Tag: security

Juniper Predicts Cybersecurity Boom

Posted on October 17, 2023 by - News

A new study by Juniper Research predicts a 107 per cent growth in the number of industrial endpoints featuring cybersecurity protection in the next five years.

The research identified the rise of interconnected processes within the Industry 4.0 revolution as increasingly exposing critical industrial infrastructure to external threats, requiring wholesale changes in how industrial stakeholders secure their operations.

Juniper Research defines an industrial endpoint as any physical or virtual device connected to a network to send and receive information in an industrial setting.

BlueVoyant hires Jon Leather

Posted on August 23, 2023 by - Moving People

Cyber security outfit BlueVoyant has tapped industry specialist Jon Leather as its Head of European Supply Chain Defence Advisory.

Leather joins BlueVoyant from Standard Chartered Bank, where he served as the Head of Third-Party Information Security Risk Oversight. Previously, he spent more than a decade at Lloyds Banking Group, focusing on cyber risk and leading information and cyber security supplier assurance programmes.

Leather is highly experienced around the components and mechanisms that make up an organisation’s third-party cyber risk relationships.

Leather chaired the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) Cyber Supply Chain Risk Working Group for Financial Services, an initiative he will continue to be involved with in an advisory capacity.

Security skills gap major issue

Posted on July 26, 2023 by - News

A Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) report has found that the cybersecurity skills gap is going to be around for a while.

The report said that the issue posing significant challenges to businesses and organisations across the nation. Despite an increase in demand for cybersecurity professionals, the lack of skilled individuals continues to be a persistent issue.

Government expected to relax fraud rules on tech

Posted on May 3, 2023 by - News

The UK government plans to relax a proposal that would mandate technology companies to reimburse victims in the event of online financial fraud.

The move follows concerns raised by the Treasury and the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology regarding the proposal’s impact on the UK tech industry.

The annual cost of fraud to the UK amounts to billions of pounds. The government wants a new national fraud strategy to foster collaboration between the government, law enforcement and private companies.

It is expected that the measures will introduce a voluntary agreement where the technology sector will commit to tackling online fraud, rather than being held accountable for reimbursing victims. All a technology company has to do is promise that the attack will not happen again and show what steps have been taken to prevent it.

Firms find security a bit tricky

Posted on April 6, 2023 by - News

Security outfit Sophos has been asking around and found that nearly all organisations find essential security operation tasks, such as threat hunting a bit too challenging.

Sophos’s new survey The State of Cybersecurity 2023: The Business Impact of Adversaries on Defenders  which found that, globally, 93 per cent of organisations find the execution of some essential security operation tasks, such as threat hunting, challenging.

These challenges include understanding how an attack happened, with 75 per cent of respondents stating they have challenges identifying the root cause of an incident. This can make proper remediation difficult, leaving organizations vulnerable to repetitive or multiple attacks, by the same or different adversaries, especially since 71 per cent of those surveyed also reported challenges with timely remediation.

More than 71 per cent said they have challenges understanding which signals/alerts to investigate, and the same percent reported challenges prioritising investigations.

Sophos CTO John Shier said that only a fifth of respondents considered vulnerabilities and remote services a top cybersecurity risk for 2023, yet the ground truth is that these are routinely exploited by Active Adversaries.

IDC sees expansion in security spend

Posted on March 20, 2023 by - News

Beancounters at IDC have added up some numbers and concluded that worldwide security spending will grow by 12.1 per cent to reach $219 billion  in 2023.

According to IDC’s Worldwide Security Spending Guide investments in cybersecurity hardware, software, and services should reach nearly $300 billion in 2026.

The guide pinpoints the ongoing threat of cyberattacks, the demands of providing a secure hybrid work environment, and the need to meet data privacy and governance requirements as some of the biggest drivers for this growth.

AWS expands security partner network

Posted on July 28, 2022 by - News

Cloudy bookseller AWS has expanded and revamped its partner network.

The outfit has bought in eight new categories to help customers  locate partner software and service solutions: Threat Detection and Response; Identity and Access Management; Infrastructure Security; Data Protection; Compliance and Privacy; Application Security; Perimeter Protection; and Core Security.

Speaking to the gathered throngs at AWS’s annual re:Inforce conference worldwide head of cloud foundations for the AWS Partner Network, Ryan Orsi, claimed the move will allow partners to “increase their business, increase their trust and visibility with their customers and prospects out there to show they have all the right skill sets and knowledge about AWS environments.

Resellers scoop NHS security deal

Posted on August 12, 2020 by - News

Resellers have been winning parts of a £500 million framework that will provide “end-to-end” IT to the NHS  including Computacenter, Softcat, Total and Dell.

The Digital Workplace Solutions framework is managed by NHS Shared Business Services (SBS) and replaces the predecessor “Link: IT Solutions”.

Total Computers sales director Kieran O’Connor said: “We’re already working with NHS Shared Business Services through ‘The Edge4Health’, so are thrilled to be a ‘Digital Workplace Solutions’ supplier and see it as further endorsement of our ability to provide the public sector with competitive pricing, technical excellence and great service.”

The framework will run for an initial two-year period, with an option to run for a further two years after. Since publication, NHS SBS has told CRNthat the framework is worth an estimated £500 million.

Only half of business leaders are ready to face security threats

Posted on June 24, 2020 by - News

The UK’s vulnerability to cyber security attacks has again come under the spotlight, with only half of business leaders ready and prepared to counter digital threats they’re currently facing – or are likely to confront in the future, according to a new survey

A worrying key finding of the survey of over 750 business leaders conducted by online pioneer Esme Learning Solutions, who is collaborating with Saïd Business School in the development of the Oxford Cyber Futures programme, was that although businesses have woken up to the threat of poor cyber security practices, they are not yet walking the walk.

Lockdown measures that forced the majority of businesses worldwide to work remotely in response to COVID-19 have raised a number of cyber security concerns and issues. The number of attacks against organisations grew to reach a four-month high at the end April resulting in the NCSC and CISA issuing an advisory about cyber criminals exploiting COVID-19 on April 8th 2020.

Less than half of cybersecurity professionals can handle IoT attacks,

Posted on November 4, 2019 by - News

Only half of cybersecurity professionals have a plan in place to deal with attacks on their IoT devices and equipment, despite that fact that nine out of ten express concerns over future threats, according to new research from the Neustar International Security Council (NISC).

These findings come at a time in which 48 percent of organisations admitted to experiencing a cyberattack against their IoT or connected devices and equipment in the last year alone. Just over a quarter reported feeling ‘very confident’ that their personnel would know how to protect against such attacks, while 38 percent claimed they are in the process of developing a plan.

Security spending soars

Posted on October 21, 2019 by - News

Worldwide spending on security products and services will enjoy solid growth over the next five years according to beancounters at IDC.

According to the (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Security Spending Guide, worldwide spending on security-related hardware, software, and services will be $106.6 billion in 2019, an increase of 10.7 percent over 2018. This amount will reach $151.2 billion in 2023 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.4 percent  over the 2019-2023 forecast period.

Rate of change challenges security

Posted on September 10, 2019 by - News

Security experts have identified the rate of change as one of the biggest current threats to cyber security in the UK.

The sort of change they are talking about is not just the ability of hackers to come up with new viruses, but also changes to the legal landscape.

The challenges were identified by leading industry experts discussing the current status of UK cyber security in the run up to Cyber Security Connect UK, (CSCUK), the leading conference and industry forum for CISOs.

Security technologies strong according to Globaldata

Posted on June 5, 2019 by - News

Deal activity remained strong in security technologies space in 2018, according to analysts GlobalData.

Despite the fluctuating trend in venture capital (VC) funding and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the security technologies space during 2014-2018, deal activity remained stable in 2018 compared to 2017, primarily due to the hype around the cybersecurity segment and companies’ strategies to strengthen their market position, said GlobalData.

Small businesses need ‘cyber security champions’

Posted on March 21, 2019 by - News

Small businesses should train up “cybersecurity champions” to better protect themselves from the threat of cyber attacks, new government research has suggested.

A report by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) claimed that in the case of more than half (57 percent) of businesses who had suffered a recent breach, the incident had first been spotted by staff rather than by software.

Cyber security services get top priority

Posted on February 27, 2019 by - News

MSPs are seeing cybersecurity as their top priority, according to Kaseya’s 2019 MSP Benchmark Survey,

The survey found that nearly a fifth of managed service providers listed cybersecurity services as their top IT problem this year followed by ‘public cloud adoption/migration/support’ (11 percent and ‘private cloud adoption/migration’ (nine percent).