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Demystify the Cybersecurity Risk Management Process

Cybersecurity is critical today, with data breaches becoming more common and sophisticated. As a result, cybersecurity risk management is a complex and ever-changing field.

After checking out some online surveys, we found around 304.7 million ransomware attempts in the first half of 2021. In the second half, it was even worse, reaching 318.6 million. These figures have even beaten 2020 in total, which was 281.9 million ransomware attacks. So, it's apparent that cybersecurity risk management is complex and requires IT security professionals to understand the threats posed by cybercriminals.

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8 Penetration Testing Trends You Should Know in 2022

As a result of the pandemic’s transition to remote work, the year 2022 is also considered a year of fresh challenges and transformation. The rising demand for the safety of software-based properties like web and mobile applications is projected to enhance the growth of the global pen tests market. Moreover, the growing usage of cloud-based security services is anticipated to fuel the demand for penetration testing. Additionally, the ever-increasing digitization in developing countries is projected to boost the trend of the Internet of Things-based connected devices. This, in turn, boosts the need for pen-testing. Companies have become more prone to malicious assaults and attacks. The rising number of cyber-attacks, coupled with the increasing necessity to meet the compliance measures, is estimated to be a driver for the global pen-testing market during the estimated period. To combat such malicious attacks, penetration testing company must have to keep a close eye on growing cybersecurity trends.

In the year 2022, we will undeniably continue to see attacks on the Internet of Things devices. Edge computing gadgets – where data and information are operated on as close as possible to the point it is gathered – besides centralized cloud infrastructure is all vulnerable. Once again, awareness and instruction are two of the most valuable tools when it comes to protecting against these vulnerabilities. Any cybersecurity approach should always take account of a thorough audit of each and every device that is given access to a network or is connected and a full understanding of any vulnerability it may create. As 2022 gets underway, it is the perfect time to evaluate the tech trends presently shaping the future of pen-testing, and how it will persistently go forward.

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Penetration Testing 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Ethical Hacking

Every day, we use and generate huge amounts of data. And this data is used by different sectors like healthcare, finance, marketing, and others. However, data breaches are increasingly rampant these days. That’s why such sensitive information should be safeguarded.

This is where penetration hacking comes in handy. Penetration testing or ethical hacking is used to get access to resources. Hackers carry out attacks to uncover security vulnerabilities and assess their strengths.

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Importance of Learning Java for Cybersecurity

As a new generation of threats pop-up, Java has become one of the most-used programming languages for applications, including cybersecurity. If you’re into application development, you’ll know that Java is ubiquitous for daily use. Knowing the language can be useful for a career in cybersecurity.

With that said, it’s vital to learn not only how to read and program Java but also its value in the field of cybersecurity. This will allow you to get one step ahead of hackers and other malicious parties. Here’s why learning Java is a crucial step for cybersecurity.

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API Security Weekly: Issue #136

This week, we check out how API attacks can be used to squash political dissent, a handy OAuth 2.0 security checklist as well as some common OAuth vulnerabilities and the ways to detect and mitigate them, and a case study of API penetration testing.

Vulnerability: Russian Opposition Email List Breach

Companies typically avoid providing details on their data breaches. Today we have a rare exception. The staff of the Russian opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, has posted a detailed report on both the breach they had earlier this year and their investigation into the breach. Unfortunately, the report is in Russian, so you might need to use Google Translate or auto-generated English subtitles in the video version that they posted on YouTube.

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Guide to AWS Penetration Testing

Introduction

The popularity of cloud computing is undeniably on the rise and some of the factors contributing to it include scalability, efficiency, flexibility, and reduced IT costs. As the popularity rises, however, there is a worrying Cyber Security Trend that has emerged for organizations and individuals alike.

According to the 2020 Trustwave Global Security Report, the volume of attacks on cloud services has doubled in 2020 as compared to the last year. Cloud environments are now the third most targeted environment for cyber-attacks after corporate and internal networks.

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Risky Business: Preparedness Lessons Learned from the Florida Water Plant Hack

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone in the IT security space who will argue against the importance of risk preparedness. Unfortunately, more often than not, people will talk-the-talk without walking the proverbial walk. It sounds smart: be ready for potential attacks before they happen. But we have a long way to go to put this sentiment into practice. Accidents are unplanned, and we're never quite as prepared as we should be. The "that will never happen to us" attitude is rampant among the enterprise, especially when it comes to cybersecurity.

Risk preparedness is something organizations need to start taking seriously, as seen by the recent Florida water plant hack, among others. If they don't, the outcomes could be devastating. Imagine a stadium of sick Super Bowl attendees or worse. While the focus has been largely on protecting big businesses or federal entities with lots of valuable data, no one is truly safe from bad actors — not even local municipalities. In fact, these could be even more dangerous targets when you consider something as serious as compromising a community’s water supply or information theft. 

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Shifting Left: A Penetration Tester’s Journey to the Code Analysis Camp

Most of you know me as an offensive security gal. The fact that I decided to join a SAST team frankly surprised me, as well. Now that I have officially started my job at ShiftLeft, I am taking this moment to reflect on how I got here and how I see the future of application security.

Confessions of a Newbie Web Developer

I started my career as a web developer. And I absolutely loved it! I loved building tools that solve someone else’s problems. And there is no feeling like seeing your vision materialize right in front of your eyes.

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A Complete Guide to the Stages of Penetration Testing

As per the new study, 95 percent of all successful hacks in the companies worldwide are the result of spearfishing. This is a kind of an email spoofing that targets a particular company or individual for stealing steal sensitive information or gain a grip on the network. 

As per the Statista, fig shows the nations majorly targeted by phishing attacks globally during 1st quarter 2020

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Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing

Introduction

In these days of widespread Internet usage, security is of prime importance. The almost universal use of mobile and Web applications makes systems vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Vulnerability assessment can help identify the loopholes in a system while penetration testing is a proof-of-concept approach to actually explore and exploit a vulnerability.

Cyber-attacks are increasing every day with the increased use of mobile and Web applications. Globally, statistics show that more than 70 percent of the applications either have vulnerabilities that could potentially be exploited by a hacker or worse, they have already been exploited. The data losses due to this are typical of two types. Either the data is confidential to the organization or it is private to an individual. Regardless of the category, data losses result in the loss of money or reputation. This article explores a technical process that can be adopted by industries and organizations to protect their intellectual property, and if implemented correctly, will result in better risk management.

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Scanner or Scammer: Analysis of CamScanner Vulnerability


One of the most popular photo-scanning apps with OCR capabilities, CamScanner was recently found out to be riddled with nasty malware.

An estimated 100 million of CamScanner users may be affected as a result of this threat. After a series of negative reviews on the Google Play Store by users who observed suspicious behavior on the app, Kaspersky researchers investigated and discovered the malicious components of the application. Reportedly, one of the app’s advertising libraries contained the malware component.

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Automate ZAP Security Tests With Selenium Webdriver

OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy) is an open-source and easy-to-use penetration testing tool for finding security vulnerabilities in the web applications and APIs. As a cross-platform tool with just a basic Java installation pre-requisite, it provides vulnerability scanning for beginners and penetration testing for professionals. It can be downloaded and installed as a standalone application or Docker image.

Additionally, the OWASP community has exposed ZAP APIs, which allows ZAPs to integrate with other tools/frameworks.

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Dependencies: It’s Not Just Your Code You Need to Secure

Original article published by Cristián Rojas at Hackmetrix Blog

The EQUIFAX USA event of 2017 put a spotlight an under-considered aspect of software security: it’s not just our code that we need to secure. The facts of the case are widely known, but its cause? Not so much. Little is said about the fact that this leak would not have taken place if the developers of the EQUIFAX application had upgraded their Apache Struts web framework to a more secure version.