LRQA Nettitude Blog

By Richard Hicks | Senior Security Consultant at Nettitude

Cybersecurity doesn’t have a finish line. Whether you’re a small business or a large multi-national organisation, there are always steps and checks you should be completing on a regular basis, one of the most common of which is performing regular penetration testing. There are plenty of organisations out there that are willing to sell you days of effort to test a system, based on fixed scopes, etc., but there is more to security than simply asking someone to mark your homework. A proper cybersecurity framework is one that is custom built and designed for your organisation, there is no one-size fits all in cybersecurity and as such there are a multitude of paths available for you to follow.

Sounds confusing, right? Here at Nettitude, we’re big supporters of the not for profit organisation known as CREST, they are an accreditation and certification body that has helped shape and define information security within the UK and worldwide. CREST regularly publish information, tooling and guidance on cyber security, in which, one such guidance document they provide is the CREST Penetration Testing Guide. This guide provides all the information you need to know about penetration testing, covering the key points of why you would want to stand up a framework, how to size and scope it appropriately to your organisation and crucially as a final step, how to measure the performance and efficacy of your penetration testing programme.

Below We’ll give you a non-biased explanation of what a cyber maturity assessment is, and how CREST can help guide you in the right direction.

By Mike Buckley | Presales Consultant at Nettitude

For those that have recently been keeping up with our Cloud Research and Innovation Series, you will by now be aware that many businesses across the globe are turning to cloud solutions. IaaS, SaaS and PaaS all have an increasingly large part to play in business IT strategy, and there are a whole host of benefits which are no longer an added convenience but a necessity for the modern 21^st century worker. This is now becoming a realisation for most managers and CEO’s, who are battling against time… and competitors, to get cloud technology incorporated into their business infrastructure. However, as you will have found out from our series so far, there are a number of key considerations to make, in which security is frequently an afterthought in the rush to use all the convenient features that cloud technology provides.

Below, we will look at some of the key considerations’ businesses need to make when considering their cloud migration strategy.

By Mike Buckley | Presales Consultant at Nettitude

In today’s ‘always on’ digital world, the rate at which organisations and individuals experience cyber-attacks is continually increasing. The University of Maryland state that on average, there is a hacker attack every 39 seconds, which equates to 2,244 times a day. In response to this, organisations have began to step up their cybersecurity, with Gartner reporting that Worldwide spending on cybersecurity is forecasted to reach $133.7 billion in 2022.

Moreover, we are beginning to see an increasing number of organisations hiring their own in-house cybersecurity specialists and teams to protect against network threats, but for many SME’s, this simply isn’t a feasible option. In this post, we’ll be exploring the top predicted types of network attacks which could affect organisations in 2020.

By Graham Sharples | Threat Analyst 

Internet of things (IoT) devices are now embedded in every part of our lives, with more and more devices becoming connected to the internet each day. This is a trend that can trace its origins back to the start of the 1990s wherein a toaster was created by John Romkey that could be turned on and off over the internet. This demonstrated what could potentially be achieved with everyday household appliances. Today, IoT devices are in nearly every electronic device we use and with IBM’s announcement in 2018 that they had made the smallest computer in the world measuring 1 millimetre by 1 millimetre, there is almost nothing an IoT device can’t fit into.

By Mike Buckley at LRQA Nettitude 

Effective network design is crucial for the smooth running of every business. As the heart of your business activity, your network is relied upon day-in, day-out by your staff to keep business flowing, and customers returning. As most of us have experienced before, when the network goes down, chaos usually follows. When this happens, it can often be a mammoth task to get everything back up and running and the time lost is irreplaceable. However, by following best practice for network design and configuration from the beginning, you could prevent many issues before they arise.

Below, we’ll explain why establishing a well-designed and configured network is important, as well as detailing the six factors that are essential to the smooth running of your network…