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• Household IoT devices face an ever-increasing risk without proper security
• Hackers compromise IoT devices and integrate them into botnets responsible for major DDoS attacks
• ISPs can do much more to protect their customers and infrastructure

IoT makes people's lives more comfortable, but for all the good it does, it's also a prime target for botnets and threat actors. Compromised IoT devices launch DDoS attacks against online services, companies, or even people. There's an entire industry built around the DDoS-as-a-Service principle, and the potential victims don't have many options for protection. A possible solution lies in the hands of ISPs when they choose to provide IoT security to their customers.

• SMBs are not prepared for security incidents but are looking for more protection
• Cybersecurity investment from SMB will likely rise
• A majority of SMBs believe that cybersecurity will be outsourced in the next five years

Small and medium businesses (SMB) know that cybersecurity is a priority, but their leaders also believe that their organization will be the target of an attack in the next six months, according to a new survey from ConnectWise.

• Most CISOs are concerned about the threat of cyberwarfare to their organisation yet a lot of businesses don’t have a strategy in place to protect against it. In fact, new research by Bitdefender found 71% of CISOs believe cyberwarfare is a threat to their organisation.
• Despite this, only just over a fifth (22%) admit to not having a strategy in place to mitigate this risk.

• Healthcare breaches continue in high numbers
• Vendor report details minority of healthcare providers can't meet NIST CSF criteria
• Healthcare providers can get back on track, but it will take a strong focus on an effective remediation plan

• Your customers can be helped to change their weak passwords
• All your company needs to do is make one change to its website
• Supports new feature coming to Google Chrome next month

• Zerologon is a zero-credential vulnerability that exploits Windows Netlogon to allow adversaries access to the Active Directory domain controllers, first reported in August 2020 
• “This attack has a huge impact” according to researchers, as attackers on the local network can launch this exploit to compromise the Windows domain controller with no authentication
•  Bitdefender customers are protected from this post-exploit technique via our Network Attack Defense, Anti-Malware SDK and Indicator of Risk (IOR) technologies

• The main driver of the IoT market is not innovation and the final product suffers
• The IoT gold rush brings more and more unsecure devices because standards and regulations don’t really exit
• Security for IoT devices can still be achieved, even in these conditions, and the solution is in the ISPs’ hands

The IoT ecosystem is built on a sand foundation, with its devices always in the spotlight for their lack of security, vulnerabilities and other potential problems looming on the horizon. With no solution in sight, even in the long run, the devices' security now falls into the users' or ISPs' responsibility.

• Chief Information Security Officers are preparing for an average of 3.3 security compliance standard audits over the next six to 12 months
• Of the CISOs working for software companies, 77% said they were preparing for SOC-2 audits
• Security seniors are worried about their current resources facing upcoming audits and security compliance

Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) must prepare for more than three audits on average in the next six to 12 months but struggle with inadequate tools, limited budgets and personnel, and inefficient manual processes.

• Simulated phishing campaign reveals recipients typically open the email 50% of the time, 32% click the malicious attachment or link, and 13% submit sensitive data
• Employees in Quality Management & Health, Purchasing / Administrative Affairs, Legal / Internal Control, Human Resources, and Research & Development have the highest rates opening and interacting with malicious emails
• Phishing attacks are winning because they target fundamental and typical human nature, researchers say

Users that deal with extensive email exchanges daily are proportionally more prone to phishing attacks than those that don’t. Hardly a surprise. But, according to one report, researchers have been able to pinpoint the exact industries and departments most prone to falling victim to email-borne cyber threats.

• The adoption of telehealth vendors has significantly expanded healthcare providers' attack surface
• Researchers find a noticeable increase in leaks from primary healthcare and telehealth companies on the dark web since February 2020
• Threat actors use strains of ransomware that are uniquely tailored to take down healthcare IT infrastructures
• Despite new risks from telehealth vendors, the healthcare sector has improved its security posture compared to 2019

While COVID-19 has proven the healthcare industry's overall resilience, it has also increased its cybersecurity risk. A new report indicates that the rapid adoption and onboarding of telehealth vendors has led to a significantly increased digital footprint and attack surface, leaving both provider and patient data at risk.

• Ransomware retakes the lead (from business email compromise) as the top cyber insurance claim the first half of the year
• Analysts observed a 47% increase in the severity of ransomware attacks, on top of a 100% increase from 2019 to Q1 2020
• Ransomware (41%), funds transfer loss (27%), and business email compromise incidents (19%) were the most frequent types of loss

Data from 25,000 small-to-midsize organizations reveals ransomware as the top cyber insurance claim in the first half of 2020, with the average ransomware demand increasing 100% from 2019 through Q1 2020.

• More organizations are moving applications and data to the cloud, driven in part by changing work environment caused by the pandemic
• Ensuring data security is a key challenge in taking full advantage of public cloud resources

This year has seen a few dramatic trends that directly affect IT, in large part results of the global health crisis: the massive shift to a work-from-home model, a significant increase in e-commerce activity, and a big jump in the use of videoconferencing and other collaborative tools—to name a few.

• 94% of IT pros have experienced a data breach at some point in time
• 79% are worried their current employer could be next
• Employee data breaches most commonly occur through external email services such as Gmail and Outlook

New research indicates that IT professionals are overwhelmingly pessimistic about their organization’s resilience facing a cyber threat. Employee data breaches are seen as the biggest risk to the business.

• 88% of data breaches are caused by human error
• Employees between the ages of 18 and 30 are five times more likely to admit to errors that compromised cybersecurity
• IT reps can leverage integrated Risk Management and Analytics to address misconfigurations and vulnerabilities, including human-triggered ones

A new study indicates that nine in 10 data breaches are caused by mindset lapses, pinning the root cause of almost all cyber incidents on insiders. Stanford University Professor Jeff Hancock believes employees are reluctant to admit to their errors if employers judge them too harshly.

• 84% of companies say their vulnerability management is efficient
• Researchers find a significant disconnect between perception and reality
• Organizations must update and automate remediation processes

Most companies place a lot of trust in their vulnerability management programs, with 84% of IT leaders rating them as "mature." However, a deeper dive into the state of vulnerability management at various companies reveals a major disconnect between that perception and reality.

• Data storage, remote access and network administration are most prevalent services exposing sensitive data
• Unsafe services are linked to other security issues in the digital supply chain
• Ukraine, Indonesia, Bulgaria, Mexico and Poland are among countries with the highest rate of domestically hosted systems running unsafe services

A third of companies in the digital realm expose unsafe services to the internet and exhibit several other critical security lapses, according to an in-depth study on the prevalence of unsafe network services.

• Most security professionals have difficulty maintaining security configurations in the cloud
• 22% still assess their cloud security posture manually
• Security pros confess they need more automated enforcement

Organizations face shortcomings in monitoring and securing their cloud environments, according to a survey of 310 security professionals.

• Criminals look for higher BEC payments
• Gift card frauds are the most common BEC incidents
• One Russian BEC operation tries to hit companies with $1.27 million attack

The average payments made through Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks are increasing significantly, according to a new report APWG Phishing Activity Trends Report.

• Cybercrime will cost more than $11 million per minute globally by 2021
• Organizations spend on average $25 per minute to tackle malicious activity
• Threat intelligence emerges as a key asset in defending the enterprise against cyber threats

The global cost of cybercrime has doubled since 2015. Cybercrime now costs organizations $25 per minute and will have a per-minute global cost of more than $11 million by 2021, according to a new report.

• 50% of businesses find it harder to detect insider threats after migrating to the cloud
• customer data is the most vulnerable to insider attacks
• the average cost of remediation after an insider attack is anywhere between $100,000 and $2 million

Insider threats pose a significant danger to any organization. This danger is exacerbated as the global pandemic forces a shift to cloud applications and remote work. According to a new report, 50% of businesses find it harder to detect insider threats after migrating to the cloud.

• Security is not only a technology problem. It’s also a people problem
• The impact in mean time to respond (MTTR) is increasing as a direct result of a lack of time to investigate every alert
• New MDR services are designed to help customers instantly up-level their incident response capabilities