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Threat hunting is an essential component of your cybersecurity strategy. Whether you're getting started or in an advanced state, this article will help you ramp up your threat intelligence program. What is Threat Hunting? The cybersecurity industry is shifting from a reactive to a proactive approach. Instead of waiting for cybersecurity alerts and then addressing them, security organizations are now deploying red teams to actively seek out breaches, threats and risks, so they can be isolated. This is also known as "threat hunting."  Why is Threat Hunting Required? Threat hunting complements existing prevention and detection security controls. These controls are essential for mitigating threats. However, they are optimized for low false positive alerting. Hunt solutions, on the other hand, are optimized for low false negatives. This means that the anomalies and outliers that are considered false positives for detection solutions, are hunting solutions' leads, to b

Critical infrastructure attacks are a preferred target for cyber criminals. Here's why and what's being done to protect them. What is Critical Infrastructure and Why is It Attacked? Critical infrastructure is the physical and digital assets, systems and networks that are vital to national security, the economy, public health, or safety. It can be government- or privately-owned. According to Etay Maor, Senior Director Security Strategy at  Cato Networks , "It's interesting to note critical infrastructure doesn't necessarily have to be power plants or electricity. A nation's monetary system or even a global monetary system can be and should be considered a critical infrastructure as well." These qualities make critical infrastructure a preferred target for cyber attacks. If critical infrastructure is disrupted, the impact is significant. In some cases, such cyber attacks on critical infrastructure have become another means of modern warfare. But unlike

Over the past two years, a shocking  51% of organizations surveyed in a leading industry report have been compromised by a cyberattack.  Yes, over half.  And this, in a world where enterprises deploy  an average of 53 different security solutions  to safeguard their digital domain.  Alarming? Absolutely. A recent survey of CISOs and CIOs, commissioned by Pentera and conducted by Global Surveyz Research, offers a quantifiable glimpse into this evolving battlefield, revealing a stark contrast between the growing risks and the tightening budget constraints under which cybersecurity professionals operate. With this report, Pentera has once again taken a magnifying glass to the state of pentesting to release its annual report about today's pentesting practices. Engaging with 450 security executives from North America, LATAM, APAC, and EMEA—all in VP or C-level positions at organizations with over 1,000 employees—the report paints a current picture of modern security validation prac

Deep fakes are expected to become a more prominent attack vector. Here's how to identify them. What are Deep Fakes? A deep fake is the act of maliciously replacing real images and videos with fabricated ones to perform information manipulation. To create images, video and audio that are high quality enough to be used in deep fakes, AI and ML are required. Such use of AI, ML and image replacement are unlike other types of information manipulation, which use less extreme manipulation techniques, like misrepresentation of information, isolating parts of the information or editing it in a deceptive manner. Etay Maor, Senior Director of Security Strategy at Cato Networks adds "To add complications, the recent advancements and accessibility to AI generated text, such as GPT3, have already been used in combination with deepfakes (as a proof of concept) to create interactive, human looking conversation bots" What Do Deep Fakes Look Like? Deep fakes come in all shapes and siz

Here are three of the worst breaches, attacker tactics and techniques of 2022, and the security controls that can provide effective, enterprise security protection for them. #1: 2 RaaS Attacks in 13 Months Ransomware as a service is a type of attack in which the ransomware software and infrastructure are leased out to the attackers. These ransomware services can be purchased on the dark web from other threat actors and ransomware gangs. Common purchasing plans include buying the entire tool, using the existing infrastructure while paying per infection, or letting other attackers perform the service while sharing revenue with them. In this attack, the threat actor consists of one of the most prevalent ransomware groups, specializing in access via third parties, while the targeted company is a medium-sized retailer with dozens of sites in the United States. The threat actors used ransomware as a service to breach the victim's network. They were able to exploit third-party creden

Ransomware: contemporary threats, how to prevent them and how the FBI can help In April 2021, Dutch supermarkets faced a food shortage. The cause wasn't a drought or a sudden surge in the demand for avocados. Rather, the reason was a ransomware attack. In the past years, companies, universities, schools, medical facilities and other organizations have been targeted by ransomware threat actors, turning ransomware into the internet's most severe security crisis. The Ransomware Landscape Ransomware has existed for more than 30 years, but it became a lucrative source of income for cyber actors and gangs in the past decade. Since 2015, ransomware gangs have been targeting organizations instead of individuals. Consequently, ransom sums have increased significantly, reaching millions of dollars. Ransomware is effective because it pressures victims in two, complementary ways. First, by threatening victims to destroy their data. Second, by threatening to publicize the attack. The s

Since cybersecurity is definitely an issue that's here to stay, I've just checked out the recently released first episodes of Cato Networks  Cybersecurity Master Class Series .  According to Cato, the series aims to teach and demonstrate cybersecurity tools and best practices; provide research and real-world case studies on cybersecurity; and bring the voices and opinions of top cybersecurity thought-leaders. Designed for security and IT professionals, C-level managers and security experts, each session contains both theory and hands-on examples about strategic, tactical, and operational issues on a wide range of topics.  The classes are hosted by industry-recognized cybersecurity researcher and keynote speaker, Etay Maor, who is also Senior Director of Security Strategy at Cato. Four out of the planned annual 8-10 episodes are currently available online.  Episode 1 , entitled  How (and Why) to Apply OSINT to Protect your Enterprise  takes an in-depth look at our era of data proli

The Secure Access Service Edge (or SASE)  has been a very hot buzzword in the past year. A term and category created by Gartner 2019, SASE states that the future of networking and security lies in the convergence of these categories into a single, cloud-based platform. The capabilities that SASE delivers aren't new and include  SD-WAN , threat prevention, remote access, and others that were available from multiple vendors over the years.  So, what is, in fact, new about SASE? This is the main topic for our discussion with Yishay Yovel, Chief Marketing Office at  Cato Networks , one of the first companies that entered the SASE market. THN: Cato had been a big proponent of SASE. Why is SASE important to end customers? Yishay:  SASE is a wake-up call for our industry and IT organizations. IT infrastructure got fragmented with many point solutions that, in turn, created complexity, rigidity, high cost, and increased risk. These are systemic issues. Each point product by itself does

Lately, we can't help noticing an endless cycle where the more enterprises invest in threat prevention; the more hackers adapt and continue to penetrate enterprises. To make things worse, detecting these penetrations still takes too long with an average dwell time that exceeds 100 (!) days. To keep the enterprise protected, IT needs to figure out a way to break this endless cycle without purchasing complex security and data analysis tools and hiring the right (skilled and expensive) security professionals to operate them. Enter MDR An advanced security service, Managed Detection and Response (MDR), provides ongoing threat detection and response, leveraging AI and machine learning to investigate, alert, and contain threats. MDR is becoming popular and gaining traction. In fact, Gartner forecasts that by 2024, 25% of organizations will be using MDR services, up from less than 5% today. And by 2024, 40% of midsize enterprises will use MDR as their only managed security s

As more businesses leverage remote, mobile, and temporary workforces, the elements of business continuity planning are evolving and requiring that IT professionals look deep into the nuts and bolts of connectivity. CISOs and their team members are facing new challenges each and every day, many of which have been driven by digital transformation, as well as the adoption of other productivity-enhancing technologies. A case in point is the rapidly evolving need to support remote and mobile users as businesses change how they interact with staffers. For example, the recent COVID-19 crisis has forced the majority of businesses worldwide to support employees that work from home or other remote locations. Many businesses are encountering numerous problems with connection reliability, as well as the challenges presented by rapidly scaling connectivity to meet a growing number of remote workers. Add to that security and privacy issues, and it becomes evident that CISOs may very wel