US Cybersecurity Firm Founder Admits Funding DDoS Attacks

Infosecurity | January 21, 2020

An American businessman who co-founded a cybersecurity company has admitted to hiring criminals to carry out cyber-attacks against others. Tucker Preston, of Macon, Georgia, confessed to having paid threat actors to launch a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks between December 2015 and February 2016. DDoS attacks prevent a website from functioning by bombarding it with so much junk internet traffic that it can't handle visits from genuine users. In a New Jersey court last week, 22-year-old Preston pleaded guilty to one count of damaging protected computers by transmission of a program, code, or command. Preston admitted to causing at least $5,000 of damage to the business he targeted.

Spotlight

Those high profile data breaches led to a swift response from the Government with the penalties for serious or repeated privacy breaches increased from $2.22 million to a minimum of $50 million at the end of December. Since then, the Government has released the Privacy Act Review Report and the 2023-2030 Australian Cyber Security Strategy that signpost a significant shift for Australia’s cyber landscape. Critical infrastructure; personal information; cyber security; dealing with ransomware attacks – all are likely to be shaken up.

Spotlight

Those high profile data breaches led to a swift response from the Government with the penalties for serious or repeated privacy breaches increased from $2.22 million to a minimum of $50 million at the end of December. Since then, the Government has released the Privacy Act Review Report and the 2023-2030 Australian Cyber Security Strategy that signpost a significant shift for Australia’s cyber landscape. Critical infrastructure; personal information; cyber security; dealing with ransomware attacks – all are likely to be shaken up.

Related News

DATA SECURITY, PLATFORM SECURITY, SOFTWARE SECURITY

New KnowBe4 SecurityCoach Integrates With Bitdefender GravityZone

PRWeb | May 22, 2023

KnowBe4, the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, today announced that its new SecurityCoach product integrates with Bitdefender GravityZone, a leading next-generation endpoint protection platform for threat prevention, detection and response. The new partnership and product integration between the two cybersecurity leaders will help reduce risky behavior, support real-time security coaching and help organizations become more cyber resilient. SecurityCoach helps IT/security professionals develop a strong security culture by enabling real-time security coaching of their users in response to risky security behavior. Leveraging an organization’s existing security stack, IT/security professionals can configure their real-time coaching campaigns to immediately deliver a SecurityTip to their users related to a detected event. “Bitdefender joins our ecosystem of technology partners, which is growing rapidly, to enrich the support we provide to our customers and fortify their organization’s human firewall,” said Stu Sjouwerman, CEO, KnowBe4. “KnowBe4 is proud to partner with Bitdefender to provide a seamless integration with our new SecurityCoach product, which aims to deliver real-time security coaching and advice to help end users enhance their cybersecurity knowledge and strengthen their role in contributing to a strong security culture. KnowBe4 is actively working with Bitdefender to provide an API-based integration to connect our platform with systems that IT/security professionals already utilize, making rolling out new products to their teams an easy and unified process.” “We are pleased to partner with KnowBe4 to integrate Bitdefender GravityZone with SecurityCoach,” said Daniel Daraban, senior director of product management at Bitdefender Business Solutions Group. “Businesses and organizations are under constant assault from ransomware, trojans, and other malware infecting systems. This integration leverages GravityZone’s behavioral analytics, machine learning, and root cause analysis for contextualized alerts resulting in actionable SecurityTips that help minimize risky user behavior.” KnowBe4 will provide step-by-step instructions and recommendations to help IT/security professionals achieve quick and pain-free integration and data syncing during the implementation process. KnowBe4 now integrates or partners with over 20 of the world's top cybersecurity platforms across Endpoint, Network, Identity, Cloud and Data Security https://www.knowbe4.com/integrations. For more information on SecurityCoach, visit http://www.knowbe4.com/securitycoach. About Bitdefender Bitdefender is a cybersecurity leader delivering best-in-class threat prevention, detection, and response solutions worldwide. Guardian over millions of consumer, enterprise, and government environments, Bitdefender is one of the industry’s most trusted experts for eliminating threats, protecting privacy, digital identity and data, and enabling cyber resilience. With deep investments in research and development, Bitdefender Labs discovers hundreds of new threats each minute and validates billions of threat queries daily. The company has pioneered breakthrough innovations in antimalware, IoT security, behavioral analytics, and artificial intelligence and its technology is licensed by more than 180 of the world’s most recognized technology brands. Founded in 2001, Bitdefender has customers in 170+ countries with offices around the world. For more information, visit https://www.bitdefender.com. About KnowBe4 KnowBe4, the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, is used by more than 56,000 organizations around the globe. Founded by IT and data security specialist Stu Sjouwerman, KnowBe4 helps organizations address the human element of security by raising awareness about ransomware, CEO fraud and other social engineering tactics through a new-school approach to awareness training on security. Kevin Mitnick, an internationally recognized cybersecurity specialist and KnowBe4's Chief Hacking Officer, helped design the KnowBe4 training based on his well-documented social engineering tactics. Tens of thousands of organizations rely on KnowBe4 to mobilize their end users as their last line of defense.

Read More

DATA SECURITY, ENTERPRISE SECURITY, PLATFORM SECURITY

BlueVoyant Enhances its Cloud-Native Splunk Managed Detection & Response (MDR), Consulting, and Implementation Services

BlueVoyant | March 20, 2023

BlueVoyant, a cybersecurity company that illuminates, validates, and remediates internal and external risks in one platform, announced enhanced Splunk capabilities, with end-to-end consulting, implementation, and Managed Detection & Response (MDR) services. With the increasing adoption of cloud technologies, organizations face a complex and rapidly evolving threat landscape. The service helps clients maximize their Splunk investment whether it be on the Splunk Cloud Platform or Splunk Enterprise. "Splunk Your Way with BlueVoyant enables our clients to have industry-leading consulting, implementation, and cyber defense in a cost-effective manner," said Drew Gibson, BlueVoyant senior director for the company's Splunk Alliance. "BlueVoyant has a strong relationship with Splunk, and is known for its dynamic expertise in the company's products, helping our joint clients have greater control and visibility of their data usage and security posture." Key components of Splunk Your Way with BlueVoyant include: Enabling clients to collect, monitor, and analyze security data across on-premise, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments in a single platform Cloud-native SIEM (security information and event management) with real-time visibility to identify security threats and remediate them quickly Clients can reduce their data burden by 20% or more with a proprietary Data Readiness model that improves data quality and reduces costs Onboarding within a month for Existing Splunk users to quickly see the benefits of BlueVoyant Continuously improving client's Splunk instance by using faster security content delivery, and parity between different SIEM and EDR (endpoint detection and response) tools Availability of numerous bundles of workshops, retainers, and MDR services to help clients optimize, implement, manage, and monitor and protect their Splunk instance "BlueVoyant has the strength of our MDR for Splunk which we launched in 2021, aided by the expertise of thousands of Splunk deployments by our Concanon Professional Services division to provide a compelling service which helps the client get the most their Splunk investment, whether Splunk is installed 'on-prem' or via Splunk Cloud," said Michael Cormier, managing director for Concanon, a BlueVoyant company. BlueVoyant acquired Conanon in fall 2021 to enhance its end-to-end Splunk platform capabilities. Splunk recognized BlueVoyant as a key MSP (managed service provider) partner with the new Premier Manage designation. BlueVoyant also earned core competency badges for Cloud Migration and Cloud Migration: Co-Delivery. The company has 200 active Splunk certifications. In 2022, BlueVoyant expanded its Splunk go-to-market by including its offerings on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace. BlueVoyant is hosting a webinar at 1 p.m. EDT Thursday, April 13 to discuss what the company has learned from our Splunk deployments and clients, and to answer questions. Current clients, security professionals, and other parties are encouraged to attend. About BlueVoyant BlueVoyant combines internal and external cyber defense capabilities into an outcomes-based cloud-native platform by continuously monitoring your network, endpoints, attack surface, and supply chain, as well as the clear, deep, and dark web for threats. The full-spectrum cyber defense platform illuminates, validates, and quickly remediates threats to protect your enterprise. BlueVoyant leverages both machine-learning-driven automation and human-led expertise to deliver industry-leading cybersecurity to more than 900 clients across the globe.

Read More

DATA SECURITY, ENTERPRISE SECURITY, WEB SECURITY TOOLS

Verimatrix Launches New Cybersecurity Microsite, VMX Labs and Enhanced User Experience for Extended Threat Defense

Businesswire | April 10, 2023

Verimatrix, (Euronext Paris: VMX) (Paris:VMX), the leader in powering the modern connected world with people-centered security, today announced its launch of a new cybersecurity microsite (verimatrixcybersecurity.com), a new UX for its Extended Threat Defense (XTD) product, and a new VMX Labs research team offering cyber threat advisories and insights. “I am excited to unveil a new UX for our cybersecurity product, Extended Threat Defense, along with new services from Verimatrix to help our customers secure their mobile app ecosystems, and rapidly detect and respond to threats – including zero day attacks,” said Asaf Ashkenazi, CEO at Verimatrix. “Today, most companies interact with their customers via mobile applications. If that app is compromised, the connection between the company and their customers is at risk. Verimatrix XTD protects the connection of businesses to their consumers -- and there is nothing more important than that.” Just this year, large mobile-app breaches made headlines through their new use of overlay attacks within mobile app attacks, leading users to believe they were interacting with legitimate apps when they’re really arming bad actors with sensitive information and even their personal banking details. CISOs, SOC teams, fraud departments and developers can now turn to VerimatrixCybersecurity.com for the latest information surrounding mobile app security and the extended ecosystem of connected devices and lurking threats. Today’s launch includes: New cybersecurity microsite – Verimatrix also launched VerimatrixCybersecurity.com to offer a centralized destination and resource center for its XTD cloud platform. The microsite includes a host of new resources, including videos and white papers. New VMX Labs – Led by Klaus Schenk, Verimatrix’s senior vice president of security and threat research, VMX Labs aims to provide ongoing cyber threat advisories, as well as insights and commentary from VMX Lab team members who investigate threat types and information helpful to application developers and even users. New Product UX for Verimatrix XTD - Verimatrix delivers an amazing new user experience for its Extended Threat Defense product; a revamped UX and design that allows customers to more easily prevent, detect, respond and predict threats to mobile applications and the devices that connect to the critical infrastructure. The company has expanded its detection capabilities to the network, in addition to the application and device data. New capabilities include the ability to access network risk per application to protect the connection to the company’s critical infrastructure, and this is all available now. About Verimatrix Verimatrix (Euronext Paris: VMX) helps power the modern connected world with security made for people. We protect digital content, applications, and devices with intuitive, people-centered, and frictionless security. Leading brands turn to Verimatrix to secure everything from premium movies and live streaming sports to sensitive financial and healthcare data, and mission-critical mobile applications. We enable the trusted connections our customers depend on to deliver compelling content and experiences to millions of consumers around the world. Verimatrix helps partners get to market faster, scale easily, protect valuable revenue streams, and win new business. Visit www.verimatrix.com and www.verimatrixcybersecurity.com

Read More