Content by Mathew J. Schwartz

White House Might Eliminate Cyber Coordinator Role

Mathew J. Schwartz  •  May 10, 2018

Adequately tracking the nonstop arrival and departure of officials in the Trump White House might require real-time, multidimensional flowcharts. But one thing is clear: The White House is facing a looming cybersecurity knowledge and expertise deficit, and that deficit may soon get worse.

Spectre: The Next Generation

Mathew J. Schwartz  •  May 9, 2018

Spectre and Meltdown: It's déjà vu all over again as Intel is reportedly prepping a coordinated vulnerability disclosure announcement for eight new speculative execution flaws. One of the new flaws is apparently worse than any of the three Spectre/Meltdown variants that came to light in January.

Zero-Day Attack Exploits Windows via Malicious Word Doc

Mathew J. Schwartz  •  May 9, 2018

Security alert: Microsoft has issued updates to fix 67 unique flaws in its products. One vulnerability in Windows VBScript engine is already being actively exploited in the wild via malicious Word documents and could also be employed for attacks via websites and malvertising, Microsoft warns.

Equifax: US Breach Victim Tally Stands at 146.6 Million

Mathew J. Schwartz  •  May 8, 2018

Equifax says it continues to field queries from U.S. lawmakers about the full extent of its massive 2017 data breach, which occurred after an attacker exploited its unpatched Apache Struts web application. Research finds that many more organizations are using unpatched Struts applications.

How Authentication Must Evolve in the Age of GDPR

Mathew J. Schwartz  •  May 7, 2018

Privacy regulations, user satisfaction concerns and the need to prevent data breaches are driving more organizations that must authenticate users to find "a better way of ensuring that people are who they are when they are accessing critical information," says Tony Smales, CEO of Forticode.

Tessian: Using Machine Learning to Prevent Data Loss

Mathew J. Schwartz  •  May 7, 2018

Abhirukt Sapru, head of business development at Tessian, describes the use of machine learning to help prevent highly sensitive information from being sent to the wrong person via email.

InstaSafe: A Software-Defined Perimeter

Mathew J. Schwartz  •  May 7, 2018

Sandip Kumar Panda, co-founder and CEO of InstaSafe, which offers a software-defined perimeter solution, talks about his company's approach toward secure connectivity.

StackRox: Security for Containerization and Microservices

Mathew J. Schwartz  •  May 4, 2018

StackRox CTO Ali Golshan says his firm helps organizations that use containers and microservices to secure their cloud applications via better detection, prevention and response. How does it work?

Acalvio Technologies: Battling Breaches With Deception

Mathew J. Schwartz  •  May 4, 2018

Acalvio Technologies helps organizations practice "cyber deception" to more effectively detect and respond to data breaches, says Rick Moy, the firm's head of marketing. So how does it work?

DeferPanic: More Secure Virtualization via IaaS Containers

Mathew J. Schwartz  •  May 4, 2018

Ian Eyberg is CEO of DeferPanic, a Unikernel-based infrastructure-as-a-service startup that provides containers that help organizations employ virtualization in a more secure manner. How does it work?

No Surprise: Cambridge Analytica Tries to Exit Data Scandal

Mathew J. Schwartz  •  May 4, 2018

Leading the latest edition of the ISMG Security Report: Cambridge Analytica shuts down, saying it's lost all of its customers, and Australia's Commonwealth Bank spots a big, bad potential data breach.

5 Top Cybersecurity Themes at RSA 2018

Mathew J. Schwartz  •  May 3, 2018

What matters most, right now, to the information security community? At RSA 2018, RSA's president said WannaCry was a wakeup call for vulnerability and risk management. Other experts see artificial intelligence, machine learning and secure coding as hot trends.

SamSam Ransomware Offers Volume Decryption Discount

Mathew J. Schwartz  •  May 2, 2018

The attackers behind SamSam ransomware have been focusing not on infecting individuals' computers, but rather the systems of large organizations that they hope will pay for a "volume discount" - in one case, $46,000 - to decrypt all of their systems at once.

How Micro-Segmentation Can Help Stop Breaches From Spreading

Mathew J. Schwartz  •  May 2, 2018

Hackers are going to breach a network, bypassing firewalls and other network defenses. So the focus must be on what happens next, says Mukesh Gupta of Illumio, who describes how micro-segmentation can help contain breaches.

Using Cloud-Based Cybersecurity Services

Mathew J. Schwartz  •  May 2, 2018

Organizations that procure cybersecurity services are increasingly looking not just for private cloud-based approaches, but products that operate from public cloud environments, says Larry Hurtado, CEO of Digital Defense.