Security News > 2021 > December

Password managers are a near-defacto standard for organizations, with 86% reporting they are being put to use, according to a Bitwarden survey of over 400 U.S. IT decision makers across a wide range of industries. This reflects a 9% increase in the use of password managers over the past year.

Data from a survey of 1,200 enterprise security leaders reveals that an increase in tools and manual reporting combined with control failures are contributing to the success of threats such as ransomware, which costs organizations an average of $1.85 million in recovery, according to Panaseer. 60% of the security leaders lack strong confidence in their ability to continuously measure security controls that mitigate the infiltration, propagation, and exploitation of a successful ransomware attack.

Last month saw an alarming rise in cyberattacks against healthcare facilities. Ransomware attacks across the globe locked 68 care providers out of their respective networks during Q3 of this year alone, threatening patient safety and privacy.

Although 94% of ITDMs agree that the speed of digital transformation has accelerated over the last year, decision makers outside of IT departments fail to recognise the extent of change, Dae.mn finds. Of the respondents that believe they have fully implemented their digital transformation strategy, only 20% are decision makers outside the IT department and 80% are IT decision makers.

The head of the UK's secretive Military Intelligence Section 6 agency - popularly known as MI6 - has delivered a rare speech in which he has warned that China, Iran, and Russia use information technology to destabilise rivals, and that the agency he leads can no longer rely on in-house innovation to develop the technologies the UK needs to defend itself. MI6 boss Richard Moore delivered a speech on Thursday at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and opened with an explanation of why the normally reclusive agency had taken the unusual step of allowing its leader to speak in public.

An Imperva Snapshot assessment lets teams assess the status of their databases and the data stored, to identify non-compliance with privacy regulations as well as compliance requirements for cloud data stores. iStorage datAshur SD offers data storage solution to securely share and scale unlimited encrypted data.

Israel's Ministry of Defense has dramatically restricted the number of countries to which cybersecurity firms in the country are allowed to sell offensive hacking and surveillance tools to, cutting off 65 nations from the export list. In curtailing the exports, the move effectively makes it harder for local cybersecurity firms to market their software to countries with totalitarian regimes or with a track record of perpetrating human abuses.

Twitter on Tuesday announced an expansion to its private information policy to include private media, effectively prohibiting the sharing of photos and videos without express permission from the individuals depicted in them with an aim to curb doxxing and harassment. "Beginning today, we will not allow the sharing of private media, such as images or videos of private individuals without their consent. Publishing people's private info is also prohibited under the policy, as is threatening or incentivizing others to do so," the company's Safety team said in a tweet.