cybersecurity

WHAT IS PROACTIVE CYBER DEFENSE?

It’s not hard to understand the concept of proactive cyber defense: acting in anticipation of an attack against a computer or network. The goal is getting in front of attacks by evading, outwitting, or neutralizing them early instead of waiting for the damage to start like reactive cyber defenses. It’s also not hard to understand the benefits of being proactive: preventing the negative effects of cyber attacks instead of trying to minimize the damage. The only thing hard…

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cloud cybersecurity

What is Cloud Workload Protection?

Cloud usage is increasing rapidly. Analysts forecast growth of 17 percent for the worldwide public cloud services market in 2020 alone. This proliferation comes on top of already widespread cloud adoption. In a recent report by Flexera, over 83 percent of companies described themselves as intermediate to heavy users of cloud platforms, while 93 percent report having a multi-cloud strategy. With a growing number of companies planning on doing more in diverse cloud environments, cloud workloads are becoming…

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cybersecurity iot

Unpredictions for 2020 in Cyber Security

The end of the year tradition of prediction is becoming a guessing game as the pace of innovation is increasing towards pure randomness. So I will stop pretending I know what is going to happen in 2020, and I want to write on areas that seem like the most unpredictable for 2020. Below you can find an honest review of my?2019 predictions. 2020 Unpredictions 5G A much talked about topic in 2019 with billions poured…

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cybersecurity iot

My Ten Cyber Security Predictions for 2019

Well, 2018 is almost over and cyber threats are still here to keep us alert and ready for our continued roller coaster ride in 2019 as well. So here are some of my predictions for the world of cybersecurity 2019: IoT IoT is slowly turning into reality and security becomes a growing concern in afterthought fashion as always. This reality will not materialize into a new cohort of specialized vendors due to its highly fragmented…

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cybersecurity

How to Disclose a Security Vulnerability and Stay Alive

In recent ten years, I was involved in the disclosure of multiple vulnerabilities to different organizations and each story is unique and diverse as there is no standard way of doing it. I am not a security researcher and did not find those vulnerabilities on my own, but I was there. A responsible researcher, subjective to your definition of what is responsible, discloses first the vulnerability to the developer of the product via email or…

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AI blockchain cybersecurity

Risks of Artificial Intelligence on Society

Random Thoughts on Cyber Security, Artificial Intelligence, and Future Risks at the OECD Event – AI: Intelligent Machines, Smart Policies It is the end of the first day of a fascinating event in artificial intelligence, its impact on societies, and how policymakers should act upon what seems like a once in lifetime technological revolution. As someone rooted deeply in the world of cybersecurity, I wanted to share my point of view on what the future…

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AI blockchain cybersecurity

Accountability – Where AI and Blockchain Intersect

Recently I?ve been thinking about the intersection of blockchain and AI. Although several exciting directions are rising from the convergence of these technologies, I want to explore a specific one: accountability. One of the hottest discussions on AI is whether to constraint AI with regulation and ethics to prevent an apocalyptic future. Without going into whether it is right or wrong to do so, I think that blockchain can play a crucial role if such…

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cybersecurity

Some Of These Rules Can Be Bent, Others Can Be Broken

Cryptography is a serious topic ? a technology based on a mathematical foundation posing an ever-growing challenge for attackers. On November 11th, 2016, Motherboard wrote a piece about the FBI?s ability to break into suspects? locked phones. Contrary to the FBI?s constant complaints about going dark with strong encryption, the actual number of phones they were able to break into was relatively high. The high success ratio of penetrating locked phones in some way doesn?t…

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cybersecurity

Cyber-Evil Getting Ever More Personal

Smartphones will soon become the target of choice for cyber attackers?making cyber warfare a personal matter. The emergence of mobile threats is nothing new, though until now, it has mainly been a phase of testing the waters and building an arms arsenal. Evil-doers are always on the lookout for weaknesses?the easiest to exploit and the most profitable. Now, it is mobile’s turn. We are witnessing a historic shift in focus from personal computers, the long-time…

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cybersecurity

Is It GAME OVER?

Targeted attacks take many forms, though there is one common tactic most of them share: Exploitation. To achieve their goal, they need to penetrate different systems on-the-go. The way this is done is by exploiting unpatched or unknown vulnerabilities. More common forms of exploitation happen via a malicious document that exploits vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader or a malicious URL that exploits the browser in order to set a foothold inside the end-point computer. Zero-Day is…

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cybersecurity

Time to Re-think Vulnerabilities Disclosure

Public disclosure of vulnerabilities has always bothered me and I wasn’t able to put a finger on the reason until now. As a person who has been involved personally in vulnerabilities disclosure, I am highly appreciative of the contribution security researchers on awareness and it is very hard to imagine what would the world be like without disclosures. Still, the way attacks are being crafted today and their links to such disclosures got me into…

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cybersecurity

Taming The Security Weakest Link(s)

Overview The security level of a computerized system is as good as the security level of its weakest links. If one part is secure and tightened properly and other parts are compromised, then your whole system is compromised, and the compromised ones become your weakest links. The weakest link fits well with attackers? mindset which always looks for the least resistant path to their goal. Third parties in computers present an intrinsic security risk for…

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cybersecurity

The Emergence of Polymorphic Cyber Defense

Background Attackers are Stronger Now The cyber-world is witnessing a fast-paced digital arms race between attackers and security defense systems, and 2014 showed everyone that attackers have the upper hand in this match.? Attackers are on the rise due to their growing financial interest?motivating a new level of sophisticated attacks that existing defenses are unmatched to combat. The fact that almost everything today is connected to the net and the ever-growing complexity of software and…

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cybersecurity

To Disclose or Not to Disclose, That is The Security Researcher Question

Microsoft and Google are?bashing each other on the zero-day exploit in Windows 8.1 that was disclosed by Google last week following a 90 days grace period. Disclosing is a broad term when speaking about vulnerabilities and exploits – you can disclose to the public the fact that there is a vulnerability and then you can disclose how to exploit it with an example source code. There is a big difference between just telling the world…

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innovation

Google?s Aspired Hegemony

After writing yesterday about the launch of Google Pages Beta at Should Google Lead the Web Development Tools Market? I realized that Google has changed profoundly from what they were at first. At the beginning, Google was an enabling technology by really making the world wide web “matter” accessible to everyone. They have contributed immensely in making the web a useful and enjoyable place to be. Ever since Google raised their head towards direct competition…

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blogging startups

A Product Roadmap in a Feed

Strategic Board was initially an idea about a new competitive intelligence/market intelligence tool for enterprises in the IT sector. Since then many things have changed including our concept and vision and probably the only permanent thing here is me and Strategic Board the name itself:) One of the building blocks a competitive intelligence tool is required to have in order to be effective is comparisons and more specifically product comparisons. Product comparisons, whether it is…

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innovation

Can Microsoft afford to ignore Linux?

Microsoft completed the acquisition of Sybari Software, their new anti-virus and anti-spyware line of business – The Windows Observer–Antivirus, Anti-Spyware Strategy Moves Forward for Microsoft. One line from the news caught my eye as something that makes immediate common sense but may not be right strategically after all “Not surprisingly, Microsoft will discontinue new sales of Sybari’s products for the Unix (Solaris and AIX) and Linux operating systems. It will, however, continue to sell and…

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innovation

Web-based Apps Offline Capability

It seems that web-based applications can accomplish today the most extensive and complex tasks that were possible before only by locally installed software. One aspect that has not been addressed by either Microsoft IE or Firefox, the leading web browsing software, is working offline. Although Microsoft has mentioned it in the past under the hat of Smart Client architecture still current products do not show any sign of support. Offline capability is something not trivial…

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innovation

Software As a Service – Perspectives

My perspectives on the important subject of software as a service presented on Venture Chronicles by Jeff Nolan: Software as a Service – Part 1. Evolving Relationships – Technology is nowadays an integral part of businesses in all sectors and the general trend of evolving and de-coupling the dependencies enterprise customers has on technology vendors shows its signs also on the evolution of the way technology is delivered. In the customer’s perspective, the financial alignment…

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