PLATFORM SECURITY
Veracode | March 30, 2022
Veracode, a leading global provider of application security testing solutions, has released new findings that show the public sector has the highest proportion of security flaws in its applications and maintains some of the lowest and slowest fix rates compared to other industry sectors. Analysis of data collected from 20 million scans across half a million applications revealed these sector-specific findings as part of Veracode’s annual report on the State of Software Security (SOSS).
"Public sector policy makers and leaders recognize that dated technology and vast troves of sensitive data make government applications a prime target for malicious actors. That’s why the White House and Congress are working together to update regulations governing cybersecurity compliance. In the wake of May 2021's Executive Order to improve the nation's cybersecurity and protect federal government networks, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Department of Defense and the White House have issued four memos addressing the need to adopt zero trust cybersecurity principles and strengthen the security of the software supply chain. Our research confirms this need.”
Chris Eng, Chief Research Officer at Veracode
No Time to Waste: Fix More Flaws Faster
Veracode’s research found that compared to other industries, the public sector has the highest proportion of applications with security flaws, at 82 percent. When it comes to how quickly organizations fix flaws once detected, the public sector posts the slowest times on average—roughly two times slower than other sectors. The research also revealed that 60 percent of flaws in third-party libraries in the public sector remain unfixed after two years, which is double that of other sectors and lags the cross-industry average by more than 15 months. Finally, with only a 22 percent fix rate overall, the public sector is challenged to keep software supply chain attacks from impacting critical state, local, and educational applications.
Eng continued, “Organizations in this sector must act with urgency. They can improve their secure DevOps practices significantly by using multiple types of scanning—static, dynamic, and software composition analysis—to get a more complete picture of an application’s security, which in turn will help them to improve remediation times, comply with industry regulations, and make the case for increasing application security budgets.”
High Severity Flaws Are Priority One
Demonstrating a positive trend, the public sector ranks highly when it comes to addressing high severity flaws. The research reveals that government entities have made great strides to address high severity flaws, which appear in only 16 percent of applications. In fact, the number of high severity flaws has decreased by 30 percent in the last year alone, suggesting that developers in the sector increasingly recognize the importance of prioritizing flaws that present the greatest risks. This is encouraging and may reflect growing understanding of new software security guidelines, such as those outlined in the U.S. Executive Order on Cybersecurity and the U.K. Government Cyber Security Strategy 2022 – 2030.
Eng closed, "Recognizing that time is of the essence, public sector leaders are beginning to set timelines. For example, in “Moving the US Government Toward Zero Trust Cybersecurity Principles”, Shalanda Young has set a deadline of September 30, 2024 for all US federal agencies to meet specific cybersecurity standards. We think that the progress made against high security flaws is a great starting point and support all public sector agencies who seek to gain better control over their software supply chains."
About the State of Software Security Report
The twelfth volume of Veracode’s annual report on the State of Software Security (SOSS) examines historical trends shaping the software landscape and how security practices are evolving along with those trends. This year’s findings are based on the full historical data available from Veracode services and customers and represent a cross-section of large and mid-sized companies, commercial software suppliers, and open-source projects. The report contains findings about applications that were subjected to static analysis, dynamic analysis, software composition analysis, and/or manual penetration testing through Veracode’s cloud-based platform.
About Veracode
Veracode is a leading AppSec partner for creating secure software, reducing the risk of security breach, and increasing security and development teams’ productivity. As a result, companies using Veracode can move their business, and the world, forward. With its combination of process automation, integrations, speed, and responsiveness, Veracode helps companies get accurate and reliable results to focus their efforts on fixing, not just finding, potential vulnerabilities.
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DATA SECURITY
Skyhigh Security | March 22, 2022
Symphony Technology Group (“STG”), a leading Menlo Park-based private equity firm focused on the software, data, and analytics sectors, today announced the launch of Skyhigh Security. The new portfolio company was created to satisfy the growing cloud security requirements for large and small organizations. Skyhigh Security’s unique approach extends security beyond data access to securing how the data is used. Its data-aware Security Service Edge (SSE) is built to meet the needs of the modern workforce with security that follows the data and users wherever they are.
Earlier this year, STG announced it would be splitting McAfee Enterprise into two organizations—Trellix and Skyhigh Security—to better focus on the very distinct markets of Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and the SSE. At that time STG also announced that Gee Rittenhouse, who previously led Cisco’s cyber security business, would serve as CEO of the SSE business, bringing deep cloud security expertise.
“Skyhigh Security has emerged as a dedicated cloud security company that is laser-focused on propelling businesses forward with a comprehensive and converged approach to data security. We’re committed to investing in this business, which is in one of the most important markets in security, SSE.”
William Chisholm, managing partner, STG
“With the majority of data in the cloud and users accessing it from everywhere, a new approach to security is needed,” said Rittenhouse. “Skyhigh Security has created a comprehensive security platform to secure both data access and data use via unified policies and data awareness. Organizations can now have complete visibility and control and seamlessly monitor and mitigate security risks—achieving lower associated costs, driving greater efficiencies and keeping pace with the speed of innovation.”
“Organizations are at a crossroads navigating the hybrid workforce,” said Frank Dickson, vice president, IDC. “While the ‘work from anywhere’ model creates flexibility and agility, it can also be a point of security vulnerability, challenging perimeters and endpoints and opening new attack surfaces in the cloud. These organizations need a best-in-class cloud-native solution that simplifies the implementation of cloud security to protect data regardless of where it lies.”
“Protecting the way data is used is as important as the way data is accessed—we must implement a powerful data-centric defense to meet the demands of how work is conducted today,” said Dan Meacham, chief information security officer, Legendary Entertainment. “Skyhigh Security’s platform approach is completely integrated and simple to use. With over 10 years focus on cloud security, they are a pioneer in the SSE space. Skyhigh Security’s innovations have been validated both by analysts and customers alike. It is truly one of the most solid and unique SSE solutions in the market today.”
The Skyhigh Security SSE Portfolio includes Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Remote Browser Isolation technology, Cloud Firewall and Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP). The company was most recently named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Security Service Edge and recognized in the 2022 Critical Capabilities for SSE for its MVISION Unified Cloud Edge (UCE) solution.
About Skyhigh Security:
Skyhigh Security protects organizations with cloud-native security solutions that are both data-aware and simple to use. Its market-leading Security Service Edge (SSE) Portfolio goes beyond data access and focuses on data use, allowing organizations to collaborate from any device and from anywhere without sacrificing security.
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NETWORK THREAT DETECTION
SilverSky | January 11, 2022
SilverSky, a cybersecurity innovator offering powerful managed detection and response (MDR) services, today announced it completed the acquisition of Burlington, Massachusetts-based Cygilant.
As a leading cybersecurity-as-a-service provider, Cygilant operates a security operation center (SOC) in Belfast, Northern Ireland and also boasts some of the world's most notable Ph.D.-level talent focused on cybersecurity, advanced networks and data science. The addition of Cygilant's UK-based delivery center complements the current SilverSky footprint in Asia and North America while expanding SilverSky's access to European markets.
In October 2021, SilverSky announced that ITOCHU International, Inc., the North American flagship company of Tokyo-based ITOCHU Corporation, made a strategic investment of $31.5 million in SilverSky. Additionally, in August 2021, SilverSky announced the completed acquisition of New Jersey-based Advanced Computer Solutions Group, LLC (ACSG) which added a notable customer base within the U.S. education sector and marked the company's first acquisition in a series of planned growth opportunities.
"Alongside our recent growth-related announcements, this acquisition of Cygilant, a cybersecurity-as-a-service and threat-intelligence powerhouse, helps to further galvanize our efforts to globally expand the SilverSky presence as well as retain and nurture some of the industry's best cybersecurity and data science talent," said Richard Dobrow, CEO at SilverSky. "Cygilant shares our commitment to rich-service offerings that are unmatched in the industry. We're pleased to welcome the Cygilant team and their customers."
"We are excited to join SilverSky,This represents a significant next-chapter of the Cygilant journey, as our innovative SOC capabilities and deep bench of cybersecurity expertise are combined with one of the industry's most comprehensive MDR offerings. The outcome for our customers will be access to the collective set of broader managed services that will continue to enrich their cyber protections and strengthen their security posture."
Rob Scott, CEO and President at Cygilant who will be joining SilverSky as its Chief Strategy Officer
About SilverSky
Organizations of all sizes face the same cybersecurity threats, compliance mandates, and business risk as Fortune 500 companies. SilverSky levels the playing field and enables companies, regardless of their size, to access enterprise-grade cybersecurity to meet regulatory requirements, proactively respond to threats, and rapidly reduce risk. SilverSky offers one of the most comprehensive managed detection and response (MDR) solutions in the industry. Delivered as a managed services model, SilverSky MDR makes powerful cybersecurity simple, affordable, and accessible to organizations of all sizes and across industries. Customer environments are monitored 24x7x365 by highly skilled security operations analysts in SilverSky SOCs, which were developed based on military-grade security and are powered by the latest integrated technology. SilverSky has more than 20 years of operational cybersecurity success defending thousands of customers in some of the most demanding industry sectors.
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DATA SECURITY
Covail | December 23, 2021
Covail, a Columbus-based cybersecurity and digital optimization firm founded by Central Ohio’s largest companies, is being acquired by a leading Managed Detection and Response firm.
Covail announced today that it has agreed to be acquired by cybersecurity and managed detection and response (MDR) services provider GoSecure. The transaction is estimated to close in December 2021. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
“Since our founding six years ago as the Columbus Collaboratory, our goal has been to find ways to leverage collaboration to deliver successful AI, cybersecurity and cloud-based software solutions to our Fortune 500 clients,With this acquisition by GoSecure, our clients will now have access to an even broader set of capabilities and expertise thanks to our ability to leverage GoSecure’s class-leading capabilities and solutions. This will also help to further accelerate market penetration for our leading-edge security products and AI capabilities.”
Covail CEO Matt Wald
Covail, as Columbus Collaboratory, was born out of the aspiration of seven of the largest companies in central Ohio – American Electric Power (AEP), Battelle, Cardinal Health, Huntington Bank, L Brands (now Bath & Body Works), Nationwide, and OhioHealth – in partnership with One Columbus. The goal of the endeavor was to solve common automation, AI, and cybersecurity challenges across multiple industries. “The diversity and maturity of these founding companies made Covail the innovative, value-driven, solutions partner that it is today”, said Michael Krouse, SVP of Strategy and Transformation at Ohio Health and Chairman of the Covail Board. “Covail accelerated the cybersecurity and AI capabilities of the founding companies, upskilled critical tech talent for the region, and built a high-growth company that contributed to our region’s economic growth engine. It’s exciting to be able to leverage this strategic relationship to secure Columbus as the Midwest’s premier cybersecurity hub.”
Through its ecosystem of collaborators and commercial partners, Covail’s technology teams executed over 1,000 engagements and collaboration sessions that solved complex business challenges using machine learning and the latest cyber defense practices. The firm’s work attracted top technology talent to the region, Wald said, and led to the development of software products that enabled advanced cyber threat detection and continuous risk management.
GoSecure is a recognized cybersecurity leader and innovator. The company is the first and only to integrate endpoint, network and email threat detection into a single Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service.
GoSecure plans to leverage Covail’s talent, proprietary technology, and client relationships to build a regional presence in Central Ohio that will help accelerate its momentum in the US market. GoSecure’s access to technology talent and partnerships made Columbus an attractive, economically viable location for a cybersecurity hub, Wald said.
Wald said partnership with the original companies in the Covail firm will continue, along with an expansion to additional businesses with the goal of making Central Ohio a major U.S. cybersecurity operations center.
About Covail
Covail™ is a trusted solutions partner, enabling organizations to optimize through Intelligent Operations solutions that lower total risk and cost for key business functions, equipping them to transform from a position of strength. Since 2015, Covail’s experts in Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Automation have been delivering business results for leading Fortune 500 companies across industries. Trustworthy, Intelligent Operations. Accelerated. Learn more at covail.com.
About GoSecure
GoSecure is a recognized cybersecurity leader and innovator, pioneering the integration of endpoint, network, and email threat detection into a single Managed Detection and Response service. The GoSecure TitanTM platform delivers predictive multi-vector detection, prevention, and response to counter modern cyber threats. Titan MDR offers a detection to mitigation speed of less than 15 minutes, delivering rapid response and active mitigation services that directly touch the customers’ network and endpoints. For over 10 years, GoSecure has been helping customers better understand their security gaps and improve their organizational risk and security maturity through MDR and Advisory Services solutions delivered by one of the most trusted, skilled and experienced teams in the industry.
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