Media coverage published in 2022

Vectra VP of Marketing Mike Banic predicts data science and machine learning will become the focus of the fight on cyber-attacks, cyber security will get social, and new entrants will continue to disrupt the cyber security market.

Our roundup of intriguing new products from companies such as Dell, CloudBerry and Vectra (See Slide 16).

Real-time cyber-attack detector Vectra Networks has introduced a real-time detection platform for insider and targeted threats.

Working in information security for the past 20 years, I have seen a lot. Though there have been many multi-million dollar impact breaches, the recent Sony Pictures hack and subsequent data exposure and extortion is probably the most impactful to a company out of the previous breaches this year.

Vectra Networks has released an updated real-time detection platform – X-series platform – aimed for insider and targeted threats detection.

Regardless of how well we secure our assets from outside parties, we ultimately need to give access to our employees, contractors and partners in order for them to do their jobs. Misuse of this privileged access, whether through data theft or damage, is an unfortunate, yet inherent risk of doing business for most organizations.

Vectra Networks announced release of a real-time detection platform to protect organizations and government agencies from insider and target threats.

The Vectra X-series platform is designed to detect sophisticated threats by using a combination of security research, data science and machine learning. According to the company, the product is capable of detecting attacks on all operating systems, applications and devices regardless of the method and location of the initial delivery.

Vectra Networks has released its updated X-series platform, the first real-time detection solution designed to discover insider and targeted threats. The new platform promises to help organizations gain instant visibility into potential threats by leveraging a combination of dynamic community threat analysis and real-time detection of cyberattacks.

CEO Hitesh Sheth tells Bloomberg TV's Pimm Fox how Community Threat Analysis dynamically creates a clear picture of typical network access through the entire corporate network, identifying anomalies and flagging unauthorized access to documents, data and intellectual property, making it an effective way of recognizing insider attacks.

Frank Ohlhorst details how data breaches happen and what Vectra’s X-series security appliances can do to detect and prevent them.

“We've gone from an environment where people were essentially stationary with fixed computing assets to one where everything is porous and people are mobile and applications and data and information are all in the cloud,” says Hitesh Sheth, president and CEO for Vectra Networks.

The systems of entertainment giant Sony have been hacked once again, and although the full extent of the breach is not yet known, the incident will likely be added to the list of most damaging cyberattacks.

Vectra Networks' X-series of appliances combine advanced analytics with AI to identify threats in real time.

Ten percent of hosts experience at least one or more cyberattacks that bypass enterprise security perimeter defenses, according to a new study by security solution provider Vectra Networks.

The new "C" version of the NotCompatible malware that targets Android devices is very difficult to stop – but it's not that hard to avoid.

A report by data security company Vectra Networks looks at how cybercriminals bypass perimeter defenses, andwhat they do inside a network once they have gained access.

Overall, 15 percent of hosts in the participating organizations experienced a targeted attack, according to a Vectra Networks report.

When it comes to the darkhotel issue and the fast-evolving threat landscape, "what the malware is doing" is more important than "what the malware is."

There's speculation that China might be behind a months-long hack attack that breached USPS servers, compromising personal data of workers and customers.

An attack happens and he or she is able to squeeze by the perimeter defense; that is just the beginning for an assault on a network, a new report shows.

Vectra Networks collected data over five months from more than 100,000 hosts within sample organizations to gain a deeper understanding of breaches that inevitably bypass perimeter defenses, and what attackers do once inside networks.

Mobile technologies can be a boon to productivity, but they also introduce cyber-security vulnerabilities that technologists and insurers are laboring to protect.

Got malware? More than likely you do, but don't panic: The bulk of infections can be traced to standard botnet activity like spamming and click-fraud rather than data theft, a new study of real-world breaches has found.

Highly organized, sophisticated and successful cyber attacks continue to assail organizations and while most are opportunistic, a higher than expected percentage are targeted, according to results from a recent study.

This is the first report, using real-world data from the Vectra X-series platforms currently in production networks, that reveals what attackers do within a network once they evade perimeter defenses.

Every year Computer Technology Review ranks the top 25 software applications that you absolutely must check out. This year, new-comer Vectra Networks is in the mix.

Some large U.S. retailers are refusing to use Apple Inc's new electronic payments service as they commit to developing a rival payments system that would bolster their profits by eliminating credit card transaction fees.

Mobile technology advances have brought about the once-unfathomable prospect that wireless security is at least on a par with traditional computing and networking systems – the very ones currently fending off an unprecedented wave of cyberattacks.

Explore the challenges, understand needs and evaluate mobile device management as an approach to detecting attacks. It can lead to a flexible, highly efficient solution that detects all phases of an active attack on mobile devices, regardless of device type, operating system or applications installed.

If you patched your Linux-based systems before 1:11 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time yesterday for the major Shellshock vulnerability in the Bash function, your work is not done here yet. New bugs have been reported in Bash, so it's probably time to patch again, security experts warn.

Vectra CEO Hitesh Sheth says that the recent Home Depot breach exposes a serious security weakness, noting that the company said hackers used unique, custom-built malware to compromise up to 56 million payment cards.

It's time for CIOs to start focusing on the next line of defense in the war against cyber crime: an emerging area called breach detection, which focuses on identifying long-tail intrusions after they happen and mitigating their damage, partly through the use of big-data technologies. Your company’s information security may depend on it.

Security experts say the only hope of protecting corporate networks from hackers is something the industry calls “defense in depth.” The phrase simply means that plugging in one traditional defense – antivirus software, or a firewall, is no longer going to cut it.

Vectra Networks, Inc. announced on August 5 it had raised a new $25 million round of funding to boost sales and marketing for its behavior-based cyber security solution.

Cybercriminals' ability to attack is outpacing our ability to defend. We are fighting an asymmetric war. Resources are one challenge, but so are the defensive tactics. Organizations rely on security best practices and products that were developed to counter a different threat – long before the rise of mobility, the cloud and well-organized criminals.

Vectra Networks CEO Hitesh Sheth and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz comment on the Chinese hackers that stole personal information from 4.5 million patients of Community Health Systems and discuss how vulnerable U.S. companies are to hackers. They speak with Pimm Fox on "Taking Stock."

Vectra Networks Inc., a San Jose startup whose software aims to protect corporate and government IT systems against cyberattacks, has raised $25 million in capital provided by Accel Partners, Khosla Ventures and Intel Capital.

Bloomberg TV host Pimm Fox speaks with Vectra CEO Hitesh Sheth on how Vectra works, its contextual reporting and protecting organizations while maintaining privacy.

Cybersecurity firms now recognize that cybercriminals are so good at penetrating corporate and government IT systems that they can no longer be entirely blocked. One of these firms, Vectra Networks, has raised another $25 million in funding to detect and prioritize attacks in real time so customers can decide which ones to fight first.

Accel Partners and existing investors just dropped a new $25 million into Vectra Networks, a security startup deeply connected to U.S. national security officials.

Ben DiPietro of the Wall Street Journal looks at recent surveys and reports dealing with risk and compliance issues, including the new BYOD and Mobility Report from Vectra and the Information Security Group on LinkedIn.

Despite all the warnings in the tech media about Bring-Your-Own-Device, or BYOD, security risks, a minority of organizations have implemented policies or processes to address BYOD, a new study finds.

Just 21 percent of more than 1,100 IT security practitioners said their organizations have fully implemented BYOD policies, processes and infrastructure, according to recent survey.

Report shows that 21 percent of organizations who acknowledge broad use of privately owned devices do not support those devices within their organizations.

The second annual BYOD and Mobile Security Study reveals more exploits entering organizations via mobile devices. All told, this reality a now a top BYOD security concern, experts reveal.

LinkedIn survey finds enterprise mobility still in infancy.

Despite the significant damage, including loss of company or client data and unauthorized access to data and systems that the use of privately owned devices without proper security can wreak, most organizations simply have not kept pace with the explosion in use of those personal devices in the workplace.

New study shows malware protection is a requirement for mobile security.

Close to one-fourth of organizations that have broad use of BYOD devices do not support their use, opening up the enterprise to security risks such as malware infection.

Defense in Depth is practical strategy and "best practices" strategy in that it relies on the intelligent application of techniques and technologies that exist today.

Security start-ups arise because they have fresh approaches to fighting malware and cyber-espionage or combatting the insider threat through network monitoring. In this round-up of some of the newer security firms, Distil Networks, Observable Networks and Vectra Networks fit into that category.

Most organizations would say protecting high-value information and complying with regulations is a priority, but in practice, few businesses have enough IT security staff and resources to ensure that policies are defined and upheld, systems are secured, and users are trained.

Sometimes it's possible to have too much threat data.

Last week, online retail giant eBay announced that it was hacked. Large organizations realize that they have to do more to protect themselves from cybercrime and are exploring ways to block threats and/or reduce the attack surface across their networks.

The Vectra X-series platform can detect attacks at every phase of a persistent attack, regardless of how the attack enters an organization’s network and the operating system, application or device being attacked.

Vectra differentiates real threats from noise, and as an attack intensifies, the Vectra platform reports updates in real time.

As if there weren't a sufficient number of things to worry about related to the Heartbleed vulnerability disclosed earlier this month, you can now add this to the list: Many of the world's computers used to control and manage heavy industrial equipment may be vulnerable, too.

Some big-name former Washington officials are backing a new cybersecurity company that seeks to help less-well-heeled clients. Vectra uses an approach en vogue: Identifying hackers already in the system rather than trying to keep them out.

The infosec world is embracing artificial intelligence and the seismic changes it will bring to threat detection and mitigation, Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann writes in Dark Reading. As networks become more sophisticated, generate more data, and are exposed to advanced threats, AI and the automation it empowers are the cure.

The magnitude of the Yahoo! data breach – more than 1 billion user accounts compromised – is by far the largest that has ever occurred. But Yahoo! is not the exception. Routers, switches and servers in the vast majority of data centers where customer account information is kept are largely unprotected and highly vulnerable to cyber attacks.

The incoming U.S. administration would be well advised to take the recent Democratic and Republican National Committee hacks seriously, Vectra CEO Hitesh Sheth tells CNBC. "We can safely assume that nation-state actors will continue their efforts to affect U.S. economic interests as well as our democratic and political processes."

Vectra CSO Gunter Ollmann says that experienced infosec employees are twice as valuable to the global market, demanding higher pay and improved roles. To retain them, organizations are offering “senior” titles and accompanying pay hikes. Meanwhile, the skills and job tasks between “junior” and “senior” remain unfulfilled.

On news that data breach insurance claims are being made at a rate of over one a day, Matt Walmsley, Vectra EMEA director, says “By automating detection using the very latest self-learning security tools, and with it the response to an incident based on early indicators, many attacks can be nipped in the bud before they become costly incidents.”

Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, says encrypted network traffic is having an impact on security that relies on deep packet inspection, whose efficacy degrades as more traffic is encrypted. Even worse, traditional security responses to handling encrypted traffic will suffer due to certificate and public key pinning built into applications.

Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra , says that a rise in claims for digital theft and intrusions was taking place amid growing nation state-driven cyber crimes and the looming risk posed by GDPR compliance requirements and punitive fines. There is also growth in corporate cyber extortion using ransomware and malware.

There are a lot more tools necessary and available to combat the cyber threat, at the edge, at the endpoint and in between. “It is important to identify, develop and train associates who are motivated cyber warriors, and it is an ongoing process, due to the velocity of change," says Joe Duffey, CISO at Natixis Global Asset Management.

Hitesh Sheth, CEO at Vectra, outlines his top cybersecurity predictions for 2017. Attacks on the U.S will increase during Drumpf’s administration, new forms of ransomware will become a big headache for security response teams, data center attacks will increase, and firewall vulnerabilities will continue to be ignored.

Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, tells CSO that critical firewall vulnerabilities will continue to be ignored in 2017. According to the Shadow Server website, there are still more than 816,000 Cisco firewalls connected to the Internet that are vulnerable, undermining the inherent trust placed in firewalls.

Günter Ollmann, CSO at Vectra, explores how the information security industry is starved of experienced security workers and how it is proving detrimental to its advancement and exposing IT systems and Internet businesses to criminality and ransom. In the next 25 years, AI defense systems will unleash unimaginable ways to combat cyber threats.

It is estimated that today there are over 1 million InfoSec positions unfilled – growing to over 1.5 million by 2019 – and more than 200,000 of those vacancies are in the U.S. This global shortage of expertise and experience lies at the very heart of the InfoSec world’s ability to respond to cyber attacks – affecting vendors and consumers alike.

Data centers are the main repository for digital assets and resources, and their high value makes them a target for attackers. But threats in the data center are relatively mature by the time they manifest. With more assets residing in data centers than ever before, how safe is it? Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra, explains.

With more unmanaged and seldom-updated devices connecting to our networks, behavior-based security is an essential line of defense. It ensures that unusual activity and volume are quickly identified and addressed, and this can be done regardless of the device being targeted. Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra, makes the case.

What can organizations who expect to be a target do about an APT? And how sure can anyone really be that they are ready to respond? Expecting the unexpected is a difficult task, says Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra, quite reasonably, although in terms of cyberattacks the truth is that prevention alone fails.

Employees who reuse credentials or shop from their work computers are at risk, says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. Fake Best Buy or Amazon promotional emails could be a phishing attack infecting computers with ransomware or exploits to initiate a targeted cyber attack, while everyone is supposed to be enjoying holiday cheer.

Große Daten-und Datenwissenschaften können verschiedene Arten von Prognosen zu erstellen. Das Brexit-Referendum und die US-Wahlen von 2016 führten zu zwei Ergebnissen, die sich stark von den vorhergesagten Ergebnissen unterschieden. David Pegna, Leiter der Data Science bei Vectra, erklärt, was Cyber-Sicherheit aus den großen Datenfehlern lernen kann.

For years, the security community focused on perimeter defenses, but ensuring all is well requires more than building a bigger wall. Hackers only need about 146 days to spy, spread and steal, according to Mike Banic, vice president of marketing at Vectra. And it only takes about three days for an attacker to gain administrative credentials.

Darknet website AlphaBay sells tens of thousands of items related to malware, exploits, hacked accounts, stolen credentials, and hacking services. Christopher Doman, a threat analyst at Vectra, talks about the AlphaBay market and forum and explains the various ways this information can be used for nefarious purposes.

Unlike signature-based detection systems, today’s AI-powered security technologies are rarely suited to a plug-it-in-and-watch-it-light-up evaluation strategy. They often include a mix of supervised and unsupervised machine learning, automated threat hunting, trained classifiers, and focus on reducing erroneous and unactionable alerts.

As more business decisions rely on big data analytics, cybercriminals have greater incentive to pollute the incoming data to alter decisions or make them predictable so they can be monetized, says Vectra CTO Oliver Tavakoli. This can cause a hedge fund to buy or sell a stock. “Criminals can make large sums of money front-running the transaction.”

"Everyone with a newly minted computer science degree is being encouraged to get into cybersecurity, as the lack of candidates is driving up salaries," says Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann. Although the U.S. Department of Homeland Security event "was pitched under the banner of cybersecurity, it is not clear what jobs were actually being filled."

In 2017, ransomware will be used with other techniques for blended attacks, says Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann. Despite ransomware detection improvements made in 2016, most organizations still do not have a sufficient offline backup strategy to restore files, whether the ransom is paid or the attacker provides the encryption key.

Alex Waterman, senior director of product management at Vectra, predicts that cybercriminals will step up their efforts to use more vulnerable IoT devices to mount attacks and the tools published by the Shadow brokers hacking group will be used against the data center’s unprotected physical infrastructure.

"The CISO usually becomes the person who drives both the strategy and the budget," says Vectra CEO Hitesh Sheth. "They usually have a team." It's often seen in the Fortune 50 companies that "the CISO is still heavily involved, but the board is involved as well. It has become a regular topic among the board of directors."

Alex Waterman, senior director of product management at Vectra, predicts that cybercriminals will step up their efforts to corral legions of unprotected IoT devices to mount even more sophisticated attacks. Also, the attack tools published by the Shadow Brokers hacking group will be used against the data center’s vulnerable physical infrastructure.

The challenge of detecting attack behaviors in network traffic is immense. Finding correlations across protocols without intrusive deep packets inspection requires analyzing thousands of correlations between metadata from internal and external network traffic. A few companies are using AI technology to tackle this challenge, including Vectra.

Most organizations continue to struggle with malware-based intrusions, according to this column written by Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann. Despite the deployment of policies, user education, enforcement chokepoints, data inspection, and regular assessments of defenses, malware remains the primary method of breaching the corporate network.

"Just as hacking, cybersecurity and email breaches have been core to the election process, they will continue to grow and affect the U.S. government," says Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann. "Hence, in Trump's presidency, the U.S. government and agencies will have their hands forced in dealing with this invasive hacking epidemic.

“It’s troubling that the breach was discovered only after receiving complaints from customers that scammers were fishing for their bank account details," says Vectra CTO Oliver Tavakoli. "With the availability of real-time detection methods today that identify what’s happening at any given moment, this lack of awareness is shocking."

The accuracy of polling results failed miserably in the 2016 election. From a data science perspective, what are the lessons learned from the big data polling blunders in election predictions? The lesson is all about using the right data for the problem at hand, and not about questioning if the data is right. The same applies for cybersecurity.

Vectra CTO Oliver Tavakoli explains to SC Magazine that the variety, volume and velocity inherent in big data makes it difficult to ensure integrity of all of the data. To combat this challenge, Tavakoli encourages organizations to always pay attention to where the data is coming from and to encrypt the data.

Traditionelle IT-Sicherheitslösungen gelangen an ihre Grenzen und können keinen ausreichenden Schutz mehr bieten. Im Zuge dieser Entwicklung setzt sich die künstliche Intelligenz (KI) als neuartiger Sicherheitsansatz immer weiter durch. Oliver Tavakoli, CTO bei Vectra berichtet in einem aktuellen Beitrag auf VDI Nachrichten, worin die Vorteile des maschinellen Lernens liegen.

A global shortage of expertise lies at the heart of the infosec world’s ability to respond to attacks and has considerable effect on vendors and consumers alike. Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann explains why unfilled jobs are the biggest threat to the cybersecurity industry, and identifies three ways to approach the problem.

Every new technology that guards against cyberattacks forces hackers to evolve. Automated attacks are now capable of learning to use an application and carrying out its basic functions. For example, Wade Williamson, director of threat research at Vectra, says banking malware can transfer money belonging to a compromised account.

"You should keep Internet-enabled devices – like video cameras—on a separate network from the primary business network that deals with customer financial transactions, like point of sale systems, intellectual property, or any form of regulated data," said Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann chastises "the person who holds open a secure door for a slow moving 'employee' without checking for a badge. One of the easiest ways to infiltrate a secure building or data center is to appear encumbered (e.g., having both hands full with boxes) and wait for an authorized person to open the door for you."

Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann weighs in on the most vital areas of focus for new CSOs during their first weeks on the job and shares advice for prioritizing problem areas. Ollmann also shares two different yet critically important perspectives on security – vendor and non-vendor – and what to take care of on day one.

One of the biggest reasons we now have the Mirai botnet is that "the (IoT) manufacturers are trying to save money and reduce the time to market, and only after the product has been proven to be popular do they go back and add security to it," Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann tells the International Business Times.

“Whether it’s freedom fighters or terrorists, the cyber-domain is an important theatre for propagating a cause," says Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann. "Tools that target the opposition and gather valuable intelligence are in play by small and large groups around the world. Cyber warfare isn’t just the domain of large nation-state actors.”

Researchers at Vectra Networks have been monitoring the group for the past two years and determined that its operations focus on Middle Eastern political issues. The threat actor has been dubbed “Moonlight” based on the name of a command-and-control (C&C) domain used in the attacks.

Moonlight group is likely to be involved in cyberespionage, warns Vectra Networks. “They put effort into crafting the emails, the websites, the documents they've created, putting a fair amount of energy into it. But beyond that the underlying tech is off the shelf," says Vectra CTO Oliver Tavakoli, emphasizing how attackers don't need sophisticated hacking skills.

Identified by Vectra Networks, this particular campaign used spear-phishing emails and social media lures to trick targets into installing the H-Worm malware. H-Worm creates a backdoor that can be used to further compromise targets with a remote access Trojan called njRat.

A hacking group is running a wide ranging cyber-espionage campaign against targets in the Middle East. Security firm Vectra Networks says it has identified over 200 samples of malware generated by the group over the last two years. The assaults are not technically sophisticated but nonetheless tricky in their use of social engineering tactics.

Your router, home Wi-Fi, refrigerator and webcams could be part of an international army of zombie attackers. “A newly installed Wi-Fi home router is likely to be compromised within weeks if the default passwords are not changed – or within a few hours if you live in a more densely populated metropolitan area,” says Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann.

Vectra CEO Hitesh Sheth offers career advice about breaking into the tech industry: “Don’t play it safe. The tech industry is very unique with lots of opportunity for someone just starting their career. Take risks. Look for startups that can drive exponential change and not just ones that seem to be the 'coolest.'”

"If these gadgets are not regularly updated to address vulnerabilities, then they are left open to exploitation," says Vectra EMEA Director Matt Walmsley. "There's now a lot of pressure on the manufacturers to raise their game and support the embedded software side of things as long and as vigorously as, say, a PC operating system vendor does.”

"Under the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the fines could have been much higher – up to 4 percent of worldwide turnover. In the case of TalkTalk, that could have been £72 million based on 2015 turnover,"Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann says. "In that respect, the company has got off lightly.”

“Autonomous, behaviour-based threat monitoring can prevent a repeat of the same type of attack for any company, without requiring a major capital investment in more IT security staff,” Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann tells ITProPortal. "This new type of security approach allows known and unknown malware and attack vectors to be spotted.

The Mirai botnet malware used in the DDoS attack that took down the site of infosec journalist Brian Krebs was clocked at 620 Gbps. It was released in the Hackforums community website by Anna-senpai, who claims to have authored the code. Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann explains security concerns around Mirai and the dangers of default passwords.

Jonathan Barrett and Justin Heath from Vectra weigh in on the most serious cybercrimes of the past year. About the Shadow Brokers' hack of the NSA-affiliated Equation Group, Barrett notes that "the penetration of such a highly regarded organization demonstrates what serious security professionals already know: Everyone is vulnerable."

The risk isn’t limited to traditional webcams, says Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann, whose company found vulnerabilities in an inexpensive networked camera earlier this year. Internet-enabled home security cameras and networked TVs can also be hacked. So can videoconferencing tools in offices, which can be used as a gateway into other office machines.

Mit Malware infizierte oder fingierte Druckertreiber stellen in Microsoft Windows eine kritische Sicherheitslücke für netzwerke dar. Das berichtet Gérard Bauer, vice president EMEA bei Vectra, auf Silicon.de. Bauer gibt Einblick in die Angriffstechnik von Cyber-Kriminellen und erklärt Lösungsansätze, mit denen sich Unternehmen schützen können.

Firewalls have rarely been a hindrance to breaching a network and siphoning data, according to IT Security Guru. Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann explores the history of the firewall over the last three decades and how vulnerable it is to targeted and persistent attacks by sophisticated adversaries, particularly through the use of backdoors.

"I anticipate that now that the bridge has been crossed, other security researchers will attempt to work with similar investment companies to monetize the vulnerabilities and research they have conducted," said Günter Ollmann, chief security officer at the cybersecurity firm Vectra Networks.

InformationWeek and Dark Reading named Vectra one of 25 emerging security vendors to watch, citing its ability to provide "automated threat management to discover attackers inside corporate networks. It's powered by behavioral models that are always learning, and issue alerts about threats before they cause extensive damage."

Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra, comments on the Yahoo hack: “It’s concerning how many organisations are unaware of huge data breaches taking place in their networks. Research shows that about two out of 10 data breaches are detected internally – leaving around 80% to be detected by external discovery and third-party agencies.”

"By calling it 'state sponsored' organisations, are attempting to deflect the discussion from the types of tools used and their failed defences, and to posit that they had no chance of protecting their data because 'the government did it'," said Günter Ollmann, chief security officer at Vectra Networks.

Vectra Networks möchte mit einer neuen Lösung versteckte Sicherheitslücken in Netzwerkinfrastrukturen wie Firewalls, Server, Router und Switches aufdecken. Das berichtet das Fachmagazin Funkschau. Demnach ermöglicht diese Sicherheitslösung branchenweit erstmalig die erforderliche Transparenz, den Kontext und die Intelligenz, um selbst hochentwickelte Angriffe auf das Rechenzentrum aufzudecken.

While U.S. officials have suggested designating election systems as critical infrastructure after the Democratic National Committee hack, 62% of Passcode Influencers say it's not enough. “Unless we move beyond a declaration and into actual protection, proclamation would act more like an invitation to global hackers," said Vectra CTO Günter Ollmann.

We need to recognize the uniqueness of the data center and the threats they face, while recognizing that this uniqueness does not make them separate. Look for the attack techniques that are unique to the data center, while retaining the context of everything we've learned in the campus. This requires some planning, but is achievable.

Günter Ollmann, CSO at Vectra Networks, said, "Instead of buying hardware and appliances with a three-to-five-year depreciation lifecycle, they are buying a service. They are now paying, typically, based around number of servers or users being protected. Their security spend can change drastically in Capex and Opex."

The more places your information is stored and the more people have access to it, the more potential points of attack there are, said Vectra CEO Hitesh Sheth. Encrypted databases don't mean much if your financial advisor takes work home on an unencrypted thumb drive or an office assistant falls for a phishing email.

Vectra's prediction that 2016 would see ransomware "focus more on holding enterprise assets hostage and less on individuals," is supported by a recent report that shows nearly 40% of businesses surveyed experienced a ransomware attack in the last year. Over a third lost revenue and 20% had to completely cease business operations.

Vectra, which has been focusing on campus networks, is expanding its reach to the data center and the public cloud. The company is among a new wave of security companies that detect attacks in progress. Vectra's new strategies detect bad behavior because intruders in the data center don’t have the same goals as intruders in the campus network do.

Security experts from Vectra Networks have taken a closer look at one of the files leaked by the Shadow Brokers, a nefarious group that claims to have stolen hacking tools from the Equation Group, a US-based cyber-espionage actor that some security vendors say is the NSA.

India’s third largest IT services firm has recently partnered with Silicon Valley-based cyber security firm Vectra Networks and Israel-based IntSights Cyber Intelligence to bolster and expand its threat intelligence-as-a-service offering.

A challenge facing virtualised data centres is securing the physical infrastructure on which the virtual or shared service sits. The point of attack is the area outside of the hypervisor and virtual machines, utilising support and management protocols such as IPMI. It is the physical infrastructure – the servers, switches and firewalls – that is being targeted.

Does behavioural analytics fit into the concept of machine learning? Vectra EMEA Director Matt Walmsley comments, "Behavioural analytics is a powerful component in machine learning, based on real-time threat detection and management. By focusing on behaviours rather than signatures, it's possible for previously unknown threats to be identified."

Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra, says “channel partners are looking to augment and build out multi-layered offerings and service delivery capabilities as they transform their business as traditional resellers to being very services led. That's why we've gone out and created technology alliances."

With all the effort expended on securing virtualized environments, one of the biggest vulnerabilities is in hardware, says Wade Williamson, Vectra director of threat analytics. This is true not just in the data center, but in our laptops. The underlying firmware, controllers, and BIOS can undercut what we think we know about a device.

Months on from Apple and the FBI headlines, the security industry has had a chance to reflect on the lessons learned about backdoors in products – whether deliberate or put there without all parties knowing. Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann looks at the case for encryption in the second half of 2016.

Following a data breach at HEI Hotels & Resorts, Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann explains why the hospitality industry continues to serve as a target of attack. Because the hospitality industry “depends heavily on transient and temporary staff, they are more prone to physical subversion of their systems.”

Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra, comments on the Sage breach, “The simplest way to access unauthorised systems is through the acquisition and misuse of legitimate credentials. Other 'insiders' may seek to escalate their privileges or broaden the hosts and services they wish to access for nefarious reasons."

Oliver Tavakoli, CTO at Vectra Networks, told CBR: “Most leading edge cyber security solutions would more accurately be described as employing ‘data science’ and ‘machine learning’ than ‘AI’.

Here’s one more: Vectra Networks, winner of the Best-of-Black Hat award for most innovative emerging company. Vectra’s technology uses machine learning and behavioral analysis to spot threats in network traffic in real time, and it has a comprehensive channel program.

Günter Ollmann, CSO at Vectra networks, talks to Mike Mimoso at Black Hat about ransomware as a prototype for malware going forward, as well as the long-term future of exploit kits and whether IoT is something that can be secured sooner rather than later.

Accolades: Vectra was given the ‘Most Innovative Emerging Company’ for its tool allowing security teams to prioritise threats at their organisations.

Dark Reading selected Vectra for addressing security challenges with solutions that are inventive and practical. "With a glance at the simple, elegant visualization used by Vectra’s Threat Certainty Index, an infosec pro will know in moments what needs their attention first,” notes Editor-in-Chief Tim Wilson.

Vectra CTO Oliver Tavakoli said it best: “We need to use machine learning where it makes sense – when we analyze advanced of attacks, correlate behavior and conduct data reduction. When we call it AI, we're constructing a narrative that is often used by marketing to build buzz. The term is one of pop culture rather than an actual scientific term.”

“The bad guys communicate really, really well," says Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann. "They have an entire ecosystem for sharing and monetizing techniques. Our corporate security community doesn't have those tools, but we have Black Hat and DefCon and BSides."

Vectra CSO Günter Ollmann, Vectra CTO Oliver Tavakoli and security researcher Lane Thames at the Tripwire Vulnerability and Exposures Research Team agreed that the vulnerability should not have been discussed on Twitter, but Tavakoli thought the security flaws were nonetheless disclosed responsibly.

As advances in network-based detection increase the fidelity and coverage of malware and threats, the possibility of specific attribution will continue to recede, says Mike Banic, vice president of marketing at Vectra. The malware ecosystem continues to evolve swiftly, and security researchers and professionals need to adapt accordingly.

July was the busiest month in recent memory for vulnerabilities, says Wade Williamson, Vectra director of threat analytics. The vulns were copious and severe, and all the big vendors seemed to suffer. And while every organization strives to keep their technology patched and updated, months like this remind us that it is impossible to be perfect.

We have to consider that the tools and tactics of our adversaries will evolve and change in parallel with ours, warns Oliver Tavakoli, CTO at cybersecurity firm Vectra Networks. “After several years spent trying to perfect predictive analytics, attackers will counter with feints and pattern randomization."

CRN named Vectra Networks to its prestigious list of 2016 Emerging Vendors. Vectra was singled out by CRN as a rising technology innovator who is reshaping the future of the IT channel. The CRN Emerging Vendors list is a valuable resource for solution providers looking to expand their portfolios with cutting-edge technology.

Whether external and insider, detecting threats requires identifying when hosts behave in a way that exposes data or assets. “There is a need to track the flow of data within a network to proactively identify the acquisition, staging, and stealing of data, whether driven by an insider or outsider,” says Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra.

The security flaw enabled malicious users to covertly install a hand-picked malware on computers that connect to fake printers or devices that pose as printers. Vectra Networks security experts found that the issue dwells in the Windows Print Spooler component that connects to available printers.

Discovered by researchers at Vectra, the flaw allows any printer or device that mimics a printer to install malware on computers on a local area network. The print spooler does not authenticate printer drivers, allowing attackers to infect multiple computers on the network and continue to infect other devices as they discover the driver.

Die Forscher des Sicherheitsexperten Vectra Networks haben ein kritisches Sicherheitsleck in Microsoft Windows entdeckt. Dieses ermöglicht Hackern, mit relativ einfachen Mitteln, Computer innerhalb eines Netzwerkes automatisch mit Schadsoftware zu infizieren, sobald sich diese mit einem Drucker verbinden.

This bug is actually a security vulnerability that was discovered in the Windows Print Spooler software. If the printer is connected to a network, like in an office, it could potentially spread to other PCs on the same network as well, infecting all of them in the process.

"Microsoft is pretty much between a rock and a hard place," Nicolas Beauchesne, senior security researcher with Vectra, says. "Printer vendors have yet to agree on a printing standard or in some cases, to even sign their drivers. Ensuring that every driver is signed would break older printers until their respective vendors deploy new drivers for all their models."

The primary problem is that an attacker could compromise a printer – a not-so-secure device, Vectra notes – which then allows the printer to distribute malware disguised as system-level printer drivers. Attackers then gain access to the infected system to spread malware to anyone else foolish enough to try connecting to the printer.

Whenever software is updated, security experts are usually pretty quick to spot flaws that could lead to malware infections, aided by various bug bounties and the like. Some potential flaws however slip through the net for days, weeks, months, years and - very rarely - decades. Vectra Networks has found one such flaw that dates back around 20 years.

The hole was reported to Microsoft by security researchers from Vectra Networks, and it’s one of those bugs about which you can’t help thinking, “Golly gosh, that should never have happened.” Fortunately, as far as we know, Vectra was the first company to figure this one out, and disclosed it responsibly to Microsoft, which has now issued a patch.

Security researchers at the Vectra Threat Labs recently discovered two security issues affecting the Windows Print Spooler components and say that they allow an attacker to compromise systems via the printer itself. These are a remote code execution flaw and an elevation of privilege vulnerability, both of which were patched by Microsoft.

Researchers at Vectra discovered a roughly 20-year-old flaw in Windows Print Spooler (which oversees the printing process) that lets attackers slip malware on to a PC. The spooler doesn't verify that a printer's drivers are legitimate so it's possible for attackers to install maliciously-coded drivers thorough the Internet or the printer itself.

Vectra contacted Microsoft with details of the vulnerability. A "critical" fix has been released for all supported versions of Windows. Windows Print Spooler now writes to the file system in a safer way and warns users who attempt to install untrusted printer drivers.

"So in the end, we have a mechanism that allows the downloading of executables from a shared drive, and run them as a system on a workstation without generating any warning on the user side," wrote Nicolas Beauchesne, senior threat researcher at Vectra Networks.

Vectra Networks hat seine jüngsten Ergebnisse des Vectra Threat Labs veröffentlicht. Das berichtet das Online IT- und Business Magazin ZDNet. Die Experten der Forschungseinrichtung haben eine kritische Sicherheitslücke bei Microsoft Windows entdeckt, die es Hackern mithilfe von infizierten oder fingierten Druckertreibern ermöglicht, die Systemkontrolle über Computer innerhalb eines Netzwerks zu erlangen.

Vectra CEO Hitesh Sheth talks with Bloomberg Markets about the crucial role that artificial intelligence will play in detecting and responding to cyberattackers in 2018. It will be an AI war, with nation-state hackers and organized cybercriminals using their AI threat arsenal to attack organizations who use AI as a defensive weapon.

AI is the inevitable next phase in cybersecurity. What is avoidable, however, is security burnout. By implementing key business and professional-growth programs – and augmenting the work of security analysts with AI – organizations can greatly reduce the security burnout rate while nurturing and developing future security analysts.

When WannaCry was first detected, we saw similarities in the code used for that ransomware attack with previous attacks attributed to North Korea, like the Sony hack. North Korea has been targeting banks directly with banking malware while using ransomware against other organizations to acquire a large volume of Bitcoin.

AI propose désormais de plus en plus de fonctionnalités de sécurité, en commençant par la possibilité d'automatiser le traitement de ces volumes de données, alertes, gérables et intégrant des algorithmes d'apprentissage automatique détectant le comportement agresseur, explique Christophe Jolly, directeur France chez Vectra.

Vectra is hunting for channel partners in the UK after trebling its revenue in Q3, says Matt Walmsley, head of EMEA marketing. Vectra revenue jumped 294 percent in the third quarter this year, which Walmsley said was driven by a need for enterprises to address the detection gap that allows cybercriminals to easily breach networks.

In his latest installment in the CSO “Thinking Security” column, Vectra CTO Oliver Tavakoli explores the benefits of running red team exercises. Red team exercises enable organizations to understand how to respond when dealing with real-world advanced attacks and adapt to respond quickly to these threats.

The security operations center at Texas A&M serves 11 universities and seven state agencies. But with just seven full-time analysts and a risk-rich environment of 174,000 students and faculty, triaging security events was overwhelming, but with the help of Vectra Cognito, and it now takes 10-20 minutes to resolve an incident, on average.

"The IoT and IT/OT convergence is accelerated by the speed of business and the implementation of AI to drive decisions in ICS environments," says Chris Morales, Vectra head of security analytics. "In addition, more ICS devices are running commercial operating systems, exposing ICS systems to a wider swath of known vulnerabilities."

"To gain access to the industrial control systems, the threat actor infected an SIS engineering workstation on what is supposed to be an isolated network," says Chris Morales, Vectra head of security analytics. "An infected laptop can be brought in by a contractor, connect to the network and spread to the controlled ICS environment."

People who use Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft trust that their communication is secure because of the use of HTTPS, says Chris Morales, Vectra head of security analytics. But entities can manipulate the border gateway protocol to perform man-in-the-middle attacks and manipulate TLS/SSL encryption to eavesdrop on users.

“The motivation of the attacker is always financial or competitive gain or theft of intellectual property,” says Chris Morales, Vectra head of security analytics. “The constantly changing landscape makes it nearly impossible to track cyberespionage organizations without a team of researchers focused on attribution.”

Keyloggers are an important weapon in the arsenal of cyberattackers, says Chris Morales, Vectra head of security analytics. "They're often used in the recon phase of targeted attacks to steal user credentials and other sensitive information that are used to compromise user accounts. Keyboard loggers are hard to spot with consumer anti-virus."

"Data exfiltration from cloud-based storage will accelerate," says Vectra CTO Oliver Tavakoli. "This will occur at the cross-section of IaaS and PaaS. And organizations will often have no idea that their data has been stolen. Virtual forms of traditional security products will be powerless to contain this threat."

"Why would a hardware vendor install this kind of software on their computers?" asks Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "The key logger was a software development or test tool that should have been removed before the code was released. Any attacker could easily monitor everything a user does on their system.”

"This NiceHash attack is reminiscent of the Carbanak heist in which the sophisticated attackers used the bank's own tools to steal their money," said Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. Morales says the most important security controls monitor internal traffic for the misuse of administrative credentials and administrative protocols.

“If you are risk averse, transfer deposits made to your bitcoin wallet to a hard currency account with a bank,” says Matt Walmsley, Vectra EMEA director. However, he added, "Many exchanges may limit the amount you can transfer in one instance and you may not be able to empty your account, so buyers beware.”

"Consumers have no security controls to monitor botnet activity on their personal networks," Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, tells CSO magazine. "Security teams prioritize attacks targeting their own resources rather than attacks emanating from their network to external targets.”

"Exfiltration of data from cloud-based storage will accelerate," says Matt Walmsley, Vectra EMEA director. "Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) attacks will see massive tranches of data from organizations being taken from the cloud, without IT/security team even knowing."

Die Coop-Gruppe nutzt die auf KI basierende Cognito-Plattform von Vectra zur Erkennung von Cyberbedrohungen. Mit 2.476 Filialen und mehr als 85.000 Mitarbeitern ist Coop einer der größten Einzel- und Großhändler in der Schweiz.

Cognito de Vectra utilise AI pour analyser le comportement des hôtes, puis s'appuie sur des algorithmes d'apprentissage automatique pour détecter les cyberattaques cachées dans les réseaux, notamment pendant les phases de reconnaissance interne, de mouvement latéral et d'extraction de données.

"We're now at a time where artificial intelligence needs to be introduced to identify and respond to threats automatically and in real-time, a task that humans alone are simply incapable of performing at adequate scale and speed," says Matt Walmsley, Vectra EMEA director.

“On ne consulte pas le contenu d'une boîte mail, mais le comportement du trafic sur un appareil et s'il s'agit ou non d'une tentative d'attaque," précise Chris Morales, responsable security analytics de Vectra. “On peut même constater des attaques sur un réseau crypté."

Vectra intègre l'intelligence des menaces et les flux d'indicateurs de compromis (IoC) dans sa plateforme Cognito. La plateforme détecte également les activités de découverte d'attaquants ciblant les services Active Directory via LDAP et Kerberos.

Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, notes that the challenge is that traditional security and methods for internal data centers don't have the same visibility in cloud environments. "Companies like Uber who rely on cloud infrastructure need a security strategy with processes and tools that provide visibility into cloud attacks."

"Normal security tools and methods built for internal data centers do not have the same visibility in cloud environments where your systems and data are sharing a neighborhood (the internet and cloud apps) with millions and millions of other people, both good and bad," says Chris Morales, Vectra head of security analytics.

"Die einzige Möglichkeit, Zwischenfälle wie die bei Uber zu stoppen, besteht darin, zu akzeptieren, dass sich Angreifer bereits im Netzwerk befinden und sie schnell finden, bevor sie Schaden anrichten und Daten stehlen", sagt Gerard Bauer, Vice President EMEA bei Vectra.

“This breach happened at the same time Uber was under investigation by U.S regulators for the 2014 breach,” says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. “There are many breach notification laws, especially in California, that require immediate notification to consumers. We are the ones put at risk here, not Uber.”

“Organizations recognize that there is a need to prioritize the protection of citizen’s personal data through disclosure, but can be reluctant due to the impact a confession will have on their reputation and market value," says Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra. "This Uber breach of trust has rattled the regulators."

"The lesson here is don’t assume the same security tools used in a private cloud will protect you in the public cloud," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "To detect malicious behavior in the public cloud, you have to know what can be attacked and understand how it would be done.”

"Anyone who performs an online transaction has personal data on the internet," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "Even worse, personal information exists in places people are not even aware of or have any control over. The Equifax breach impacted more than 145 million consumers, and that's just one recent breach."

Automation and the use of artificial intelligence-based methods to detect, triage and correlate cyber security attacks in enterprise networks can be a powerful means for rapid risk reduction. We recently connected with Vectra CEO Hitesh Sheth to better understand how all this can be accomplished on a modern platform.

"AI automates repetitive tasks at massive scale and makes human security analysts better in the same way financial analysis tools enable bankers to be better," says Chris Morales, Vectra head of security analytics. "Similarly, AI can benefit from human intelligence by learning from the conclusions humans make based on AI’s automated analysis."

Texas A&M found a way to train the next-generation SOC analysts using Vectra. Dark Reading reports that the university added AI-based Vectra to the SOC to cut the time to vet alerts, a process that often took hours to reach the action phase. AI now provides context to alerts and now it only takes 15-20 minutes to triage them.

"Once the attackers get inside, how do they sustain control, how do they move, how do they ultimately accomplish their goal?" asks Vectra CTO Oliver Tavakoli. "It can look more like a heist movie, a bank robbery of a vault where you have to go through a myriad of steps. That's where AI can help pore through the data."

Bei der automatisierten Erkennung von Cyberbedrohungen und für eine schnellere Reaktion auf solche Angriffe wollen Vectra und Phantom künftig zusammenarbeiten. Beide Unternehmen wollen ihre jeweiligen Kompetenzen in die Partnerschaft einbringen. Zudem steht nun die »Vectra-App for Phantom« zur Verfügung.

La détection des menaces est bonne; les traiter c'est mieux. Vectra se concentre sur le premier: son moteur Cognito analyse les flux du réseau, étudie le comportement des hôtes, puis s'appuie sur des algorithmes d'apprentissage automatiques pour le mouvement latéral, l'acquisition et l'extraction des données.

"We will see an uptake in the exfiltration of sensitive data at the cross-section of IaaS and PaaS," says Vectra CTO Oliver Tavakoli. "On top of this, organizations will often have no idea that their data has been stolen. Virtual forms of traditional security products will be powerless to contain this threat."

When it comes to AI and machine learning, Vectra is one to watch, according to Dark Reading. Vectra was cited by Dark Reading for its playbooks that speed-up the response to in-progress cyber attacks, integration with other security products, and several patents for AI-based threat hunting.

Vectra a annoncé la signature d'un accord pluriannuel avec Coop Group, l'une des principales entreprises suisses de vente en gros et au détail, pour installer Cognito, une plateforme de détection des menaces basée sur l'intelligence artificielle.

Um den Zeitaufwand für Sicherheitsoperationen von Tagen auf Minuten zu reduzieren, haben Vectra und Phantom ihre Zusammenarbeit angekündigt und die Vectra App für Phantom-Lösungen entwickelt.

The positive view is that the community constantly reviews Linux source code and can respond before attackers do, Chris Morales, head of security analytics tells LinuxInsider. "The negative view is that open source code is not maintained regularly and depends on an army of volunteers to keep safe. The truth is somewhere in between."

Coop chose Vectra after identifying significant economic and security gains resulting from the introduction of AI security automation. After evaluating multiple solutions, it turned to Vectra and its Cognito AI platform to help protect them detect cyber attacks in real time and speed response by augmenting their security operations team.

“Vectra and Phantom share a mission to automate threat detection and response,” said Mike Banic, Vectra vice president of marketing. “Our Cognito platform automates the threat detection, triage, correlation and prioritization, and our partnership with Phantom enables automated security orchestration with a broad ecosystem of partners.”

The Coop Group decided that network perimeter defenses were insufficient to safeguard customer information, internal systems and point of sale systems. As a result, Coop selected Vectra artificial technology to detect and respond to cyber-attacks in real time and prevent or significantly mitigate the impact of a data breach.

Wenn Cybersicherheit auf den Netzwerkperimeter beschränkt ist, kann man nur eine oder zwei Phasen eines Angriffs sehen, schreibt Gerard Bauer, Vice President EMEA bei Vectra. Die Überwachung des Netzwerks von innen bietet jedoch viele weitere Möglichkeiten, um viele weitere Phasen eines aktiven Angriffs zu erkennen.

Vectra, makes the Tech Tribune's Top 10 list of best startups in San Jose. In conducting its research, the Tech Tribune editorial staff considered several critical factors for its Top 10 list, including revenue potential, leadership team, brand and product traction, and competitive landscape.

Das Security-Unternehmen Vectra hat einen Vertrag mit der Coop-Gruppe für den mehrjährigen Einsatz von Cognito geschlossen. Mit Cognito bietet Vectra eine KI-basierte Plattform (künstliche Intelligenz) für das Entdecken und Erkennen von Cyberbedrohungen.

“The risk with third-party services is exposure through unknown system and application vulnerabilities," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "Organizations should do their own security assessments of third-party services and externally monitor the activities on these services, independent of the service provider."

Organizations need to “clean out debris — incomplete and broken data — and massage data from different sources to make it compatible, comprehensible and as easy as possible to analyze,” says Vectra CTO Oliver Tavakoli. “Make the data as self-describing as possible so all members of the team understand the meaning of the various bits.”

Oliver Tavakoli, the CTO of cyber security vendor Vectra, explains that nation-states, hackers and organized cybercrime groups will develop new vectors to defeat predictive capabilities. “After several years spent trying to perfect predictive analytics, attackers will counter with feints and pattern randomization,” Tavakoli says.

“We see this trend all the time in targeted attacks,” says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. “Attackers understand their target's working environment, identify key software to compromise, and then once they establish a foothold, the attacker begins to snoop around for data to steal.”

Amazon Key allows couriers to open your front door and drop-off a package using a digital keyless lock and cloud cam. But can it be hacked? Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra, comments on the security concerns and the ease in which hackers can compromise webcams.

“Different applications and processes have unique communication patterns," Vectra CTO Oliver Tavakoli writes in CSO. "Attacker traffic often looks different from user traffic, whether it is encrypted or not. Instead of looking inside the encrypted stream, sophisticated math is used to find signals that indicate a threat.”

“We see this trend all the time in targeted attacks,” says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. “Attackers identify key software to compromise to initially infect the target, establish a foothold and begin to snoop around for data to steal.”

"I was an investor in Vectra during my time at Intel Capital," writes Ken Elefant at Sorenson Capital. "By comparing outside network data to the log inside the enterprise, Vectra can automate the process of detecting attacks. Human workers simply could not wrap their arms around such a broad distribution of information."

Trying to make sense of machine learning data from phishing campaigns is often inefficient and impractical. But security companies can use machine learning to "unlock patterns in large swaths of data to detect something in real time and make a decision,” says Vectra CTO Oliver Tavakoli.

The city of Peterborough, Ontario tried Darktrace and Vectra Cognito. It chose Vectra. After deploying Cognito, “We left it alone for a couple of days to learn and that was it," says Nick Powers, the city's IT security manager. “We are better positioned from incident detection and response than we were six months ago."

Accenture accidentally revealed internal data when it allowed public access to four of its Amazon storage buckets. "They were fortunate that it was discovered by someone who helped prevent damage," says Vectra CEO Hitesh Sheth. "It could have easily been used for snooping and data gathering on large enterprises with very harmful effects."

In the shadowy cybersecurity world, artificial intelligence is highly touted as a means to find the clues to lurking malware. Using artificial intelligence, "we focus on the duration, timing, frequency, and volume of network traffic," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "Data on a sequence of activities points to hidden risks."

"Knowing that attackers may have free rein in a network for 99 days before they are detected, acquiring companies should be prepared for the potential risk and liability of a cyberattack for at least one quarter past the close of a deal," says Vectra CEO Hitesh Sheth.

DAQRI, a maker of augmented reality for the industrial workplace, uses Vectra to monitor network traffic from 1,200 devices. "When you look at traffic, you can see if someone is doing port scans, jumping from host to host or transferring large amounts of data in an unconventional way," says Minuk Kim, senior director of IT and security at DAQRI.

Vectra CTO Olivier Tavakoli explains that nation-states, hackers and organized cybercrime groups will develop new vectors to defeat predictive capabilities. “After years spent trying to perfect predictive analytics, attackers will counter with feints and pattern randomization,” Tavakoli tells IT Security Guru.

"Enterprises need to increase their visibility inside the network to automatically detect, analyze and respond to nefarious behaviors before they have time to escalate into critical security incidents," says Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra.

Mehr Sicherheitsprodukte verwenden künstliche Intelligenz und maschinelles Lernen, um Bedrohungen zu erkennen. Das AI-basierte Cybersecurity-Unternehmen Vectra gibt neun Tipps, wie Lösungen bewertet werden können.

Vectra CEO Hitesh Sheth talks with Fox Business News about the recent theft of U.S. classified information from an NSA contractor’s computer by hackers who were reportedly working for the Russian government.

Last week, Vectra announced that European glass manufacturer Vetropack Group would use Vectra's AI cybersecurity software. Vetropack officials say that offloading its security team was one of the goals in implementing Vectra's platform, which can be used to analyze data from many sources.

Auch im Falle des maschinellen Lernens im Kampf gegen Cyber-Bedrohungen braucht man die richtigen Werkzeuge. Die Implementierung des optimalen ML-Tools für jeden Angriffsdetektionsalgorithmus ist eine effektive Strategie, da jede Methode ihre eigenen Stärken hat.

Pour sa première participation aux Assises de la Sécurité, Vectra présentera ses solutions qui utilisent l’intelligence artificielle pour transformer la cybersécurité. Pour Christophe Jolly, Directeur France de Vectra, l’intelligence artificielle est la réponse pour parer les malwares de toutes sortes.

Angesichts neuer Bedrohungsszenarien und sich wandelnder Rahmenbedingungen in der Cybersicherheit bewähren sich zunehmend automatisierte Sicherheitslösungen auf Basis Künstlicher Intelligenz.

Vectra, führend in der Automatisierung der Erkennung laufender Cyberangriffe mittels künstlicher Intelligenz (KI) und maschinellem Lernen (ML), stellt auf der diesjährigen it-sa 2017 zahlreiche Neuerungen vor.

Vectra CEO Hitesh Sheth says “Artificial intelligence allows enterprises to augment their security teams to automate detection and response to security incidents. That allows security analysts at companies like Vetropack to remain in control and stop attacks faster.”

„KI sollte dazu dienen, die Tätigkeit menschlicher Analysten zu unterstützen, damit diese ihren Job smarter und effizienter erledigen können," betont Gérard Bauer, vice-president EMEA bei Vectra. „In der Praxis bedeutet dies, die Arbeitslast zu reduzieren, damit sich die Security-Teams auf die wichtigsten Vorkommnisse konzentrieren können.“

Oliver Tavakoli, CTO of Vectra, said “Lock things down that you’re not using. Don’t expose yourself to more risk for the things you are using. Be diligent about updating.”

Oliver Tavakoli, CTO of Vectra, said “Lock things down that you’re not using. Don’t expose yourself to more risk for the things you are using. Be diligent about updating.”

Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra weighs in on the Equifax data breach.

Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra weighs in on the Equifax data breach.

Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra weighs in on the Equifax data breach.

Matt Walmsley, EMEA director of Vectra, warns "While the IoT may be bringing more devices onto the network than ever, these devices are rarely truly hardened, patched or updated. Their creators may have decades of electrical and mechanical engineering experience, but often lack experience of computer programming or internet security."

Equifax, one of the three largest business agencies in the US, has been successful in hacking its IT systems. "Companies should focus their attention and investment on the detection of ongoing attacks. Hacker attacks need to be detected and addressed more quickly, "said Gérard Bauer, VP EMEA at Vectra, a provider of cyber-security solutions based on artificial intelligence.

“Vectra is advancing automated threat hunting with the introduction of Attack Campaigns. The Vectra Cognito platform now further automates threat hunting by exposing the relationships between threat detections on separate workloads and devices to understand the activity and scope of attack campaigns.”

Commenting on the leak, Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, said “Enterprises have to realise they cannot address cybersecurity by simply spending money on intrusion prevention solutions and instead need to shift investments to detection and response solutions that are being used by today’s advanced attackers.”

Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, said “Equifax needs to raise their cybersecurity score. Enterprises have to realise they cannot address cybersecurity by simply spending money on intrusion prevention solutions and instead need to shift investments to detection and response solutions that are being used by today’s advanced attackers.”

Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, said: “Equifax needs to raise their cybersecurity score. Enterprises have to realise they cannot address cybersecurity by simply spending money on intrusion prevention solutions and instead need to shift investments to detection and response solutions that are being used by today’s advanced attackers.

Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra commented "Enterprises have to realise they cannot address cyber-security by simply spending money on intrusion prevention solutions and instead need to shift investments to detection and response solutions that are being used by today's advanced attackers.”

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is considered a major future trend for many areas of technology. From the smartphone, to car and home automation, to customer analysis and even to counter cyber attacks, KI is to revolutionize the technology.

Mike Banic, Vectra Networks' vice president of marketing, discusses SOAPA's effect on cybersecurity, including data collection, technology integration, machine learning, and partner ecosystems.

Mike Banic, Vectra Networks' vice president of marketing, discusses SOAPA's effect on cybersecurity, including data collection, technology integration, machine learning, and partner ecosystems.

Many enterprise organizations are currently evaluating the Vectra Cognito platform, and over the past weeks, several customers detected WannaCry attacker behaviors. Just because the headlines stopped, doesn’t mean that the attack did.

The Vetropack Group, a leading European manufacturer of packaging glass, uses Vectra's cybersecurity platform as the basis for protecting its central systems and information and for more effective organization of its security operations.

Vectra Networks' Chief Technology Officer, Oliver Tavakoli, discusses how government agencies can benefit greatly by selecting artificial intelligence to augment - not replace - their cybersecurity teams.

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning to augment, not replace, cybersecurity capabilities

Many companies moving from a private cloud to a cloud service are unaware of increased threats. It's worth examining the differences in private versus public clouds when it comes to threats that applications and data encounter. When I talk to customers about the differences, I use a metaphor of what's happening onstage versus backstage.

As more companies are considering putting mission-critical applications and data into the public cloud, it's worth examining the differences in private versus public clouds. The lesson: don't assume that the same tools you use in your private cloud will adequately protect you in the public cloud.

Penny Crosman writes about how IT teams as well as cyber attackers use artificial intelligence. Greenhill & Company’s CIO, John Shaffer discusses his use of Cognito, “What you’re really interested in is trying to figure out what the smart actors are doing. That’s where machine learning and AI come into play.”

Vectra Networks' Chief Technology Officer, Oliver Tavakoli, discusses how government agencies can benefit greatly by selecting artificial intelligence to augment - not replace - their cybersecurity teams.

Penny Crosman writes about how IT teams as well as cyber attackers use artificial intelligence. Greenhill & Company’s CIO, John Shaffer discusses his use of Cognito, “What you’re really interested in is trying to figure out what the smart actors are doing. That’s where machine learning and AI come into play.”

Penny Crosman writes about how IT teams as well as cyber attackers use artificial intelligence. Greenhill & Company’s CIO, John Shaffer discusses his use of Cognito, “What you’re really interested in is trying to figure out what the smart actors are doing. That’s where machine learning and AI come into play.”

Penny Crosman writes about how IT teams as well as cyber attackers use artificial intelligence. Greenhill & Company’s CIO, John Shaffer discusses his use of Cognito, “What you’re really interested in is trying to figure out what the smart actors are doing. That’s where machine learning and AI come into play.”

Vectra, a provider of automated detection of ongoing cyber attacks, has received five new patents in the United States for advanced analysis of IT security automated by artificial intelligence (AI).

Oliver Tavakoli, chief technology officer of Vectra, said, “Finding the sometimes-tenuous connections across multiple machines which are part of a single attack campaign is the next AI frontier for reducing analysts’ alert fatigue and turning the tables on the attackers.”

"We will see an increase in the use of deep learning, such as recursive neural nets, that enable algorithms to continuously learn and evolve," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "2019 will see deep learning become the best practice for detecting cyberattacks."

The problem wasn't that the data centers lacked the authentication or encryption tools. "The controls existed but were not implemented and used equally and regularly," Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, says.

The Vectra Cognito platform incorporates artificial intelligence (AI), deep machine learning and traffic monitoring into a tool that is able to detect threats that other programs miss, even if they are already entrenched inside a protected network.

Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, says the biggest risk posed by mobile devices in a corporate network is malicious apps gaining access to enterprise data. Make sure mobile devices do not share network connectivity with critical infrastructure or systems with sensitive information.

"VirusTotal provides value only if you have the necessary staff to extract value from it," says Oliver Tavakoli, chief technology officer at Vectra. "This is reflective of the fact that the VirusTotal data repository is of most value to large and expert IT security teams."

"Dieser Cyberangriff ist eine Form der Spionage von Nationalstaaten", sagt Gerard Bauer, Vizepräsident von EMEA bei Vectra. "Der einzige Unterschied ist jetzt, dass es im Cyberspace passiert, anstatt in ein Gebäude einzubrechen und physische Dokumente zu stehlen."

Vectra’s artificial intelligence-based platforms detected “a higher-than-normal rate of malicious internal reconnaissance behaviors” from attackers inside of manufacturers’ systems and that this “indicates that attackers are mapping-out manufacturing networks in search of critical assets to steal or damage.”

"Hacks are getting bigger because the volume of data generated on the Internet every single day is so large," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "Just like a user employs a search engine to get information, a cyber spy will search massive online databases for information."

"Prevention will never be 100%," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "That is unrealistic. The report states the breach was entirely preventable. I don't believe that is true. It is the same notion as building a wall would stop the drug trade. The criminal build tunnels instead."

“Cryptomining efforts are popular across higher education," according to a study published in March from Vectra. Vectra reported that 85% of cryptocurrency mining instances happened in higher education between August 2017 and January 2018, compared to just three percent in the technology sector.

"We can improve our ability to detect and respond to breaches by looking for the type of behaviors an attacker performs," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "The most critical threat behaviors should be correlated with compromised hosts in real time before they become a problem."

“It is a classic ‘could have, should have’ scenario,” says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. “As long as a motive exists, attackers will continuously attempt to compromise networks until they succeed. The failure comes down to people and process, not necessarily technology."

Für Gérard Bauer, Vizepräsident von EMEA bei Vectra, zeigt der Erfolg der "alten" Emotet-Malware eines der grundlegenden Probleme vieler IT-Sicherheitslösungen, die immer noch auf klassischen Cyber-Sicherheitskonzepten basieren.

"Zero days are saved for the most critical needs," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. Most attackers don’t like to waste this type of knowledge when they can simply convince a user to give them access to their system instead."

“Gaming has always been an arena for hacking and attacks,” says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. “In today's competitive and financially lucrative gaming world, that means bypassing developer controls to gain a competitive advantage or disrupt other players.”

“Enterprises are unable to spot worm reconnaissance and lateral movement behaviors," says Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra. "Security analysts can't operate at the speed and scale required to manually identify the threat and close down their lines of communication and movement."

"Disposer de systèmes qui surveillent le comportement d'exfiltration plutôt que d'essayer d'inspecter les charges utiles de données peut être un moyen de relever ce défi," déclare Gregory Cardiet de Vectra. "La détection de ces comportements à un stade précoce est essentielle."

"La réponse aux incidents prend trop de temps et, dans de nombreux cas, les équipes de sécurité tentent de comprendre ce qui s'est passé et comment l'empêcher de se reproduire plutôt que de détecter et d'intervenir tôt dans le cycle de l'attaque pour éviter le vol et les dommages," a déclaré Gregory Cardiet. un expert en cybersécurité chez Vectra.

To detect cyberthreats, their AI software sifts through massive stores of computer network data. Wall Street analysts are eyeballing and a handful of other private firms. With AI tools, the new AI companies are taking customers away from cybersecurity industry incumbents, analysts say.

"Was die Datenschutzverletzung selbst anbelangt, war die Exfiltration der Daten innerhalb der Verschlüsselung möglicherweise ein Versuch, Sicherheitskontrollen wie Systeme zum Schutz vor Datenverlust zu umgehen", sagt Gerard Bauer, Vizepräsident der EMEA.

"Les attaquants avancent lentement et par étapes pour obtenir des privilèges et adopter une variété de comportements avant d’accéder aux données souhaitées, de les exfiltrer," explique Gregory Cardiet, expert en cybersécurité chez Vectra. "La détection de ces comportements à un stade précoce est essentielle."

"Si les dates sont vraies, entre la date de détection initiale ou le 8 septembre 2018 et la divulgation publique de la faute, l'exigence de notification GDPR de 72 heures était très loin d'être respectée," déclare Gregory Cardiet, expert en cybersécurité chez Vectra.

Incident response continues to take too long as security teams try to figure out what happened and how do we stop it happening again, says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "It's important to spot and close down an attacker earlier in its lifecycle to minimize or stop a breach from occurring."

“With a real treasure trove of valuable personal information having been lifted, this is undoubtedly going to damage the Marriot Starwood brands, and could have a significant direct impact for their affected customers identity assurance,” says Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra.

"Data exfiltration inside encryption can circumvent security controls like data loss prevent," Morales says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "Systems that watch for exfiltration behaviors, rather than trying to inspect the data payloads, can provide a way to handle this challenge."

Although Marriott reported the malware resided in its U.S.-based reservation system, if any EU guests were involved it could open the company up to fines due to GDPR, said Chris Morales, head of security Analytics at Vectra.

"With a real treasure trove of valuable personal information having been lifted, this is undoubtedly going to damage the Marriott Starwood brands, and could have a significant direct impact for their affected customers identity assurance," says Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra.

Among the victims of ad fraud are companies that have to pay for every user who views their ads. "Every company has a budget for online ads, and this type of scheme would cannibalize that budget with no return on leads or sales," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

"Misconfiguration of systems is as big of a risk as system vulnerabilities," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "APIs for external service integration is important to offer services to customers, but poor security practices in API access and design puts enterprises in danger."

Vectra se démarque de Darktrace en proposant des modèles mathématiques de détection développés et testés sur un groupe de sociétés utilisant la solution, testés et calibrés avant d'être déployés en production pour l'ensemble du client de base.

"The cybersecurity skills gap is alive and well, it’s challenging to hire and retrain cybersecurity talent," says Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra. "Within the next three years there will be in excess of 350,000 unfilled European cyber-security jobs than candidates."

The findings in the Vectra 2018 Spotlight Report on Energy and Utilities “underscore the importance of detecting hidden threat behaviors inside enterprise IT networks before cyberattackers have a chance to spy, spread and steal,” says Chris Morales, Vectra head of security analytics.

Vectra leverages its automated and self-learning algorithms to provide real-time detection and response capabilities. It can also score every detection and host in terms of the threat severity and enrich threat investigation and threat hunting scenarios.

Smaller yet expanding devices may be more appealing to hackers than to consumers, warned Mike Banic, vice president of marketing at Vectra. The number of mobile vulnerabilities is highest on Android apps, largely due to its open source nature and the questionable security of third-party app stores.

"Our best course of action is to work with the national governments to ensure any biometric system is highly secure and has auditing and oversight to ensure the proper use of the biometric data,” says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

"Organizations are moving towards more automation for very rational reasons," says Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra. "We need to understand how new AI tools work. This is new technology and we need to understand the fundamentals so we can understand how they work."

“Nation-state actors are well-resourced, innovative and highly motivated, and organizations have limited time, finite human and technical resources and capabilities with which to protect their rapidly expanding attack surface," says Matt Walmsley, director of EMEA at Vectra.

“When attackers move laterally inside a network, it exposes a larger attack surface that increases the risk of data acquisition and exfiltration,” says Branndon Kelley, CIO of American Municipal Power.

When looking specifically at the enterprise networks of energy and utility companies, Vectra detected 194 command-and-control attack behaviours against energy and utility companies for every 10,000 host devices – 25 more attack behaviours than the average across all industries.

“Manually monitoring the network creates a challenge for resource-constrained organizations that cannot hire large security teams,” says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. “Numerous security analysts are needed to perform the manual analysis required in identifying attacks."

Tirant les leçons de l'attaque NotPetya, Saint-Gobain a revu son plan de cyberdéfense. Sur la partie détection, le SOC peut maintenant compter sur l'IA de Vectra pour affiner les remontées d'alertes. Un changement pas uniquement technologique.

“Rest assured that they won’t be submitting their own offensive samples," says Vectra CTO Oliver Tavakoli. "And they won’t be submitting bespoke samples that were crafted to target them except for well after the fact so as not to tip their hand to the attacker."

Usually, such attacks are meticulously planned months in advance and under-protected networks are allowing criminals to cross the threshold of infrastructure networks, according to a new research report from Vectra.

Critical infrastructure Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems are a perennial target for hackers. According to a study released by threat monitoring firm Vectra on Nov. 1, there were almost 200 network hacking attempts for every 10,000 SCADA host devices.

The recent 2018 Spotlight Report on Manufacturing from Vectra suggested that the manufacturing industry suffers an inordinate volume of malicious internal network activity, lateral movement and reconnaissance activity; Deloitte also touched on these vulnerabilities in a recent article.

"AI augments the human capabilities to work at the scale and speed that manual approaches simply can't touch," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "This would invaluable, given that a lack of time is one of the top job concerns being cited from IT and security professionals."

Vectra meldet, dass die meisten Cyberangriffe gegen Energie- und Versorgungsunternehmen in Unternehmens-IT-Netzwerken auftreten. Sie finden somit nicht in der eigentlich kritischen Infrastruktur statt, obwohl Cyberangreifer industrielle Steuerungssysteme ins Visier nehmen.

The majority of cyber attacks on energy and utility firms do not occur in the critical infrastructure of the firm, but inside the IT networks. According to a report by Vectra, such attacks are planned and orchestrated often months in advance rather than by launching an off-the-cuff attack.

Recent attack activity tracked by security threat monitoring firm Vectra of more than 4 million devices and systems shows that the IT networks in energy and utilities are being hit regularly by attackers intent on blending in as they conduct deep reconnaissance on their ultimate targets: The industrial networks.

"We believe Vectra embodies the vision, drive and innovation that define a successful entrepreneurial venture. Vectra should be proud of its accomplishment,” says Alex Vieux, Red Herring publisher and CEO. Red Herring’s Top 100 Global list has become a mark of distinction for identifying promising companies and entrepreneurs.

In a new report, researchers at security vendor Vectra outline how hackers infiltrate energy and utilities systems and then move laterally across networks over a period of several months to gather intelligence and plan their attack.

The Vectra 2018 Spotlight Report on Energy and Utilities said that while ICS is in the crosshairs, most attacks against the energy and utilities industry occur and succeed inside the enterprise IT network – not in the critical infrastructure.

30 ans après, Grégory Cardiet, expert IA chez Vectra, propose son éclairage sur ce type de méthode toujours d’actualité et sur la réponse enfin apportée par l’intelligence artificielle face à ce type de menace historique.

Heureusement, selon Grégory Cardiet, expert IA chez Vectra, l’intelligence artificielle pourrait enfin permettre aux entreprises de lutter efficacement contre ce fléau. En effet, grâce à l’automatisation, il est désormais possible de surveiller et de détecter en temps réels les vers informatiques.

Key findings underscore the importance of detecting hidden threat behaviors inside enterprise IT networks before cyberattackers have a chance to spy, spread and steal. These threat behaviors reveal that carefully orchestrated attack campaigns occur over many months.

"Enterprises are unable to spot reconnaissance and lateral movement attack behaviors, and security analysts and threat hunters cannot operate at the speed and scale to manually identify threats and close down their lines of communication and movement," says Matt Walmsley, Vectra EMEA director.

“The covert abuse of administrative credentials provides attackers with unconstrained access to critical infrastructure systems and data," says David Monahan, managing research director of Enterprise Management Associates. "This is one of the most crucial risk areas in the cyberattack lifecycle.”

Cyberattacks targeting energy and utilities firms have increased inside enterprise IT networks, rather than the critical infrastructure, according to Vectra's 2018 Spotlight Report on Energy and Utilities.

AI-powered attack detection specialist Vectra finds that attackers typically gain a foothold in energy and utilities networks by staging malware and spear-phishing to steal administrative credentials.

“When attackers move laterally inside a network, it exposes a larger attack surface that increases the risk of data acquisition and exfiltration,” said Branndon Kelley, CIO of American Municipal Power, an electric-power generator utility that serves municipalities in nine states.

“There is a difference between attacks that probe IT networks for information about critical infrastructure versus attacks against the ICS on which the critical infrastructure operates,” according to the new report from Vectra.

"What is abundantly clear is that the sudden rise in demand for talent against a backdrop of relatively flat supply has created a hiring bottleneck in the path to establish a stronger security posture," writes Oliver Tavakoli, chief technology officer at Vectra.

"It's very easy for an attacker to get into an energy utility network, use the tools that are already there, such as Outlook web access, and then hide within the signal of things that are already happening," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

“I don’t think [utilities] have watched enough for this,” Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, told Route Fifty. “They need to monitor actual IT networks a lot closer.”

According to a new report published by Vectra, there is a key distinction between attacks that probe IT networks for information about critical infrastructure and those attacks that actually target industrial control systems (ICSs).

While attacks on industrial control systems take the spotlight, IT networks are more frequently attacked because they usually have schematics and data of those control systems, says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

"Vectra donne une vue des adresses IP ayant des comportements déviants selon les scénarios threat établis par Vectra," dit Paul Le Mesle, responsable du cyber SOC de Saint-Gobain.

"Vectra offre un avantage considérable par rapport à un SIEM," a reconnu Paul Le Mesle, responsable du SOC Saint-Gobain. "notre CyberSOC doit intégrer les outils du Big Data, de l’intelligence artificielle et de l’orchestration, pour libérer du temps à nos analystes."

“Cognito filled a gap," says Brett Walmsley, CTO at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust. "We needed to know what we didn’t know, and Cognito showed us what was hidden. With Cognito, we don’t have to worry about not knowing an attacker is in our network.”

„Eine KI-basierte Automatisierung ist erforderlich, um solche Angreifer schnell zu demaskieren, sagt Gerard Bauer, Vectra-Vizepräsident von EMEA. "Dies ermöglicht es, Angriffsverhalten in Echtzeit zu überwachen und zu erkennen."

The highest-risk threats are automatically prioritised and triaged by the Vectra Cognito platform, enabling the cybersecurity team to stop advancing threats before key assets are damaged or stolen.

“Local governments generally don’t have the funding required to maintain a large security staff and large set of security tools,” Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra said. “More often, at best, local governments are leveraging an outsourcing security provider to perform security monitoring .”

“No matter how much revenue you have, you can’t find the people,” says Hitesh Sheth, CEO of Vectra, which makes the AI software the Texas A&M University System uses. “People leave in 12 months because someone else will give them a 30% bump in pay.”

“The Equifax Cyber Threat Center last year captured 2.5 billion logs a day and monitored 50,000 security events per second," says Mike Banic, vice president at Vectra. "No matter how many security professionals you hire, humans aren’t good are drudging through mountains of manual work, yet our industry keeps asking them to."

“The vast majority of IoT devices, particularly those aimed at consumer use, will have vendors and supporting supply chains that simply don’t have the resources, skills, or even the will to meet the framework’s recommendations,” says Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at AI security firm Vectra.

"Vectra stands out for its ability to offer unparalleled flexibility and agility to identify fundamental attack behaviors such as command-and-control communications, abuse of account credentials, data exfiltration, botnet monetization, and early indicators of ransomware activity," said Vikrant Gandhi, industry director at Frost & Sullivan.

Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra, says that while the Code of Practice recognizes key IoT risks, there are problems surrounding it. “Voluntary codes of practices will likely only attract organizations who are already proactive and bought into addressing the issues the Code of Practice seeks to address,” he says.

"Not having the technical understanding to manage the security of these devices, consumers unknowingly put their households at risk," says Matt Walmsley, Vectra EMEA director. Consumers should change their IoT devices’ default passwords to a strong password string, and always ensure the latest firmware is running.”

“In reality, the vast majority of IoT devices, particularly those aimed at consumer use, will have vendors and supporting supply chains that simply don’t have the resources, skills, or even the will to meet the frame work’s recommendations,” says Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra.

Vectra setzt dort an, wo viele Security-Lösungen wie Virenscanner oder Firewall bereits versagt haben. Die Lösung ist in der Lage, Auffälligkeiten im Netzwerk zu erkennen und dann Alarm zu schlagen. Gartner stuft Vectra Networks damit als „visionär“ im Bereich Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems ein. Auf der ITSA stand das Unternehmen mit den Themen ML und KI im Mittelpunkt.

Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, warns that the enterprise must tighten up software supply chain assurance and balance the risks and rewards of internet access and browser controls. "Organizations need to balance that against constraining legitimate organizational digital activities," he says.

"Startups that are just features and aren’t acquired may not have a chair when the music stops playing," says Vectra CEO Hitesh Sheth. "If you do the due diligence and pay attention, you can find some real gems that you want to return to."

“Over time, enterprise has built technologies and bolted them on, and there is a way that you can remove the layers with AI, because it is a big data analysis — taking what all of these various components are doing as part of the evolution and really bringing it back into one product,” says Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra.

“Les logiciels malveillants opportunistes tels que les ransomwares et les cryptominers sont désormais des menaces courantes, et les attaques avancées ciblées restent les plus dangereuses et les plus difficiles à gérer et à atténuer pour les entreprises,” dit Gregory Cardiet de Vectra.

An acquisition by a larger company can be both a good and a bad thing for a startup and its customers. "Startups that are just features and aren’t acquired may not have a chair when the music stops playing — and may have to shut their doors," says Hitesh Sheth, CEO at Vectra.

„Oberflächlich betrachtet, mag diese Malware extrem erscheinen, aber sie ist an sich lediglich eine Kombination aus bestehenden Methoden von Cyberangreifern,” sagt Gerard Bauer, Vice President EMEA bei Vectra. „Sie umfasst den gesamten Lebenszyklus eines Angriffs – von der Infektion bis zur Datenvernichtung.”

"Machine learning allows us as defenders to adapt much more quickly in real-time to threats that are constantly changing," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "What machine learning is good at doing is learning over time and adapting. As environments change, the machine can start to change."

"The manufacturing industry exhibits higher than normal rates of cyberattack reconnaissance and lateral movement activity," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "This is due to the rapid convergence of enterprise IT and operational technology (OT) networks, combined with the lack of security for IIoT devices."

Magecart, an anonymous Russian group of cyber criminals, tried to steal the card details of people in the UK who had brought items through the cancer charity’s online gift shop. Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra, warned that charities are an “irresistible target” to hackers because they process large numbers of online payments.

«Ce que l’IA sait bien faire, c’est lire des paquets réseaux à grande vitesse et les comparer à des modèles de comportement, complète Grégory Cardiet, ingénieur avant-vente de Vectra. Est-ce que cette machine a un comportement d’attaque ? Certains malwares sont inconnus au bataillon. Ils n’ont été créés que pour ce client, le vol d’information est silencieux.»

“A proper response should include the revocation of credentials and user access from that system," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "This works if the proper response policy is in place and users know to respond quickly to IT before potential access and compromise occurs.”

“AI is pretty complex, built around processing large amounts of data and learning from it,” explains Vectra CTO Oliver Tavakoli. “There are hundreds of thousands of lines of code behind AI interfaces and entities – and some are even neural networks that are not totally understandable by the people that created them."

"A lot of content that users post on Facebook is shared publicly and cannot be classified as private information," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "This data breach is different than leaking your personal credit card, health information, or even your personal browsing history."

"The analysis and identification of signatures for the initial infection is always behind the threat becoming known and out in the wild," says Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra. "It’s not enough to build stronger defenses. Motivated and well-resourced attackers will always find a way given enough time and persistence."

"We will see more attack vectors that exploit software users," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "We must assume vulnerabilities exist and will be exploited” He recommends focusing more on detecting threats in real time and responding rapidly to reduce the impact of vulnerabilities.

"This particular software flaw compromise “isn’t surprising,“ says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "All code has these forms of flaw that allow unintended use of software, and the more complex the software gets the more likely these type of flaws exist."

“There aren’t many details on this as of yet, but what we do know is that the attackers manipulated a flaw in the ‘view as’ feature of Facebook to acquire user access tokens that would allow a person to log into user accounts," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

"All code has these forms of flaws that allow the unintended use of software," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra. "The more complex the software gets, the more likely these types of flaws will exist."

“While analyzing Hola, Vectra Threat Labs researchers found that in addition to behaving like a botnet, Hola contains a variety of capabilities that almost appear to be designed to enable a targeted, human-driven cyber attack on the network in which a Hola user’s machine resides.”

Vectra has integrated its Cognito artificial intelligence-based cyberattack-detection and threat-hunting platform with Microsoft Azure and the Azure Virtual Network Terminal Access Point (TAP). That news and other cloud security developments surfaced at the Microsoft Ignite 2018 conference in Orlando.

“Think carefully about the VPN provider you use. Many of the free VPN providers are in the business of monetizing your personal data to pay for their services," says Chris Morales, the head of security analytics at Vectra.

A Vectra 2019 Spotlight Report on Healthcare found ransomware attacks are becoming less prevalent as cyber criminals look to new ways of attacking a system.

Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra talks about the dangers of hidden tunnels – one of the key attack vectors for bad actors targeting the financial sector

Vectra AI - Raised $100M from a Series E round on June 10th.

How would the world's most generous elf operate in a world of zero-trust security? A group of cybersecurity experts lets us know.

A zero-trust architecture fundamentally distrusts all entities in a network and does not allow any access to resources until an entity has been authenticated and authorized to use that specific resource, i.e. trusted.

According to ESG research, 36% of organizations are actively integrating disparate security analytics and operations tools in pursuit of a more cohesive security technology architecture.

Vectra closed a $100 million round led by TCV, bringing the company’s overall haul to $222.5 million since being founded nine years ago.

Findings from the Vectra 2018 Security Spotlight Report on the financial service sector identified vulnerabilities posed to financial services organizations by attackers using hidden tunnels to surreptitiously access and steal data.

AI is augmenting security analysts and also making a considerable contribution to bridging the cyber skills and resource gap by allowing less experienced analysts to enter the profession and achieve more, more quickly.

Vectra’s Cognito platform uses AI to detect cyber attacks in real-time. Combining human intelligence, data science, and machine learning, Cognito automates tasks that are normally done by security analysts and greatly reduces the work that’s required to carry out threat investigations.

Network security vendor Vectra tapped former Telstra channel exec Dee Clinton as its Asia-Pacifc channel chief.

The use of AI in cybersecurity not only expands the scope of what a single security expert is able to monitor, but importantly, it also enables the discovery of attacks that would have otherwise been undetectable by a human.

Matt Walmsley, a director at cybersecurity and artificial intelligence firm Vectra, told Newsweek password integrity "seems to be a significant factor in this disturbing case."

Matt Walmsley, Head of EMEA Marketing at Vectra, says extortion is a well-established approach for cyber criminals and is used through tactics that include threatening denial of service, doxing, and ransomware.

After a minor server breach, leading commodities trader turned to Vectra’s Cognito service to expose hidden threats, spot privilege misuse, and conduct conclusive investigations.

Recent research conducted by Vectra sought to quantify the threat, finding that nine out of ten organizations have experienced some form of malicious RDP behavior.

‘Remote Access Trojans (RATs) are an insidious set of attacker tools that invade our systems, data and privacy. With so much legitimate remote access happening across our networks and hosts, there’s plenty of opportunity for RATs to operate undiscovered as they hide in plain sight.

“Public vulnerability disclosure should be a basic practice for every company, not just government agencies,” Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

The Cognito Privileged Access Analytics module has also been deployed to monitor the actions of privileged accounts.

If you've never heard of a third-party website, avoid signing up for it, said Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

KTVU's Alex Savidge spoke to Chris Morales, head of security analytics at San Jose based Vectra about online safety tips this holiday shopping season.

ED&F Man selected the Cognito network detection and response platform from Vectra to expose attackers hidden inside its network, spot privilege misuse and perform conclusive incident investigations.

Using some 60 machine learning models to analyze all behaviors an attacker could perform across an attack lifecycle, its Cognito platform claims to flip the traditional approach to user-based threat detection on its head by providing the defender with multiple opportunities to detect an attacker.

While the code of practice is welcome, the voluntary approach has certain limitations, particularly for an IoT industry with a supply chain with varying security resources, according to Kevin Vanhaelen, regional director, Asia-Pacific, Vectra.

The code offers important “recognition of some of the key IoT risks and associated steps responsible IoT vendors and service providers might take,” said Kevin Vanhaelen, regional director, Asia-Pacific, Vectra in the wake of the draft code’s release.

APAC regional director of cybersecurity firm Vectra, Kevin Vanhaelen, said he thought the voluntary codes of practice do not go far enough.

“Cloud architectures are plagued by security vulnerabilities,” says Ammar Enaya, Vectra’s regional director in the Middle East.

“This is mostly a harmless bug that allows Facebook to use the camera but it is not a compromise or breach of personal data or privacy. The easiest thing to do is for users to disable the use of the camera in the iPhone app settings,” says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

“It’s a bit creepy that Facebook enables the camera on an iPhone, however, there is no evidence of any photos or video being uploaded to the cloud,” says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

Despite the legitimate security concerns regarding Facebook, it appears this particular bug is nothing to worry about, said Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

Hitesh Sheth is a man with one of the most inspiring stories in the entrepreneurial world and technology environment. Sheth grew up in Kenya, sharing a one-bedroom apartment with his family, where he slept in the laundry room.

After a data breach of more than 20 million entries hit the country, it’s fairly likely that if you are one of Ecuador’s 16.6 million citizens, some data relating to you has just been disclosed.

That rate of cyber breaches “indicate that there is still room for improvement,” says Kevin Vanhaelen, Asia-Pacific regional director at Vectra, “and I would bet my bottom dollar that there are more that are yet to be discovered.”

“As we continue to transform threat detection response for enterprises migrating to the cloud, enabling the building of next-generation security operations centers and communicating the value of transforming cybersecurity with artificial intelligence is more important than ever,” said Vectra CEO Hitesh Sheth.

In this podcast, TCV’s Tim McAdam and Vectra CEO, Hitesh Sheth, talk about what it takes to reduce business risk in the cloud – and keeping enterprises, consumers and their transactions/interactions secure – while capitalizing on the tremendous opportunities the cloud offers.

Kevin Vanhaelen, Asia-Pacific regional director for cyber security company Vectra AI, said that 36 breaches in four months indicated that there was "still room for improvement".

"I would bet my bottom dollar that there are more that are yet to be discovered," says Kevin Vanhaelen, Asia-Pacific regional director for cyber security company Vectra.

"RDP is a valuable mechanism for threat actors to progress their attacks and certainly has a broader utility than simple cryptojacking attempts. RDP remains a widely exposed and vulnerable attack surface and will likely continue in the near future due to the protocol’s prevalent use," Vectra EMEA director Matt Walmsley told SC Media UK.

Kevin Vanhaelen, Asia-Pacific regional director for cyber security company Vectra AI, said that 36 breaches in four months indicated that there was "still room for improvement".

Kevin Vanhaelen, regional director, Asia-Pacific, of network security vendor Vectra AI said the reported 36 breaches is almost certainly an underrepresentation of the actual attacks and more breaches which have already occurred will come to light in the future.

“The prevalence of destructive attacks like ransomware directly impact system availability,” Tim Wade, technical director with the CTO Team at Vectra, told Threatpost.

"Reducing threat notification and response processes needs to move from weeks or days to minutes," says Kevin Vanhaelen, Asia-Pacific regional director for cyber security company Vectra.

Security analysts must continuously hunt for attackers already inside the network. They need to be able to respond to the threats that can cause real damage immediately, and correctly since not all attacks are the same.

"I find the idea of using lasers to issue voice commands as interesting but not compelling," observed Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

“It’s a positive sign to see Facebook tightening up their Groups feature API and communicating in a transparent way,” says Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra.

Research from Vectra has shown that legacy systems, insufficient access controls and the proliferation of medical IoT devices have created security vulnerabilities that leave hospitals wide open to cyberattacks.

The SANS Institute recently identified the key components to keep your supply chain secure. Here's why industry experts believe they are important.

“Ransomware is a fast-and-easy attack with a bigger payout than stealing and selling credit cards or personally identifiable information (PII), both of which have perishable values as time passes after their theft,” said Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

“Here we have yet another poorly secured database on the internet that’s been copied. Startups, by their very nature, are extremely agile, but this can’t be at the expense of good data management and security practices,” said Matt Walmsley, director EMEA at Vectra.

Healthcare data has long been one of the favourite targets for cyber attackers. A set of medical records can provide a wealth of data for criminals to conduct fraud or launch more effective targeted attacks.

Problems in the supply chain aren’t always malicious or intentional—quite often the risks have more to do with operational process, such as storing in an exposed database in the cloud, said Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

The use of AI in cybersecurity not only expands the scope of what a single security expert is able to monitor but importantly, it also enables attacks to be discovered that would have otherwise been undetectable by a human.

“When you read the results,” suggests Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, “always read the questions first to identify potential bias or if they are leading the respondent.

Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, says Facebook's evidence is likely based on origination of traffic and accounts. "The argument will be, who was accountable on the other end of those accounts and who sanctioned the operation of spying?"

"When AI is used extensively on the offensive, you need to have a symmetric response on defense," says Hitesh Sheth, president and chief executive at Vectra.

"When we think of ransomware, WannaCry is probably the first example that jumps to mind, for obvious reasons—to date, it is one of the most devastating ransomware attacks," says Ammar Enaya, regional director – METNA at Vectra.

“Cybercriminals are increasingly making rational economic decisions around targeting organizations and demand ransom levels that they believe will have a higher likelihood of payment,” Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra.

Matt Walmsley, Head of EMEA Marketing at Vectra, says extortion is a well-established approach for cyber criminals and is used through tactics that include threatening denial of service, doxing, and ransomware.

“Extortion is a well-established approach for cyber criminals and is used through tactics that include threatening denial of service, doxing, and ransomware,” explained Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra.

“Cyber criminals are increasingly making rational economic decisions around targeting organisations and demand ransom levels that they believe will have a higher likelihood of payment," says Matt Walmsley, Head of EMEA Marketing at Vectra.

“Extortion is a well-established approach for cyber-criminals and is used through tactics that include threatening denial of service, doxing, and ransomware," says Matt Walmsley, EMEA Director at Vectra.

“Amazon did not a rent a server to Capital One in the sense that this was a compromised managed server,” Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

Matt Walmsley, director for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Vectra, says that the relatively small amount of ransom that the Johannesburg attackers are seeking seems to be a way to ensure that something is paid to them.

Matt Walmsley, director for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Vectra, says that the relatively small amount of ransom that the Johannesburg attackers are seeking seems to be a way to ensure that something is paid to them.

"Cybercriminals are increasingly making rational economic decisions around targeting organizations and demanding ransom levels that they believe will have a higher likelihood of payment," says Matt Walmsley, director for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Vectra.

"Cybersecurity teams supporting the city will undoubtedly be working flat out to confirm the extent of any attack to aid officials in deciding if they should pay," says Matt Walmsley, director for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Vectra.

Matt Walmsley, director for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Vectra, says that the relatively small amount of ransom that the Johannesburg attackers are seeking seems to be a way to ensure that something is paid to them.

Matt Walmsley, director for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Vectra, says that the relatively small amount of ransom that the Johannesburg attackers are seeking seems to be a way to ensure that something is paid to them.

“Attribution and understanding motivation of attacks or incidents is never precise so I’m not surprised there is confusion and speculation around this story,” said Matt Walmsley, head of EMEA marketing at cybersecurity firm Vectra.

In May 2019, most of Baltimore’s government computer systems were infected with a new and aggressive ransomware variant named RobbinHood.

But while attribution “is great for pointing fingers and laying blame” and titillating the media, “during an active attack, it doesn’t matter who is attacking you or why,” said Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra said,“we know that poorly configured servers in AWS is something many administrators struggle with understanding, including how to properly limit access to the data they store there. This is not even about company size or maturity."

It isn't the technology's fault, notes Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

Whelan and his team conducted a proof-of-concept test of the Cognito threat-detection and hunting platform from Vectra.

"The system configuration of allowing a user to run a command as any user except does not seem normal to me," says Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

The bark seems worse than the bite with this particular Linux vulnerability. It is not really a very critical vulnerability, suggested Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

The bark seems worse than the bite with this particular Linux vulnerability. It is not really a very critical vulnerability, suggested Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

Chris Morales, head of security analytics with Vectra, told Threatpost that Android includes a biometric API that app developers can use to integrate biometric authentication into their applications in a device- and modality-agnostic fashion.

Matt Walmsley, EMEA Director at Vectra commented to SC Media UK: "The need to deny, degrade, or counter digital attacks by nation states, and other nefarious groups means that offensive cyber competencies are part of the arsenal that modern governments all have access to."

Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, says SMBs need more than an IT outsourcer who does security as part of a mix of services.

Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, argued that the best form of protection from ransomware is to identify the warning signs of an attack.

The 2019 Spotlight Report on RDP is based on the analysis of data in the 2019 Black Hat Edition of the Attacker Behavior Industry Report, which reveals behaviors and trends in networks from a sample of more than 350 opt-in Vectra deployments from January-June 2019.

According to the Vectra 2019 Spotlight Report on RDP, from January-June 2019, the company’s Cognito platform detected 26,800 suspicious RDP behaviors in more than 350 deployments.

Vectra, has disclosed that the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a widely exposed and vulnerable attack surface and will likely continue in the near future due to the protocol’s prevalent use.

Data from Vectra confirms that RDP remains a very popular technique for cyberattackers, with 90% of these deployments exhibiting RDP attacker behavior detections.

“Cybercriminals know that RDP is an easy-to-access administrative tool that allows them to stay hidden while carrying out an attack,” said Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra.

Because the goal in a ransomware attack is to propagate as wide and as quickly as possible, it is desirable for fire encryption to occur beyond the local files.

The sensitive nature of the content on Hookers.nl could make the data ripe for the blackmail of affected users – both for clients and for the prostitutes actively using the forum, Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, told Threatpost.

“The most effective weapon in carrying out a ransomware attack is the network itself,” says Ammar Enaya, regional director at Vectra.

Precisely what could either augment or replace the maligned questionnaire is unclear. Full audits of vendors are labor-intensive and expensive, Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, said in an interview.

“This is stark reminder that privilege policies can be a blunt tool and that the behavior of administrative users and others granted escalated privileges need not only to be managed but their use monitored, too,” says Matt Walmsley, EMEA Director at Vectra.

Regional presence is critical to the company’s global go-to-market channel strategy to deliver advanced AI to detect and respond faster to cyberattacks.

Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol, or RDP, is one of the most widely used utilities for connecting to remote machines. But it poses risks if organizations don't actively monitor how it's being used, says Chris Morales of the security firm Vectra.

Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol, or RDP, is one of the most widely used utilities for connecting to remote machines. But it poses risks if organizations don't actively monitor how it's being used, says Chris Morales of the security firm Vectra.

Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol, or RDP, is one of the most widely used utilities for connecting to remote machines. But it poses risks if organizations don't actively monitor how it's being used, says Chris Morales of the security firm Vectra.

RDP can be better managed by ensuring the use of complex passwords and limiting RDP's use to the correct systems.

Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol, or RDP, is one of the most widely used utilities for connecting to remote machines. But it poses risks if organizations don't actively monitor how it's being used, says Chris Morales of the security firm Vectra.

“The experience of fighting yesterday’s battles doesn’t prepare us well for tomorrow’s cyber-wars,” says Ammar Enaya, regional director – Middle East, Turkey and North Africa at Vectra.

Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol, or RDP, is one of the most widely used utilities for connecting to remote machines. But it poses risks if organizations don't actively monitor how it's being used, says Chris Morales of the security firm Vectra.

Managing access control and data permissions is difficult without a proper understanding of the who, what, and where of data access models. To truly understand data flow and access, organizations need to observe privilege based on real world activity and assess the access that does occur. This would allow an organization to differentiate between what should and should not occur.

Researchers at the security firm CyberMDX have uncovered two significant vulnerabilities in certain Dell Wyse thin client devices that, if exploited, could enable threat actors to remotely run malicious code and access files on affected devices.

Vectra's Ammar Enaya says this is a significant example of a well-executed supply chain attack compromising a popular IT administration tool as a penetration mechanism. The subsequent exploitation of authentication controls enabled the threat actor to pivot to the cloud and operate undetected for an extended time in Microsoft 365, which allowed them to gather intelligence.

The SolarWinds hack, which is reportedly being link to Russia, is shaping up to be the biggest cyber-attack this year. The attack targeted the US government, its agencies and several other private companies. It was first discovered by cybersecurity firm FireEye, and since then more developments are being reported each day.

United States officials have blamed Russian hackers for recent breaches at federal agencies, companies, and high-profile cybersecurity vendor FireEye, with the malicious activity appearing to come from highly skilled attackers. "Attackers could also set up automated workflows to consolidate all the activities and run them autonomously while quietly exfiltrating data," Vectra's Matt Walmsley shares.

While all of these things together sound like the makings of a best-selling fiction novel, the cyber security industry – and all of the threats and dangers that exist within it – is all too real. That’s one reason why cybersecurity books make for some pretty interesting reading both in terms of academics and entertainment. Hashed Out reached out to many IT and cyber security experts within the industry to inquire about their favorite books on cyber security and create a comprehensive list of the “best cyber security books.”

The recentbreach, which began in March, targeted the SolarWinds Orion software, a popular IT network administration tool used by companies around the world and by U.S. government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, the Treasury Department, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Pentagon and the White House. The hackers attached malware to a SolarWinds software update that was downloaded by as many as 18,000 organizations.

Causing 18,000 organizations, the vast majority of which were not actually targets of interest, to have to remediate and possibly rebuild their devices and networks represent a huge amount of collateral damage," Vectra's Oliver Tavakoli said. "Obviously, the concept of collateral damage exists on a spectrum – but we can probably all agree this attack was on the far end of the spectrum.

Vectra AI has formed a new partnership with Baidam Solutions. This partnership provides First Nations’ people with scholarships, a full education and technical skills to combat the rise in cyberattacks against businesses, government and infrastructure.

Solutions Review’s NDR Vendors to Watch is an annual listing of solution providers we believe are worth monitoring. Companies are commonly included if they demonstrate a product roadmap aligning with our meta-analysis of the marketplace. Other criteria include recent and significant funding, talent acquisition, a disruptive or innovative new technology or product, or inclusion in a major analyst publication.

A perfect storm may have come together to make SolarWinds such a successful attack vector for the global supply-chain cyberattack discovered this week. Researchers said that includes  its use of a default password (“SolarWinds123”) that gave attackers an open door into its software-updating mechanism; and, SolarWinds’ deep visibility into customer networks.

Vectra's Matt Walmsley comments on the recent SolarWinds breach, discussing how security teams need to drastically reduce the overall risk of a breach by gaining instant visibility and understanding of who and what is accessing data or changing configurations, regardless of how they are doing it, and from where.

The recent supply chain attack, which has affected around 18,000 SolarWinds Orion customers, is thought to have been executed by a sophisticated nation-state threat actor. Vectra's Matt Walmsley says that IT administrators and security teams have access to highly privileged credentials as part of their legitimate work. Attacking the digital supply chain of their software tools is an attempt to gain penetration and persistence right at the heart of their operations, gain privileged access and to provide springboard out across their digital hybrid-cloud enterprise.

A number of key US government departments have been hacked, with concern that the attack has allowed a foreign power to monitor American government communication.

For many businesses, recovery from the pandemic fallout hinges in part on employees working safely and virus-free outside their homes. That leaves organizations facing the very real possibility that they will serve as both trackers and guardians of health data to ensure the safety of employees.

SolarWinds estimates that between last March and June, roughly 18,000 user organizations downloaded updates of its Orion software that Russian APT actors allegedly corrupted with Sunburst backdoor malware. John Mancini, senior product manager at Vectra, said that a core point of the DHS’ guidance for remediating the SolarWinds hack is to analyze for any listed indicators of compromise and then “identify potential behaviors in metadata that may be related to the compromise.”

Hackers working on behalf a foreign government are believed to be behind a highly sophisticated attack into a range of key government networks, including in the Treasury and Commerce Departments, and other agencies. The hackers had free access to their email systems.

With 2021 fast approaching, cybersecurity experts and analysts note that cybersecurity will continue to evolve even as most of the world enters a post-COVID-19 era, with cybercriminals, threat actors and nation-state hackers ready to take advantage of whatever may happen next. This will keep CISOs, their security teams, as well as their counterparts in IT, trying to catch up and stay ahead.

In what may well turn out to be one of the most significant supply-chain attacks in recent years, a likely nation-state backed group compromised systems at SolarWinds and inserted malware into updates of the company's widely used Orion network management products that were released between March and June 2020. Matt Walmsley, EMEA director at Vectra, says the attackers likely manipulated Security Assertion Mark-up Language (SAML) authentication tokens used in Single Sign On to try and escalate privileges in the early stages of the campaign.

The US Department of Homeland Security was the third federal department to be targeted in a major cyberattack, US media reported Monday, a day after Washington revealed the hack which may have been coordinated by a foreign government.

Business Times

SolarWinds over the weekend admitted that hackers had exploited a backdoor in an update of some of its software released between March and June. The hacks are part of a wider campaign that also hit major cybersecurity firm FireEye, which said its own defenses had been breached by sophisticated attackers who stole tools used to test customers' computer systems.

Oliver Tavakoli, our CTO, shares his thoughts on the upcoming cybersecurity trends to watch.

After a major data breach, do criminals actually have your password even if it has been encrypted? Companies have various ways of encrypting passwords. There are also techniques called salting and hashing. The upshot is, the average user will not take the time to find out how the affected company does their encrypting—or hashing or salting for that matter.

Chris Fisher, Vectra's director of security engineering APJ, shares that as our reliance on technology grows exponentially, so does the need for robust cybersecurity to protect users and keep data and business operations safe from hackers.

The IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act has been officially signed into law. The bipartisan legislation, sponsored by Reps. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., and Will Hurd, R-Texas, and Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Cory Gardner, R-Colo., requires that any IoT device purchased with government money meet minimum security standards.

As the time for distribution of COVID-19 vaccines comes closer, law enforcement agencies across the world are warning of organized crime threats, including schemes to sell counterfeit vaccine on the dark web, as well as physical and virtual attacks targeting supply chain companies.

To exploit VMware's vulnerability, an attacker must have access to the device’s management interface. This access can allow attackers to forge security assertion markup language (SAML) credentials to send seemingly authentic requests to gain access to protected data. Chris Morales, our head of security analytics, discusses howthat this is why granted access does not equate to trusted access.

Researchers at Abnormal Security said Monday they blocked an attack where a malicious email impersonating one of their customer’s vendors bypassed the customer’s Proofpoint gateway and set up a trap to steal Office 365 credentials. Chris Morales, head of security analytics at Vectra, said the known partner compromise technique equates to internal spear phishing, when a phishing email that originates from a trusted and legitimate connection doesn’t get blocked by the email gateway.

With the market demand for NDR solutions is generating significant traction among forward-thinking enterprises with this set to continue into 2021, we're excited to welcome Jerome Jullien to the Vectra team as vice-president of international partner sales.

With more than 25 years’ experience in Enterprise Technology, including managing Channels, System Integrator and Service Provider (SI/SP) and Alliances, Jerome Jullien, now Vice President of International Sales, brings a strong track record of building successful business models for the Channel and will play a key role in managing and driving sales via the Vectra partner ecosystem.

Instead of monolithic ransomware, or a single piece of software that did everything and was highly automated, today’s ransomware tends to be modular and often obtained from a malicious developer or acquired “as a service”. There’s an organized dark ecosystem for ransomware with component and service supply chains, not dissimilar to the structures and practices we see in the legitimate world. It’s expeditious to change and morph, which makes traditional fingerprinting for signatures less effective.

This week, IBM Security X-Force uncovered a global phishing campaign targeting the COVID-19 Vaccine Cold Chain. The company’s task force dedicated to tracking down COVID-19 cyber security threats said it discovered fraudulent emails impersonating a Chinese business executive at a credible cold-chain supply company. The emails, dating back to September, targeted organizations across six countries, including Italy, Germany, South Korea, Czech Republic, greater Europe and Taiwan, the company said.

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We are thrilled to announce the appointment of Jerome Jullien as Vice President of International Partner Sales to its leadership team.

Clop ransomware is claiming to have stolen 2 million credit cards from E-Land Retail over a one-year period ending with last months ransomware attack. This is a timely reminder that ransomware operators have changed their tactics and become far more targeted. Not only are they performing data theft and public bullying, but they remain active inside an organization for extended periods prior to detection.

The FBI this week made public a private industry notification warning that business email compromise (BEC) scammers are exploiting web-based email clients’ auto-forwarding rules to secretly gather intel on their targets and also hide their fraudulent communications. Moreover, if organizations fail to sync their web-based email clients with their desktop-based clients, this suspicious activity may go unnoticed by infosec personnel.

A calculated cybercriminal operation is targeting companies in the coronavirus vaccine supply chain with phishing emails that appear to be designed to steal sensitive user credentials, IBM Security X-Force said in a report released Thursday. The targeted organizations are all associated with a COVID-19 cold chain, a component of the overall supply chain that ensures the safe storage of vaccines in cold environments during storage and transportation.

Jerome Jullien has been appointed to the leadership team of network threat detection and response (NDR) vendor, Vectra, as the international partner sales vice president.

Organizations that conduct almost all of their business online now face needing to protect an expanded threat surface. Ammar Enaya, our METNA regional director, shares his takes on how business can protect their data in the cloud.

A hacker began selling access to hundreds of stolen executive email accounts last Friday, ZDNet reported. Email and password combinations are being sold for anywhere from $100 to $1,500 on Exploit.in, an underground hacker forum populated by Russian speakers.

If businesses do not configure their network to routinely sync their employees' web-based emails to their internal network, an intrusion may be left unidentified until the computer sends an update to the security appliance set up to monitor changes within the email applications. This leaves the employee and all connected networks vulnerable to cybercriminals.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will help make it possible to create an urban landscape that enables safe, efficient, convenient and self-optimizing traffic eco-systems, while dealing with highly increased complexity. As cities become “smarter”, data collected from sensors regarding energy consumption, traffic, sanitation, will all increase at a scale that makes it difficult for certain types of tasks to be done well by humans alone, or would be unthinkable without the aid of automated system.

Next year we will also see more blurred lines across traditional channel boundaries. Sandra Hilt, senior director of channel sales for EMEA, at Vectra, shares her thoughts on how  today’s channel partners are increasingly positioned as service-led, trusted advisors to their customers. Consequently, the offering of different service engagements is becoming more and more important.

The new cloud capabilities allow Vectra and its users to track and link accounts and data in cloud and hybrid environments. This helps users prevent the loss of visibility when environments expand to the cloud where users leverage multiple accounts and may access resources from shadow IT devices.

Techday's 10 Minute IT Jams provide sharp, to-the-point insights into emerging and established technology companies that operate in the Asia-Pacific region. In Techday's second IT Jam with Vectra AI, they speak with head of security engineering Chris Fisher, who discusses the organizational impact of security breaches within Microsoft O365, why these attacks are on the rise, and what steps organizations should take to protect employees from attacks.

With more commerce occurring online this year, and with the holiday season upon us, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reminds shoppers to remain vigilant. Be especially cautious of fraudulent sites spoofing reputable businesses, unsolicited emails purporting to be from charities, and unencrypted financial transactions.

Adam Mendler sat down with our CEO, Hitesh Sheth, for a one-on-one interview. Hitesh shared his perspective on leadership, AI, and technology trends.

Australia’s health sector is constantly the target of cyberattacks, and in the first half of 2020, a total o of all Australian data breaches were in the health sector. The real threat is already in healthcare networks in the form of privileged access misuse, the growth in healthcare IoT devices, and that the majority of attacks occur due to underinvestment in security operations or a lack of security awareness by insiders.

Vectra has announced broader and deeper cloud capabilities to track and link accounts and data in hybrid environments.

With the end of the year nearing, two U.S. government agencies are warning shoppers to be cautious of online holiday shopping scams, fake emails and unencrypted financial transactions. Vectra's Chris Morales noted that emails containing deals and links to discount websites that seem too good to be true will be the main cause of security issues during the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

By seamlessly integrating with SaaS applications like Office 365, IaaS providers, identity providers and cloud virtualization platforms, Vectra is giving visibility into who and what is accessing data, regardless of how and where.

Organizations in the public and private sectors will continue to grapple with the security implications of remote or hybrid work environments. Between March and July approximately one-third of organizations said ransomware delivered by phishing increased over the five months prior. And more than half recorded a security incident, such as a breach. In the months that have followed, the threats have only accelerated as attackers show an appetite for exploiting anything COVID.

This Presidential election campaign has seen myriad stories and comments published online by supporters on both sides looking to influence voters. While many were written by humans, an increasing number were generated by AI. Advances in machine learning mean AI generated text is now almost indistinguishable from anything written by people.

Private and trusted networks cannot be protected by old network security focused on malware signatures and anomaly detection alone. As workload shifts from clients, servers, and endpoints to the public cloud, this proliferation has created a network where user identity has become the new perimeter

Vectra empowers security teams with continued analysis of how users are accessing, using and configuring cloud services based on logs from SaaS, and account usage from Identity Providers (IdPs) like Microsoft Azure AD. Vectra is uniquely positioned to protect this network of hybrid on-premise and cloud connectivity.

We've been working from home for months and there is more of it to come. Just to cheer us up even more Chris Morales, head of security analytics for Vectra, says a load of our commonly-used apps may be insecure. Listen to this podcast for his tips!

Vectra’s network threat detection and response (NDR) solution is designed to use cloud identities that track and link attacker activities and progression across all networks. Targeted credential-based attacks are so powerful that they render some prevention processes useless - particularly email security, multifactor authentication (MFA), cloud access security brokers (CASBs).

Private and trusted networks cannot be protected by legacy network security focused on signatures and anomaly detection alone. As workload shifts from clients, servers, and endpoints to the public cloud, this proliferation has redefined the network and user identity has become the new perimeter. Vectra's cloud capabilities monitor threats across cloud, hybrid, and on-premise networks

Menlo Labs discovered that there are 49 different versions of Chrome being used by their customers as of November 17. Vectra's Tim Wade explains that so long as there are zero days, which appears to be an indefinitely long, unceasing period of time, prevention will have a failure rate. What’s more important than prevention is resilience, which involves identifying security investments that minimize the impact of an attack.

Analyzing the psychological underpinnings of an insider threat case is a complex undertaking because there is little evidence and scant public data about insider threat incidents.

Vectra announced broader and deeper cloud capabilities to track and link accounts and data in hybrid environments. Vectra empowers security teams with continued analysis of how users are accessing, using and configuring cloud services based on logs from SaaS, and account usage from Identity Providers (IdPs) like Microsoft Azure AD.

Vectra is first to use cloud identities to track and link interactions between hosts and accounts across the entire network. Vectra’s enhanced capabilities mark the first, and only, NDR solution that can detect and stop threats across the entire network, tying together attacker activities and progression between cloud, hybrid, and on-premise networks.

The rise of targeted credential-based attacks negate email security, multifactor authentication (MFA), cloud access security brokers (CASBs), and other threat-prevention approaches normally established to protect users because these malicious account-based attacks look like legitimate user actions. Vectra ties together all host and account interactions as they move between cloud and on-premise environments in one consolidated view, to drastically reduce the overall risk of a breach.

Private and trusted networks cannot be protected by old network security focused on malware signatures and anomaly detection alone. As workload shifts from clients, servers, and endpoints to the public cloud, this proliferation has created a network where user identity has become the new perimeter. Vectra is uniquely positioned to protect this network of hybrid on-premise and cloud connectivity with our learning behavioral models that stitch together hosts and on-premise and cloud identities to stop attacks earlier in the kill chain.

Modern day enterprise security is like guarding a fortress that is being attacked on all fronts, from digital infrastructure to applications to network endpoints. That complexity is why AI technologies such as deep learning and machine learning have emerged as game-changing defensive weapons in the enterprise’s arsenal over the past three years.

An unauthorized person apparently gained access to a database of insurance software firm Vertafore earlier this year and compromised the driver's license data of over 27 million Texas citizens, the company detailed this week. The possibility that a system vulnerability does not exist could mean the data was obtained through a database configuration error, says Tim Wade, Vectra's technical director of the CTO team.

Experts have warned that cybercrime is likely to increase as more people prioritize online shopping over in-store purchases due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The National spoke to a number of cyber security experts who offered readers tips to help keep the online criminals at bay.

Organizations' migration to the cloud is a broad term that encompasses many different trends, three of which our CTO, Oliver Tavakoli, unpack and discuss in his article.

Healthcare facilities have become an increasingly popular target for ransomware groups in the past year. While an uptick in cyber attacks on United States hospitals might otherwise be attributed to that general trend, the FBI is warning that it has evidence of a coordinated criminal attack on the country’s healthcare system.

Hackers selling network access to 7,500 educational establishments have reportedly dropped their asking price. Reports emerged last week that access was being sold by a threat actor on multiple Russian hacker forums and as well as educational organizations. The package also included access to corporate networks from other verticals, such as entertainment and the bar industry.

When it comes to managing cyber-threats, the traditional focus has been on prevention, but today, good cyber-health requires a more balanced approach as more organisations experience increasingly complex and targeted attacks.

Vectra announced the appointment of Garry Veale as regional director for the United Kingdom and Ireland, following another calendar quarter of exceptional business growth. As NDR continues to gain momentum and recognition as essential to business security operations and incident response, Veale will play a pivotal role in driving the continued success of Vectra expansion across the region.

A major global cyber threat to election security was squashed by the FBI with the help of Silicon Valley social media companies. Hitesh Sheth, our CEO, was interviewed to give his thoughts on using cybersecurity to combat the spread of disinformation.

Our CEO, Hitesh Sheth, sat down for an executive Q&A to share career advice and other lessons he's learned while working.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the newly distributed workforce that it engendered upended security strategies and forced a rethink of approaches to securing remote workers and supply chains at many companies. With more users accessing enterprise systems and data from their homes, attack surfaces increased dramatically. Enterprise security teams found themselves scrambling to implement new controls to manage threats due to their increased risk exposure.

Besides civil unrest and other physical security threats, the 2020 election also faces significant digital threats that could wreak havoc on U.S. election infrastructure and the legitimacy of the results.

CISA released a joint statement co-authored with the FBI and HHS describing the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) that are being used by cybercriminals to extort healthcare organizations and hospitals with ransomware during COVID-19.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers. Criminals have moved to lower volume, but highly targeted ransomware attacks. These are multifaceted, complex, and unfold over extended periods of time and increasingly use the legitimate tools within networks and cloud services.

Recent reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) indicate that hackers are unleashing a major ransomware attack wave on hospitals across the United States. In what they term “a wave of data-scrambling extortion attempts” aiming to lock up hospital IT environments even as the COVID-19 epidemic spikes.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), FBI, and the Department of Health and Human Services are warning healthcare providers to take precautions to protect their networks from threats, which include attempts to infect systems with Ryuk ransomware. CISA, FBI, and HHS encourage healthcare organizations to maintain business continuity plans to minimize service interruptions.

Hackers have broken through the "front door" of online data storage units used by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and leaked hundreds of chatbot conversations and patient information. Scores of victims could now be exposed to phishing scams after having their full names, home addresses and email contacts taken from a misconfigured Google Cloud storage bucket.

While the idea of lateral movement between IT and OT systems in the enterprise could be disastrous, the current work-from-home environment means that attacks against residential IoT systems could have a significant impact on productivity—or even become entry points for attacks against enterprise assets.

Attackers are exploiting the rapid adoption of cloud-based collaboration services such as Microsoft’s SharePoint Online and OneDrive by leveraging them as a social engineering tool to trick users into clicking on malicious links, often for the purpose of wire fraud or supply chain fraud. Oliver Tavakoli, CTO at Vectra, agreed that these kind of phishing scams tend to be more successful since the email is sourced by an internal party, rather than being from an external party pretending to be internal, and the links to SharePoint or OneDrive files reinforce to the victim that this is an internal communication.

The U.S. National Security Agency this week released an advisory containing information on 25 vulnerabilities that are being actively exploited or targeted by Chinese state-sponsored threat actors. The exploits themselves also cover a broad range of steps in the cyberattack lifecycle, indicating that many of the attacks in which these exploits were observed were already pretty deep into the attack progression – and many were likely found only after-the-fact through deep forensic efforts rather than having been identified while the attacks were active.

As it becomes evident that the WFH model is going to be with us well into 2021 and there is a sense that many companies will not return to a pre-pandemic models of almost everyone working from an office all the time, longer-term and more sustainable investments into how employees connect to applications are being undertaken. Zero-trust and a bias toward cloud-native delivery of applications have become central to that direction.

The National Security Agency (NSA) has released a cybersecurity advisory on Chinese state-sponsored malicious cyber activity. This advisory provides 25 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) known to be recently leveraged, or scanned-for, by Chinese state-sponsored cyber actors to enable successful hacking operations against a multitude of victim networks.

Dangerous gray areas like new BYOD policies and shadow IT devices have increased, thanks to the rapid shift to remote working. Hitesh Sheth, our CEO, discusses how organizations can navigate the distributed workforce landscape when it comes to insider threats, and recommends security postures that anticipate the actual threats themselves by proactively detecting and responding to malicious behaviors that can lead to a data breach or theft.

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) is warning that Chinese-linked hacking groups are exploiting 25 vulnerabilities in software systems and network devices as part of cyberespionage campaigns - which means patching is urgent. NSA analysts say China-backed hackers are targeting the U.S. Defense Department as well as America's national security systems and the private defense industry, using vulnerabilities as launching pads into networks, according to the alert.

The NSA has gathered enough cyber-attack data from Chinese hackers and has the list with the most exploited flaws. Oliver Tavakoli, our CTO, comments on the breadth of products covered by the list of CVEs.

October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, which was created to raise awareness around the importance of cybersecurity and provide organizations with resources to be safer and more secure online. Chris Morales, head of security analytics, shares his thoughts on security Microsoft Office 365.

With people’s health, jobs and finances all under threat, cyber monitors report an increase in e-mails enticing users to click on unsafe links, purportedly offering information on rising local case numbers, advice on safety measures, tips for claiming stimulus cheques, as well as alerts on coronavirus-linked investment opportunities or relief donations. Ammar Enaya, our Regional Director (METNA), talks about how ransomware, privileged access abuse, data loss and poorly configured services that create vulnerabilities are significant risks.

Chris Morales, our head of security analytics, shares his thoughts on security in healthcare. Through Vectra's own research as well as in the wider industry context, it's understood that the real threat is already in healthcare networks in the form of privileged access misuse; the growth in healthcare IoT devices is overwhelming and dangerous; and a majority of attacks occur due to negligence and a lack of security awareness by insiders.

Barnes & Noble, American bookseller, has notified customers of a possible data breach that may have affected their personal information. Tim Wade, our Technical Director on the CTO Team, notes that incident response can be complex and messy, and the Barnes and Noble statement likely reflects that reality.

It’s been well documented that 2020 has seen a sharp rise in cyber-attacks, and almost no industry has been spared. Software tools, especially those that facilitate remote collaboration, have seen a surge in user engagement - but even these aren’t immune to the proliferation of cyber-attacks. Microsoft’s Office 365 is no exception, as explained in Vectra's 2020 Spotlight Report on Office 365.

Vectra's Spotlight Report on Microsoft Office 365 showcases how Office 365 is attractive to cybercriminals because it provides a single gateway to infiltrate multiple applications. Matt Walmsley discusses how attackers utilize internal phishing, among other techniques, to perform lateral movement privilege escalation and reconnaissance behaviors.

According to Vectra's Spotlight Report on Microsoft Office 365, cybercriminals can launch attacks that are far more sophisticated targeting legitimate tools and services such as Power Automate (an application which lets users create custom integrations and automated workflows between Office 365 applications), Microsoft eDiscovery (an electronic discovery tool that searches across Office 365 applications/data and exports the results), and OAuth (an open standard for access authentication).

Vectra's Spotlight Report on Microsoft Office 365 analyzes the usage patterns and behaviors of attackers within Office 365 services and tools. Ideally, when security teams face attacks within their Office 365 environments, they will have solid information and expectations about SaaS platforms to easily pinpoint and mitigate malicious behaviors and privilege abuse.

With more than 250 million active users each month, Office 365 is the foundation of enterprise data sharing, storage, and communication for many organizations. This makes it a prime target for cyberattackers, who use Office 365's built-in tools and services to conduct breaches.

Just as they did with PowerShell for Windows, threat actors are abusing native O365 capabilities for lateral movement, command-and-control communication, and other malicious activity. In new research, Vectra found that attackers are widely using Office 365 accounts to move laterally to other users and accounts within an enterprise, carry out command-and-control communications, and perform other malicious activities.

Barnes & Noble is investigating a security incident involving unauthorized access to its corporate systems, including those storing customers' email addresses as well as billing and shipping addresses and telephone numbers. Tim Wade, our technical director on the CTO team, discusses how attackers are constantly looking to take advantage of any weak point in your security posture just to gain entry to IT infrastructure.

There was a lot to learn from breaches, vulnerabilities, and attacks this year.

A local electric cooperative serving western Colorado's Montrose and Delta counties, says a cyberattack first detected Nov. 7 has disabled billing systems and wiped out 20 to 25 years' worth of historic data.

The world of cybersecurity changed for good on Dec. 13, 2020 as a result of the massive cyberattack on SolarWinds.

Experts give their take on the state of cybersecurity as we near the end of 2021.

Over the last year, ethical hackers have prevented more than US$27 billion in cybercrime, according to a report released Tuesday by a leading bug bounty platform.

New research that found some 80% of ethical hackers have recently identified a vulnerability they had not encountered before the pandemic.

Modern complexities of rogue devices, remote employees, and multi-cloud environments have brought previously unseen levels of unpredictability to the SOC.

A report on cloud adoption found cloud usage among respondents has grown to 90%, while 48% say they plan to migrate half or more of their apps to the cloud in 2022.

Here’s a look at the most disruptive security incidents associated with AWS misconfigurations and how businesses can prevent misconfigurations in the future.

The U.S. Department of State will create a Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, led by a Senate-confirmed ambassador-at-large, to advance its cybersecurity diplomacy efforts.

Since taking office in January, the Biden administration has made cybersecurity one of its top priorities.

The Russian-based cybercrime group responsible for the high-profile attack on software maker SolarWinds last year is continuing to take aim at the global supply chain, according to a warning issued by Microsoft this week.

Why it’s important to make the most of machine learning when managing cyber-security incidents.

As security teams start to fight back, attackers have only become more sophisticated.  Here are six key trends that your security team should be tracking to ensure that your organization remains cyber resilient.

Acer has confirmed that its servers in Taiwan have also been breached, after hackers themselves shared details about the incident with privacy watchdogs, Privacy Affairs.

The previously unknown SnapMC group exploits unpatched VPNs and webserver apps to breach systems and carry out quick-hit extortion in less time than it takes to order a pizza.

A new bill introduced would require ransomware victims to disclose ransom payments within 48 hours of payment — including the amount of ransom demanded and paid the type of currency used for payment of the ransom, and any known information about the entity demanding the ransom.

A new report from Forrester Research indicates organizations should tread carefully between engagement, empathy and punishment because punishment has the tendency to reinforce employees’ negative perceptions and resentment of the security team.

No Internet-connected device appears to be safe from potentially being abused by a newly theorized form of distributed denial of service attack.

An Illinois man ran a successful computer takedown service until the feds stepped in.

In the sprawling IT landscapes of today, artificial intelligence (AI) will play a decisive role in this war against ransomware, giving organizations the best chance to defeat motivated attackers.

Vectra Technical Director to the CTO Office, Tim Wade explains how Resilience shifts the focus toward eliminating the probable impact of the full attack chain.

Vectra CEO, Hitesh Sheth explains how AI is the greatest ally when it comes to creating a secure future. AI can learn the differences between normal and malicious activity — independently, without requiring human input.

The security team at the Australian telco got its network detection response down from four hours down to one hour a day.

Organizations aren’t maintaining regular patching: With nearly half of all databases globally (46%) containing a vulnerability and the average number of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) per database standing at 26, it’s clear that businesses are ignoring one of the basic tenets of data security which is to patch and update databases as soon and often as possible.

One out of every two on-premises databases globally has at least one vulnerability, finds a new study.

Chris Fisher, our Director of Security Engineering APJ, discusses how public and private sector organisations – from government and military to banking, energy and transportation – have become digital-centric to seek economic savings, productivity gains and to create customer and citizen value.

A dual U.S.-Canadian national has been sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison for conspiring to launder tens of millions of dollars in wire and bank fraud schemes, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Officials say the activity included cash-out scams for North Korean hackers, including the criminal gang Lazarus Group, which has been associated with a military unit for the authoritarian regime.

It was a short hiatus for the REvil ransomware group that signed off in July following several high-profile attacks by the Russia-based crew on such companies as global meat processor JBS and tech services provider Kaseya.

Over the course of the pandemic, one of the biggest disruptions the world faced was to critical national infrastructure, specifically supply chains. Border and port closures, mandated work from home policies, and severe shortages of citizen essential products including PPE and pharmaceuticals, have highlighted vulnerabilities in production, supply, and logistics. Asia is now experiencing a renewed surge in Covid-19 infections, which continues to impact supply chains across the world and manufacturers are yet again faced with complexities.

Based on industry reports over the past few days, it appears that Paragon Software will include its New Technology File System 3 (NTFS3) kernel driver in the recent Linux Kernel 5.15 release, which promises improved support for Microsoft's NTFS file system.

Microsoft has a sizeable global channel that raises the question of whether that is the model that all vendors should be aspiring to follow.

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced two senior cybersecurity appointments.

David Larrimore has been named chief technology officer for DHS, a role he previously held at Immigration and Customs Enforcement between 2016 and 2019. Between federal appointments, Larrimore was lead solution engineer at Salesforce.

A vendor with a checkered security incident past is not automatically disqualified from future contracts. Rather, there is a playbook for due diligence.

The operators of LockFile ransomware have adopted new techniques, including "intermittent encryption," to help evade detection, according to cybersecurity firm Sophos.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have observed an increase in highly impactful ransomware attacks occurring on holidays and weekends—when offices are customarily closed—in the United States, as recently as the Fourth of July holiday in 2021.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) published a new cybersecurity advisory to highlight precautions and mitigation steps that public and private sector organizations can take to reduce their risk to ransomware and other cyber attacks, specifically leading up to holidays and weekends.

Citing damaging ransomware attacks that it, along with the FBI, has observed over recent holidays, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an alert warning organizations to be prepared as the Labor Day holiday nears.

After Bangkok Airways disclosed that it had been clobbered by a cyberattack last week, the LockBit 2.0 ransomware gang tossed its own countdown clock in the trash and went ahead and published what it claims are the airline’s encrypted files on its leak site.

The LockFile ransomware family has made an impression in the relatively short amount of time it’s been around. The malware garnered a lot of attention over the past several months after being detected exploiting high-profile Microsoft vulnerabilities dubbed ProxyShell and PetitPortam.

New research released by Nozomi Networks in tandem with SANS found that 91% of respondents are using cloud technologies to directly support some aspect of industrial control system (ICS) operations.

Public and private sector organisations – from government and military to banking, energy and transportation – have become digital-centric to seek economic savings, productivity gains and to create customer and citizen value.

Despite security improvements over the last seven years, the U.S. Agency for International Development - USAID - needs to better protect the large amounts of personal identifiable data - such as Social Security numbers - that the agency collects, according to an inspector general's audit.

Kaseya has obtained a master decryptor key for the REvil ransomware that locked up the systems of at least 60 of its customers in a spate of worldwide cyberattacks on July 2.

The hoards of consumer information that companies collect multiply the damaging effects of data breaches, lawyers and cybersecurity specialists say. In an estimated 1,700 publicly reported data breaches during the first half of 2021, more than 18 billion pieces of information have been exposed, according to research from cybersecurity company Risk Based Security Inc.

As Digital Transformation efforts continue, the survey found that AWS is becoming an even more critical component to organisations that are regularly deploying new workloads, leveraging deployments in multiple regions and are relying on more than one AWS service.

The scope of a cyberattack at T-Mobile US keeps growing, as the operator today confirmed personal data on at least 54 million people was exposed and stolen. It pegged the number of people affected at nearly 49 million people earlier this week.

Accenture suffered a LockBit ransomware attack that reportedly encrypted at least 2,500 computers and leaked client information.

The U.S. Census Bureau was targeted by a cyberattack last year that compromised some systems but did not result in the theft of census data, according to a new report from the Office of the Inspector General.

According to a watchdog report, U.S. Census Bureau computer servers were exploited in January 2020 during a cybersecurity attack, but hackers’ attempts to keep access to the system were unsuccessful.

Oliver Tavakoli, CTO at Vectra, lays out the different layers of ransomware defense all companies should implement. Determining how hard a target you present for the current wave of human-driven ransomware involves multiple considerations. There are four steps to analyzing how prepared you are for a ransomware attack.

A newly published Office of the Inspector General report detailing how the U.S. Census Bureau mishandled a January 2020 cybersecurity incident is a strong reminder to the business community to follow best practices such as IT asset management, frequent vulnerability scanning and mitigation, comprehensive event logging and prompt notification and incident response when a possible incident is suspected.

T-Mobile USA officials have confirmed that the records of 47.8 million current, former and prospective customers were stolen in a “highly sophisticated cyberattack” late last week.

T-Mobile US has said cyber attackers who breached its computer networks stole personal details of more than 40 million past, current and prospective customers.

Mobile telecommunication company T-Mobile has confirmed a data breach that reportedly affects nearly all of its U.S. customers. Hackers gained access to the company’s systems and hacked servers and databases containing the personally identifiable information of approximately 100 million customers.

A proliferation of ransomware attacks has created ripple effects worldwide. Such criminal attacks have since increased in scale and magnitude, as critical hospital and infrastructure targets were shut down.

T-Mobile said on Monday it was looking into claims that a hacker has stolen data related to more than 100 million T-Mobile customers in the United States and aims to sell access to part of the information for around $277,000.

T-Mobile is investigating a reported breach in which a hacker claims to be selling the personal information of over 100 million of its customers.

Microsoft on Monday announced that it received the approval to launch Azure Government Top Secret for its military and intelligence customers.

Global e-commerce giant Amazon is reportedly considering plans to implement a keyboard-stroke monitoring solution for its customer-service representatives.

T-Mobile said in a statement that it had determined that “unauthorized access to some T-Mobile data occurred, however, we have not yet determined that there is any personal customer data involved.” The company noted that it’s “confident that the entry point used to gain access has been closed” and that a review is ongoing.

Over one-third of organizations worldwide have experienced a ransomware attack or breach that blocked access to systems or data in the previous 12 months, according to new research.

Researchers on Friday reported that an insecure direct object reference (IDOR) vulnerability allowed for the reading and modifying of all user workouts on the cloud-based Wodify fitness platform.

Accenture, the multinational consulting firm with tens of billions USD in annual revenue and over half a million employees worldwide, is being blackmailed by the LockBit ransomware group, which has launched a successful attack against them.

Information technology consulting giant Accenture PLC has been struck by ransomware that resulted in customer data stolen.

Accenture officials are saying they staved off a ransomware attack this week by a cybercriminal ring using the LockBit malware even as the hacker group claimed to have captured data from the massive global IT and business consulting firm and has threatened to release it.

Vectra AI has released the findings of its new PaaS and IaaS Security Survey Report. The report presents the results of a survey of 317 IT executives all using AWS, 70 percent coming from organizations of 1,000+ employees. The findings show a rapid expansion and reliance on AWS services while simultaneously showcasing security blind spots within many organizations.

In a report on remote workforce security, 52 percent of the U.S. IT and cybersecurity professionals surveyed revealed they experienced remote workers finding workarounds to their organizations’ security policies.

A group using the LockBit ransomware says it struck the IT consulting firm Accenture and threatened to release data within hours.

Accenture sent an internal memo confirming that attackers stole client information & work materials in a July 30 “incident.”

As ransomware and nation-state attacks have become more destructive, older methods of protecting networks and infrastructure, such as perimeter defenses and penetration resistance, can no longer protect organizations' assets and data.

In the wake of a relentless wave of supply chain attacks, security leaders must heed this famous line and change their approach. When relying on traditional prevention-based strategies, victims have faced costly and humiliating results time and time again.

Sharing threat intelligence and proof-of-concept exploits can often help other organizations better defend themselves, but such efforts are hampered by obstacles and restrictions.

In response to the number of high-profile ransomware incidents, the Federal Government has launched Operation Orcus. The cross-agency initiative is designed to target ransomware attacks that have direct links to sophisticated organised crime groups, both in Australia and globally. The Australian Federal Police are leading the initiative, with the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), Australia Criminal Intelligence Commission, AUSTRAC, and state and territory police agencies also joining the force.

The expansion of AWS services has naturally led to increased complexity and risk. In fact, all of the companies surveyed have experienced at least one security incident in their public cloud environment in the last 12 months. Gartner anticipated that over 99% of cloud breaches will have a root cause of customer misconfiguration.

With competitive corporate pressures to reduce IT operations and security costs, transitioning workloads and data to the cloud are unstoppable — but the most challenging question is how to govern the process to ensure a predictable, accountable, and scalable transition, and resulting cloud infrastructure that accounts for the diverse interests of the internal stakeholders and the regulators.

Every organisation deploying Amazon Web Services (AWS) has experienced at least one security incident.

New report finds 100% of companies have experienced a security incident, but continue to expand their footprint as 64% report deploying new AWS services weekly.

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Organizations count on multifactor authentication (MFA) to prevent attacks. However, the belief that you're 100% protected because of MFA is just false. Even though there are statistics that highlight how MFA can reduce the risk of identity compromise by 99% over passwords, attackers still know how to bypass it. Our CEO, Hitesh Sheth, shares his thoughts on why MFA isn't enough.

New report from Vectra AI finds 100% of companies have experienced a security incident, but continue to expand their footprint as 64% report deploying new AWS services weekly.

Vectra AI released the findings of the PaaS & IaaS Security Survey Report. The report compiled the answers of 317 IT executives all using AWS, 70% coming from organization of 1,000+ employees. The findings show a rapid expansion and reliance on AWS services while simultaneously showcasing security blind spots within many organizations.

As digital transformation efforts continue, the survey found that AWS is becoming an even more critical component to organizations who are regularly deploying new workloads, leveraging deployments in multiple regions and are relying on more than one AWS service.

Organizations hit by ransomware attacks also report tightened budgets and lingering impacts on productivity, profitability and security posture, suggesting the extensive damage caused in the wake of ransomware attacks has long-lasting effects.

Varonis on Thursday released a report indicating that companies have to focus a bit more on securing their SaaS applications. The study found that 44% of cloud privileges are misconfigured, 3 out of 4 cloud identities for external contractors remain active after they leave, and 15% of employees transfer business-critical data to their personal cloud accounts.

After focusing almost exclusively on Russia for the first seven months of his presidency, Joe Biden’s White House shifted part of its cybersecurity attention to China on July 12, with the administration blaming hackers associated with one of the country’s security services with carrying out attacks on vulnerable versions of Microsoft Exchange email servers earlier this year.

A little over 10 years ago, Google launched their Vulnerability Rewards Program (VRP), with the goal of establishing a channel for security security researchers to report bugs to Google and offer an efficient way for Google to thank them for helping make Google, users, and the Internet a safer place.

Threat detection and response leader Vectra AI has released details of the top five Microsoft Azure AD and Office 365 threat alerts triggered within financial services organisations. The analysis, conducted during early 2021, recorded and categorised the potential threats detected by Vectra’s Cognito Network and Cloud Detection Platform deployments. Each of these detections represents an anomalous behaviour, and therefore helps security teams spot and stop cyber-attacks within their Microsoft cloud environments.

Google celebrated the anniversary of its Vulnerability Rewards Program (VRP) by launching bughunters.google.com, a site that brings together all of the VRPs it has for Google, Android, Abuse, Chrome, and Play, and puts them on a single intake form that aims to make it easier for bug hunters to submit issues.

The LemonDuck malware that for the past couple of years has been known for its cryptocurrency mining and botnet capabilities is evolving into a much broader threat, moving into new areas of cyber attacks, targeting both Linux and Microsoft systems and expanding its geographical reach, according to security researchers with Microsoft.

Vectra is positioned as an integral part of the Microsoft Zero Trust model; it assumes breaches by investigating the behaviour of users, workloads, networks and devices as though they originate from an untrusted network. It does so by leveraging its analytics and understanding of users and accounts, tracking them between on-premises and cloud.

The massive hack of the Microsoft Exchange email server software that took place early this year is estimated to have hit tens of thousands of victims, causing disproportionate chaos for smaller businesses. The Biden administration has formally declared that Chinese state-backed APT groups are to blame.

A short-lived outage at the content delivery network supplier Akamai on Thursday, which briefly knocked offline many corporate websites, is another indicator that companies need resiliency built into their systems. That means they should avoid relying on just one CDN provider, security experts say.

Vectra AI has announced the Vectra Cognito platform will deliver key Zero Trust capabilities for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure customers. The company says it’s uniquely positioned as an integral part of the model, which assumes breaches by investigating the behaviour of users, workloads, networks, and devices as though they originate from an untrusted network.

iPhone users, drop what you’re doing and update now: Apple has issued a warning about a ream of code-execution vulnerabilities – some of which are remotely exploitable – and experts are emphatically recommending an ASAP update to version 14.7 of iOS and iPadOS.

Organized by Amnesty International and the Paris-based non-profit Forbidden Stories, the Pegasus Project involves 80 journalists in 10 countries. Its subject is the Pegasus spyware sold by NSO Group, a powerful tool that is supposed to only be available to law enforcement and intelligence agencies for legitimate and legal uses.

The software company at the center of a huge ransomware attack this month has obtained a universal key to unlock files of the hundreds of businesses and public organizations crippled by the hack.

UK rail operator Northern suffered a cyber attack targeting its newly installed self-serve ticketing machines across Northern England, forcing the operator to take all the ticketing machines offline.

The federal government is fighting back against what it says are China-based cyberattacks against U.S. universities and companies with indictments and a “naming-and-shaming” approach — but researchers aren’t convinced the efforts will come to much in terms of deterring future activity.

Reports that the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware was used by governments to spy on Apple iPhones used by journalists, activists, government officials and business executives is becoming a global controversy for NSO, Apple and a number of governments at the center of the scandal.

In 2015, there were few hotter areas in Silicon Valley than cybersecurity, and Vectra ranked in the top 10 of that competitive group.

Cyber attackers are slipping through perimeter defenses and hiding in the shadows and dark corners of networks.

Gerard Bauer, vice president of EMEA sales at Vectra, shares his security predictions for 2016.

Sanrio says the loophole that provided an attack entry method potentially allowing cyber criminals to bypass traditional security defences in order to enter and exploit internal systems with the appearance of a legitimate user, has been closed and data is now safe.

New technologies, such as machine learning, have evolved to help organizations improve their response to modern attacks. Although the financial industry has been using machine learning since the 1970s to detect fraudulent behavior, use of machine learning in the information security sector is a recent phenomenon.

In this eighth annual VMblog.com series exclusive, virtualization and cloud executives share their predictions for 2016.

Higher education is a key target for cyber attacks because of the open networks common on college and university campuses. Thousands of students and faculty wander on and off the network with their own devices, bringing viruses and malware to the wider community and creating nightmares for security teams.

In 2016, what organisations need are tools that identify the activities of the attacker inside a network before a data breach occurs, with a focus on how to quickly intervene, minimise the time they are exposed and reduce the impact of cyberthreats.

Hernan Londono, associate CIO at Barry University in Miami, talks about embracing campus mobility and BYOD, and explains why a strong Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) defense is vital to protecting the university's network from mobile devices that it doesn't own or manage.

A SANS Institute report, backed with findings from Vectra, explains how an automated threat detection system that combines behavioral analysis, data science and machine learning can help organizations meet Critical Security Control (CSC) mandates.

Automated network threat detection tools that use data science, machine learning and behavioral analysis work with perimeter security to help organizations meet security goals defined in the CIS Critical Security Controls recommendations and protect against attackers, according to a new report from the SANS Institute.

Despite being vulnerable to cyberattacks, many universities still have insufficient threat management defenses. Attackers can easily evade perimeter security defenses and spy, spread and steal for the better part of a year, undetected. In the process, they'll take vital research data, personal info and financial records from campus community members.

The core view of most of the experts we spoke to was that, while it is not clear if there is a higher number of CISOs now, these individuals are definitely gaining a stronger position within the business.

VTech hackers purportedly made off with millions of pieces of customer information and have now been revealed to have stolen photos and private chat histories, too. VTech sold an app called Kid Connect that lets parents use their smartphones to talk to their kids through their VTech devices.

Officials from Vectra Networks and Barry University in Miami discuss insufficient cyber attack defenses at many colleges, despite existing vulnerabilities. They also discuss new defense-in-depth models that quickly pinpoint and mitigate threats in progress and share security strategies that enable mobility as well as open and collaborative learning.

What steps can be taken to detect and block exploits that take advantage of software vulnerabilities? And how can security teams better understand the behaviour of legitimate software components? Preventing the exploitation of software vulnerabilities is desirable but their detection is a must for organisations and their security teams.

VTech, maker of electronic toys for kids, said that 5 million of its customer accounts were leaked in a data breach that accessed user names, birthdays and passwords but not their credit card or personally identifiable information. Company officials noted that the breach was mounted by an "unauthorized party."

Ransomware is targeting enterprise networks with a vengeance. In addition to user hard drives, it's been increasingly successful at encrypting file-shares and network drives. Consequently, ransomware has evolved from a mere nuisance to a potentially debilitating attack that holds critical business assets and intellectual property hostage.

Vectra advanced persistent threat (APT) security software was chosen by the Computer Technology Review editorial panel based on rigorous judging criteria that included product innovation, functionality and affordability.

However, the most dangerous threat to data, user and system security is not the known known, but rather the unknown unknowns – the threats that have yet to be captured in the wild and mapped. We don’t know if they exist, we don’t have visibility into what they do, and there’s no way signatures can catch them.

The oil and gas industry is caught in a slump, with prices going up and down and profits in decline. But it faces another major problem that's gotten less attention: Cyber attacks could threaten industry stability and worker safety.

Government Security News is pleased to announce that Vectra has been named a finalist in its seventh annual Homeland Security Awards for Best Threat Intelligence Solution.

Unlike vendors that attempt to make every piece of malware sound like the end of the world, it is important to show IT security teams which threats actually pose the greatest risks to the university.

Most security solutions have one at-bat, yet attackers can typically survive undetected in a network for around 225 days, says Vectra’s Mike Banic. “Every network has likely been hacked, but they just don’t know it yet,” he says.

Vice president of marketing Mike Banic shares the company's latest developments and discusses its recent advancements in the real-time detection of in-progress cyber attacks that spread inside networks.

While remote offices, clinics, bank branches and retail locations are critical to business success, they often lack the same security protections found at the headquarters or data center locations.

The capstone event of SINET is its yearly innovation showcase in Washington, D.C., the last of which was held Nov. 3-4. The showcase brought together innovative solutions from 16 firms, including Vectra, selected by a collective of seasoned judges.

Are cybersecurity and privacy mutually exclusive, or is it possible to have both? Oliver Tavakoli, CTO of Vectra Networks, offers a quick analysis of the commercial solutions available from well-known cybersecurity suppliers to provide valuable insight.

Rochester Institute of Technology is already planning its second Collegiate Pentesting Competition after the success of its first annual event held Nov. 7–8 in Rochester, N.Y. Teams from nine regional universities faced-off at RIT as they broke into computer networks, evaluated their weak points and presented plans to better secure them.

A new competition at Rochester Institute of Technology allows students to attack the problem of cyber security from a different perspective. Instead of defending themselves against attackers, as other cyber threat competitions do, these students create a full-fledged plan of attack and launch it against a network.

Two teens arrested after being implicated in the attack on internet service provider TalkTalk in which 1.2 million customer details were stolen last week.

Cyber attackers are moving laterally inside networks and using hidden tunnels of encrypted traffic to get around. The encrypted traffic that protects data within modern applications – such as SharePoint, Exchange, Salesforce.com, and Google Apps – creates a blind spot that can be exploited by advanced threats and malware.

Vectra takes the network analytics approach, proposing to weave together data via machine learning to surface anomalous behaviors and even anticipate an attacker’s next move.

For the third time, UK telecoms provider TalkTalk has fallen victim to a cyber-breach and there could be as many as four million customers affected.

TalkTalk Telecom Group PLC said Friday it has received a ransom demand from someone claiming responsibility for a criminal hack of its website that could have resulted in the theft of data from its database.

In the wake of news that TalkTalk have suffered their third serious data breach in a year, industry experts have lined up to express concern at the company’s blasé attitude toward cyber security.

Cyber threats to the oil and gas industry infrastructure are potentially more serious than the breaches where hackers capitalize on stolen personal, health care or financial information. Nation states and foreign businesses have motivations to carry out cyber attacks with potentially crippling global consequences.

EC3, NCA, FBI and a range of other bodies have targeted the Dridex banking malware, including using a sinkhole operation to sever communications between infected botnets and their controlling cyber-criminals.

The National Crime Agency has issued a warning that a new version of the Dridex malware is targeting the UK, with £20 million having already been purported stolen by this attack.

Venky Ganesan, managing director at Menlo Ventures, writes, “I believe there will be significant winners…notably those that reduce false positives and prioritize workflows for better incident response and remediation. Among the early leaders are companies such as Exabeam, LightCyber, Securonix and Vectra Networks."

The university turns to Vectra for a real-time cyber-attack detection system that uses data science, machine learning and behavioral analysis to detect attacks in progress.

Updates released on Tuesday by Adobe for Flash Player, Reader and Acrobat address a significant number of vulnerabilities that expose the users of these products to hacker attacks. The work of experts from Vectra Networks has been acknowledged in finding and reporting vulnerabilities.

Vectra customer Jackson Health System will speak at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2015 event next week. Jackson Health System CISO Connie Barrera will present “Protecting Health Organizations from Cyber Attacks” on Oct. 6 at 3:50 p.m. EDT in the Europe 8 Conference Room of the Walt Disney World Dolphin hotel in Orlando, Florida.

SINET, an organization focused on advancing cybersecurity innovation through public and private sector collaboration, today announced the winners of its annual SINET 16 Innovator competition, including Vectra Networks.

Vectra Networks raised $35 million in equity funding on Tuesday. DAG Ventures led the round with participation from all existing investors including Khosla Ventures, Accel Ventures, IA Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, Intel Capital and Juniper Networks.

Barry University, a 9,000-student Catholic university in Miami, has signed Vectra Networks to protect its data and networks from cyber attacks.

Distributor Cloud Distribution has reached an agreement with Vectra Networks to provide the vendor’s security products to the channel. Cloud Distribution says it will help grow the Silicon Valley firm’s presence in the UK and forge relationships with new partners to drive revenue growth.

Cloud Distribution has inked a deal with cybersecurity vendor Vectra Networks as the US player launches in the UK.

While consumer Wi-Fi products may seem like an odd choice for intensive threat research, Vectra Threat Labs found that vulnerabilities in consumer and Internet of Things gear can end up having a much larger impact on enterprise security than you might think.

Barry University has selected Vectra to protect its high-value data Relevant Products/Services as advanced persistent attacks (APTs) surge. Vectra’s automated threat management solution enables the university to detect cyber attacks as they are happening – automatically and in real time.

IT security is renowned for being in a state of constant evolution. New threats and attack strategies pop up constantly, and security vendors offer up shiny new products designed to keep the attackers at bay.

Vectra Networks has completed its initial European business expansion following 12 months of “accelerated sales growth.” Vectra has established a dedicated European presence, with a local headquarters based in Pfaffikon, Switzerland, a logistics hub in Amsterdam and a dedicated European leadership team.

Die Sicherheit von Unternehmen sowie der Schutz der Bürger im Internet sollen verbessert werden – so sieht es das jüngst verabschiedete IT-Sicherheitsgesetz vor. Ziel ist es, die digitalen Infrastrukturen Deutschlands zu den sichersten der Welt zu machen.

The world of security is like a football game, says Steven J. Spano, president of the Center for Internet Security. “There’s a flow to a football game where the defense has the advantage for a while, but then the offense starts to counter and mitigate,” he says.

Hitesh Sheth, president and CEO of Vectra Networks, says advanced economies now have cyber as part of their arsenal, and economic impacts are key during breaches.

The industry approach to detecting threats is inherently reactive, ceding the firstmover advantage to the cyber criminals. Defenses – based on signatures, reputation lists and blacklists – are only designed to recognize threats that have been previously seen. This means someone needs to be the first victim, and everyone hopes it’s not them.

Data breaches are constantly in the news whether in the form of sensational attacks against the likes of Ashley Madison or potentially more serious and far-reaching attacks such as those against health insurer Anthem or the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Against the backdrop of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management breach, the 2015 edition of the Laboratory’s Cyber Defenders internship offers an especially compelling introduction to cybersecurity for students who may soon serve on the front lines of cyberdefense.

Hacker attacks often start with spear-phishing attempts used to obtain credentials or deliver malware. But healthcare entities can take steps to help prevent these scams from being successful, says Connie Barrera, CISO of Jackson Health System in Miami.

Security teams are overwhelmed with a massive amount of threat data. While a decade ago no one was talking about threat intelligence except government agencies, organizations are now bombarded with threat data leaving them challenged with identifying what is relevant.

The Jscript9 memory corruption vulnerability (CVE-2015-2419) affecting Internet Explorer 11 was identified by Vectra Threat Labs while analyzing files leaked as a result of the data breach at Italian surveillance software maker Hacking Team. The flaw was identified from an email in which someone offered to sell the exploit to the Hacking Team.

If they haven't already, Internet Explorer users would do well to implement the security update provided by Microsoft last month, as among the fixed vulnerability is one that is currently being exploited via the popular commercial Angler exploit kit.

In-demand consultant and former hacker Jeff Moss offers his takes on trends, privacy, machine learning – and why you should always keep your keys in your pocket.

In the wake of massive data breaches at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, health insurer Anthem and retailer Target, an enterprise’s initial reaction might be to tighten the security around networks and data. However, you may be forgetting one critical component: The insider threat.

Hacker installieren Schadsoftware auf Computern des Bundestages sowie des Kanzleramts und greifen über Monate hinweg sensible Daten ab, ohne bemerkt zu werden. Welche Bedrohungen existieren für deutsche Unternehmen und Verbraucher? Und wie kann man sich schützen, wenn überhaupt?

The industry approach to detecting threats is inherently reactive, ceding the first-mover advantage to the cyber criminals. Defenses – based on signatures, reputation lists and blacklists – are only designed to recognize threats that have been previously seen. This means someone needs to be the first victim, and everyone hopes it’s not them.

Vectra earns spot on select list featuring coolest tech startups heating up the IT channel for equipping partners with differentiated automated threat detection offering.

Security company Vectra Networks has detected a zero-day vulnerability affecting Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) 11, after scanning through the huge cache of data logs leaked from Hacking Team.

Oliver Tavakoli sheds light on how the public can keep information safe in today’s Internet-driven world.

Zero-days patched across major vendors expand the fallout from the Hacking Team breach, but that's not the only source of vulnerability disclosures this month.

Firewalls alone may not be enough to stop cyber attacks. For that, there’s data science.

Vectra says it notified Microsoft about the flaw on July 9, then waited to release details of the flaw until a Windows fix had been released, just five days later. "They were able to work on this very quickly," says threat researcher Wade Williamson, director of product marketing at Vectra.

According to security researchers at Vectra Networks, this latest vulnerability in Internet Explorer was patched in amongst Microsoft's latest Update Tuesday fixes, which came out on 14 July 2015.

Defense Department CIO Terry Halvorsen’s visit to Silicon Valley in April included 29 companies, including Vectra Networks, with a focus on security, big data analytics and infrastructure management.

Vectra Networks discovered a security flaw in the latest version of Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 devices through monitoring an online conversation between a security researcher and malware developer Hacker Team regarding the sale of information relating to the flaw.

Microsoft has released 14 bulletins as part of its July 2015 security updates. One of the zero-day vulnerabilities is a Jscript9 memory corruption vulnerability (CVE-2015-2419) identified by researchers at Vectra. The flaw affects Internet Explorer 11 and it can be exploited to gain complete control of a vulnerable system.

The Internet Explorer bulletin, MS15-065, patches 29 vulnerabilities in the browser, including a Jscript9 memory corruption bug.

The IE vulnerability was discovered in an email a security researcher sent to Hacking Team executives, according to a blog post published Tuesday by researchers from security firm Vectra Networks.

According to Vectra Networks, the vulnerability fixed by Microsoft impacts fully patched versions of Internet Explorer 11 on both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.

Vectra Networks reported the vulnerability to Microsoft on July 9. Vectra said the flaw occurs within a custom heap in JSCRIPT9, meaning it may allow an attacker to bypass protections found in standard memory.

The Vectra Threat Labs found exploitable use-after-free vulnerability that lets attackers bypass standard memory protections in popular Web browser.

After analyzing the leaked data from last week's attack on Hacking Team, Vectra researchers discovered a previously unknown high severity vulnerability in Internet Explorer 11, which impacts a fully patched IE 11 web browser on both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.

Vectra Networks n’es plus exactement ce que l’on appelle une jeune pousse. L’entreprise existe depuis quatre ans. Mais sa technologie a récemment été distinguée par l’Innovation Sandbox de la dernière édition de RSA Conference.

Vectra Networks CEO Hitesh Sheth discusses cyber-attacks, the importance of discovering breaches and the security of networks.

A new report from security firm Vectra looks at the strategic phases of a cyberattack and what companies can do to shore up their defenses.

Vectra Networks says metadata from 40 customer network it analyzed showed one or more indicators of a targeted (as opposed to opportunistic) attack in every company that bypassed any defence the organization threw up. Not only that, three per cent of the companies showed evidence of data theft.

Backed by a database that can be hacked into and changed, the NJAC may not really fix the perceived wrongs in the Supreme Court collegium system.

Für seinen Eintritt in den europäischen Markt hat der Sicherheitsanbieter Vectra Networks die DACH-Region gewählt. In dieser will er nun ein Partnernetzwerk aufbauen, das seine Threat Management-Lösung verkauft.

There's no use in wondering anymore when your organization will be victimized by a cyberattack, it has already happened, to everyone. That is the take of an article at CIO, which noted that virtually every company has by now been compromised.

In a recent analysis of a quarter-million endpoint devices in 40 enterprises, every single corporate network showed evidence of a targeted intrusion but most of the activity was not yet at the most-dangerous data exfiltration stage.

A report from cyberdefense firm Vectra Networks found dramatic increases in lateral movements and reconnaissance are signs attackers are using targeted attacks to find ways past a company’s security perimeter.

Vectra Networks has announced the results of its second edition Post-Intrusion Report, which details threats to evade perimeter defenses and what attackers do once they get in a network.

Afin de mener leurs opérations de cybercrimes, les pirates sont de plus en plus nombreux à recourir aux réseaux Internet anonymes comme Tor. En 2015, son utilisation a bondi de 1 000% par rapport à l'année précédente selon un rapport de Vectra Networks.

In the wake of recent cyberattacks, including the high-profile breach of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, a new report from Vectra Networks has found a massive surge in the number of targeted cyberattacks, calling into question whether organizations are prepared to meet this threat.

A new study from Vectra explains what happens after your cyber defenses have been breached. According to the second edition of its Post-Intrusion Report, there was non-linear growth in lateral movement (580%) and reconnaissance (270%) detections that outpaced the 97% increase in overall detections compared to last year.

Malicious actors are increasingly using the anonymous Tor network and external remote access tools to instigate targeted attacks that are growing in sophistication and complexity, a Vectra Networks analysis of internal traffic has shown.

Selon un rapport de Vectra Networks, les cyberattaques ciblées sont en nette augmentation. L’usage de réseaux tels que Tor se généralise.

A new survey of 500 cyber security professionals shows privileged users, such as managers with access to sensitive information, pose the biggest insider threat to organizations (59 percent).

A new study has identified a surge in the typical indicators of targeted attacks on today's networks. Nearly 25 percent of the data analyzed was from education networks.

Vectra Networks is out with the second edition of the company’s Post-Intrusion Report, a real-world study about threats that evade perimeter defenses and what attackers do once they get inside your network. It is both illuminating and disturbing.