LogicGate, a leading provider of Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) solutions through its Risk Cloud® platform, announced today the release of the Automated Evidence Collection feature designed to elevate productivity, control effectiveness and data-driven decision-making while ensuring compliance and security across more than 20 cybersecurity and privacy frameworks.
Completing evidence requests are often seen as a vital, yet tedious and time-consuming process for compliance team members. By automating the evidence collection process, the security compliance team becomes more of a partner to control owners, elevating their reputation within an organization and allowing them to focus on higher impact tasks.
This new capability systematically and automatically gathers, validates, and manages critical data and evidence central to an organization’s risk management and compliance initiatives. By employing automated workflows, it seamlessly assimilates data from diverse sources, from internal systems to external data feeds, reducing the need for manual interventions and mitigating the risk of human inaccuracies.
Key advantages of the Automated Evidence Collection feature within Risk Cloud include:
Time and Resource Optimization: Eliminates manual data gathering and verification, automates reporting, saving time and reducing the resources required to compile evidence.
Increased Accuracy and Reliability: Ensures consistent and standardized data collection, reducing human error risk and providing more reliable information for compliance audits and risk assessments.
Enhanced Compliance and Audit Readiness: Helps organizations maintain continuous compliance and audit readiness with accurate and up-to-date evidence.
Near-Real-time Monitoring and Visibility: Automated solutions allow organizations to promptly identify and address compliance gaps and enhance proactive risk management.
Scalability and Efficiency: Handle large volumes of data and evidence from various sources, making it scalable for organizations of all sizes and complexities.
Streamlined Reporting and Documentation: Create comprehensive and standardized reports and documentation for compliance audits and reporting purposes.
Risk Cloud is a no-code risk and compliance platform purpose-built to scale and streamline risk assessment, regulatory compliance, and strategic decision-making. Risk Cloud ensures proactive risk mitigation and strategic alignment with a user-friendly interface, automated processes, advanced analytics, and real-time insights.
Learn more about LogicGate’s Automated Evidence Collection feature.
Today, Trend Micro released its ransomware report for 1H which found that Canada is the top 3rd country affected by successful RaaS and extortion attacks in the first and second quarters of 2023, just behind U.S. and the U.K.
The report* revealed that many ransomware threat actors are no longer going after “big game” targets, instead focusing on SMBs they presume to be less well-defended. In Canada, while ransomware file detection at enterprise organizations decreased by 69.13% in the second quarter of the year, data shows a 214.29% increase in file detections for SMBs. Findings also revealed that globally, small businesses accounted for the majority (57%) of LockBit victims and almost half (45%) of Black Cat victims in the first half of this year.
Further, healthcare, education and technology emerged as the top three industries in ransomware file detection in Canada in the first half of the year.
Additional Canadian survey findings:
Canada is included in the top 5 countries in terms of ransomware file detections in machines in March 2023. The top ransomware was BlackBasta and Trend had predicted it would continue to be of significance in Canada.
Canada was fourth in terms of LockBit’s successful attacks of victim organizations in the second quarters of 2023.
Canada was 3rd then rose to 2nd when it came to BlackCat’s successful attacks in terms of victim organizations in the first and second quarters of 2023.
Canada was the top 3rd country for Clop’s successful attacks in terms of victim organizations in the first and second quarters of 2023.
As ransomware attacks become more evolved and complex, it’s not just ransom demands that will increase through the years: recovery times are also expected to be longer. And while SMBs are surely a target, enterprise and consumer aren’t far behind.
Learn more about the ransomware threats in the first half of the yearhere.
Posted in Commentary on September 21, 2023 by itnerd
If you run a Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA), you will want to read this alert from the company. Here’s the TL:DR:
A vulnerability in the remote access VPN feature of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) Software could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to conduct a brute force attack in an attempt to identify valid username and password combinations or an authenticated, remote attacker to establish a clientless SSL VPN session with an unauthorized user.
This vulnerability is due to improper separation of authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) between the remote access VPN feature and the HTTPS management and site-to-site VPN features. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by specifying a default connection profile/tunnel group while conducting a brute force attack or while establishing a clientless SSL VPN session using valid credentials. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to achieve one or both of the following:
Identify valid credentials that could then be used to establish an unauthorized remote access VPN session.
Establish a clientless SSL VPN session (only when running Cisco ASA Software Release 9.16 or earlier).
This flaw has already been tied to ransomware attacks. Making this a today problem for anyone running an ASA box. The Cisco document has mitigations in it that I strongly recommend you take action to implement until Cisco gets around to fixing this.
Posted in Commentary with tags YouTube on September 21, 2023 by itnerd
Today, YouTube hosted Made On YouTube in New York, the flagship event to discuss the future of content creation on YouTube. At today’s event, YouTube unveiled a suite of AI-powered capabilities that will help both new and established creators and artists create, edit, and share content in bold new ways. These AI-powered tools will help unlock powerful new forms of creative expression, take the friction out of the creative process, and allow YouTube creators to reach more viewers.
Today’s key announcements include:
Dream Screen: a new generative AI feature to unlock creative expression on Shorts: Later this year, YouTube will introduce Dream Screen, a new experimental feature that allows creators to add AI-generated video or image backgrounds to their Shorts simply by typing an idea into a prompt. With Dream Screen, creators will be able to generate new, fantastic settings for their Shorts that are only limited by bounds of their imagination.
Since launching Shorts in 2020, Shorts has now climbed to over 70B daily views from over 2B logged-in users every month.
And in Canada, average daily views of YouTube Shorts grew by over 150% year-on-year
YouTube Create: Taking the work out of video production: To help anyone to create and share videos right to YouTube, today the platform has launched a new mobile app called YouTube Create, which was designed to empower creators to get started with a suite of production tools to edit their Shorts, longer videos, or both.
The app offers video editing tools including precision editing and trimming, automatic captioning, voiceover capabilities and access to a library of filters, effects, transitions and royalty-free music with beat matching technology so that creators can produce their next YouTube video without relying on complex editing software.
YouTube has consulted with more than 3k creators in the process of building YouTube Create.
Currently in beta on Android in select markets including the United States, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Indonesia, India, Korea, and Singapore, YouTube Create is free of charge.
You can read more in the media alert attached, or the blog post here.
Posted in Commentary with tags Aptum on September 21, 2023 by itnerd
Aptum, a global provider of Managed Services and Advisory & Consulting Services, today released part two of its annual Cloud Impact Study 2023 – Maximizing Value: Controlling Costs and Optimizing Cloud Spend. According to the study, 71 per cent of IT professionals surveyed stated that cloud-related costs make up 30 per cent or more of their total IT spend.
The study involved 400 senior IT professionals from organizations with 250+ employees across the U.S., Canada, and UK. It explores the trends in cloud cost management and how these trends have evolved over time.
In today’s challenging economic climate, organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the financial implications of their business operations. While the cloud has brought benefits such as flexibility, scalability, agility, and cost efficiency to organizations in recent years, there are still unforeseen costs. More than half (52 per cent) of IT professionals admitted their organizations have wasted significant IT spend due to inefficiencies with cloud platforms and services.
In fact, 73 per cent of IT respondents reported that their cloud investment has resulted in higher-than-expected IT costs within the last 12 months, marking a 28 per cent increase compared to 2021 figures. Additionally, the majority (92 per cent) of IT professionals stated that they are likely to conduct a full ROI (return-on-investment) analysis of cloud spending, a rise from 89 per cent in 2022. But what is causing these increased costs?
The survey identified several factors, including poor planning, a lack of internal expertise, the acceleration of cloud adoption, and a lack of familiarity with complex cloud solutions. These challenges are considerably magnified when organizations implement a hybrid, multi-cloud strategy that incorporates both on-premises and public cloud services for different data services and workloads. Currently, 62 per cent of respondents agree that a lack of internal expertise has prevented them from expediting cloud implementations. However, to mitigate these escalating costs, developing skills and knowledge in cloud strategy is crucial.
The results demonstrate that organizations struggle to fully realize the value of their cloud spending as they expand their adoption of cloud services. The lack of a comprehensive, multi-cloud strategy poses a challenge for many IT leaders, preventing them from fully harnessing the transformative capabilities of the cloud.
But continued cost savings rely on a clear cloud investment strategy that focuses on visibility and control of costs – especially for those accelerating cloud investment and moving into more complex, multi- and hybrid cloud environments. FinOps principles are key to ensuring organizations are operating efficiently in the cloud:
Cost Visibility and Accountability: FinOps helps gain visibility into cloud expenditures, allowing teams to be more conscious of their spending.
Optimized Resource Usage: FinOps practices help identify underutilized or unused resources, leading to termination or downsizing.
Enhanced Decision-Making and Forecasting: With clear insights, informed decisions can be made based on usage analysis, reducing the likelihood of unexpected overruns.
Cultural Change: A FinOps culture encourages cost to be an organizational mindset and a standard part of operational discussions.
Continuous Improvement: The iterative nature of FinOps ensures continuous improvement to cloud financial management practices, leading to ongoing savings.
To access the complete findings from part two of Aptum’s Cloud Impact Study 2023, Maximizing Value: Controlling Costs and Optimizing Cloud Spend, download the report here: https://aptum.com/cloud-hub/2023-cis-part-2/.
Posted in Commentary with tags CDW on September 21, 2023 by itnerd
Today, CDW Canada, a leading provider of technology solutions and services for Canadian organizations, released the 2023 Hybrid Cloud Report, which explores emerging trends and the state of hybrid cloud for Canadian organizations.
Organizations should be maximizing cloud spending
Organizations say the growing use of public cloud services will increase their ability to innovate, improve customer experience and deliver new products. The report found that Canadian CEOs expect nearly half (49 percent) of their organization’s revenue to come from digital products, services and/or experiences in the next five years.
Despite the increasing reliance on cloud services, which enable Canadian organizations to stay competitive, Canadian public cloud IT spending has room for improvement. On average, 18 percent of all public cloud services spending annually in Canada is not being maximized, highlighting a crucial area of opportunity for Canadian organizations to properly resource their plans for future business offerings.
To optimize cloud spending, organizations are turning to Financial Operations (FinOps), an evolving cloud financial management discipline designed to enable
1
maximum business value. The report found that just over half (55 percent) of Canadian organizations surveyed have an individual or team dedicated to FinOps and as with any new discipline, those responsible for it are experiencing growing pains.
The top cited challenges faced by the person or team performing IT FinOps around cloud expenditure are:
Understanding how to optimize cloud spend for architectural and business benefit (42 percent)
Allocating cloud costs to the correct team (40 percent)
Understanding cloud price models and how to apply these optimally (39percent)Leveraging a cloud partner to provide best practices for hybrid, multicloud financial management can ensure organizations maximize their spending and reduce overages.Third-party partners are essential for security and governance of hybrid, multicloud environmentsThe report found that Canadian organizations are increasingly running their compute and storage capacity across private and public clouds, increasing from 33 percent currently to 40 percent by 2025, meaning we can expect more hybrid, multicloud environments in Canada.The advantages of running hybrid, multicloud environments include the ability to be agile and resilient, allowing organizations to scale performance while meeting security and compliance requirements.Many factors may affect the scope of Canadian organizations’ digital infrastructure strategies, which dictates the use of hybrid, multicloud environments. The top cited external-facing business objectives shaping these strategies over the next two years are:
Reducing the overall cost of doing business (42 percent)
Supporting more personalized customer engagement (41 percent)
Responding to specific crisis-driven requirements (37 percent)
In comparison, the top cited internal-facing business objectives are:
Cybersecurity and data protection across all geographies (45 percent)
IT responses to unexpected business conditions when needed (40 percent)Canadian organizations will have to address complex concerns around management, governance, security and visibility that can have serious consequences for data protection.
Hybrid, multicloud environments enable the future of work in an ever-changing business landscape.Visit CDW’s Cloud Solutions page to learn more.
Posted in Commentary with tags Hacked on September 21, 2023 by itnerd
Over a month after the initial cyberattack, The Clorox Company said in its latest update to the SEC that it is still using a manual ordering process and doesn’t expect operations to return to normal until near the end of the month as it continues to untangle the disruption to operations.
“The cybersecurity attack damaged portions of the company’s IT infrastructure, which caused widescale disruption of Clorox’s operations. The company is repairing the infrastructure and is reintegrating the systems that were proactively taken offline,” the SEC filing adds.
Despite the ongoing interruption, Clorox does believe the intruders’ “activity is contained”, but the event will have considerable financial impact due to slower rate of order processing and product availability issues after manufacturing halts, the company warned.
A return to normal automated order processing is scheduled for September 25th.
“The true costs of a breach and lingering business disruption can be much larger than many risk models assume. Maintaining business continuity requires a holistic approach: regular software patches and updates, multifactor authentication, ongoing security training, incident response planning, backups, and actionable threat intelligence. Cybersecurity is complex, and the importance of speed and accuracy cannot be overstated. IT and security teams must be empowered to collaborate so that the right intel gets to the right people to rapidly take the right actions.”
This has clearly been a nightmare for Clorox. This should illustrate why you need to take precautions to make sure that you don’t end up like Clorox.
Air Canada has had to admit to the fact that they were pwned by hackers. Here’s the details:
An unauthorized group briefly obtained limited access to an internal Air Canada system related to limited personal information of some employees and certain records. We can confirm that our flight operations systems and customer facing systems were not affected. No customer information was accessed. We have contacted parties whose information has been involved as appropriate, as well as the relevant authorities.
We can also confirm all our systems are fully operational. We have since implemented further enhancements to our security measures, including with the help of leading global cyber security experts, to prevent such incidents in the future as part of our ongoing commitment to maintaining the security of the data we hold.
We have no further public comment on this matter.
I’m not sure how Air Canada knows how long that the threat actors were in their systems. After all the threat actors could have gone unnoticed for weeks or months before they attracted attention. Thus this does little to reassure me or anyone else who reads this. And this isn’t the first time that Air Canada has been pwned. The Air Canada app was the subject of a data breach a few years ago that affected 20,000 customers. Thus I think it’s safe to say that this airline doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to cybersecurity. And that you should take that into consideration the next time you need to book a flight.
LogicGate Launches Automated Evidence Collection Feature for Risk Cloud Platform
Posted in Commentary with tags LogicGate on September 21, 2023 by itnerdLogicGate, a leading provider of Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) solutions through its Risk Cloud® platform, announced today the release of the Automated Evidence Collection feature designed to elevate productivity, control effectiveness and data-driven decision-making while ensuring compliance and security across more than 20 cybersecurity and privacy frameworks.
Completing evidence requests are often seen as a vital, yet tedious and time-consuming process for compliance team members. By automating the evidence collection process, the security compliance team becomes more of a partner to control owners, elevating their reputation within an organization and allowing them to focus on higher impact tasks.
This new capability systematically and automatically gathers, validates, and manages critical data and evidence central to an organization’s risk management and compliance initiatives. By employing automated workflows, it seamlessly assimilates data from diverse sources, from internal systems to external data feeds, reducing the need for manual interventions and mitigating the risk of human inaccuracies.
Key advantages of the Automated Evidence Collection feature within Risk Cloud include:
Risk Cloud is a no-code risk and compliance platform purpose-built to scale and streamline risk assessment, regulatory compliance, and strategic decision-making. Risk Cloud ensures proactive risk mitigation and strategic alignment with a user-friendly interface, automated processes, advanced analytics, and real-time insights.
Learn more about LogicGate’s Automated Evidence Collection feature.
Leave a comment »