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If only Patch Tuesdays came around infrequently — like total solar eclipse rare — instead of just creeping up on us each month like The Man in the Moon. Although to be fair, it would be tough for Microsoft to eclipse the number of vulnerabilities fixed in this month’s patch batch — a record 147 flaws in Windows and related software.
Yes, you read that right. Microsoft today released updates to address 147 security holes in Windows, Office, Azure, .NET Framework, Visual Studio, SQL Server, DNS Server, Windows Defender, Bitlocker, and Windows Secure Boot.
“This is the largest release from Microsoft this year and the largest since at least 2017,” said Dustin Childs, from Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI). “As far as I can tell, it’s the largest Patch Tuesday release from Microsoft of all time.”
Tempering the sheer volume of this month’s patches is the middling severity of many of the bugs. Only three of April’s vulnerabilities earned Microsoft’s most-dire “critical” rating, meaning they can be abused by malware or malcontents to take remote control over unpatched systems with no help from users.
Most of the flaws that Microsoft deems “more likely to be exploited” this month are marked as “important,” which usually involve bugs that require a bit more user interaction (social engineering) but which nevertheless can result in system security bypass, compromise, and the theft of critical assets.
Ben McCarthy, lead cyber security engineer at Immersive Labs called attention to CVE-2024-20670, an Outlook for Windows spoofing vulnerability described as being easy to exploit. It involves convincing a user to click on a malicious link in an email, which can then steal the user’s password hash and authenticate as the user in another Microsoft service.
Another interesting bug McCarthy pointed to is CVE-2024-29063, which involves hard-coded credentials in Azure’s search backend infrastructure that could be gleaned by taking advantage of Azure AI search.
“This along with many other AI attacks in recent news shows a potential new attack surface that we are just learning how to mitigate against,” McCarthy said. “Microsoft has updated their backend and notified any customers who have been affected by the credential leakage.”
CVE-2024-29988 is a weakness that allows attackers to bypass Windows SmartScreen, a technology Microsoft designed to provide additional protections for end users against phishing and malware attacks. Childs said one of ZDI’s researchers found this vulnerability being exploited in the wild, although Microsoft doesn’t currently list CVE-2024-29988 as being exploited.
“I would treat this as in the wild until Microsoft clarifies,” Childs said. “The bug itself acts much like CVE-2024-21412 – a [zero-day threat from February] that bypassed the Mark of the Web feature and allows malware to execute on a target system. Threat actors are sending exploits in a zipped file to evade EDR/NDR detection and then using this bug (and others) to bypass Mark of the Web.”
Update, 7:46 p.m. ET: A previous version of this story said there were no zero-day vulnerabilities fixed this month. BleepingComputer reports that Microsoft has since confirmed that there are actually two zero-days. One is the flaw Childs just mentioned (CVE-2024-21412), and the other is CVE-2024-26234, described as a “proxy driver spoofing” weakness.
Satnam Narang at Tenable notes that this month’s release includes fixes for two dozen flaws in Windows Secure Boot, the majority of which are considered “Exploitation Less Likely” according to Microsoft.
“However, the last time Microsoft patched a flaw in Windows Secure Boot in May 2023 had a notable impact as it was exploited in the wild and linked to the BlackLotus UEFI bootkit, which was sold on dark web forums for $5,000,” Narang said. “BlackLotus can bypass functionality called secure boot, which is designed to block malware from being able to load when booting up. While none of these Secure Boot vulnerabilities addressed this month were exploited in the wild, they serve as a reminder that flaws in Secure Boot persist, and we could see more malicious activity related to Secure Boot in the future.”
For links to individual security advisories indexed by severity, check out ZDI’s blog and the Patch Tuesday post from the SANS Internet Storm Center. Please consider backing up your data or your drive before updating, and drop a note in the comments here if you experience any issues applying these fixes.
Adobe today released nine patches tackling at least two dozen vulnerabilities in a range of software products, including Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, Commerce, InDesign, Experience Manager, Media Encoder, Bridge, Illustrator, and Adobe Animate.
KrebsOnSecurity needs to correct the record on a point mentioned at the end of March’s “Fat Patch Tuesday” post, which looked at new AI capabilities built into Adobe Acrobat that are turned on by default. Adobe has since clarified that its apps won’t use AI to auto-scan your documents, as the original language in its FAQ suggested.
“In practice, no document scanning or analysis occurs unless a user actively engages with the AI features by agreeing to the terms, opening a document, and selecting the AI Assistant or generative summary buttons for that specific document,” Adobe said earlier this month.
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Apple and Microsoft recently released software updates to fix dozens of security holes in their operating systems. Microsoft today patched at least 60 vulnerabilities in its Windows OS. Meanwhile, Apple’s new macOS Sonoma addresses at least 68 security weaknesses, and its latest update for iOS fixes two zero-day flaws.
Last week, Apple pushed out an urgent software update to its flagship iOS platform, warning that there were at least two zero-day exploits for vulnerabilities being used in the wild (CVE-2024-23225 and CVE-2024-23296). The security updates are available in iOS 17.4, iPadOS 17.4, and iOS 16.7.6.
Apple’s macOS Sonoma 14.4 Security Update addresses dozens of security issues. Jason Kitka, chief information security officer at Automox, said the vulnerabilities patched in this update often stem from memory safety issues, a concern that has led to a broader industry conversation about the adoption of memory-safe programming languages [full disclosure: Automox is an advertiser on this site].
On Feb. 26, 2024, the Biden administration issued a report that calls for greater adoption of memory-safe programming languages. On Mar. 4, 2024, Google published Secure by Design, which lays out the company’s perspective on memory safety risks.
Mercifully, there do not appear to be any zero-day threats hounding Windows users this month (at least not yet). Satnam Narang, senior staff research engineer at Tenable, notes that of the 60 CVEs in this month’s Patch Tuesday release, only six are considered “more likely to be exploited” according to Microsoft.
Those more likely to be exploited bugs are mostly “elevation of privilege vulnerabilities” including CVE-2024-26182 (Windows Kernel), CVE-2024-26170 (Windows Composite Image File System (CimFS), CVE-2024-21437 (Windows Graphics Component), and CVE-2024-21433 (Windows Print Spooler).
Narang highlighted CVE-2024-21390 as a particularly interesting vulnerability in this month’s Patch Tuesday release, which is an elevation of privilege flaw in Microsoft Authenticator, the software giant’s app for multi-factor authentication. Narang said a prerequisite for an attacker to exploit this flaw is to already have a presence on the device either through malware or a malicious application.
“If a victim has closed and re-opened the Microsoft Authenticator app, an attacker could obtain multi-factor authentication codes and modify or delete accounts from the app,” Narang said. “Having access to a target device is bad enough as they can monitor keystrokes, steal data and redirect users to phishing websites, but if the goal is to remain stealth, they could maintain this access and steal multi-factor authentication codes in order to login to sensitive accounts, steal data or hijack the accounts altogether by changing passwords and replacing the multi-factor authentication device, effectively locking the user out of their accounts.”
CVE-2024-21334 earned a CVSS (danger) score of 9.8 (10 is the worst), and it concerns a weakness in Open Management Infrastructure (OMI), a Linux-based cloud infrastructure in Microsoft Azure. Microsoft says attackers could connect to OMI instances over the Internet without authentication, and then send specially crafted data packets to gain remote code execution on the host device.
CVE-2024-21435 is a CVSS 8.8 vulnerability in Windows OLE, which acts as a kind of backbone for a great deal of communication between applications that people use every day on Windows, said Ben McCarthy, lead cybersecurity engineer at Immersive Labs.
“With this vulnerability, there is an exploit that allows remote code execution, the attacker needs to trick a user into opening a document, this document will exploit the OLE engine to download a malicious DLL to gain code execution on the system,” Breen explained. “The attack complexity has been described as low meaning there is less of a barrier to entry for attackers.”
A full list of the vulnerabilities addressed by Microsoft this month is available at the SANS Internet Storm Center, which breaks down the updates by severity and urgency.
Finally, Adobe today issued security updates that fix dozens of security holes in a wide range of products, including Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Premiere Pro, ColdFusion 2023 and 2021, Adobe Bridge, Lightroom, and Adobe Animate. Adobe said it is not aware of active exploitation against any of the flaws.
By the way, Adobe recently enrolled all of its Acrobat users into a “new generative AI feature” that scans the contents of your PDFs so that its new “AI Assistant” can “understand your questions and provide responses based on the content of your PDF file.” Adobe provides instructions on how to disable the AI features and opt out here.
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One frustrating aspect of email phishing is the frequency with which scammers fall back on tried-and-true methods that really have no business working these days. Like attaching a phishing email to a traditional, clean email message, or leveraging link redirects on LinkedIn, or abusing an encoding method that makes it easy to disguise booby-trapped Microsoft Windows files as relatively harmless documents.
KrebsOnSecurity recently heard from a reader who was puzzled over an email he’d just received saying he needed to review and complete a supplied W-9 tax form. The missive was made to appear as if it were part of a mailbox delivery report from Microsoft 365 about messages that had failed to deliver.
The reader, who asked to remain anonymous, said the phishing message contained an attachment that appeared to have a file extension of “.pdf,” but something about it seemed off. For example, when he downloaded and tried to rename the file, the right arrow key on the keyboard moved his cursor to the left, and vice versa.
The file included in this phishing scam uses what’s known as a “right-to-left override” or RLO character. RLO is a special character within unicode — an encoding system that allows computers to exchange information regardless of the language used — that supports languages written from right to left, such as Arabic and Hebrew.
Look carefully at the screenshot below and you’ll notice that while Microsoft Windows says the file attached to the phishing message is named “lme.pdf,” the full filename is “fdp.eml” spelled backwards. In essence, this is a .eml file — an electronic mail format or email saved in plain text — masquerading as a .PDF file.
“The email came through Microsoft Office 365 with all the detections turned on and was not caught,” the reader continued. “When the same email is sent through Mimecast, Mimecast is smart enough to detect the encoding and it renames the attachment to ‘___fdp.eml.’ One would think Microsoft would have had plenty of time by now to address this.”
Indeed, KrebsOnSecurity first covered RLO-based phishing attacks back in 2011, and even then it wasn’t a new trick.
Opening the .eml file generates a rendering of a webpage that mimics an alert from Microsoft about wayward messages awaiting restoration to your inbox. Clicking on the “Restore Messages” link there bounces you through an open redirect on LinkedIn before forwarding to the phishing webpage.
As noted here last year, scammers have long taken advantage of a marketing feature on the business networking site which lets them create a LinkedIn.com link that bounces your browser to other websites, such as phishing pages that mimic top online brands (but chiefly Linkedin’s parent firm Microsoft).
The landing page after the LinkedIn redirect displays what appears to be an Office 365 login page, which is naturally a phishing website made to look like an official Microsoft Office property.
In summary, this phishing scam uses an old RLO trick to fool Microsoft Windows into thinking the attached file is something else, and when clicked the link uses an open redirect on a Microsoft-owned website (LinkedIn) to send people to a phishing page that spoofs Microsoft and tries to steal customer email credentials.
According to the latest figures from Check Point Software, Microsoft was by far the most impersonated brand for phishing scams in the second quarter of 2023, accounting for nearly 30 percent of all brand phishing attempts.
An unsolicited message that arrives with one of these .eml files as an attachment is more than likely to be a phishing lure. The best advice to sidestep phishing scams is to avoid clicking on links that arrive unbidden in emails, text messages and other mediums. Most phishing scams invoke a temporal element that warns of dire consequences should you fail to respond or act quickly.
If you’re unsure whether a message is legitimate, take a deep breath and visit the site or service in question manually — ideally, using a browser bookmark to avoid potential typosquatting sites.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) this week seized 13 domain names connected to “booter” services that let paying customers launch crippling distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Ten of the domains are reincarnations of DDoS-for-hire services the FBI seized in December 2022, when it charged six U.S. men with computer crimes for allegedly operating booters.
Booter services are advertised through a variety of methods, including Dark Web forums, chat platforms and even youtube.com. They accept payment via PayPal, Google Wallet, and/or cryptocurrencies, and subscriptions can range in price from just a few dollars to several hundred per month. The services are generally priced according to the volume of traffic to be hurled at the target, the duration of each attack, and the number of concurrent attacks allowed.
The websites that saw their homepages replaced with seizure notices from the FBI this week include booter services like cyberstress[.]org and exoticbooter[.]com, which the feds say were used to launch millions of attacks against millions of victims.
“School districts, universities, financial institutions and government websites are among the victims who have been targeted in attacks launched by booter services,” federal prosecutors in Los Angeles said in a statement.
Purveyors of booters or “stressers” claim they are not responsible for how customers use their services, and that they aren’t breaking the law because — like most security tools — these services can be used for good or bad purposes. Most booter sites employ wordy “terms of use” agreements that require customers to agree they will only stress-test their own networks — and that they won’t use the service to attack others.
But the DOJ says these disclaimers usually ignore the fact that most booter services are heavily reliant on constantly scanning the Internet to commandeer misconfigured devices that are critical for maximizing the size and impact of DDoS attacks. What’s more, none of the services seized by the government required users to demonstrate that they own the Internet addresses being stress-tested, something a legitimate testing service would insist upon.
This is the third in a series of U.S. and international law enforcement actions targeting booter services. In December 2022, the feds seized four-dozen booter domains and charged six U.S. men with computer crimes related to their alleged ownership of the popular DDoS-for-hire services. In December 2018, the feds targeted 15 booter sites, and three booter store defendants who later pleaded guilty.
While the FBI’s repeated seizing of booter domains may seem like an endless game of virtual Whac-a-Mole, continuously taking these services offline imposes high enough costs for the operators that some of them will quit the business altogether, says Richard Clayton, director of Cambridge University’s Cybercrime Centre.
In 2020, Clayton and others published “Cybercrime is Mostly Boring,” an academic study on the quality and types of work needed to build, maintain and defend illicit enterprises that make up a large portion of the cybercrime-as-a-service market. The study found that operating a booter service effectively requires a mind-numbing amount of constant, tedious work that tends to produce high burnout rates for booter service operators — even when the service is operating efficiently and profitably.
For example, running an effective booter service requires a substantial amount of administrative work and maintenance, much of which involves constantly scanning for, commandeering and managing large collections of remote systems that can be used to amplify online attacks, Clayton said. On top of that, building brand recognition and customer loyalty takes time.
“If you’re running a booter and someone keeps taking your domain or hosting away, you have to then go through doing the same boring work all over again,” Clayton told KrebsOnSecurity. “One of the guys the FBI arrested in December [2022] spent six months moaning that he lost his servers, and could people please lend him some money to get it started again.”
In a statement released Wednesday, prosecutors in Los Angeles said four of the six men charged last year for running booter services have since pleaded guilty. However, at least one of the defendants from the 2022 booter bust-up — John M. Dobbs, 32, of Honolulu, HI — has pleaded not guilty and is signaling he intends to take his case to trial.
The FBI seizure notice that replaced the homepages of several booter services this week.
Dobbs is a computer science graduate student who for the past decade openly ran IPStresser[.]com, a popular and powerful attack-for-hire service that he registered with the state of Hawaii using his real name and address. Likewise, the domain was registered in Dobbs’s name and hometown in Pennsylvania. Prosecutors say Dobbs’ service attracted more than two million registered users, and was responsible for launching a staggering 30 million distinct DDoS attacks.
Many accused stresser site operators have pleaded guilty over the years after being hit with federal criminal charges. But the government’s core claim — that operating a booter site is a violation of U.S. computer crime laws — wasn’t properly tested in the courts until September 2021.
That was when a jury handed down a guilty verdict against Matthew Gatrel, a then 32-year-old St. Charles, Ill. man charged in the government’s first 2018 mass booter bust-up. Despite admitting to FBI agents that he ran two booter services (and turning over plenty of incriminating evidence in the process), Gatrel opted to take his case to trial, defended the entire time by court-appointed attorneys.
Gatrel was convicted on all three charges of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, including conspiracy to commit unauthorized impairment of a protected computer, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer. He was sentenced to two years in prison.
A copy of the FBI’s booter seizure warrant is here (PDF). According to the DOJ, the defendants who pleaded guilty to operating booter sites include:
–Jeremiah Sam Evans Miller, aka “John The Dev,” 23, of San Antonio, Texas, who pleaded guilty on April 6 to conspiracy and violating the computer fraud and abuse act related to the operation of a booter service named RoyalStresser[.]com (formerly known as Supremesecurityteam[.]com);
–Angel Manuel Colon Jr., aka “Anonghost720” and “Anonghost1337,” 37, of Belleview, Florida, who pleaded guilty on February 13 to conspiracy and violating the computer fraud and abuse act related to the operation of a booter service named SecurityTeam[.]io;
–Shamar Shattock, 19, of Margate, Florida, who pleaded guilty on March 22 to conspiracy to violate the computer fraud and abuse act related to the operation of a booter service known as Astrostress[.]com;
–Cory Anthony Palmer, 23, of Lauderhill, Florida, who pleaded guilty on February 16 to conspiracy to violate the computer fraud and abuse act related to the operation of a booter service known as Booter[.]sx.
All four defendants are scheduled to be sentenced this summer.
The booter domains seized by the FBI this week include:
cyberstress[.]org
exoticbooter[.]com
layerstress[.]net
orbitalstress[.]xyz
redstresser[.]io
silentstress[.]wtf
sunstresser[.]net
silent[.]to
mythicalstress[.]net
dreams-stresser[.]org
stresserbest[.]io
stresserus[.]io
quantum-stress[.]org
For Cisco engineers working on Duo, having a remote-first workplace has helped them reach life goals, connect with colleagues around the world, and be intentional communicators. We understand that working remotely can be an adjustment — that’s why we’ve compiled the 10 parts of remote work that surprised our team members most and their advice for navigating the nuances. If you’re interested in being part of a remote-first workplace, check out our open positions.
Senior Engineering Leader David Rines has worked remotely for the past seven years. He’s found that Cisco’s approach to distributed teams has “enabled us to pick up the right talent, and not necessarily local talent. We are moving towards a global, follow the sun environment,” he said.
One of the aspects Rines appreciates most of this structure is getting “a widely varied set of perspectives and experiences that help build a more reliable, more robust product, which is why we’re here.”
Another benefit to having colleagues across the globe is the sharing of recipes, a perk Senior Site Reliability Engineer Bernard Ting particularly enjoys. Proactively communicating with colleagues virtually “helps you to form bonds with people from other teams. You can always learn something new about cultures elsewhere. I talk to people about food and so I’m always gathering recipes from people from all over the world,” Ting shared.
While some may fear that working remotely could lead to feelings of isolation and loneliness, a different camaraderie can flourish in the structure of our distributed teams. With colleagues across time zones, “there’s always someone there who you can reach out to help solve your problem,” Rines said.
Collaboration hours are another way Site Reliability Engineering Manager Jaya Sistla has cultivated virtual community and problem-solving. These hours are blocked off for team members to talk about what they’re working on. “The main thing is being able to ask for help so you don’t go into the rabbit hole debugging things,” Sistla said.
Ting points out that working in a distributed model allows you to really engage in virtual events and conversations. Given that the team mainly communicates through online chat, Ting has found that “forces you to see everyone as equally approachable, which has made me more comfortable reaching out to people from anywhere in the world.”
For folks sharing an office, collaboration can happen through casual chats over coffee. When facing a challenge, you can ask your neighbor for support. While ideally virtual communication could have a similar cadence and spontaneity, the logistics of remote and distributed work require intentionality and being proactive in connecting with colleagues as people and as co-workers.
When Ting first started working remotely, he felt that every meeting needed to be formal and have a business objective. By sharing his feelings with his manager, he was reassured that “socializing is a very important part of teamwork, because if you don’t have a good relationship with your colleagues you’re not going to be able to have healthy discussions, healthy conflict or be able to critique each other when the situation arises.”
Since that conversation, Ting has been more proactive about catching up with colleagues, which can include sharing a coffee over video chat. Duo’s “coffee roulette” formalizes the process as every month, employees who opt in can be randomly paired up for a quick half-hour chat focused exclusively on socializing. Ting has found being proactive about socializing virtually helpful. “It’s made me more intentional with my time and really treasure the social experience you can get,” he said.
Some folks may be concerned that without a manager observing their efforts and work ethic day in and day out, it may be harder to recognize accomplishments and challenges. Ting found that within his team “when you work on projects and in your one-on-ones with your managers, they’re always very intentional about learning what you’ve been doing and seeing what your progress is like on certain projects. I’ve been asked, ‘How do you think you can improve? What are some of the things you’ve been doing outside of the team work?’”
To cultivate cross-team collaboration and education, there are thoughtfully planned virtual lunch and learns. “We schedule training sessions and common meetings at times that are flexible for everyone. If it has to be repeated, we do it so people can comfortably attend rather than stretching themselves and attending at odd hours,” Sistla said.
For Software Engineer Nick Aspinall, an important and fun part of working remotely is keeping in touch with virtual messaging. One unique perk has been getting to create and customize emojis with team members including a few of himself in “various ridiculous states,” he said.
Connecting with colleagues on themed channels focused on personal and professional interests from coffee to pets “makes it really cool because you can meet people across different teams and still get some of the feeling of rubbing elbows that you get when you’re in the office,” Aspinall said. Participating in these virtual conversations boosts morale while also providing an endless supply of cute animal pics.
Given the multi-faceted nature of our work and the importance of consistent information sharing, having different communication channels and formats to communicate data with varying degrees of complexity is vital. Having information readily accessible, accurate and updated is particularly necessary in a field like cybersecurity.
Senior Software Engineer Mario Lopez finds that the variety of information sources contributes to an easeful remote working experience. For instance, for complex architecture decisions or detailing, Duo’s Wiki is the best source.
Software Engineer Hanna Fernandez has benefited from chat channels dedicated to design and engineering topics to “see what everyone’s up to and what thoughts people have,” she said. Sista pointed out these are great places to ask questions and open up dialogue to solve problems.
Our culture is “video-on,” meaning that it is preferred that during video meetings, as much as possible, attendees have their cameras on. Lopez loves this because “you get a bit of that personal human element.”
“We’re all people behind these screens. You definitely get some of people’s personality through text, but you get it more when you actually see them. It’s infectious when you see someone smiling. You’ve got to smile back,” he shared (while we both smiled).
When Fernandez started at Cisco, she was advised to schedule individual meetings with everyone she would be working with on every team that she joined. That suggestion is one she’s applied even virtually.
“It’s a great strategy because I already know that my team is super talented and very smart, but this way I also get to know them as humans beyond their roles,” Fernandez said. Fernandez also finds it important to check in with co-workers and ask how they’re feeling and how their time off was. “I know a lot of people hate small talk, but it’s not just small talk. I’m genuinely interested in how my co-workers are doing.”
One of Ting’s biggest goals was buying his first house in the countryside outside of London. By working remotely, Ting has flexibility in his location which allowed him to achieve his goal of buying a house and settling down with his partner, while giving their dogs the space they need to be dogs.
When transitioning from fully remote to hybrid, it’s important to recognize that there will be some shifts to get accustomed to. As the structures of remote, distributed and hybrid work evolve, it’s important to stay flexible and notice what’s possible through multiple modalities of team building. Many teams have enjoyed in-person gatherings and connecting through virtual lunches and team games when remote.
Fernandez has had multiple roles with multiple structures at Cisco. As an intern, she was fully in person and shared desk space with other interns who collaborated on full stack engineering. While working in finance IT, Fernandez was hybrid and many of her colleagues were distributed among multiple offices. The pandemic began while she was in a DevOps role, forcing her to maintain boundaries around her work time while working fully remotely. In her current role working on Duo, Fernandez is completely remote but advocates for in-person events if possible, because “humans are social creatures who want to see each other’s faces in real life once in a while.”
For Aspinall, “when we did come back to the office, there was a bit of an adjustment period where you were overstimulated from the office.” He also wanted to ensure team members who were 100% remote were fully included. Now he sees that while half his team is fully remote and the other half is hybrid, “that doesn’t stop anyone from doing anything. All of our meetings feel the same. They’re all seamless.”
If you’re interested in joining our team from wherever you are in the world, check out our open roles.
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Cybersecurity has changed dramatically since the dawn of firewalls in the 1980s. But despite all the upheaval and innovation, they have stood the test of time. The basic concept of allowing “good” traffic to flow and blocking the bad stuff remains essential. Of course, it looks much different now than in the era of Care Bears and Cabbage Patch Kids.
Today’s workers, data, and applications are everywhere, and firewalls must be as well. There’s no longer just one finite space to defend. With the recent explosion of hybrid work and the rapid transition to multi-cloud environments, it’s imperative that firewalls evolve alongside a business — and be ready for whatever’s next.
So, can your firewall grow with you? Or is it stuck in the age of Hair Bands and He-Man?
The past few years have brought about a keen focus on resilience — remaining strong, yet adaptable in the face of unexpected and even unfathomable challenges. But an organization cannot persevere without security being at the forefront of any resilience strategy.
96% of executives consider security resilience highly important to their business.
– Cisco Security Outcomes Report
Firewalls are a critical foundation for building powerful, resilient security infrastructure. Yet contemporary firewalls have to be and do more than one thing. Cisco Secure Firewall delivers world-class security controls wherever you need them, with unified visibility and consistent policy management and enforcement.
As a worldwide leader in networking and security, Cisco is better positioned than any other vendor to incorporate effective firewall controls into your infrastructure — anywhere your data and applications reside. According to a study conducted on behalf of Cisco by Forrester Research, Cisco Secure Firewall customers can:
Cisco Secure Firewall delivers on several key aspects necessary for security resilience: visibility, flexibility, intelligence, integration, and unified controls. Together, they enable organizations to close gaps, see and detect threats faster, and adapt quickly to change.
Watch video: Cisco Secure Firewall Overview
With most of today’s internet traffic being encrypted, security measures can become obsolete without the ability to see into all traffic, encrypted or not. While decryption is commonplace, it is simply not feasible in many cases, and can have serious impacts on network performance. With its Encrypted Visibility Engine, Cisco Secure Firewall leverages deep packet inspection (DPI) to identify potentially malicious applications in encrypted traffic without offloading to another appliance and degrading performance.
Due to a highly distributed network and workforce, as well as constantly maturing attacks, the ability to see into every corner of your ecosystem is crucial. Cisco Secure Firewall blends multiple technologies to detect and block more threats in more places. By combining traditional firewall capabilities with URL filtering, application visibility and control, malware defense, and Snort 3 intrusion prevention, organizations gain robust protection against even the most sophisticated threats.
Cisco offers a wide variety of firewalls for defending the different areas of your network — including physical, virtual, and cloud-native — as well as cloud-delivered. We can secure businesses and offices of all types and sizes, from the data center to the cloud.
Cisco Secure also provides flexible firewall management options, enabling you to deploy and operate your security architecture in a way that is tailored to the unique requirements of your NetOps, SecOps, and DevOps teams. No matter which firewall models you choose or environments you operate in (physical or virtual), you can use a single, simplified application to manage all your firewalls from one place.
The threat landscape changes every day, and our defenses must change with it. Cisco Talos is one of the largest and most trusted threat intelligence groups in the world. Its in-depth insight into global threats, and advanced research and analysis, enable us to quickly incorporate protections for new threats into our products via hourly updates. That way, Cisco customers are continuously safeguarded from both known and unknown threats.
“When the Log4j vulnerability was discovered, we were protected before we even completed our patching,” said Paul Smith, network administrator at Marian University. “As a result of automated hourly updates from Talos, Cisco Secure Firewall had an early detection signature, so it was already blocking the concerning traffic from infiltrating our network.”
Another differentiator for Cisco Secure Firewall is that it’s part of an integrated security ecosystem. With Cisco SecureX, organizations can correlate data from multiple technologies and unleash XDR capabilities for a centralized, automated response to threats.
“At the end of the day, it’s about protecting the data, and we do that with the integration of [Cisco] Secure Endpoint, Umbrella, and Secure Firewall, which combine to protect the networks, endpoints, workstations, and servers — and all of this can be correlated easily within SecureX.”
– Elliott Bujan, IT Security Manager, Marine Credit Union
The new Cloud-delivered Firewall Management Center leverages the cloud to facilitate agile, simplified operations for a distributed, hybrid network. It provides efficiency at scale by allowing security teams to swiftly deploy and update policies across their environment with just a few clicks, as well as take coordinated actions to prioritize, investigate, and remediate threats within a single pane of glass. And with a cloud-delivered management center, Cisco regularly updates its software behind the scenes, which reduces risk, maintains compliance, and gives your team more time to focus on other priorities.
Additionally, Cisco Secure Firewall dynamically shares policies driven by intelligence from Cisco Secure Workload, which uses microsegmentation to prevent lateral movement of attackers throughout a network. This allows security policies to be harmonized across both the network and application environments, boosting efficacy and fostering collaboration between teams.
These are just some examples of what makes up a comprehensive, modernized firewall. But Cisco is not stopping there. We continue to innovate to meet evolving business needs. For example, the new enterprise-class 3100 Series firewalls are specially designed for hybrid work, supporting more end users with high-performance remote access for increased organizational flexibility.
Additionally, Cisco Secure Firewall serves as a key component of advanced security strategies including XDR, SASE, and zero trust, helping businesses keep pace with accelerating digital transformation. According to Cisco’s most recent Security Outcomes Report, organizations with mature XDR, SASE, and zero trust implementations all boast significantly higher levels of security resilience.
Fuel and energy retailer, Ampol, uses a variety of Cisco technologies, including Secure Firewall, to segment and safeguard its network. “Cisco was an integral part of our success during COVID-19 as we were able to serve customers without interruption in stores,” said Amir Yassa, senior project specialist at Ampol. “Deploying our retail resilience project, mostly comprised of Cisco products, enabled us to reduce our IT-related incidents by 90%, thus enabling us to serve our customers better now and into the future.”
Is your firewall keeping up with future demands, or is it still stuck in the 80s teasing its hair? If it’s the latter, we can help. Visit cisco.com/go/firewall and learn how to refresh your firewall.
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Cisco Secure Social Channels
Organizations embrace the public cloud for the agility, scalability, and reliability it offers when running applications. But just as organizations need these capabilities to ensure their applications operate where needed and as needed, they also require their security does the same. Organizations may introduce multiple individual firewalls into their AWS infrastructure to produce this outcome. In theory, this may be a good decision, but in practice—this could lead to asymmetric routing issues. Complex SNAT configuration can mitigate asymmetric routing issues, but this isn’t practical for sustaining public cloud operations. Organizations are looking out for their long-term cloud strategies by ruling out SNAT and are calling for a more reliable and scalable solution for connecting their applications and security for always-on protection.
To solve these challenges, Cisco created stateful firewall clustering with Secure Firewall in AWS.
Firewall clustering for Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual provides a highly resilient and reliable architecture for securing your AWS cloud environment. This capability lets you group multiple Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual appliances together as a single logical device, known as a “cluster.”
A cluster provides all the conveniences of a single device (management and integration into a network) while taking advantage of the increased throughput and redundancy you would expect from deploying multiple devices individually. Cisco uses Cluster Control Link (CCL) for forwarding asymmetric traffic across devices in the cluster. Clusters can go up to 16 members, and we use VxLAN for CCL.
In this case, clustering has the following roles:
The above diagram explains traffic flow between the client and the server with the insertion of the firewall cluster in the network. Below defines the roles of clustering and how packet flow interacts at each step.
Owner: The Owner is the node in the cluster that initially receives the connection.
Backup Owner: The node that stores TCP/UDP state information received from the Owner so that the connection can be seamlessly transferred to a new owner in case of failure.
Director: The Director is the node in the cluster that handles owner lookup requests from the Forwarder(s).
Forwarder: The Forwarder is a node in the cluster that redirects packets to the Owner.
Fragment Owner: For fragmented packets, cluster nodes that receive a fragment determine a Fragment Owner using a hash of the fragment source IP address, destination IP address, and the packet ID. All fragments are then redirected to the Fragment Owner over Cluster Control Link.
Cisco brought support for AWS Gateway Load Balancer (Figure 2). This feature enables organizations to scale their firewall presence as needed to meet demand (see details here).
Building off the previous figure, organizations can take advantage of the AWS Gateway Load Balancer with Secure Firewall’s clustering capability to evenly distribute traffic at the Secure Firewall cluster. This enables organizations to maximize the benefits of clustering capabilities including increased throughput and redundancy. Figure 3 shows how positioning a Secure Firewall cluster behind the AWS Gateway Load Balancer creates a resilient architecture. Let’s take a closer look at what is going on in the diagram.
Figure 3 shows an Internet user looking to access a workload. Before the user can access the workload, the user’s traffic is routed to Firewall Node 2 for inspection. The traffic flow for this example includes:
User -> IGW -> GWLBe -> GWLB -> Secure Firewall (2) -> GLWB -> GWLBe -> Workload
In the event of failure, the AWS Gateway Load Balancer cuts off existing connections to the failed node, making the above solution non-stateful.
Recently, AWS announced a new feature for their load balancers known as Target Failover for Existing Flows. This feature enables forwarding of existing connections to another target in the event of failure.
Cisco is an early adaptor of this feature and has combined Target Failover for Existing Flows with Secure Firewall clustering capabilities to create the industry’s first stateful cluster in AWS.
Figure 4 shows a firewall failure event and how the AWS Gateway Load Balancer uses the Target Failover for Existing Flows feature to switch the traffic flow from Firewall Node 2 to Firewall Node 3. The traffic flow for this example includes:
User -> IGW -> GWLBe -> GWLB -> Secure Firewall (3) -> GLWB -> GWLBe -> Workload
Organizations need reliable and scalable security to protect always-on applications in their AWS cloud environment. With stateful firewall clustering capabilities from Cisco, organizations can protect their applications while maintaining cloud benefits such as agility, scalability, and reliability.
Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual is available in the AWS marketplace, providing features like firewalling, application visibility & control, IPS, URL filtering, and malware defense. Cisco offers flexible options for firewall licensing, such as pay-as-you-go (PAYG) and bring-your-own-license (BYOL). To learn more about how Cisco Secure Firewall clustering capabilities can help protect your AWS applications, see our additional resources, check out our 30-day free trial, or speak to your Cisco sales representative.
Cisco Secure Firewall Clustering in the Cloud
Introducing AWS Gateway Load Balancer Target Failover for Existing Flows
Secure Firewall for Public Cloud webpage
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Cisco Secure Social Channels
The word is out! Cisco Secure Endpoint’s effectiveness is off the charts in protecting your enterprise environment.
This is not just a baseless opinion; however, the facts are rooted in actual test results from the annual AV-Comparative EPR Test Report published in October 2022. Not only did Secure Endpoint knock it out of the park in enterprise protection; but Cisco Secure Endpoint obtained the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) per agent at $587 over 5 years. No one else was remotely close in this area. More to come on that later.
If you are not familiar with the “AV-Comparatives Endpoint Prevention and Response Test is the most comprehensive test of EPR products ever performed. The 10 products in the test were subjected to 50 separate targeted attack scenarios, which used a variety of different techniques.”
These results are from an industry-respected third-party organization that assesses antivirus software and has just confirmed what we know and believe here at Cisco, which is our Secure Endpoint product is the industry’s best of the best.
Look for yourself at where we landed. That’s right, Cisco Secure Endpoint smashed this test, we are almost off the quadrant as one of the “Strategic Leaders”.
We ended up here for a combination of reasons, with the top being our efficacy in protecting our customers’ environments in this real-world test that emulates multi-stage attacks similar to MITRE’s ATT&CK evaluations which are conducted as part of this process (click here for an overview of MITRE ATT&CK techniques). Out of all the 50 scenarios tested, Secure Endpoint was the only product that STOPPED 100% of targeted threats toward enterprise users, which prevented further infiltration into the organization.
In addition, this test not only assesses the efficacy of endpoint security products but also analyzes their cost-effectiveness. Following up on my earlier remarks about achieving the lowest cost of ownership, the graph below displays how we stacked up against other industry players in this space including several well-known vendors that chose not to display their names due to poor results.
These results provide a meaningful proof point that Cisco Secure Endpoint is perfectly positioned to secure the enterprise as well as secure the future of hybrid workers.
Enriched with built-in Extended Detection and Response (XDR) capabilities, Cisco Secure Endpoint has allowed our customers to maintain resiliency when faced with outside threats.
As we embark on securing “what’s next” by staying ahead of unforeseen cyber threats of tomorrow, Cisco Secure Endpoint integration with the complete Cisco Secure Solutions portfolio allows you to move forward with the peace of mind that if it’s connected, we can and will protect it.
Now that you have seen how effective Secure Endpoint is with live real-world testing, try it for yourself with one of our live instant demos. Click here to access instructions on how to download and install your demo account for a test drive.
Click here to see what analysts, customers, and third-party testing organizations have to say about Cisco Secure Endpoint Security efficacy, easy implementation and overall low total cost of ownership for their organization —and stay ahead of threats.
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Cisco Secure Social Channels
On Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the deals roll out. So do some of the worst Black Friday and Cyber Monday scams.
Hackers, scammers, and thieves look to cash in this time of year by blending in with the holiday rush, spinning up their own fake shipping notices, phony deals, and even bogus charities that look legitimate at first glance, yet are anything but. Instead, they may be loaded with malware, point you to phishing sites that steal your personal info, or they may simply rip you off.
Classically, many online scams play on emotions by creating a sense of urgency or even fear. And for the holidays, you can throw stress into that mix as well—the stress of time, money, or even the pressure of finding that hard-to-get gift that seems to be out of stock everywhere. The bad actors out there will tailor their attacks around these feelings, hoping that they’ll catch you with your guard down during this busy time of year.
So while knowing how to spot a great gift at a great price is solid skill to have this time of year, so is the ability to spot a scam. Let’s look at some of the worst ones out there, along with what you can do to steer clear of them.
Come this time of year, keeping tabs on all the packages you have in transit can get tricky. You may have an armload of them enroute at any given time, and scammers will look to slip into this mix with phony order confirmations sent to your mailbox or your phone by text. Packed with either an email attachment or a link to a bogus website, they’ll try to get you to download malware or visit a site that attempts to steal your identity.
These messages can look quite legit, so the best way to keep track of your orders is on the sites where you purchased them. Go directly to those sites rather than clicking on any links or attachments you get.
This scam plays out much like the fake order scam, yet in this case the crooks will send a phony package tracking notification, again either as a link or as an attachment. For starters, legitimate retailers won’t send tracking numbers in an attached file. If you see anything like that, it’s surely a scam designed to inject malware onto your device. In the case of a link, the scammers aim to send you to a site that will steal your personal info, just like in the case above.
Once again, the best way to track your packages is to go to the source. Visit the online store where you made your purchase, open your current orders, and get your package tracking information from there.
A classic scammer move is to “typosquat” phony email addresses and URLs that look awfully close to legitimate addresses of legitimate companies and retailers. So close that you may overlook them. They often appear in phishing emails and instead of leading you to a great deal, these can in fact link you to scam sites that can then lift your login credentials, payment info, or even funds should you try to place an order through them.
You can avoid these sites by going to the retailer’s site directly. Be skeptical of any links you receive by email, text, or direct message—it’s best to go to the site yourself by manually typing in the legitimate address yourself and look for the deal there.
At the heart of holiday shopping is scarcity. And scarcity is something scammers love. There’s always some super-popular holiday item that’s tough to find, and scammers will spin up phony websites and offers around those items to lure you in. They may use the typosquatting technique mentioned above to pose as a legitimate retailer, or they may set up a site with their own branding to look legitimate on their own (or at least try). Either way, these scams can hurt you in a couple of ways—one, you’ll pay for the goods and never receive them; and two, the scammers will now have your payment info and address, which they can use to commit further fraud.
If the pricing, availability, or delivery time all look too good to be true for the item in question, it may be a scam designed to harvest your personal info and accounts. Use caution here before you click. If you’re unsure about a product or retailer, read reviews from trusted websites to help see if it’s legitimate. (The Better Business Bureau is a great place to start—more on that in moment.)
In the season of giving, donating to charities in your name or in the name of others makes for a popular holiday gesture. Scammers know this too and will set up phony charities to cash in. Some indications that a phony charity has reached you include an urgent pitch that asks you to “act now.” A proper charity will certainly make their case for a donation, yet they won’t pressure you into it. Moreover, phony charities will outright ask for payment in the form of gift cards, wire transfers (like Western Union), money orders, or even cryptocurrency—because once those funds are sent, they’re nearly impossible to reclaim when you find out you’ve been scammed.
There are plenty of ways to make donations to legitimate charities, and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has a site full of resources so that you can make your donation truly count.
Some of it takes an eagle eye that can spot these scams as they pop up in your inbox, texts, social media feed, and so on. Yet you have further ways you can keep safe while shopping on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and any time.
This is a great one to start with. Directly typing in the correct address for online stores and retailers is a prime way to avoid scammers online. In the case of retailers that you don’t know much about, the U.S. Better Business Bureau (BBB) asks shoppers to do their research and make sure that retailer has a good reputation. The BBB makes that easier with a listing of retailers you can search simply by typing in their name.
Secure websites begin their address with “https,” not just “http.” That extra “s” in stands for “secure,” which means that it uses a secure protocol for transmitting sensitive info like passwords, credit card numbers, and the like over the internet. It often appears as a little padlock icon in the address bar of your browser, so double-check for that. If you don’t see that it’s secure, it’s best to avoid making purchases on that website.
In the U.S., the Fair Credit Billing Act offers the public protection against fraudulent charges on credit cards, where citizens can dispute charges over $50 for goods and services that were never delivered or otherwise billed incorrectly. Note that many credit card companies have their own policies that improve upon the Fair Credit Billing Act as well. However, debit cards aren’t afforded the same protection under the Act. Avoid using a debit card while shopping online and use your credit card instead.
Two-factor authentication is an extra layer of defense on top of your username and password. It adds in the use of a special one-time-use code to access your account, usually sent to you via email or to your phone by text or a phone call. In all, it combines something you know, like your password, with something you have, like your smartphone. Together, that makes it tougher for a crook to hack your account. If any of your accounts support two-factor authentication, the few extra seconds it takes to set up is more than worth the big boost in protection you’ll get.
Public Wi-Fi in coffee shops and other public locations can expose your private surfing to prying eyes because those networks are open to all. Using a virtual private network (VPN) encrypts your browsing, shopping, and other internet traffic, thus making it secure from attempts at intercepting your data on public Wi-Fi, such as your passwords and credit card numbers.
What’s more, a VPN masks your whereabouts and your IP address, plus uses encryption that helps keep your activities private. As a result, companies and data brokers can potentially learn far less about you, your shopping, your travels, your habits, and any other information that they could possibly collect and otherwise profit from.
Yes, it’s true. Your information gets collected, bought, and solid online. In fact, personal information fuels a global data trading economy estimated at $200 billion U.S. dollars a year. Run by data brokers that keep hundreds and even thousands of data points on billions of people, these sites gather, analyze, buy, and sell this information to other companies as well as to advertisers. Likewise, these data brokers may sell this information to bad actors, such as hackers, spammers, and identity thieves who would twist this information for their own purposes.
Getting your info removed from these sites can seem like a daunting task. (Where do I start, and just how many of these sites are out there?) Our Personal Data Cleanup can help by regularly scanning these high-risk data broker sites for info like your home address, date of birth, and names of relatives. It identifies which sites are selling your data, and depending on your plan, automatically requests removal.
Another place where personal information is bought and sold, stored, and exchanged is the dark web. The problem is that it’s particularly difficult for you to determine what, if any, of your info is on the dark web, stashed away in places where hackers and thieves can get their hands on it. Identity monitoring can help. McAfee’s identity monitoring helps you keep your personal info safe by alerting you if your data is found on the dark web, an average of 10 months before our competitors.
Monitored info can range anywhere from bank account and credit card numbers to your email addresses and government ID number, depending on your location. If your information gets spotted, you’ll get an alert, along with steps you can take to minimize or even prevent damage if the information hasn’t already been put to illegal use.
Identity protection through McAfee takes identity monitoring a step further by offering, depending on your location and plan, identity theft coverage for financial losses and expenses due to identity theft, in addition to hands-on help from a recovery professional to help restore your identity—all in addition to the identity monitoring called out above, again depending on your location and plan.
Keeping an eye on your bills and statements as they come in can help you spot unusual activity on your accounts. A credit monitoring service can do that one better by keeping daily tabs on your credit report. While you can do this manually, there are limitations. First, it involves logging into each bureau and doing some digging of your own. Second, there are limitations as to how many free credit reports you can pull each year. A service does that for you and without impacting your credit score.
Depending on your location and plan, McAfee’s credit monitoring allows you to look after your credit score and the accounts within it to see fluctuations and help you identify unusual activity, all in one place, checking daily for signs of identity theft.
A complete suite of online protection software like McAfee+ can offer layers of extra security while you shop. In addition to the VPN, identity, credit monitoring, and other features mentioned above, it includes web browser protection that can block malicious and suspicious links that could lead you down the road to malware or a phishing scam—along with a password manager that can create strong, unique passwords and store them securely as well. Taken together, McAfee+ offers all-in-one online protection for your identity, privacy, and security that can keep you far safer when you shop online—and as you spend your time online in general.
Even if you take the proper precautions the unexpected can happen. Whether it’s a scam, an identity crime, or flat-out theft, there are steps you can take right away to help minimize the damage.
The first bit of advice is to take a deep breath and get right to work on recovery. From there, you can take the following steps:
Whether you spot a curious charge on your bank statement, discover potentially a fraudulent account when you check credit report, or when you get an alert from your monitoring service, let the bank or organization involved know you suspect fraud or theft. With a visit to their website, you can track down the appropriate number to call and get the investigation process started.
Some businesses will require you to file a local police report and acquire a case number to complete your claim. Beyond that, filing a report is a good idea in itself. Identity theft is still theft and reporting it provides an official record of the incident. Should your case of identity theft lead to someone impersonating you or committing a crime in your name, filing a police report right away can help clear your name down the road. Be sure to save any evidence you have, like statements or documents that are associated with the theft. They can help clean up your record as well.
In the U.S., the identity theft website from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is a fantastic resource should you find yourself in need. In addition to keeping records of the theft, the FTC can provide you with a step-by-step recovery plan—and even walk you through the process if you create an account with them. Additionally, reporting theft to the FTC can prove helpful if debtors come knocking to collect on any bogus charges in your name. With a copy of your report, you can ask debtors to stop.
An instance of identity fraud or theft, suspected or otherwise, is a good time to review your options for a credit freeze or lock. As mentioned earlier, see what the credit bureaus in your region offer, along with the terms and conditions of each. With the right decision, a freeze or lock can help minimize and prevent further harm.
Strongly consider using a monitoring service like the one we described earlier to help you continue to keep tabs on your identity. The unfortunate fact of identity theft and fraud is that it can mark the start of a long, drawn-out affair. One instance of theft can possibly lead to another, so even what may appear to be an isolated bad charge on your credit card calls for keeping an eye on your identity all around. Many of the tools you would use up to this point still apply, such as checking up on your credit reports, maintaining fraud alerts as needed, and reviewing your accounts closely—along with utilizing an identity monitoring service.
A recovery service can help you clean up your credit in the wake of fraud or theft, all by working on your behalf. Given the time, money, and stress that can come along with setting your financial record straight, leaning on the expertise of a professional can provide you with much-needed relief on several counts.
Just as it’s always been, hackers, scammers, and thieves want to ruin a good thing. In this case, it’s your spirit of giving and sharing in the holiday season. Yet with this list of top scams and ways you can avoid them, you can keep bad actors like them at bay. Remember, they’re counting on you to be in a hurry this time of year, and maybe a bit stressed and a little disorganized to boot. Take your time while shopping out there and keep an eye out for their tricks. That extra moment can save you far more time and money than you may think.
The post The Worst Black Friday and Cyber Monday Scams – And How to Avoid Them appeared first on McAfee Blog.
Just a few years ago when the topic of supporting offsite workers arose, some of the key conversation topics were related to purchase, logistics, deployment, maintenance and similar issues. The discussions back then were more like “special cases” vs. today’s environment where supporting workers offsite (now known as the hybrid workforce) has become a critical mainstream topic.
Now with the bulk of many organization’s workers off-premise, the topic of security and the ability of a security vendor to help support an organization’s hybrid workers has risen to the top of the selection criteria. In a soon to be released Cisco endpoint survey, it’s not surprising that the ability of a security vendor to make supporting the hybrid workforce easier and more efficient was the key motivating factor when organizations choose security solutions.
Today, when prospects and existing customers look at Cisco’s ability to support hybrid workers with our advanced security solution set and open platform, it’s quite clear that we can deliver on that promise. But, yes, good tools make it easier and more efficient, but the reality is that running a SOC or any security group, large or small, still takes a lot of work. Most organizations not only rely on advanced security tools but utilize a set of best practices to provide clarity of roles, efficiency of operation, and for the more prepared, have tested these best practices to prove to themselves that they are prepared for what’s next.
Knowing that not all organizations have this degree of security maturity and preparedness, we gathered a couple of subject matter experts together to discuss 5 areas of time-tested best practices that, besides the advanced tools offered by Cisco and others, can help your SOC (or small security team) yield actionable insights and guide you faster, and with more confidence, toward the outcomes you want.
In this webinar you will hear practical advice from Cisco technical marketing and a representative from our award winning Talos Threat Intelligence group, the same group who have created and are maintaining breach defense in partnership with Fortune 500 Security Operating Centers (SOC) around the globe.
You can expect to hear our 5 Best Practices recommendations on the following topics;
Check out our webinar to find out how you can become more security resilient and be better prepared for what’s next.
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Cisco Secure Social Channels
The concept of zero trust is not a new one, and some may even argue that the term is overused. In reality, however, its criticality is growing with each passing day. Why? Because many of today’s attacks begin with the user. According to Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report, 82% of breaches involve the human element — whether it’s stolen credentials, phishing, misuse or error.
Additionally, today’s businesses are hyper-connected, meaning that — in addition to your employees — customers, partners and suppliers are all part of your ecosystem. Couple that with hybrid work, IoT, the move to the cloud, and more emboldened attackers, and organizational risk increases exponentially.
Adopting a zero trust model can dramatically reduce this risk by eliminating implicit trust. It has become so crucial, in fact, that several governments including the U.S., UK and Australia have released mandates and guidance for how organizations should deploy zero trust to improve national security.
However, because zero trust is more of a concept than a technology, and so many vendors use the term, organizations struggle with the best way to implement it. At Cisco, we believe you should take a holistic approach to zero trust, starting with what you have and adding on as you identify gaps in your defenses. And while layers of protection are necessary for powerful security, so is ease of use.
Zero trust plays a major role in building security resilience, or the ability to withstand unpredictable threats or changes and emerge stronger. Through zero trust, the identity and security posture of users, devices and applications are continuously checked and verified to prevent network intrusions — and to also limit impact if an unauthorized entity does gain access.
Organizations with high zero trust maturity are twice as likely to achieve business resilience.
– Cisco’s Guide to Zero Trust Maturity
Eliminating trust, however, doesn’t really conjure up images of user-friendly technology. No matter how necessary they are for the business, employees are unlikely to embrace security measures that make their jobs more cumbersome and time-consuming. Instead, they want fast, consistent access to any application no matter where they are or which device they are using.
That’s why Cisco is taking a different approach to zero trust — one that removes friction for the user. For example, with Cisco Secure Access by Duo, organizations can provide those connecting to their network with several quick, easy authentication options. This way, they can put in place multi-factor authentication (MFA) that frustrates attackers, not users.
Cisco Secure Access by Duo is a key pillar of zero trust security, providing industry-leading features for secure access, authentication and device monitoring. Duo is customizable, straightforward to use, and simple to set up. It enables the use of modern authentication methods including biometrics, passwordless and single sign-on (SSO) to help organizations advance zero trust without sacrificing user experience. Duo also provides the flexibility organizations need to enable secure remote access with or without a VPN connection.
During Cisco’s own roll-out of Duo to over 100,000 people, less than 1% of users contacted the help desk for assistance. On an annual basis, Duo is saving Cisco $3.4 million in employee productivity and $500,000 in IT help desk support costs. Furthermore, 86,000 potential compromises are averted by Duo each month.
La-Z-Boy, one of the world’s leading residential furniture producers, also wanted to defend its employees against cybersecurity breaches through MFA and zero trust. It needed a data security solution that worked agnostically, could grow with the company, and that was easy to roll out and implement.
“When COVID first hit and people were sent home to work remotely, we started seeing more hacking activity…” said Craig Vincent, director of IT infrastructure and operations at La-Z-Boy. “We were looking for opportunities to secure our environment with a second factor…. We knew that even post-pandemic we would need a hybrid solution.”
“It was very quick and easy to see where Duo fit into our environment quite well, and worked with any application or legacy app, while deploying quickly.” – Craig Vincent, Director of IT Infrastructure and Operations, La-Z-Boy
Today, Duo helps La-Z-Boy maintain a zero trust framework, stay compliant, and get clear visibility into what is connecting to its network and VPN. Zero trust helps La-Z-Boy secure its organization against threats such as phishing, stolen credentials and out-of-date devices that may be vulnerable to known exploits and malware.
As mentioned, zero trust is a framework, not a single product or technology. For zero trust to be truly effective, it must do four things:
Many technology companies may offer a single component of zero trust, or one aspect of protection, but Cisco’s robust networking and security expertise enables us to provide a holistic zero trust solution. Not only can we support all the steps above, but we can do so across your whole IT ecosystem.
Modern organizations are operating multi-environment ecosystems that include a mix of on-premises and cloud technologies from various vendors. Zero trust solutions should be able to protect across all this infrastructure, no matter which providers are in use. Protections should also extend from the network and cloud to users, devices, applications and data. With Cisco’s extensive security portfolio, operating on multiple clouds and platforms, zero trust controls can be embedded at every layer.
Depending on where you are in your security journey, embedding zero trust at every layer of your infrastructure may sound like a lofty endeavor. That’s why we meet customers where they are on their path to zero trust. Whether your first priority is to meet regulatory requirements, secure hybrid work, protect the cloud, or something else, we have the expertise to help you get started. We provide clear guidance and technologies for zero trust security mapped to established frameworks from organizations like CISA and NIST.
Much of our Cisco Secure portfolio can be used to build a successful zero trust framework, but some examples of what we offer include:
All of our technologies and services are backed by the unparalleled intelligence of Cisco Talos — so you always have up-to-date protection as you build your zero trust architecture. Additionally, our open, integrated security platform — Cisco SecureX — makes it simple to expand and scale your security controls, knowing they will work with your other technologies for more unified defenses.
As Italy’s leading insurance company, Sara Assicurazioni requires complete visibility into its extended network, including a multi-cloud architecture and hybrid workforce. The company has adopted a comprehensive zero trust strategy through Cisco Secure.
“Our decentralized users, endpoints, and cloud-based servers and workloads contribute to a large attack surface,” says Paolo Perrucci, director of information and communications technology architectures and operations at Sara Assicurazioni. “With Cisco, we have the right level of visibility on this surface.”
“The main reason we chose Cisco is that only Cisco can offer a global security solution rather than covering one specific point…. Thanks to Cisco Secure, I’m quite confident that our security posture is now many times better because we are leveraging more scalable, state-of-the-art security solutions.” – Luigi Vassallo, COO & CTO, Sara Assicurazioni
To learn more, explore our zero trust page and sign up for one of our free zero trust workshops.
Watch video: How Cisco implemented zero trust in just five months
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Cisco Secure Social Channels
Malicious software, or “malware,” refers to any program designed to infect and disrupt computer systems and networks. The risks associated with a malware infection can range from poor device performance to stolen data.
However, thanks to their closed ecosystem, built-in security features, and strict policies on third-party apps, Apple devices tend to be less prone to malware infections compared to their Android counterparts. But it’s important to note that they’re not completely without vulnerabilities.
Several iPhone viruses could infect your smartphone and affect its functionality, especially if you jailbreak your iPhone (that is, opening your iOS to wider features, apps, and themes).
This article covers how you can detect malware infections and how to remove viruses from your device so you can get back to enjoying the digital world.
Malware can affect your iPhone in a variety of ways. Here are a few telltale signs that your iPhone might have an unwelcome visitor.
If you notice any of the signs above, it’s a good idea to check for malware. Here are some steps you can take.
If you’ve confirmed malware on your iPhone, don’t worry. There’s still time to protect yourself and your data. Below is an action plan you can follow to remove malware from your device.
In many cases, hackers exploit outdated versions of iOS to launch malware attacks. If you don’t have the latest version of your operating system, it’s a good idea to update iOS to close this potential vulnerability. Just follow these steps:
It might sound simple, but restarting your device can fix certain issues. The system will restart on its own when updating the iOS. If you already have the latest version, restart your iPhone now.
If updating the iOS and restarting your device didn’t fix the issue, try clearing your phone’s browsing history and data. If you’re using Safari, follow these steps:
Keep in mind that the process is similar for Google Chrome and most other popular web browsers.
Malicious software, such as spyware and ransomware, often end up on phones by masquerading as legitimate apps. To err on the side of caution, delete any apps that you don’t remember downloading or installing.
The option to restore to a previous backup is one of the most valuable features found on the iPhone and iPad. Essentially, this allows you to restore your device to an iCloud backup made before the malware infection.
Here’s how:
If none of the steps above solves the problem, a factory reset might be the next order of business. Restoring your phone to factory settings will reset it to its out-of-factory configuration, deleting all of your apps, content, and settings in the process and replacing them with original software only.
To factory reset your iPhone, follow these steps:
The best way to protect your iOS device is to avoid malware in the first place. Follow these security measures to safeguard your device:
If you have an iPhone and are like most other people, you probably use your device for almost everything you do online. And while it’s amazing to have the internet in the palm of your hands, it’s also important to be aware of online threats like malware, which can put your digital life at risk.
The good news is that McAfee has your back with our award-winning and full-scale mobile security app. McAfee Mobile Security provides full protection against various types of malware targeting the Apple ecosystem. With safe browsing features, a secure VPN, and antivirus software, McAfee Security for iOS delivers protection against emerging threats, so you can continue to use your iPhone with peace of mind.
Download the McAfee Security app today and get all-in-one protection.
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In the fall of 2021, cryptocurrency value skyrocketed. Ethereum and Bitcoin had their highest values ever, causing a huge stir in interest in online currencies from experts, hobbyists and newbies alike … and in cybercriminals seeking huge paydays. Since then, cryptocurrency value has cooled, as has the public’s opinion about whether it’s worth the risk. Huge cryptohacking events dominate the headlines, leaving us to wonder: Is cryptocurrency losing its credibility?
In this article, you’ll learn about recent unfortunate crypto hacks and a few cryptocurrency security tips to help you avoid a similar misfortune.
A crypto wallet is the software or the physical device that stores the public and private keys to your cryptocurrency. A public key is the string of letters and numbers that people swap with each other in crypto transactions. It’s ok to share a public key with someone you trust. Your private key, however, must remain private — think of it like the password that secures your online bank account. Just like your actual wallet, if it falls into the wrong hands, you can lose a lot of money.
A malware called Mars Stealer infiltrated several crypto wallet browser extensions, including the popular MetaMask. The malware stole private keys and then erased its tracks to mask that it had ever gained entry to the wallet.1
One way to completely avoid a breach to your software crypto wallet is to opt for a hardware wallet. A hardware wallet is a physical device that can only be opened with a PIN. But there is some risk involved with a hardware wallet: if you drop it down the drain, all your crypto is gone. If you forget your wallet PIN, there is no customer service chatbot that can help you remember it. You are solely responsible for keeping track of it. For those who are confident in their hardware’s hiding spot and their personal organizational skills, they can benefit from its added security.
For anyone less sure of their ability to keep track of a hardware wallet, a software wallet is a fine alternative, though always been on alert of software wallet hacks. Keep an eye on crypto news and be ready to secure your software at a moment’s notice. Measures include un-downloading browser extensions, changing passwords, or transferring your crypto assets to another software wallet.
In the case of the Mars Stealer malware that affected MetaMask, being careful about visiting secure sites and only clicking on trustworthy links could’ve helped prevent it. Mars Stealer made its way onto people’s devices after they clicked on an infected link or visited a risky website. Stick to websites you know you can trust and consider springing for well-known streaming services and paying for software instead of torrenting from free sources.
Cryptocurrency enthusiasts often spread their crypto investments across various currency types and blockchain environments. Software known as a bridge can link numerous accounts and types, making it easier to send currency.
The cross-chain bridge Horizon experienced was on its Harmony blockchain, where a hacker stole about $100 million in Ethereum and tokens. The hacker stole two private keys, with which they could then validate this huge transaction into their own wallet. To hopefully prevent this from happening in the future, Horizon now requires more than just two validators.2
According to one report, in 2022, 69% of all cryptocurrency losses have occurred in bridge attacks.3 If you exchange cryptocurrencies with other users and have various accounts, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll use bridge software. To keep your assets safe, make sure to extensively research any bridge before trusting it. Take a look at their security protocols and how they’ve responded to past breaches, if applicable.
In the case of Horizon, the stolen private keys were encrypted with a passphrase and with a key management service, which follows best practices. Make sure that you always defend your private keys and all your cryptocurrency-related accounts with multi-factor authentication. Even though it may not 100% protect your assets, it’ll foil a less persistent cybercriminal.
Phishing attacks on bridge companies in conjunction with software hacks are also common. In this scenario, there’s unfortunately not much you can control. What you can control is how quickly and completely you respond to the cybercrime event. Remove the bridge software from your devices, transfer all your assets to a hardware wallet, and await further instructions from the bridge company on how to proceed.
Decentralized finance, or DeFi, is now one of the riskiest aspects of cryptocurrency. DeFi is a system without governing bodies. Some crypto traders like the anonymity and autonomy of being able to make transactions without a bank or institution tracking their assets. The drawback is that the code used in smart contracts isn’t bulletproof and has been at the center of several costly cybercrimes. Smart contracts are agreed upon by crypto buyers and sellers, and they contain code that programs crypto to perform certain financial transactions.
Three multi-million-dollar heists – Wormhole, Beanstalk Farms and Ronin bridge – occurred in quick succession, and smart contracts were at the center of each.4 In the case of Wormhole, a cybercriminal minted 120,000 in one currency and then traded them for Ethereum without putting up the necessary collateral. In the end, the hacker cashed out with $320 million. Beanstalk Farms lost $182 million when a hacker discovered a loophole in the stablecoin’s flash loan smart contract. Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge was hit for $625 million when a hacker took control over and signed five of the nine validator nodes through a smart contract hole.4
To be safe, conduct all crypto transactions on well-known and trustworthy software, applications, bridges, and wallets that are backed by a governing body. What you lose in anonymity you gain in security by way of regulated protocols. Hackers are targeting smart contracts because they do not have to depend on large-scale phishing schemes to get the information they need. Instead, they can infiltrate the code themselves and steal assets from the smartest and most careful crypto users. Because there’s almost no way you can predict the next smart contract hack, the best path forward is to always remain on your toes and be ready to react should one occur.
Don’t let these costly hacks be what stops you from exploring crypto! Crypto is great as a side hustle if you’re committed to security and are strategic in your investments. Make sure you follow the best practices outlined and arm all your devices (mobile included!) with top-notch security, such as antivirus software, a VPN, and a password manager, all of which are included in McAfee +.
Privacy, excellent security habits, and an eagle eye can help you enjoy the most out of cryptocurrency and sidestep its costly pitfalls. Now, go forth confidently and prosper in the crypto realm!
1Cointelegraph, “Hodlers, beware! New malware targets MetaMask and 40 other crypto wallets”
2Halborn, “Explained: The Harmony Horizon Bridge Hack”
3Chainalysis, “Vulnerabilities in Cross-chain Bridge Protocols Emerge as Top Security Risk”
4Protocol, “Crypto is crumbling, and DeFi hacks are getting worse”
5Cointelegraph, “Beanstalk Farms loses $182M in DeFi governance exploit”
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The hybrid work environment has been around for years, albeit not common but it existed. I can recall my first job where I was able to split my time working in an office and working from my makeshift home office. This was many moons ago as I will call it… pre-COVID-19.
Job seekers are certainly looking to have the flexibility of working from anywhere at any time – preferably in an environment of their choosing. Even though a hybrid workforce will provide people with the option to work from anywhere, those remote locations are sometimes in unsecured locations. Organizations must now reimagine a workforce that will need access to your internal collaboration tools along with access to your network from both on- and off-premises.
Cisco, a leader in equipping organizations with the right products for a hybrid workforce, provides the tools & services to protect your organization from bad threat actors.
With pervasive ransomware attacks, malware attacks, and email attacks, you must be ready and have not only a security solution but also a security analyst team ready to respond when an attack happens.
Securing access to your endpoint must be a top priority and your security analysts must be agile and have the right telemetry to provide around-the-clock monitoring and the ability to quickly respond to threats.
Cisco Secure Endpoint provides you with the visibility and ability to respond to threats by blocking them before they compromise your network. Combined with global, proactive threat hunting, leading-edge forensic/analytic capabilities, and reduced leading Mean Time To Detection (MTTD)/Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR) across the supply chain that no other vendor can parallel; why would you partner with any other company to secure and scale your unique hybrid workforce or workplace clients?
Click here to listen to my fireside chat on how we at Cisco would define 5 Best Practices Security Analysts Can Use to Secure Their Hybrid Workforce:
I am joined by Cisco Talos global Senior Threat Defense and Response Analyst, William (Bill) Largent who has over 20 plus years of infosec experience, specifically in network intrusion detection, traffic analysis, and signature/rule writing.
I will also be speaking with Eric Howard, Cisco Secure Technical Marketing Engineer Leader for the Security Platform and Response Group. Eric is a seasoned team leader in both Information Security Sales, and Product Management. He has built and led teams that apply deep technical understanding to business needs, initiatives, and strategies in both start-ups and established companies.
This is a conversation you do not want to skip! There were a lot of gems shared by these gentlemen that will get you where you need to be as a Security Analyst.
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The release of Microsoft Azure Gateway Load Balancer is great news for customers, empowering them to simply and easily add Cisco Secure Firewall capabilities to their Azure cloud infrastructure. By combining Azure Gateway Load Balancer with Cisco Secure Firewall, organizations can quickly scale their firewall presence across their Azure cloud environment, providing protection for infrastructure and applications exactly where and when they need it.
With applications and resources hyper-distributed across hybrid-multicloud environments, organizations require agile security to protect their environment at each control point. This integration empowers organizations to dynamically insert Cisco’s security controls and threat defense capabilities in their Azure environment, removing the clunkiness of provisioning and deploying firewalls, as well as the need to rearchitect the network. Organizations can now enjoy highly available threat defense on the fly, protecting their infrastructure and applications from known and unknown threats.
Combining Secure Firewall with Azure Gateway Load Balancer offers a significant reduction in operational complexity when securing cloud infrastructure. Azure Gateway Load Balancer provides bump-in-the-wire functionality ensuring Internet traffic to and from an Azure VM, such as an application server, is inspected by Secure Firewall without requiring any routing changes. It also offers a single entry and exit point at the firewall and allows organizations to maintain visibility of the source IP address. Complementing these features, organizations can take advantage of our new Cloud-delivered Firewall Management Center. It enables organizations to manage their firewall presence 100% through the cloud with the same look and feel as they’ve grown accustomed to with Firewall Management Center. With Cloud-delivered Firewall Management Center, organizations will achieve faster time-to-value with simplified firewall deployment and management.
Azure Gateway Load Balancer support for Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual is available now. To learn more about how Cisco Secure Firewall drives security resilience across your hybrid-multicloud environment, see the additional resources below and reach out to your Cisco sales representative.
Microsoft Blog: Gateway Load Balancer now generally available in all regions
Azure Marketplace listing: Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual
Cisco Secure Firewall At-a-Glance
Cisco Secure Firewall for Public Cloud
Cloud-delivered Firewall Management Center
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We’ve all seen the headlines like “race to the cloud” and “cloud-first.” These articles and publications are true, more and more customers have adopted cloud strategies, but there is more to the story. In these customer conversations, cloud security and network security are often discussed in unison. Why is that?
Customers desire freedom and choice when establishing resilience across every aspect of their business, and this requires both the ability to remain agile, and maintain control of their organization’s most sensitive data. Neither of these can be achieved with just the cloud, or private data center. Organizations are investing in hybrid-multicloud environments to ensure continuity amidst unpredictable threats and change. But these investments will fall short if they do not include security.
The modern enterprise relies on the network more than ever before, and it looks a lot different than it did 10 years ago. According to our 2022 Global Hybrid Cloud Trends Report, where 2,500 global IT leaders were interviewed across 13 countries, 82% said they have adopted hybrid cloud architectures, and 47% of organizations use between two and three public IaaS clouds1. As organizations have grown more dependent on the network, the more complex it has become, making firewall capabilities the most critical element of the hybrid-multicloud security strategy. And Cisco has a firewall capability for every strategy, protecting your most important assets no matter where you choose to deploy it.
In May, Cisco brought offerings from Umbrella and Duo to the AWS Marketplace. Today at AWS Re:Inforce, Cisco Secure announced furthering its partnership with AWS to drive innovation with the goal to protect the integrity of your business. Validating our commitment to hybrid-multicloud security, Cisco has received the AWS Security Competency Partner designation for Network and Infrastructure Security. This designation was awarded through our demonstrated success with customer engagements and rigorous technical validations of Secure Firewall.
This week at AWS Re:Inforce, customers can stop by our booth to see our latest firewall innovation. Cisco Secure Firewall as-a-service on AWS builds on our existing portfolio, giving organizations greater flexibility and choice with a radically simplified SaaS offering. If organizations are truly to embrace security across the multi-environment IT, customers demand simplification without compromising security. With a SaaS-based form factor, management and deployment complexity is reduced. NetOps and SecOps teams will enjoy a simplified security architecture where provisioning of firewalls and control plane infrastructure are managed by Cisco. This will save your teams time by removing the need to rearchitect the network, freeing them to focus on protecting the integrity of your business.
As organizations continue to move more of their day-to-day operations to the cloud, Cisco and AWS are committed to ensure that security is an integral part of their hybrid multi-cloud strategy. We all have seen the impact of security that is bolted on, or too complex. If we are truly to find that balance between agility and protection to ensure business continuity, we need to ensure the same protections we have in the private infrastructure are easily consumed no matter where your data may roam.
Product page: Cisco Secure Firewall for Public Cloud
Partner page: Cisco solutions on AWS
Blog: Securing cloud is everyone’s responsibility
Quick Start page: Cisco solutions on AWS
Amazon Partner Network page: Cisco solutions on AWS
2022 Global Hybrid Cloud Trends Report
1 Henderson, N. & Hanselman, E. (2022, May 25). 2022 Global Hybrid Cloud Trends Report.
S&P Global Market Intelligence, commissioned by Cisco Systems.
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/hybrid-cloud/2022-trends.html ‘
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In the spirit of #PrideMonth, McAfee hosted month-long celebrations across the world. One of these was a live event hosted by the McAfee Pride Community with a guest speaker from the Resource Center that focused on the history of Pride, support, allyship, and belonging.
We took a moment to ask our event guest speaker, Leslie McMurray, about the work that Resource Center does, the importance of pride, and what companies can do to create inclusive work environments.
“We like to say, if we had an “elevator pitch”, we would need a really tall building! Resource Center has been around for 39 years and is one of the largest LGBTQIA+ community centers in the United States, it is a primary HIV/AIDS service organization in Texas.
Some of the work that we do includes operating a food pantry and hot meal program that serves low-income people living with HIV. We have a case management department that helps locate resources that we don’t directly provide, like housing. And we have a primary care clinic that is gender-affirming and a ten-chair dental clinic that also serves those living with HIV.
We also have a youth program called Youth First that serves youth from middle-to-high school. We have a behavioral health program and a clinic that does free testing for HIV and STDs along with a mobile health unit that does free testing in outlying areas. Finally, our advocacy department has three full-time employees!
“Sometimes we get asked “What’s ‘Pride’ about? Why do you need a parade?”
It’s important to understand that LGBTQIA+ people are still working to achieve equal rights – the same as everyone else.
The tipping point of the fight for equal rights in the US dates back to 1969 when the Stonewall Uprising took place in Manhattan. The first Pride march was held a year later to honor the anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising and continues to take place during the month of June each year. And while we appreciate the attention during the month, the continued fight for equal rights for the LGBTQIA+ community is yearly, and we need continuous support and allyship of people and businesses year-round.
So it’s really important for people to learn about diverse populations, understand what their challenges are, and educate yourself on these issues – from that spring’s allies.”
“One of the simplest things for companies to do is to include ‘Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Gender expression’ in your Equal Employment Opportunity statement. Other things companies can do is to look at putting a policy in place for transgender employees who are transitioning and consider including transgender healthcare in your company benefits package.
Make sure to help foster understanding by getting employees to do training with organizations like Resource Center. And empower upper management to lead the way ensuring all employees can bring their whole selves to work. Finally, when the opportunity arises look at working with and bringing in non-profit organizations into your company to continue spreading awareness and support for the LGBTQIA+ community.
And while June wraps up Pride month, year-round we work towards a workplace and community where all can belong – a workplace where our unique differences are celebrated and where we all stand together for equality. #McAfeePride
Learn more about the incredible work that Resource Center does here
Interested in building your career at a company where you can belong? Search our openings!
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What is it that customers truly want from their security? Is it simplicity? Robust protection? Agility and flexibility? Yes! In today’s uncertain world where new challenges are being thrown at IT teams each day, security must meet many diverse needs. At the end of the day, it’s about keeping the entire business resilient despite the chaos of the cyber world.
As hybrid work, the move to the cloud, and increasingly insidious threats all converge to create layers of complexity, security teams must be extra vigilant and ready for what’s next. They need a comprehensive, integrated security system whose various components share information and work together to pinpoint attacks and minimize organizational impact — without introducing undue friction.
With businesses, networks, clouds and devices becoming so interconnected, delivering next-level security to match the future of work is a formidable undertaking — one that few vendors are positioned to tackle. But thanks to our nearly 40-year heritage of providing and protecting a vast amount of the world’s networking infrastructure, Cisco is up for the challenge.
“At a moment’s notice, we were able to transition 80 percent of our workforce to be remote — and our company was never remote before. Because of our Cisco solutions, we were able to deploy everything and have people work well remotely with very minimal issues.”
— Joseph Rodriguez, Assistant Director of IT, Allied Beverage Group
Delivering security that is simple, powerful and resilient is something we’ve been executing on for years, yet it’s never been more critical than it is at this very moment. The month of June has afforded us the perfect opportunity to showcase exactly how we plan to keep our customers cyber resilient both now and in the future.
Read about the five dimensions of security resilience.
During the RSA Conference and Cisco Live, we announced our strategic plan for the Cisco Security Cloud, a global, cloud-delivered, integrated platform that secures and connects organizations of any shape and size. As we continue to move towards the Cisco Security Cloud vision, we recently unveiled several advancements in our portfolio across SASE, XDR and zero trust.
You can read our news announcement to learn more about security resilience and how we’re delivering it. But more important than the ‘how’ is the ‘why.’ Why Cisco? What makes us uniquely positioned to secure your resilience?
As I mentioned, our customers have trusted us with their networks for nearly four decades. Currently, 80 percent of the world’s internet traffic travels through Cisco infrastructure — so we have a pretty good handle on what’s going on out there. From a security standpoint alone, we have over 300,000 customers around the globe, including 100% of the Fortune 100.
As a leader in both networking and security, the breadth and depth of our solutions is unmatched. While other vendors are just beginning to join networking with security, we’ve been doing it for years. And yet, we’re continually finding ways to simplify our robust solutions for a streamlined user experience — no matter the size of your organization, where your employees work, or whether your applications are on-premises, in the cloud, or both.
Learn more about security resilience for the hybrid work era.
In addition to unparalleled infrastructure and expertise, our open, cloud-native architecture allows you to integrate with a wide range of third-party security and technology solutions for more seamless threat defense. This includes the major cloud vendors, enabling you to secure a multi-cloud environment without getting locked in with just one public cloud provider.
Additionally, all of our solutions are backed by Cisco Talos, one of the largest commercial threat intelligence teams in the world. Combined with in-depth visibility from our Cisco Secure technologies, Talos’ extensive insight into the threat landscape leads to rapid, highly effective detection and response.
Even more crucial than what we have to say is what we have heard from our customers surrounding the “new normal” for security. “I think what the security industry could use right now is a real business outcome-oriented viewpoint,” said Tom Doughty, vice president and CISO at Prudential Financial. “Meaning, what are the strategic business outcomes you’re trying to enable? Cisco can help security teams be more aligned to our business and more resilient by allowing us to see at a granular level what’s happening in our environment, especially in an extended network.”
For the law firm of George Sink, P.A., the demands of supporting hybrid work accelerated the company’s move to the cloud. The firm is now using Cisco’s new, turnkey SASE solution to securely serve its clients under any circumstance — be it a pandemic or a hurricane. According to the firm’s CIO, Timothy Mullen, “The ability to…re-establish connectivity in another region almost immediately, with my small IT team, is unheard of and a game-changing experience.”
From financial to legal transactions, and much more, we can secure it all with our open, integrated protection platform and unwavering focus on resilience. We even had the honor of securing the Super Bowl earlier this year, helping to safeguard mission-critical gameday operations.
“The Super Bowl and events of that magnitude require a humongous orchestration of interconnectedness, not only from a technology perspective but also a people standpoint,” said NFL Chief Information Security Officer, Tomás Maldonado. “What we’re trying to do is slow down the bad actors and make it more difficult for them to attack us and impact what’s happening on the field. But at the same time, we also have to look beyond the field and think about all the various parts of our business that could be affected by an attack — recognizing that our risk factors are always changing.”
To learn more about how to keep your business strong in the face of adversity, visit our resilience web page and check out the blog from Cisco’s Jeetu Patel, “Security Resilience for a Hybrid, Multi-Cloud Future.”
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As an early adopter of Cisco Secure Endpoint, Per Mar Security Services has seen the product evolve alongside the threat landscape. According to Dan Turner, CIO at Per Mar, the evolution of the Cisco security portfolio has helped the company remain cyber resilient during the pandemic and beyond.
We recently spoke with Turner to discuss how Per Mar uses Cisco technology to rapidly detect and mitigate threats, while still enabling employees to work from wherever they need to — whether it’s a conference, job site, or home office.
Per Mar Security provides physical security services to both homes and businesses, protecting roughly 75,000 customers across 16 U.S. states. The company began using Cisco Secure Endpoint almost a decade ago to defend against attacks on its various devices. Today, it’s the main point of defense in making sure the company’s endpoints are safe. Cisco Secure Endpoint integrates with the other security products in Per Mar’s environment via Cisco SecureX.
SecureX brings together disparate security technologies from both Cisco and third parties to provide unified visibility and control. “This allows us peace of mind to know that we have the whole Cisco Secure solution being an extra set of eyes for us and making sure our customers and end users all stay safe and secure,” says Turner.
Per Mar has roughly 3,000 employees using a variety of devices on the company’s network — from Windows machines to iOS and Android devices. “We have become very mobile over the years, so working off tablets and mobile devices is how we get business done,” Turner explains. “Finding a tool like Cisco Secure Endpoint that can work across all those platforms and give my team one pane of glass to manage everything has been hugely important for us.”
This capability has enabled Per Mar to continue to operate smoothly in the midst of the pandemic. The company leveraged its existing infrastructure to spin up virtual workspaces for all of its employees within a week so they could work securely from home.
“Our Cisco systems and security frameworks allowed Per Mar to move
quickly and safely to support our employees when the pandemic hit.”— Dan Turner, CIO, Per Mar Security Services
Even before the pandemic, Cisco Secure Endpoint was able to swiftly remediate malware that found its way onto Per Mar’s network when employees worked remotely to attend conferences, for example, or to tend to other off-site obligations.
Per Mar Security provides critical protection from hazards such as burglary and fires for homes, manufacturing facilities, hospitals, college campuses, and more. It also secures special events such as high-profile football games and political conventions. Reliable IT and security systems are imperative for this work. “Without the infrastructure we have, we simply can’t provide services for our customers,” says Turner.
In addition to quickly detecting and blocking threats, the Cisco Secure portfolio integrated through SecureX has also dramatically improved Per Mar’s threat hunting and investigation capabilities. Being able to rapidly analyze data from multiple Cisco tools together in one place has enabled the company’s security team to efficiently identify the origin of a compromise down to the exact device and behavior that caused it. This ensures that the root cause can be addressed in a timely manner — often within a single day or even just a few hours.
“All those analytics allow my team to stay nimble, adapt as threats evolve, and capture any zero-day exploits that are sitting out there,” says Turner. “With Cisco Secure Endpoint, our mean time to detection is measured in hours, if not minutes, versus months or years. Because of how it ties back to the rest of the security stack that we use from Cisco, my team is able to go back through and pinpoint compromised systems in record speed.”
As the threat landscape and work environments continue to shift with the emergence of hybrid work, Per Mar remains secure. Its multi-layered defense provides robust protection against the full range of threat vectors. “Our Cisco technologies are just as critical today as they were when the world stopped spinning,” says Turner.
We are honored to play such a significant role in Per Mar’s continued success. Find out how your organization can maintain security resilience in the face of constant change.
Watch video: Per Mar Security gains threat visibility with Cisco Secure Endpoint
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Hybrid work is here to stay. According to our survey, only 9 percent of the global workforce plans to return to the office full time. Employees have become accustomed to working from home and on-the-go, and modern organizations will need to keep up with this shift to retain much-needed talent.
While flexibility has become king, many people may also miss in-person collaboration, and will want to meet with others in the office on an ad hoc basis. Businesses will need to be ready for this future of work, and empower their employees to easily conduct their roles from the office, home, coffee shop, or anywhere in between.
While it may sound daunting, it doesn’t have to be. With the right strategies and technologies in place, hybrid work can afford an organization many opportunities. It can introduce enhanced levels of agility and resilience for better company performance. It can help businesses attract skilled professionals in a competitive market. And it can also lead to cost savings, greater operational efficiencies, and improved environmental sustainability.
Of course there will always be challenges. One such challenge is cybersecurity, and hence, security resilience. With more assets to keep track of in more places, hybrid work can lead to gaps in visibility and control, providing attackers with additional ways to get in. But while attackers work hard to get into your network, Cisco continues to innovate to keep them out, no matter where your devices or users may go.
Many of the core security architectures we have been building and offering for the past several years will help to ensure a smoother transition to hybrid work, as well as greater security resilience:
Just as the workplace has evolved, so has the threat landscape. To make things even easier, we have put together the Cisco Secure Hybrid Work solution to provide exactly what you need to keep your business safe in this new work environment. All of our security technologies are backed by the superior threat intelligence of Cisco Talos, so customers can quickly adapt to detect and combat the latest risks. Talos also offers robust incident response services to help companies prepare for, respond to, and rapidly recover from attacks.
Learn how Mediapro used Cisco technologies to transition to hybrid work.
We continue to innovate to make sure our customers are prepared for what’s next. Most recently, we launched the Cisco Secure Firewall 3100 Series, which is specifically designed for hybrid work. The new firewall supports more remote workers with up to six times faster VPN performance, and also delivers a strong video conferencing experience. Cisco Secure Firewall enhances visibility and threat detection even in encrypted traffic, and helps strengthen your zero trust security posture. It also integrates with Cisco SecureX for rapid incident response.
Additionally, we recently unveiled the Cisco SecureX device insights feature. Device insights allows organizations to collect and correlate data from multiple sources to determine which devices are in an environment, where they are located, who is accessing them, their security status, and more. With so many new machines connecting to corporate infrastructure, this level of information is crucial for safeguarding the future of work.
In addition to security, Cisco’s broad hybrid work portfolio spans collaboration, networking, and IoT. With a nearly 40-year history of providing secure connectivity around the globe, we are well-equipped to empower workers to perform their best from anywhere.
“Security has always been a high priority with our extensive and intricate network but was even more critical once the pandemic began,” said Lukene Berrosteguieta, head of security operations at energy company, Repsol. “[Cisco] Business Critical Services has supported our efforts every step of the way to enhance and maintain network security across our entire infrastructure to ensure the safety of our customers and workers.”
According to Dan Turner, CIO at Per Mar Security Services, “Once COVID-19 hit the United States…we leveraged our existing infrastructure to spin up virtual workspaces for all our employees within a week so that they could work from home…. Our Cisco systems and security frameworks allowed Per Mar to move quickly and safely to support our employees.”
The way we work has forever changed, and will continue to evolve. We must enable our teams to be productive and competitive no matter what comes next. Learn how you can boost your organization’s security resilience for the years ahead.
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You’re not the only one looking forward to the big holiday sales like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Hackers are too. As people flock to retailers big and small in search of the best deals online, hackers have their shopping scams ready. Remember, McAfee frees you to live your connected life safe from threats like viruses, malware, phishing, and more. Download award-winning antivirus that protects your data and devices today.
One aspect of cybercrime that deserves a fair share of attention is the human element. Crooks have always played on our feelings, fears, and misplaced senses of trust. It’s no different online, particularly during the holidays. We all know it can be a stressful time and that we sometimes give into the pressure of finding that hard-to-get gift that’s so hot this year. Crooks know it too, and they’ll tailor their attacks accordingly as we get wrapped up in the rush of the season.
So while you already know how to spot a great deal, here are ways you and your family can spot online shopping scams so you can keep your finances safer this shopping season:
A common scam hackers use is introducing malware via email attachments, and during the holiday sale season, they’ll often send malware under the guise of offering emails and shipping notifications. Know that retailers and shipping companies won’t send things like offers, promo codes, and tracking numbers in attachments. They’ll clearly call those things out in the body of an email instead.
A classic scammer move is to “typosquat” phony email addresses and URLs that look awfully close to legitimate addresses of legitimate companies and retailers. They often appear in phishing emails and instead of leading you to a great deal, these can in fact link you to scam sites that can then lift your login credentials, payment info, or even funds should you try to place an order through them. You can avoid these sites by going to the retailer’s site directly. Be skeptical of any links you receive by email, text, or direct message—it’s best to go to the site yourself by manually typing in the legitimate address yourself and look for the deal there.
A related scammer trick that also uses typosquatting tactics is to set up sites that look like they could be run by a trusted retailer or brand but are not. These sits may tout a special offer, a great deal on a hot holiday item, or whatnot, yet such sites are one more way cybercriminals harvest personal and financial information. A common way for these sites to spread is by social media, email, and other messaging platforms. Again a “close to the real thing” URL is a telltale sign of a copycat, so visit retailers directly. Also, comprehensive online protection software can prevent your browser from loading suspicious sites and warn you of suspicious sites in your search results.
While the best of them can look practically professional and be tough to spot, one way to avoid counterfeit shopping apps is to go to the source. Hit the retailer’s website on your mobile browser and look for a link to the app from their website. Likewise, stick to the legitimate app stores such as Google Play and Apple’s App Store. Both have measures in place to prevent malicious apps from appearing in their stores. Some can sneak through before being detected though, so look for the publisher’s name in the description and ensure it is legitimate. On a fake app, the name may be close to the retailer you’re looking for, but not quite right. Other signs of a fake will include typos, poor grammar, and design that looks a bit off.
At the heart of holiday shopping is scarcity. Special offers for a limited time, popular holiday items that are tough to find, and just the general preciousness of time during the season to get things done, like shopping. Scammers love this time of year. During the holidays, they’ll play on that scarcity and crunch you’re under in their offers and messaging. Enter the “too good to be true” offer, typically set up on phony sites like the ones mentioned above. If the pricing, availability, or delivery time all look too good to be true, it may be a scam designed to harvest your personal info and accounts. Use caution here before you click. If you’re unsure about a product or retailer, read reviews from trusted websites to help see if it’s legitimate.
Apart from spotting scams, there are several things you can do to keep yourself safer while shopping this holiday season. In fact, they can keep you safer when you shop year ‘round as well. Looking for a last minute deal? Download McAfee online protection today.
This is a great one to start with. Secure websites begin their address with “https,” not just “http.” That extra “s” in stands for “secure,” which means that it uses a secure protocol for transmitting sensitive info like passwords, credit card numbers, and the like over the internet. It often appears as a little padlock icon in the address bar of your browser, so double-check for that. If you don’t see that it’s secure, it’s best to avoid making purchases on that website.
Specific to the U.S., the Fair Credit Billing Act offers the public protection against fraudulent charges on credit cards, where citizens can dispute charges over $50 for goods and services that were never delivered or otherwise billed incorrectly. Note that many credit card companies have their own policies that improve upon the Fair Credit Billing Act as well. However, debit cards aren’t afforded the same protection under the Act. Avoid using those while shopping online and use your credit card instead.
Another alternative is to set up a virtual credit card, which is a proxy for your actual credit card. With each purchase you make, that proxy changes, which then makes it much more difficult for hackers to exploit. You’ll want to research virtual credit cards further, as there are some possible cons that go along with the pros, such as in the case of returns where a retailer will want to use the same proxy to reimburse a purchase.
Using a complete suite of online protection software can offer layers of extra protection while you shop, such as web browser protection and a password manager. Browser protection can block malicious and suspicious links that could lead you down the road to malware or a financial scam. A password manager can create strong, unique passwords and store them securely as well, making it far more difficult for hackers to compromise your accounts. Identity theft protection takes your safety a step further by helping you secure your identity online and restore it should any of your personal info be found in the wrong hands.
Two-factor authentication is an extra layer of defense on top of your username and password. It adds in the use of a special one-time-use code to access your account, usually sent to you via email or to your phone by text or a phone call. In all, it combines something you know, like your password, with something you have, like your smartphone. Together, that makes it tougher for a crook to hack your account. If any of your accounts support two-factor authentication, the few extra seconds it takes to set up is more than worth the big boost in protection you’ll get.
Public Wi-Fi in coffee shops and other public locations can expose your private surfing to prying eyes because those networks are open to all. Using a virtual private network (VPN) encrypts your browsing, shopping, and other internet traffic, thus making it secure from attempts at intercepting your data on public Wi-Fi and harvesting information like your passwords and credit card numbers.
With all the passwords and accounts we keep, this is important. Checking your credit will uncover any inconsistencies or outright instances of fraud. From there, you can then take steps to straighten out any errors or bad charges that you find. In the U.S., you can run a free credit report once a year with the major credit reporting agencies.
So while you’re shopping online this year, take a deep breath before you dive in. Double-check those deals that may look almost too good to be true. Look closely at those links. And absolutely don’t click on those attachments that look like shipping notices or coupon deals. Hackers are counting on you to be in a bit of a hurry this time of year. Taking an extra moment to spot their tricks can go a long way toward keeping you and your finances safe. Remember, stay ahead of cyber criminals, get an extra layer of protection with McAfee this holiday season.
The post Spot Those Black Friday and Cyber Monday Shopping Scams appeared first on McAfee Blog.
Over the past year and a half, workers everywhere have gotten used to working from home. They have adopted an entirely new work from home mindset and diverted their weekly commuting hours to other productive and more enjoyable pursuits. As parts of the world return to a “new normal,” another change is on the way: a gradual return to the office.
The hybrid working model is met with mixed reviews from employees and business security teams alike. For some employees, a clearer separation between work and home is a welcome change. CTV News reports 66% of Canadian respondents to an International Workplace Group poll say they are looking forward to splitting their working hours between the office and home.
For business security teams who are just catching their breath after the monumental shift to a remote workforce, they are now gearing up for the new online safety challenges posed by the hybrid work model. According to a VMware Canada Threat Report, 86% of security professionals agree that cyberattacks aimed at their organizations have become more sophisticated since the onset of the pandemic. Additionally, 91% of global respondents cite employees working from home as the cause of cyberattacks. Challenges of the hybrid workforce include the constant back-and-forth of company-issued devices, the lack of control over home office setups, and mixing personal and company devices with company and personal business respectively. For example, if you pay your bills or shop online using your work device, it opens several new avenues for a hacker to walk right onto the corporate network. When your guard is down even a little bit when you are off the clock, you could fall victim to e-skimmers, fake login pages, or phishing scams.
No matter how advanced your company’s threat detection system, hackers know where vulnerabilities lie and are on the hunt to exploit them. Check out these tips to ensure you are not the weak link in your organization.
A virtual private network (VPN) is a service that scrambles online browsing data, making it impossible for nefarious characters to decipher your activity. This is an excellent way to deter hackers from tracking your movements and picking up sensitive pieces of information.
VPNs are essential if you are working in a public area, sharing a wireless network with strangers, or using a Wi-Fi connection that is not password protected. Public Wi-Fi networks are notoriously easy pickings for hackers seeking entry into unsuspecting users’ devices. On the days where you are not in the office, make sure your wireless connection is secure.
While a VPN is an excellent tool, security measures and your accounts are vulnerable without a strong and private password or passphrase to protect them. The gigantic Colonial Pipeline hack is being blamed on a hacker gaining entry through an unused VPN that was not secured with multifactor authentication. Multifactor authentication is an online safety measure where more than one method of identity verification is needed to access the valuable information that lies within password-protected accounts.
Consider using a password manager to organize all your passwords and logins. Password managers remember each pairing so you don’t have to, plus most managers are secured with multifactor authentication. A password manager makes it easier to add variety to your passwords and prevents you from ever having to write them down.
Professionals who travel between their home and an office are likely transporting their devices back and forth, increasing the number of opportunities for devices to be forgotten at either location or in transit. As convenient as it may be, never use your personal device for official business. Even if you pride yourself on sound online safety habits, your company device likely has more defenses ingrained in its hardware than your personal devices.
With your personal devices, you should carefully vet everything you download. With your work-issued devices, this vetting process is even more important as company information is at stake. The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario states that employees should never download applications to their work devices without permission from the IT team. Apps and programs often have security vulnerabilities that could open a gateway for hackers.
Zero Trust is a security philosophy that is exactly what it sounds like: trust no one. Businesses are employing Zero Trust models to greatly limit who has access to sensitive data sources. Adopt your own personal Zero Trust philosophy concerning your passwords, logins, and device access. This means never sharing passwords or log in details, especially over email, instant messenger, or over a video conference. Hackers commonly eavesdrop on all three mediums. Also, even your most trusted coworker could mishandle your passwords and login details, such as writing them down and leaving them in a public place.
A key aspect of the Zero Trust model is only granting employees access to platforms that are vital to their job. Sharing your logins with coworkers who may not be authorized for using that platform undermines all the hard work the IT team does to keep tabs on data access.
Every time you turn on the nightly news, another ransomware attack has hit another organization, each one bigger than the last. This heightened prevalence is a reflection on the wiliness of hackers, but also the number of security holes every company must plug.
There are several vulnerable points of entry in every company, and some of those vulnerabilities are heightened by the hybrid work model. Always heed the advice of your company’s IT team, and make sure to do your part to keep your devices and work information secure.
The post Hybrid Workplace Vulnerabilities: 4 Ways to Promote Online Safety appeared first on McAfee Blogs.
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