Risk Assessment | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Imagine you're considering a new car for your family. Before making a purchase, you evaluate its safety ratings, fuel efficiency, and reliability. You might even take it for a test drive to ensure it meets your needs. The same approach should be applied to software and hardware products before integrating them into an organization's environment. Just as you wouldn't buy a car without knowing its safety features, you shouldn't deploy software without understanding the risks it introduces. The Rising Threat of Supply Chain Attacks Cybercriminals have recognized that instead of attacking an organization head-on, they can infiltrate through the software supply chain—like slipping counterfeit parts into an assembly line. According to the 2024 Sonatype State of the Software Supply Chain report , attackers are infiltrating open-source ecosystems at an alarming rate, with over 512,847 malicious packages detected last year alone—a 156% increase from the previous year. Traditional sec...

As the cybersecurity landscape continues to evolve, proactive vulnerability management has become a critical priority for managed service providers (MSPs) and IT teams. Recent trends indicate that organizations increasingly prioritize more frequent IT security vulnerability assessments to identify and address potential security flaws. Staying informed on these trends can help MSPs and IT teams remain one step ahead of potential cyber-risks. The Kaseya Cybersecurity Survey Report 2024 navigates this new frontier of cyber challenges. The data is clear: Organizations are becoming increasingly reliant on vulnerability assessments and plan to prioritize these investments in 2025. Companies are increasing the frequency of vulnerability assessments  In 2024, 24% of respondents said they conduct vulnerability assessments more than four times per year, up from 15% in 2023. This shift highlights a growing recognition of the need for continuous monitoring and quick response to emerging t...

Most microsegmentation projects fail before they even get off the ground—too complex, too slow, too disruptive. But Andelyn Biosciences proved it doesn't have to be that way.  Microsegmentation: The Missing Piece in Zero Trust Security   Security teams today are under constant pressure to defend against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. Perimeter-based defenses alone can no longer provide sufficient protection as attackers shift their focus to lateral movement within enterprise networks. With over 70% of successful breaches involving attackers moving laterally, organizations are rethinking how they secure internal traffic.  Microsegmentation has emerged as a key strategy in achieving Zero Trust security by restricting access to critical assets based on identity rather than network location. However, traditional microsegmentation approaches—often involving VLAN reconfigurations, agent deployments, or complex firewall rules—tend to be slow, operationally disrupt...

As many as 768 vulnerabilities with designated CVE identifiers were reported as exploited in the wild in 2024, up from 639 CVEs in 2023, registering a 20% increase year-over-year. Describing 2024 as "another banner year for threat actors targeting the exploitation of vulnerabilities," VulnCheck said 23.6% of known exploited vulnerabilities (KEV) were known to be weaponized either on or before the day their CVEs were publicly disclosed. This marks a slight decrease from 2023's 26.8%, indicating that exploitation attempts can take place at any time in a vulnerability's lifecycle. "During 2024, 1% of the CVEs published were reported publicly as exploited in the wild," VulnCheck's Patrick Garrity said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This number is expected to grow as exploitation is often discovered long after a CVE is published." The report comes over two months after the company revealed that 15 different Chinese hacking groups o...

Attack surfaces are growing faster than security teams can keep up – to stay ahead, you need to know what's exposed and where attackers are most likely to strike. With cloud adoption dramatically increasing the ease of exposing new systems and services to the internet, prioritizing threats and managing your attack surface from an attacker's perspective has never been more important. In this guide, we look at why attack surfaces are growing and how to monitor and manage them properly with  tools like Intruder . Let's dive in. What is your attack surface? First, it's important to understand what we mean when we talk about an attack surface. An attack surface is the sum of your digital assets that are 'reachable' by an attacker – whether they are secure or vulnerable, known or unknown, in active use or not. You can also have both internal and external attack surfaces - imagine for example a malicious email attachment landing in a colleague's inbox, vs a new FTP server being...

As GenAI tools and SaaS platforms become a staple component in the employee toolkit, the risks associated with data exposure, identity vulnerabilities, and unmonitored browsing behavior have skyrocketed. Forward-thinking security teams are looking for security controls and strategies to address these risks, but they do not always know which risks to prioritize. In some cases, they might have blind spots into the existence of risks. To help, a new complimentary risk assessment is now available. The assessment will be customized for each organization's browsing environment, evaluating their risk and providing actionable insights. Security and IT teams can leverage the assessment to strengthen their security posture, inform their decision-making, evangelize across the organization, and plan next steps. The assessment results in a report that includes a high-level overview of key risks, including insecure use of gen AI, sensitive data leakage risks through the browser, SaaS app usage, ...

In 2024, cyber threats targeting SaaS surged, with 7,000 password attacks blocked per second (just in Entra ID)—a 75% increase from last year—and phishing attempts up by 58%, causing $3.5 billion in losses (source: Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2024 ). SaaS attacks are increasing, with hackers often evading detection through legitimate usage patterns. The cyber threat arena saw standout players, unexpected underdogs, and relentless scorers leaving their mark on the SaaS security playing field.  As we enter 2025, security teams must prioritize SaaS security risk assessments to uncover vulnerabilities, adopt SSPM tools for continuous monitoring, and proactively defend their systems. Here are the Cyber Threat All-Stars to watch out for—the MVPs, rising stars, and master strategists who shaped the game. 1. ShinyHunters: The Most Valuable Player Playstyle: Precision Shots (Cybercriminal Organization) Biggest Wins: Snowflake, Ticketmaster and Authy Notable Drama: Exploited on...

When CVEs go viral, separating critical vulnerabilities from the noise is essential to protecting your organization. That's why Intruder, a leader in attack surface management, built Intel - a free vulnerability intelligence platform designed to help you act fast and prioritize real threats. What is Intel? Intel was created to fill a gap in the resources available for tracking emerging vulnerabilities. When one of Intruder's go-to tools shut down last year, the team set out to build a solution that would not only meet their needs but also benefit the wider infosec community. Intel tracks the top trending CVEs from the past 24 hours and assigns each a 'hype score' - a rating out of 100, benchmarked against the year's highest levels. Alongside real-time insights, Intel features expert commentary from Intruder's Security team and consolidates the latest information from trusted sources like NVD and CISA, all in one place. 5 Ways Intel Helps You Stay Ahead Keep on top of trends: I...

Sherlock Holmes is famous for his incredible ability to sort through mounds of information; he removes the irrelevant and exposes the hidden truth. His philosophy is plain yet brilliant: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Rather than following every lead, Holmes focuses on the details that are needed to move him to the solution. In cybersecurity, exposure validation mirrors Holmes' approach: Security teams are usually presented with an overwhelming list of vulnerabilities, yet not every vulnerability presents a real threat. Just as Holmes discards irrelevant clues, security teams must eliminate exposures that are unlikely to be exploited or do not pose significant risks. Exposure validation (sometimes called Adversarial Exposure Validation) enables teams to concentrate on the most significant issues and minimize distractions. Similar to Holmes' deductive reasoning, validation of exposures directs organizations towa...

As technology adoption has shifted to be employee-led, just in time, and from any location or device, IT and security teams have found themselves contending with an ever-sprawling SaaS attack surface, much of which is often unknown or unmanaged. This greatly increases the risk of identity-based threats, and according to a recent report from CrowdStrike, 80% of breaches today use compromised identities, including cloud and SaaS credentials. Given this reality, IT security leaders need practical and effective  SaaS security solutions  designed to discover and manage their expanding SaaS footprint. Here are 5 key ways Nudge Security can help. Close the visibility gap Knowing the full scope of SaaS apps in use is the foundation of a modern IT governance program. Without an understanding of your entire SaaS footprint, you cannot say with confidence where your corporate IP is stored (Did someone sync their desktop to Dropbox?), you cannot make assumptions about your customer da...

There is one simple driver behind the modern explosion in SaaS adoption: productivity. We have reached an era where purpose-built tools exist for almost every aspect of modern business and it's incredibly easy (and tempting) for your workforce to adopt these tools without going through the formal IT approval and procurement process. But this trend has also increased the attack surface—and with it, the security and governance headaches that are still viewed as 100% the responsibility of IT and security teams. IT security leaders need scalable solutions for SaaS discovery and managing this ever-expanding attack surface. At the same time, their finance counterparts are seeking to cut technology spend (rather than salaries or headcount)—especially the low-hanging fruit of underutilized or over-deployed SaaS licenses, which Gartner estimates to be about  25% of all SaaS subscriptions . But, the key question is - where can you reduce your SaaS attack surface (and spend) without impa...

Deploying advanced authentication measures is key to helping organizations address their weakest cybersecurity link: their human users. Having some form of 2-factor authentication in place is a great start, but many organizations may not yet be in that spot or have the needed level of authentication sophistication to adequately safeguard organizational data. When deploying advanced authentication measures, organizations can make mistakes, and it is crucial to be aware of these potential pitfalls.  1. Failing to conduct a risk assessment A comprehensive risk assessment is a vital first step to any authentication implementation. An organization leaves itself open to risk if it fails to assess current threats and vulnerabilities, systems and processes or needed level of protections required for different applications and data.  Not all applications demand the same levels of security. For example, an application that handl...