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You're jolted awake by a 2:46 AM critical alert: ransomware in production. Customer data's compromised, systems are locked, and $1 million Bitcoin demand stares back at you. Your SIEM lit up. EDR flagged unusual file access. ITDR surfaced account anomalies. But it's too late. The attacker got in with stolen credentials, likely from a phishing email. Once authenticated, they slipped past your defenses, escalated privileges, and detonated ransomware. The post-incident report reveals what your tools missed: the initial login. If authentication had tapped real-time signals from your existing security stack — device compliance, threat intelligence, or login anomalies — the stolen credential could have been blocked at the login prompt, stopping the attack cold. Why Identity Is the New Perimeter Adversaries are increasingly focused on identities and credentials rather than fortified perimeters or servers. After all, why bother cracking a vault when you can stroll in with the keys?  ...

What are Ephemeral Accounts? Corporate audits today, for cyber security insurance or compliance, focus on group memberships to identify who has access to what. This process identifies who is a Domain Admin, Enterprise Admin, Local Administrator, Database Global Admin, Global Admin in Azure, and Root Access in AWS. Accounts with this level of access likely have static privilege. I like to call these accounts game-over accounts. If these accounts are compromised, the company will have a massive issue on its hands.  Other account types lurking in your environment can cause this level of damage. Many DevOps accounts and API keys can also cause this level of damage if compromised. DevOps accounts sometimes fall under the radar outside of the scope of compliance and cybersecurity insurance.  The new Privileged Access Management buzzword among vendors, analysts, and operations teams is Ephemeral Accounts . A common phrase I tend to hear is that we don't have static privileged acc...

ShinyHunters is a notorious cybercrime group that has resurfaced with a new playbook of SaaS-focused attacks. Known for monetizing stolen data on underground forums since 2020, ShinyHunters has historically breached companies by stealing credentials and databases. Recently, however, they've shifted tactics to aggressive social engineering, mirroring the methodology of the Scattered Spider group. Instead of exploiting software vulnerabilities, ShinyHunters now exploits human trust, targeting the underbelly of third-party SaaS platforms through impersonation and phishing. In mid-2025, a wave of breaches struck companies like Google, Workday, Pandora, Cisco, Chanel, and others, all tied together by one common thread: the attackers leveraged access to these firms' Salesforce CRM or similar cloud systems. Below, we look at what happened in the Google and Workday breaches, examine techniques ShinyHunters used, and demonstrate how a dynamic SaaS security approach (like Reco's) could have...

Device and software vulnerabilities pose an increasing risk to modern security. However, patch management is an infamously difficult (and downright Sisyphean) task for IT and security teams, who are faced with an ever-growing list of CVEs to remediate. This task was difficult enough in the days of on-premise environments, but a modern distributed workforce has to contend with all the users, devices, and applications that may exist outside the purview of traditional security solutions, like MDM. Overall, with the ever-growing number of CVEs and the ever-growing sprawl of shadow IT, patch management has become both more urgent and more daunting than ever. IT and security teams need to adopt zero trust methods to ensure that only healthy and patched devices are able to access their critical systems. With the help of SaaS management and employee-remediation tactics, teams can do even more to improve efficacy and support for their company-wide patch management programs.  French philo...

Sub: GenAI is here to stay. The organizations that thrive will be those that understand its risks, implement the right safeguards, and empower their employees to harness it safely and responsibly. For many people, generative AI (GenAI) began as personal experimentation in homes and on personal devices. Now, however, AI has become deeply ingrained in workplace habits, creating productivity gains, but also exposing organizations to significant security gaps. Sensitive company data, inadvertently or otherwise, regularly finds its way into public AI systems, leaving IT and cybersecurity leaders scrambling to respond. Once proprietary data is processed by a public AI tool, it may become part of the model's training data, serving other users down the line. For example, in March 2023, a multinational electronics manufacturer was reported to have experienced several incidents of employees entering confidential data, including product source code, into ChatGPT. Generative AI applications, su...

Gone are the days of mass phishing campaigns. Today's attackers are leveraging generative AI (GenAI) to deliver hyper-targeted scams, transforming every email, text, or call into a calculated act of manipulation. With flawless lures and tactics designed to outsmart AI defenses, cybercriminals are zeroing in on HR, payroll, and finance teams—exploiting human vulnerabilities with precision. The Zscaler ThreatLabz 2025 Phishing Report dives deep into the rapidly evolving phishing landscape and uncovers the latest trends, including top phishing targets, real-world examples of AI-driven phishing attacks, and actionable best practices to defend against the next wave of AI-powered phishing threats. Key findings on phishing attacks The ThreatLabz research team analyzed over 2 billion blocked phishing transactions captured across the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange™ cloud security platform from January 2024 to December 2024 and uncovered several key findings: Phishing is down but is more tar...

In today's digital landscape, where cyber threats are becoming increasingly sophisticated and pervasive, organizations must take a hard look at their traditional security models. For over three decades, firewalls and VPNs have been the backbone of network security. However, as the threat landscape evolves, it's clear that these legacy systems are no longer sufficient. Enter the Zero Trust model, exemplified by innovative solutions like Zscaler, which could revolutionize the way your organization approaches cybersecurity. Understanding the Risks Public IP Addresses as Attack Surfaces One of the critical vulnerabilities inherent in traditional security models is the reliance on public IP addresses. These addresses serve as direct attack surfaces for malicious actors. Just as having your phone number in a public directory makes you susceptible to unwanted calls, exposing public IPs makes organizations vulnerable to cyberattacks. Attackers can easily discover these IPs, allowing th...

Many moons ago, when the World Wide Web was young and the nerd in me was strong, I remember building a PC and setting it up as a web server. In those exciting, pioneering days, it was quite something to be able to have my very own IP address on the internet and serve my own web pages directly from my Apache server to the world. Great fun. I also remember looking at the server logs in horror as I scrolled through pages upon pages of failed login, and presumably hacking, attempts. I'd buttoned things up pretty nicely from a security standpoint, but even so, it would only have taken a vulnerability in an unpatched piece of software for a breach to occur, and from there, all bets would have been off. Even today, many internet service providers will let you provision your own server, should you feel brave enough. Of course, the stakes were not high for me at home, but knowing what we know now about the growth of ransomware attacks and how AI is facilitating them, no organization would da...

SaaS applications are the backbone of modern organizations, powering productivity and collaboration. However, they also introduce critical security risks—identity sprawl, misconfigurations, and an expanding attack surface. Identity providers have become a prime target for threat actors, prompting security teams to focus on protecting identities across multiple SaaS environments. To mitigate these risks, many organizations adopt SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) to harden configurations, enforce least-privilege access, and maintain visibility over human and non-human identities. SSPM is an essential preventive tool that improves cyber hygiene by reducing the attack surface. Yet prevention alone is not enough in today's evolving threat landscape. Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) is crucial to bridge this gap and enable organizations to detect and respond fast to active threats targeting their identity infrastructure. The Growing Threat to SaaS Identities The rise i...

CTM360 has recently observed a sophisticated global scam campaign where victims are lured through fraudulent Google Play Store download pages. CTM360, a leading cybersecurity company for Digital Risk Protection, has identified over 6,000 instances of these fake pages, tricking users into downloading malicious apps. Once installed, the apps disguise themselves as legitimate software to deploy PlayPraetor (a malware named after the authoritative Roman praetor). It seizes control of infected devices to steal banking credentials, log keystrokes, and monitor clipboard activity. The operation's global reach and complexity highlight a highly coordinated effort to compromise users' data for malicious purposes. How the Scam Works Threat actors behind PlayPraetor execute a well-crafted deception strategy: Fake Play Store Pages – Cybercriminals create highly realistic clones of Google Play Store and other trusted sources to distribute Trojanized APKs. Malicious APKs Disguised as L...

As I usually say: 'attackers are lazy'. In other words, they always follow the path of least resistance. As defenders catch up with their tactics, techniques, and procedures, the asymmetric gap between offensive and defensive capability shrinks, pushing attackers to shift their battlefield strategy, perpetuating a game that repeats over and over again. Take, for example, endpoint protection. For the last few years, endpoint protection, detection, and response have been the centerpiece of security strategies. As modern endpoint security products get better at anticipating threats based on AI-based engines, providing richer visibility and more contextual detection capabilities, attackers are pivoting away from them, looking for 'blind spots' in your architecture, leveraging vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in network devices, supply chains, and even firmware embedded deep within devices, areas where security visibility is limited. This trend is particularly significant due to the ...