You’ve probably heard of Threat Intelligence, it's all the rage and all the cool kids are doing it… where’ve you been? Threat Intelligence, or “TI,” is everywhere and in everything, and it can be cool, but it can also be slippery and confusing and complex and a huge waste of time and resources depending on what you do (or don’t do) with it. In this post, we’re going to make a bunch of snarky statements about Threat Intelligence, and we’re going to spill the tea on how you (as a small or medium sized business) can use it and actually get some security value in return.

In retaliation for ongoing attacks against US interests and to be a deterrent against future cyberattacks, the United States has been penetrating Russian power and industrial systems according to recent reporting in the New York Times. There have been multiple articles about attacks on critical infrastructure and attempts to penetrate systems in this space. In the US, no breach has been reported to lead to a wide spread outage, but there has been an increasing level of concern.

A few months ago, JasperLoader (a new malware loader) emerged, infecting systems with various malware payloads, such as the Gootkit Banking Trojan. After a short, initial campaign, the threat actors behind the malware halted their activity and JasperLoader went off the radar for a while. However, since late May, a new and upgraded version of JasperLoader has been spotted infecting machines across Europe.

One of the challenges in threat intelligence is taking the massive amount of data we have about the threat landscape and distilling it into its most relevant components. A huge part of the reason for growth in data science (and in cyber security specifically) is habitually struggling with too much information. (With some exceptions) With this roadblock, it’s a challenge to focus in on the data that’s truly relevant.

Georgia Tech recently notified almost 1.3 million people about a potential breach of sensitive data, and in some cases, including a social security number. Over a four month period, there was a vulnerable server that allowed people to enumerate records on a back-end database, allowing the exfiltration of sensitive information. While universities are seen as more open environments, they do have sensitive information they have to protect.

Last week, Cyberscoop reported that someone was launching a scan of the entire internet using packets spoofed with a source address of major American banks. That event is interesting in its own right, and follows an occasional pattern by which attackers occasionally try to manipulate the automation our industry uses to protect against attackers.

Looking for an affordable alternative to Cisco Umbrella Enterprise's high cost? ThreatSTOP comes with advanced reporting and security research tools out-of-the-box. See blocked threats, remediate client machines faster and check IOC’s. Here's a breakdown of how ThreatSTOP and Cisco line up.

Whether you're a company looking for an affordable alternative to Cisco Umbrella Enterprise's high cost, or looking for a solution with more features, better support & granular reporting, here's a breakdown of how ThreatSTOP and Cisco line up.

In the third quarter of 2018 alone, 4.4 million patient records were compromised across 117 disclosed health data breaches. This shows that health care continues to be targeted by criminals. The largest breach was UnityPoint, with 1.4 million records compromised.