SolarWinds, a provider of IT management and monitoring software deployed by thousands of global customers, was breached between March and June of 2020 by an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) that cybersecurity company FireEye is tracking as UNC2452. As part of the supply chain attack, the APT compromised the company’s Orion business software with trojanized malware known as Sunburst, which opens a backdoor into the networks of customers who executed Orion updates. Immediately following news of…

Data automation allows companies to conduct operations more consistently, securely, and reliably. Learn how one company tackled the challenges. Image: iStock/ADragan Data automation is going to be a major focus for my team of system administrators in 2021. Since I work for a financial organization, security is a paramount concern, so this is an area in which we intend to hit the ground running in the New Year. SEE: Managing the multicloud (ZDNet/TechRepublic special feature)…

AI and machine learning have the potential to take a bite out of cybercrime, but let’s not forget the human factor. Image: iStockphoto/AndreyPopov Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being touted as a technology that will reduce cybercrime. Ed Bishop, cofounder and CTO at Tessian, agrees that AI will help but only if it is configured to protect people. “Despite thousands of cybersecurity products, data breaches are at an all-time high,” writes Bishop in his sponsored VentureBeat…

If high-tech gadgets are on your holiday shopping list, it is worth taking a moment to think about the particular risks they may bring. Under the wrong circumstances, even an innocuous gift may introduce unexpected vulnerabilities. In this blog series, VERT will be looking at some of the Internet’s best-selling holiday gifts with an eye toward their possible security implications. Some of the risks discussed in this series may be over the top and even…

As if dealing with COVID-19 were not enough, 2020 turned out to be a banner year for another troublesome strain of virus— ransomware. Malicious actors grew more sophisticated, daring and brutal. They also hit a number of high-profile targets. For those of you who didn’t keep up with all of the developments in the ransomware space, we’ve broken down some of the most important events and trends of the year here. Growing in Scale and…