System Hardening | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

In 2017, The Australian Cyber Security Center (ACSC) published a set of mitigation strategies that were designed to help organizations to protect themselves against cyber security incidents. These strategies, which became known as  the Essential Eight , are designed specifically for use on Windows networks, although variations of these strategies are commonly applied to other platforms. What is the Essential Eight?  The Essential Eight is essentially a cyber security framework that is made up of objectives and controls (with each objective including multiple controls). Initially, the Australian government only mandated that companies adhere to four of the security controls that were included in the first objective. Starting in June of 2022 however, all 98 non-corporate Commonwealth entities (NCCEs) are going to be  required to comply with the entire framework . Non-Australians take note  Although the Essential Eight is specific to Australia, organizations outside of Australia shou

Everyone makes mistakes. That one sentence was drummed into me in my very first job in tech, and it has held true since then. In the cybersecurity world, misconfigurations can create exploitable issues that can haunt us later - so let's look at a few common security misconfigurations. The first one is development permissions that don't get changed when something goes live. For example, AWS S3 buckets are often assigned permissive access while development is going on. The issues arise when security reviews aren't carefully performed prior to pushing the code live, no matter if that push is for the initial launch of a platform or for updates. The result is straight-forward; a bucket goes live with the ability for anyone to read and write to and from it. This particular misconfiguration is dangerous; since the application is working and the site is loading for users, there's no visible indication that something is wrong until a threat actor hunting for open buckets stum

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo