Incident response | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The fight to protect your company's data isn't for the faint of heart. As an embattled IT warrior, with more systems, apps, and users to support than ever before, keeping everything up and running is a battle in itself. When it comes to preventing the worst-case scenario from happening, you need all the help you can get, despite your super-hero status. According to SANS, there are 6 key phases of an incident response plan. Preparation - Preparing users and IT to handle potential incidents in case they happen Identification - Figuring out what we mean by a "security incident" (which events can we ignore vs. which we must act on right now?) Containment - Isolating affected systems to prevent further damage Eradication - Finding and eliminating the root cause (removing affected systems from production) Recovery - Permitting affected systems back into the production environment (and watching them closely) Lessons Learned - Writing everything down and reviewing an

Two days ago, The Hacker News (THN) reported about the Zero-day vulnerability in the freshly patched Adobe Flash Player . The vulnerability was exploited in the wild by a well-known group of Russian hackers, named " Pawn Storm ," to target several foreign affairs ministries worldwide. The zero-day flaw allowed hackers to have complete control of the users' machine, potentially putting all the Flash Player users at a potentially high risk. Since then, there was no patch available to make flawed utility safe. However, Adobe has now patched the zero-day vulnerability, along with some critical vulnerabilities whose details are yet to be disclosed. Yesterday, the company published a post on their official security bulletin ( APSB15-27 ) detailing the risks associated with the zero-day and how a user can get rid of them. The critical vulnerabilities are assigned following CVE numbers: CVE-2015-7645 CVE-2015-7647 CVE-2015-7648 Also, Adobe is kn

Imagine a world where the software that powers your favorite apps, secures your online transactions, and keeps your digital life could be outsmarted and taken over by a cleverly disguised piece of code. This isn't a plot from the latest cyber-thriller; it's actually been a reality for years now. How this will change – in a positive or negative direction – as artificial intelligence (AI) takes on a larger role in software development is one of the big uncertainties related to this brave new world. In an era where AI promises to revolutionize how we live and work, the conversation about its security implications cannot be sidelined. As we increasingly rely on AI for tasks ranging from mundane to mission-critical, the question is no longer just, "Can AI  boost cybersecurity ?" (sure!), but also "Can AI  be hacked? " (yes!), "Can one use AI  to hack? " (of course!), and "Will AI  produce secure software ?" (well…). This thought leadership article is about the latter. Cydrill  (a

Let's be honest, a network attack of any scale is inevitable in today's IT world. Do you have the ability to quickly identify the details of the attack? If your network goes down, your network monitoring tool can tell you what happened, but knowing details about who was vulnerable or why the attack happened is even more valuable. An often overlooked feature of log management software is the ability to conduct forensic analysis of events. Instead of searching for a needle in a haystack, forensic analysis tools can make drilling down to identify details a quick and easy task. SolarWinds Log & Event Manager has cutting-edge IT search for fast and easy forensic analysis. Here are six ways that the forensic analysis feature of Log & Event Manager can help you piece together what really happened. 1) Incident response Say goodbye to complex queries. Conducting forensic analysis, in general, is a quicker and simpler way to do incident response. The faster you

Attackers care about ROI – they want to accomplish their objective with the least investment of time and resources possible. The same is true for you - to most effectively manage vulnerabilities, you need to think like an attacker. Ask yourself: How would you go about compromising systems, exfiltrating valuable information and making money? What are the key assets in your network that you would target? How would you get to these assets? Attackers are looking for vulnerabilities that are exposed – ones offering them an easy way to penetrate your network and pivot into the truly valuable assets on your network. Although zero-day exploits are heavily publicized, attackers more often use older, proven exploits very effectively. Fortunately, many such exploits are well known and have clear remediation methods. So, how can you determine if a known vulnerability is actually exploitable? The key is to correlate system vulnerabilities with threat intelligence so you can prioriti

Security Information & Event Management (SIEM) has evolved over the years to become one of the most trusted and reliable solutions for log management, security, and compliance. The demand for SIEM tools is constantly increasing within network and IT security teams. This is due particularly to the colossal surge of security breaches and cyber-attacks that impact corporations and cause financial loss and damaged reputations. When conducting research for an SIEM solution, it's important to be able to identify features that will enable effective detection, prevention, and response to security threats. Below, we'll discuss a number of critical topics to consider when selecting an SIEM solution. Log Correlation – The Heart of SIEM SIEM software works with the principle of log collection and correlation, therefore, it's important to ensure that log correlation happens effectively, in real time, and provides centralized visibility into potentially insecure and non-co