By Mike Buckley | Pre-Sales Consultant at Nettitude

In today’s busy environment, it’s becoming very rare for an organisations IT support team to be well resourced, with plenty of time on their hands. Having worked closely with our client’s IT Teams, one of the most frequent issues we hear about which poses a risk to an organisation’s cybersecurity is not having enough time. With cyber-threats constantly evolving, it is essential for IT teams to have time to attend training courses and gain experience on everything they are expected to support.

IT Support teams don’t have an easy job; they have to contend with a multitude of issues across a multitude of different technologies, all the while trying to appease their user base. Alongside other technologies that require in depth specialist knowledge, networks can be a particular challenge for IT teams.

In the following blog post, we’ll take a look at some of the most challenging issues that IT support teams in SME’s face, analyse the importance of making time for essential training and professional development, and examine the role of network security consulting.

By Nettitude Communications Team

As most of our clients will now be aware following the recent press release, we are pleased to announce that Karen Bolton has been appointed as the new CEO of Nettitude. As with any changes that an organisation faces, you may have questions about the new appointment and how it will affect the future of the business, as well as the impact on our clients. First and foremost, we would like to stress that whilst we may introduce some small structural changes as part of our international growth plans, Karen’s mission for the future of Nettitude remains entirely consistent with our founder Rowland’s original vision when he formed the company in 2003.

In the following blog post, we’ll provide a bit more information about Rowland Johnson’s new focus within the business and the role Karen will play in the future growth of the organisation.

By Elisa Cassi | Cyber Product and Services Manager

Enabling safer and more resilient infrastructures

Lloyd’s Register Foundation and the University of Oxford, with contributions from Nettitude and a wide-range of industry players, have recently published a foresight review of Operational Cybersecurity for the Industrial Internet of Things [IIoT]

By Nettitude Communications Team

Global cybersecurity services provider Nettitude today announced that Karen Bolton, EVP Americas and Chief Marketing Officer, will replace Founder Rowland Johnson as Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately.

Applications can come in all shapes and sizes. We use them every day when we browse the web and we may have hundreds on our phones, but they all have one thing in common; if they can be interacted with, they are potentially a target.

Just how targeted and by whom is going to be dependent on many factors such as whether the app is available publicly, as well as what sector your organisation works in. The combination of factors such as these will make your applications more or less likely to be targeted by specific threat groups, e.g. a disgruntled employee or organised crime. Understanding where your threat comes from is important for your business and typically all applications, even those such as a third-party hosted WordPress site, will likely have one or more associated threat groups. To stay proactive with security, application penetration testing can be used to identify vulnerabilities in your applications, determine likely threat groups, and help you understand your current risk.

If you are reading this, then you may already be familiar with app penetration testing as a recommendation for your business. This post will discuss the types of testing there are, what may be suitable for your specific situation and what the app pen testing service is at its core.

By Shai Canaan | Principal Security Consultant at Nettitude

The state of California will start enforcing the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) Assembly Bill 375 (AB 375) on July 1^st 2020. This California privacy law legislation is, as its name suggests, privacy specific and aims at protecting the information of residents of the state of California - or as its language refers to them, “California consumers”.

By Nettitude  

Aside from the luxury conveniences onboard many superyachts, modern vessels utilise networked technologies in order to provide faster, more accurate, and more convenient operations. Whilst all of these modern conveniences have been a game changer for the superyacht industry, this connectivity can often unfortunately bring with it, new threats to the security of the vessel, its crew, and its passengers, while additionally bringing unique marine-specific challenges in terms of systems maintenance.

Based on first hand security assessments conducted by Nettitude on a wide range of vessels, this blog post aims to express the current threat landscape for superyachts, likely tactics of threat actors, common security issues, and marine-specific challenges in maintaining secure systems and networks.

By Ben Turner | Managing Principal Security Consultant at Nettitude  

We're pleased to announce that Nettitude has been listed as the first STAR-FS accredited company that are able to deliver both ‘Threat Intelligence’ and ‘Intelligence-Led Penetration Testing’ Services.

STAR-FS is a new regulatory tool used to assess the effectiveness of a firm’s cyber capability and risk profile. This assessment created by CREST is designed to be delivered by the Threat Intelligence (TI) and Penetration Testing (PT) providers. STAR-FS was designed to deliver similar outcomes to that of CBEST while being less onerous and resource intensive on the regulatory services that back it up.

So what does this mean for our customers within the financial services sector? In the following blog post, we'll discuss the details of the STAR-FS accreditation and how this will impact on our future business within the financial sector. 

As more organisations begin to understand the importance of maturing their cybersecurity strategy, the focus is shifting away from a more ‘compliance-based’ plan and is logically developing towards a reactive security posture with a more modern, proactive and continual assurance approach. Infrastructure penetration testing is a crucial part of an ongoing security assurance programme, as well as being a distinct step in the journey. 

In the following blog post, we’ll cover the reasons why an organisation would need an infrastructure penetration test, as well as the key as well as the key considerations that need to be made in advance of one.

By Mike Buckley | Pre-Sales Consultant at Nettitude  

Firewalls have been around for what seems a very long time now. Firstly, they were considered in theory at the end of the 80s as a simple packet filter, but they soon progressed within a decade to a stateful offering, pioneered by the likes of Check Point with a usable front end.  It seems remarkable now that a Firewall that previously only inspected the first few packets of a connection to allow or deny was considered “next-gen”, but that’s just a measure of how far cybersecurity has moved on in the last twenty years. 

Whilst Check Point and Cisco ruled the market for a while, until Palo Alto came in and disrupted the marketplace with their application-based policies; there has been a big shift in how the Firewalls inspect traffic, and how policies have moved from traditional IP based rules to being able to allow particular users access to particular applications, enabling much more granularity and control.  Many more features have come (and in some cases gone) since then and of course now there’s an argument that there’s no perimeter any more, so what does that mean for the Firewall?

In this blog post, we’ll look at the function of modern firewalls and what’s in store for the future of firewall development and functionality.