Opinions & Analysis

This week, the Labour Party reported a "sophisticated, large scale cyber attack" hitting its digital platforms. What is believed to have been a Distributed Denial of Service attack was blocked by the party's cybersecurity systems. The Labour Party reported the attack to the National Cyber Security Centre, and the party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, admitted to the Independent that the event made him "very nervous" about the upcoming elections. Here's what cybersecurity experts had to say...

By Tarik Saleh, Senior Security Engineer at DomainTools Advanced Persistent Threats are long term patterns of network exploitation that go undetected for extended periods of time and are usually aimed at high profile targets such as governments, higher education institutions, political activists, and companies. They are often motivated by economic, political, and financial reasons, and the attacks tend to be highly targeted, resourceful, and risk tolerant.   The typical APT involves several phases:   Infiltration/Initial compromise:  This...

“I think therefore I am.” - René Descartes This isn’t just a pompous philosophical proposition of autonomy, instead it is a timely piece of advice for ensuring corporate cybersecurity. Descartes really was ahead of his time! Identity and access management (IAM) plays an important part in securing your IT infrastructure by mitigating risk from both external cyberattack, and internal threat. Any company that thinks seriously about protecting sensitive information about their employees or customers should...

Written by John Czupak, CEO, ThreatQuotient There’s something big brewing in the world of security operations, but what exactly is it? We are regularly inundated with various descriptions of useful tools and capabilities (think Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR), Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs), Security Incident Response (SIR), Hunting and more). Unfortunately, many of us are equally confused about the fundamental capabilities of these technologies, and more pointedly, what problems they aim to solve. Perhaps...

We often question what drives the success behind enormous companies like Google and Amazon. A large part of the answer is machine learning. These companies have quickly adopted machine learning, finding smarter ways to apply it and changing the dynamic of how they work. With the extra analytical muscle that machine learning affords, they’re able to drive more intelligent and innovative projects which – let’s be honest – just work. The result of the dominance...

The zero trust model has been developed because the distinction between “external” and “internal” areas of information systems has begun to blur. Private applications stand alongside their SaaS-based brethren, while the infrastructure transitions from virtualised servers in the data centre to services and apps residing on public clouds. Users are also changing. Not only are they quite often mobile, but they are also no longer strictly human beings. The number of APIs is exploding, and...

As digital footprints widen and the value of data increases, so too does the risk for organisations. The latest Cyber Security Breaches survey reported that 43 per cent of UK businesses experienced a breach in the previous 12 months. This figure rises to 65 per cent in medium to large businesses. No sector is immune from cyber attacks and the increasing level of sophistication means that they present some of the most the most strategically...

  Load balancing of application traffic has been around for a long time. But, as more organisations move to the private and public cloud, it’s undergoing significant changes. Let’s look at some of the important considerations of this evolving technology. Three major requirements underline IT operations and DevOps today: agile, efficiency and, multi-cloud operations. Agile: The movement toward public cloud is arguably driven by an organisation’s desire to deliver more functionality faster. Public clouds like...

By Anthony Perridge, VP International, ThreatQuotient In 2017, the value per Bitcoin reached over €20,000 (£17,324) - a climax in the hype surrounding the cryptocurrency. However, confidence has been lacking for the price to remain stable. To date, online currencies are more speculation than real means of payment as concerns around security are being raised. An establishment is only possible if users believe in the value’s sustainability, and this applies to every means of payment....

The size of the online gambling industry is expected to approach $75 billion by 2024, driven largely by technological advancements and favourable regulatory shifts. This projected growth presents ample opportunity to companies operating in the industry, but it comes with the drawback of attracting unwanted cybercriminal interest. The online gambling industry has often been a pioneer in developing anti-fraud and device-fingerprinting technology to prevent the abuse of its platforms. But as cybercriminals continue to refine...