Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

The Center for Internet Security (CIS) is a nonprofit organisation that uses a community-driven process to release benchmarks to safeguard enterprises against cyber attacks. It is one of the most recognised industry standards that provides comprehensive configuration checklists to identify and remediate security vulnerabilities in a computing environment.

This is a guest blog by Trent R.Hein, Co-CEO of Rule 4. Once in a while an opportunity comes along that brings out our inner geek like no other, which is what happened when Canonical asked if we’d be willing to review the overall cybersecurity model of Ubuntu Core and its ecosystem.

Identity theft is on the rise and it is not enough to simply stay on top of the latest trends in this arena to avoid falling victim to common cons; you need to be proactive to prevent sensitive information being stolen and used against you. This is where Identity Guard’s identity theft protection tool comes into play. It aims to deliver always-on protection from the biggest threats faced by innocent web users.

With so many people working from home, the perimeter of corporate data safety has suddenly grown very large, in many cases encompassing employee home computers. Data loss prevention (DLP) was challenging enough already, but now it takes on even more importance. One way that data can escape the corporate network is by getting copied to USB thumb drives. Some companies take the approach of gluing or epoxying the USB ports closed.

What do you think is the most important aspect of a company? Performance? Perhaps you’re thinking of profits. True, performance and profits are crucial. But security tops the list. Every company caters to different users regularly. But does the necessity of security change whether the user base is narrow or wide? Users have access to a lot of information, and often, this leads to the risk of unauthorized access and data breach.

Over 44 records are stolen per second every day due to data breaches, and according to the Risk Based Security Research report published in 2019, databases are the top most targeted assets for malicious actors to exploit organizations’ confidential data. Often, organizations don’t realize their databases have been compromised for months. Once sensitive data is leaked, the damage can’t be undone.

The cybersecurity threat landscape is quickly changing. Administrators have become more cautious when it comes to security and governing access, end users have become tech-savvy and security-aware, and attackers have also raised their game. Living-off-the-land attacks, or LOTL, is one clear trend today, with attackers exploiting preinstalled features and default tools built into system.

USB devices are undeniably valuable, but they can be dangerous. On one hand, they are useful in transporting enterprise-critical data, but on the other, they can wreak havoc if misplaced, corrupted due to a human or hardware-related error, or stolen. It’s no wonder some companies forbid the use of USB devices altogether.

Containers are becoming the new computing standard for many businesses. New technology does not protect you from traditional security concerns. If your containers handle any sensitive data, including personally identifiable information (PII), credit cards or accounts, you’ll need to take a ‘defense in depth’ approach to container security. The CI/CD pipeline is vulnerable at every stage, from build to ship to runtime.