers, exploits, messaging threats, ransomware, underground activity and lots in between. It is pretty easy to find topics to discuss, as there is so much going on in our industry, and with the malicious actors regularly shifting their tactics, techniques and procedures, I can keep the content fairly fresh.
I really enjoy having guest speakers on my webinars to mix things up a bit for the viewers as well, as I know my limitations – there are just too many threats out there to keep up with all of them. The main reason I love doing the threat webinars is that I enjoy sharing information and teaching others about our industry and the threats affecting them. If you want to check out any of my previous five years of webinars you can watch them here.
For my fifth year anniversary I wanted to try something different and I would like to do an open Q&A session. As I’ve never done this before, it will certainly be an interesting experience for me, but hopefully for you as well. I hope I can answer a majority of your questions, but I know some of you are way too smart for me, so please bear with me.
Our registration page for this webinar allows you to submit any pre-session questions that I’ll answer throughout the webinar. You can ask me anything that is on your mind and if I cannot get to your question, I’ll do my best to answer you afterwards in an email.
I hope to continue to do these webinars for the foreseeable future and I would like to end my post by thanking each and every one of you who has participated in my webinars over the years. It has been a pleasure, and I look forward to answering your questions.
Take care, stay healthy, and keep on smiling!
Jon
The post Ask Me Anything – Celebrating The Fifth Anniversary Of My Monthly Threat Webinar appeared first on .
Trend Micro is excited to launch new Trend Micro Cloud One – Conformity capabilities that will strengthen protection for Azure resources.
As with any launch, there is a lot of new information, so we decided to sit down with one of the founders of Conformity, Mike Rahmati. Mike is a technologist at heart, with a proven track record of success in the development of software systems that are resilient to failure and grow and scale dynamically through cloud, open-source, agile, and lean disciplines. In the interview, we picked Mike’s brain on how these new capabilities can help customers prevent or easily remediate misconfigurations on Azure. Let’s dive in.
What are the common business problems that customers encounter when building on or moving their applications to Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS)?
The common problem is there are a lot of tools and cloud services out there. Organizations are looking for tool consolidation and visibility into their cloud environment. Shadow IT and business units spinning up their own cloud accounts is a real challenge for IT organizations to keep on top of. Compliance, security, and governance controls are not necessarily top of mind for business units that are innovating at incredible speeds. That is why it is so powerful to have a tool that can provide visibility into your cloud environment and show where you are potentially vulnerable from a security and compliance perspective.
Common misconfigurations on AWS are an open Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) or a misconfigured IAM policy. What is the equivalent for Microsoft?
The common misconfigurations are actually quite similar to what we’ve seen with AWS. During the product preview phase, we’ve seen customers with many of the same kinds of misconfiguration issues as we’ve seen with AWS. For example, Microsoft Azure Blobs Storage is the equivalent to Amazon S3 – that is a common source of misconfigurations. We have observed misconfiguration in two main areas: Firewall and Web Application Firewall (WAF),which is equivalent to AWS WAF. The Firewall is similar to networking configuration in AWS, which provides inbound protection for non-HTTP protocols and network related protection for all ports and protocols. It is important to note that this is based on the 100 best practices and 15 services we currently support for Azure and growing, whereas, for AWS, we have over 600 best practices in total, with over 70 controls with auto-remediation.
Can you tell me about the CIS Microsoft Azure Foundation Security Benchmark?
We are thrilled to support the CIS Microsoft Azure Foundation Security Benchmark. The CIS Microsoft Azure Foundations Benchmark includes automated checks and remediation recommendations for the following: Identity and Access Management, Security Center, Storage Accounts, Database Services, Logging and Monitoring, Networking, Virtual Machines, and App Service. There are over 100 best practices in this framework and we have rules built to check for all of those best practices to ensure cloud builders are avoiding risk in their Azure environments.
Can you tell me a little bit about the Microsoft Shared Responsibility Model?
In terms of shared responsibility model, it’s is very similar to AWS. The security OF the cloud is a Microsoft responsibility, but the security IN the cloud is the customers responsibility. Microsoft’s ecosystem is growing rapidly, and there are a lot of services that you need to know in order to configure them properly. With Conformity, customers only need to know how to properly configure the core services, according to best practices, and then we can help you take it to the next level.
Can you give an example of how the shared responsibility model is used?
Yes. Imagine you have a Microsoft Azure Blob Storage that includes sensitive data. Then, by accident, someone makes it public. The customer might not be able to afford an hour, two hours, or even days to close that security gap.
In just a few minutes, Conformity will alert you to your risk status, provide remediation recommendations, and for our AWS checks give you the ability to set up auto-remediation. Auto-remediation can be very helpful, as it can close the gap in near-real time for customers.
What are next steps for our readers?
I’d say that whether your cloud exploration is just taking shape, you’re midway through a migration, or you’re already running complex workloads in the cloud, we can help. You can gain full visibility of your infrastructure with continuous cloud security and compliance posture management. We can do the heavy lifting so you can focus on innovating and growing. Also, you can ask anyone from our team to set you up with a complimentary cloud health check. Our cloud engineers are happy to provide an AWS and/or Azure assessment to see if you are building a secure, compliant, and reliable cloud infrastructure. You can find out your risk level in just 10-minutes.
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Do you see value in building a security culture that is shifted left?
Yes, we have done this for our customers using AWS and it has been very successful. The more we talk about shifting security left the better, and I think that’s where we help customers build a security culture. Every cloud customer is struggling with implementing earlier on in the development cycle and they need tools. Conformity is a tool for customers which is DevOps or DevSecOps friendly and helps them build a security culture that is shifted left.
We help customers shift security left by integrating the Conformity API into their CI/CD pipeline. The product also has preventative controls, which our API and template scanners provide. The idea is we help customers shift security left to identify those misconfigurations early on, even before they’re actually deployed into their environments.
We also help them scan their infrastructure-as-code templates before being deployed into the cloud. Customers need a tool to bake into their CI/CD pipeline. Shifting left doesn’t simply mean having a reporting tool, but rather a tool that allows them to shift security left. That’s where our product, Conformity, can help.
The post Knowing your shared security responsibility in Microsoft Azure and avoiding misconfigurations appeared first on .
The introduction of the MITRE ATT&CK evaluations is a welcomed addition to the third-party testing arena. The ATT&CK framework, and the evaluations in particular, have gone such a long way in helping advance the security industry as a whole, and the individual security products serving the market.
The insight garnered from these evaluations is incredibly useful. But let’s admit, for everyone except those steeped in the analysis, it can be hard to understand. The information is valuable, but dense. There are multiple ways to look at the data and even more ways to interpret and present the results (as no doubt you’ve already come to realize after reading all the vendor blogs and industry articles!) We have been looking at the data for the past week since it published, and still have more to examine over the coming days and weeks.
The more we assess the information, the clearer the story becomes, so we wanted to share with you Trend Micro’s 10 key takeaways for our results:
1. Looking at the results of the first run of the evaluation is important:
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2. There is a hierarchy in the type of main detections – Techniques is most significant
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https://attackevals.mitre.org/APT29/detection-categories.html
3. More alerts does not equal better alerting – quite the opposite
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4. Managed Service detections are not exclusive
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5. Let’s not forget about the effectiveness and need for blocking!
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6. We need to look through more than the Windows
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7. The evaluation shows where our product is going
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8. This evaluation is helping us make our product better
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9. MITRE is more than the evaluation
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10. It is hard not to get confused by the fud!
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The post Trend Micro’s Top Ten MITRE Evaluation Considerations appeared first on .
Over the past three decades, we’ve had time at Trend Micro to observe the industry trends that have the biggest impact on our customers. And one of the big things we’ve seen is that threats move largely in tandem with changes to IT infrastructure. This matters today because most organizations are transforming the way they run and manage their infrastructure—a daunting task on its own.
But with digital transformation also comes an expanded corporate attack surface, driving security leaders to demand enhanced visibility, detection & response across the entire enterprise — this is not just about the endpoint.
Transforming business
Over the past five years, there has been a major shift in the way IT infrastructure is delivered, and with that shift, increasing complexity. A big part of this change has been the use of the cloud, reflected in Gartner’s prediction that the market will grow to over $266 billion in 2020. Organizations everywhere are leveraging the cloud and DevOps to rapidly deliver new and differentiated applications and services for their customers, partners and employees. And the use of containers and microservices across a multi-cloud and hybrid environment is increasingly common.
In addition to leveraging public cloud services like IaaS, organizations are also rapidly adopting SaaS applications like Office 365, and expanding their use of mobile and collaborative applications to support remote working. Some are even arguing that working patterns may never be the same again, following the changes forced on many employers by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Combine these changes with networks that continue to extend to include branch offices and add new areas to protect like operational technology including industrial systems, and we can certainly see that the challenges facing the modern enterprise look nothing like they did a few years ago.
Under fire, under pressure
All of these infrastructure changes make for a broader attack surface that the bad guys can take advantage of, and they’re doing so with an increasingly wide range of tools and techniques. In the cloud there is a new class of vulnerabilities introduced through a greater use of open source, containers, orchestration platforms, supply chain applications and more. For all organizations, the majority of threats still prey upon the user, arriving via email (over 90% of the 52.3 billion we blocked in 2019), and they’re no longer just basic phishing attempts. There’s been an uptick in fileless events designed to bypass traditional security filters (we blocked 1.4 million last year). And Business Email Compromise (BEC) and ransomware continue to evolve, the latter causing major outages across local government, healthcare and other vulnerable sectors.
Organizations are often left flat-footed because they don’t have the in-house skills to secure a rapidly evolving IT environment. Mistakes get made, and configuration errors can allow the hackers to sneak in.
Against this backdrop, CISOs need visibility, detection and response capabilities across the extended enterprise. But in too many cases, teams are struggling because they have:
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Beyond the endpoint
While endpoint detection and response (EDR) has become a popular response to some of these problems over recent years, the reality is that cyber-attacks are rarely straightforward and limited to the endpoint (as noted in the email statistic above). Security teams actually need visibility, detection, and response across the entire IT environment, so they can better contextualize and deal with threats.
This is what Trend Micro XDR offers. It provides visibility across not just endpoints but also email, servers, cloud workloads and networks, applying AI and expert security analytics to correlate and identify potential threats. The result is fewer, higher fidelity alerts for stretched IT security teams to deal with. Recognizing the skills shortage reality, we also offer a managed XDR service that augments in-house SOC activities with the power of Trend Micro security experts.
Detection and response is too important to be limited to the endpoint. Today’s CISOs need visibility, detection, and response everywhere.
The post Why CISOs Are Demanding Detection and Response Everywhere appeared first on .
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