Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Cloud applications have opened up limitless opportunities for most organizations. They make it easier for people to collaborate and stay productive, and require a lot less maintenance to deploy, which means they’re much more affordable and easy to scale to your needs. But for all of their benefits, cloud apps also open up your organization to a host of new risks. By enabling users anywhere access to corporate resources you lose the visibility and control that perimeter-based tools provide.

Moving to a new home is listed as one of the main stressors in life. When organizations switch offices to accommodate business needs, moving can also be a major stressor for IT teams — but it doesn’t need to be. Not too long ago we moved our Boston office to a new location, one of our major engineering hubs, where many of our engineers and IT members work.

‍The NSO Group, the vendor behind Pegasus, is struggling financially, and to solve their money problems, the company is now considering selling their surveillanceware to governments with poor human rights records.

With nearly every organization going through rapid digital transformations, it has become critical that security teams are equipped to provide seamless access for their remote users while keeping sensitive data secure. This is why I’m thrilled that Verizon has launched the Lookout suite of cloud security solutions to deliver security service edge (SSE) and ensure that customers can seamlessly secure their data and apps in the cloud, on premises and on the internet.

Don't bring your personal life into the office; don't bring your work stuff home — these were already difficult tasks prior to the 2020 pandemic. Now, with hybrid work settling in, they have become nearly impossible to achieve. Where we work is no longer tethered to a static location. From the Wi-Fi we connect to, to the devices we use for work, our personal and professional lives are now closely intertwined.

After a two-year hiatus, the Gartner Security and Risk Management, London is back! I had the privilege of attending a number of sessions, spending time talking with analysts and digesting some of the latest cybersecurity trends and strategies, including the Top Cybersecurity Predictions for 2022-2023 from Gartner. Two themes that stood out to me were security service edge (SSE) and extended detection and response (XDR) Below are some of my key takeaways from this year’s conference.

My first interaction with a firewall was with a TIS Gauntlet that I compiled on a Sun workstation in 1994. Since then, I have worked with firewalls from Checkpoint (back when configuration files were clear text flat files and they only had support out of their headquarters in Israel), Raptor, Pix (when they booted from a 3 ¼” floppy), and finally the Cisco ASAs, FortiGates, and Palo Alto firewalls of today.

Modern organizations are built on data. It enables collaboration and helps us engage with customers. But that same helpful data is also sprawled across countless apps, making it difficult to secure. Ransomware attacks are on the rise — 57% of security leaders expect ransomware to compromise their organization within the next year — which makes data protection more essential than ever.

Many of today’s security tools are built to secure cloud services. But we need to keep in mind that many organizations still require configurations that don’t have direct connection to the cloud. Organizations that have numerous branch locations — like convenience stores, school districts and banks — often use a software-defined wide area network, or SD-WAN.

The education systems, including K-12 school institutions, are in the crosshairs of increasingly frequent and sophisticated cyberattacks. In just one month of 2021, educational organizations suffered more than 5.8 million malware incidents. Teachers, administrators and students are also targets as they use various devices such as laptops and smartphones to browse social media or send messages with friends and family.