LRQA Nettitude Blog

While cybersecurity attacks are detrimental to any organisation, financial institutions are one of the most vulnerable industries to be targeting in terms of the damage that can be caused.

A staggering 46% of businesses in the UK have reported a cyber-attack in the past 12 months alone, however, statistics show that there has been a 238% rise in global cyber-attacks on banking institutions since the beginning of the pandemic. As financial institutions rely on the trust and credibility they establish with clients, the possibility of a cyber-attack can threaten this premise on a daily basis. What’s more, as technology continues to develop and more and more clients adopt digital banking practices, the risks from cyber-attacks on banks becomes larger, in which organisations that facilitate monetary transactions and other financial movement, have a duty to play a critical role in fostering financial stability.

In light of this, the regulators are continually adapting their approach in order to identify what resilience measures organisations should be proactively putting in place.

By Paul Hood | Senior Threat Intelligence Analyst

Throughout 2020, a surge in malware and ransomware campaigns have been detected using coronavirus-themed lures to strike a wide range of sectors across the globe. The global COVID-19 developments alter the threat landscape significantly for worldwide organisations, particularly given the confluence of trying circumstances such as remote working, short-staffing due to furlough and the pressing need to share accurate and timely updates on the pandemic.

With the digital era being well upon us, today’s state of affairs in the cybersecurity world has grown rather complex, and there are no exceptions for those of us who work in pen testing. Whilst traditional penetration testing techniques are still very much relevant to today’s reality, there’s no denying that there are many new tools, techniques and even new responsibilities that make penetration testing, on the whole, a mammoth task. In light of this, it becomes increasingly difficult for human teams to stay on top of these requirements effectively, and it’s becoming more and more necessary to lean on technological automation to support our cybersecurity endeavours.

By Mike Buckley | Presales Security Consultant at Nettitude

What is an Endpoint

Firstly, what is an endpoint? An endpoint is usually a device which communicates with the network to which it is connected. This can be a myriad of devices including, laptops, mobiles, tablets, servers etc. As the attack vectors vary hugely depending on where we focus, this blog will primarily target the laptop/desktop world. Risks to all endpoints may be similar, but the mitigations are very different.

By Mike Buckley | Presales Security Consultant at Nettitude

There are a few important principles that should be keeping a responsible CIO/CISO awake at night. Most certainly, one of those would be the loss or leakage of business-critical data such as customer Personal Identifiable Information (PII) or financial details. One of the primary functions of their role is to recognise this and put into place processes and technical controls to lower the risk of that data being exposed. We only have to look in the media to see numerous examples of data breaches. Threat actors as we now call them have been trying to access data of various kinds stretching back into the 1980s when modems connected everything together. Unfortunately for the CIO/CISOs of today there are compliance frameworks such as GDPR which firmly put the burden of responsibility on their shoulders.

By Graham Stevens | Incident Response Consultant at Nettitude 

GDPR has been with those of us in Europe since May 2018, and in that time, we have seen a number of eye-watering fines being issued by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) here in the UK. This has for the most part been for data breaches and general carelessness with personal data by numerous organisations. In fact between March 2019 and March 2020 the ICO took regulatory action 236 times, with 15 of these resulting in fines for businesses who were in breach of the data protection laws.

By Kyle Barnes | Penetration Tester at LRQA Nettitude 

Penetration Testing is an important tool in any company's security arsenal. There are various types of Pen Testing, ranging from network scans and web application tests to social engineering and red team engagements. One of the most important aspects of Penetration Testing is examining Legacy Systems and legacy software. As older technologies have been available for researchers and cybercriminals to scrutinise for longer periods of time, this is one reason why they often contain more known vulnerabilities. However, the chances are that if the cybersecurity experts know about these vulnerabilities, then there’s a very good chance that the cyber-criminals do too. Legacy Systems, either within an internal network or publicly facing, are often the first targeted and can lead to a devastating attack.

Here’s what you need to know about protecting your Legacy System…

By Elisa Cassi | Cyber Product and Services Manager at Nettitude

Cloud Technology is set to benefit organisations through a range of unique opportunities in terms of agility, resiliency, economy, enhanced workforce productivity. Whilst the adoption of cloud technology does not necessarily pose an inherent cybersecurity risk over on-premise models, existing problems in the applications being moved are likely to be amplified if key emerging risks and newly discovered attack techniques and vulnerabilities  are not identified and properly managed. This is particularly relevant for certain deployment models, such as “lift and shift” due to the fact that issues that were risk accepted because of security control present in the on premise environment do not necessarily translate to acceptable risks in the cloud environment.

We see that cloud service providers are prioritising efforts and resources to secure their infrastructure platforms and are in fact enabling improved security. In this blog the opportunities coming from cloud adoption are discussed, and in particular the key differentiators of cloud security are outlined.

By Mike Buckley | Pre-Sales Consultant at Nettitude

For some of our clients reading this, you might well be familiar with our Security Operations Centre (SOC). However, for many it can be a bit of a mystery with it sounding like some sort of covert operations lair. Whilst we can tell you that what goes on in our SOC is some very clever and ground-breaking stuff, it’s not quite the scenes from the latest James Bond movies!

So, you’re probably wondering what does actually go on in our Security Operations Centre, and what goes on in our Vulnerability Management Programmes. Below, we’ll give you exclusive access to the ins and outs of our SOC Vulnerability Management activities.

By Chris Oakley | VP of Technical Services for the Americas at LRQA Nettitude

The importance of detection and response

It is common for organizations seeking to improve their security posture to focus on prevention-based practices. This approach aims to stop threat actors from breaching the organization’s infrastructure, which is an important component of a robust security posture and should continue to be a focus.

In the following post, we'll take a look at the objective of effective security and how the SOC Visibility Triad plays an important part in this.