Blue Team | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A few days ago, a friend and I were having a rather engaging conversation that sparked my excitement. We were discussing my prospects of becoming a red teamer as a natural career progression. The reason I got stirred up is not that I want to change either my job or my position, as I am a happy camper being part of Cymulate's blue team. What upset me was that my friend could not grasp the idea that I wanted to keep working as a blue teamer because, as far as he was concerned, the only natural progression is to move to the red team.  Red teams include many roles ranging from penetration testers to attackers and exploit developers. These roles attract most of the buzz, and the many certifications revolving around these roles (OSCP, OSEP, CEH) make them seem fancy. Movies usually make hackers the heroes, while typically ignoring the defending side, the complexities and challenges of blue teamers' roles are far less known. While blue teams' defending roles might not sound as...

What is the difference between a penetration test and a red team exercise? The common understanding is that a red team exercise is a pen-test on steroids, but what does that mean? While both programs are performed by ethical hackers, whether they are in-house residents or contracted externally, the difference runs deeper. In a nutshell, a pen-test is performed to discover exploitable vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that would potentially serve unethical hackers. They primarily test the effectiveness of security controls and employee security awareness. The purpose of a red team exercise, in addition to discovering exploitable vulnerabilities, is to exercise the operational effectiveness of the security team, the blue team. A red team exercise challenges the blue team's capabilities and supporting technology to detect, respond, and recover from a breach. The objective is to improve their incident management and response procedures. The challenge with pen-testing and red te...

Are you using the cloud or thinking about transitioning? Undoubtedly, multi-cloud and hybrid environments offer numerous benefits for organizations. However, the cloud's flexibility, scalability, and efficiency come with significant risk — an expanded attack surface. The decentralization that comes with utilizing multi-cloud environments can also lead to limited visibility into user activity and poor access management.  Privileged accounts with access to your critical systems and sensitive data are among the most vulnerable elements in cloud setups. When mismanaged, these accounts open the doors to unauthorized access, potential malicious activity, and data breaches. That's why strong privileged access management (PAM) is indispensable. PAM plays an essential role in addressing the security challenges of complex infrastructures by enforcing strict access controls and managing the life cycle of privileged accounts. By employing PAM in hybrid and cloud environments, you're not...