Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Software supply chain attacks, or digital supply chain attacks, have become increasingly prevalent over the last couple of years. According to a study by KPMG, 73% of organizations have experienced at least one significant disruption from a third-party in the last three years. What’s the best way to protect against potential software supply chain attacks? To get the answer, let’s define what those attacks are, how they happen, and how you can defend against them.

Arguably, the most used device by an organization’s employees is their smartphone. Ensuring that anyone, from the CEO to a newcomer being onboarded, knows how to keep this device safe should be paramount. Why? Globally, more than 2 million attacks on mobile devices are reported each month, according to Statista. While the number of attacks has dropped precipitously from its peak of 6.5 million in October 2020, it is still dangerously high and a favorite threat actor attack vector.

New data shows a massive uptick in attacks across all industries, but a particularly worrisome growth in interest in targeting the public sector – and the indicators of who’s responsible may surprise you.

While spam tends to be dismissed as being more an annoyance, new research shows that there is a very real and ever-present threat in emails that are marked as “spam”. I’ve written plenty about phishing attacks that target bank customers. It’s nothing new. What’s interesting is a recent article by security researchers at BitDefender where banking-related phishing attacks are considered spam.

Financial services institutions (FSIs) have become an increasingly common target for malicious actors. According to Boston Consulting Group, FSIs are 300 times more likely to face cyber attacks than other sectors, and the 2022 VansonBourne report noted that 94% of the FSIs it surveyed experienced a cyber attack in the last 12 months.

On June 22nd, 2023, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the UK's cybersecurity agency, released a Cyber Threat Report for the country's legal sector. Developed to update a previous iteration from 2018, the report reflects a dramatic change in the cybersecurity threat landscape, offering advice that considers the security issues inherent with remote working, new data revealing the UK legal sector's vulnerability to cybercrime, and the increasing prevalence of attacks on smaller organizations.

The most common types of cyberattacks are phishing, variations of password attacks, malware, spoofing, supply chain attacks, DDoS attacks, identity-based attacks, IoT attacks and insider threats. Continue reading to learn more about what these cyberattacks are and how to keep yourself protected from them.

It’s been reported that 2.6 million user records sourced from the Duolingo app are for sale. The attacker apparently obtained them from an open API provided by the company. There’s a more technical explanation available here. While we talk a lot about the vulnerabilities in the OWASP API Top-10 and the exploits associated with those vulnerabilities, this incident provides a good reminder that not all vulnerabilities are flaws in code. In fact, this API was working as designed.

Business Email Compromise (BEC) remains a lucrative threat vector for attackers. The FBI’s IC3 reported that in 2022, they received 21,832 complaints with adjusted losses of over $2.7 billion. When it comes to targeted attacks, threat actor sophistication is evident in their ever-evolving tactics, even as detection capabilities and preventative measures improve. Let’s take a look at the current BEC landscape for the first half of 2023.