If you manage Facebook advertising for a small or medium-sized business, open your inbox with suspicion, because attackers…

Microsoft Teams vulnerabilities let attackers impersonate users, edit chat history, and spoof calls before Microsoft issued security fixes in late 2025.

Check Point Research exposed a sophisticated, role-based operation called the YouTube Ghost Network, distributing dangerous Lumma and Rhadamanthys Infostealer malware. Learn how cybercriminals use hijacked channels and bots to triple malicious video output and steal user credentials.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

One of the leading cyber security conferences globally, Black Hat USA is where intellect meets innovation. The 2024 event is taking place from August 3^rd – 8^th, at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas.

The conference is highly regarded for its emphasis on cutting-edge cyber security research, high-caliber presentations, skill development workshops, peer networking opportunities, and for its Business Hall, which showcases innovative cyber security solutions.

Although two other cyber security conferences in Las Vegas will compete for attention next week, Black Hat is widely considered the main draw. Last year, Black Hat USA hosted roughly 20,000 in-person attendees from 127 different countries.

Event information

The Black Hat audience typically includes a mix of cyber security researchers, ethical hackers, cyber security professionals – from system administrators to CISOs – business development professionals, and government security experts.

On the main stage this year, featured speakers include Ann Johnson, the Corporate Vice President and Deputy CISO of Microsoft, Jen Easterly, Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Harry Coker Jr., National Cyber Director for the United States Executive Office of the President.

The Black Hat CISO Summit, on Monday, August 5^th through Tuesday, August 6^th, caters to the needs and interests of CISOs and security executives. This track will address topics ranging from the quantification of cyber risk costs, to supply chain security, to cyber crisis management.

Professionals who are certified through ISC2 can earn 5.5 Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits for CISO Summit attendance.

Why else Black Hat

• Access to thousands of industry professionals who have similar interests, who can discuss challenges and who can provide new product insights.
• Access to the latest cyber research, which may not yet be widely available, helping your organization prevent potential attacks before they transform into fast-moving, large-scale issues.
• Cyber security strategy development in partnership with experts and vendors.
  • Check Point is offering exclusive 1:1 meetings with the company’s cyber security executives. If you plan to attend the event and would like to book a meeting with a Check Point executive, please click here.
• Community building. Connect with others, collaborate on initiatives and strengthen everyone’s cyber security in the process.

Must-see sessions

If you’re attending the event, plan ahead to make the most of your time. There’s so much to see and do. Looking for a short-list of must-see speaking sessions? Here are a handful of expert-led and highly recommended talks:

• Enhancing Cloud Security: Preventing Zero-Day Attacks with Modernized WAPs: Wednesday, August 7^th, at 11:00am, booth #2936
• How to Train your AI Co-Pilot: Wednesday, August 7^th, at 12:30pm, booth #2936
• Key Factors in Choosing a SASE Solution: Thursday, August 8^th, at 10:45am, booth #2936

Further details

Be ready for anything and bring the best version of yourself – you never know who you’ll meet. They could be your next software developer, corporate manager, business partner, MSSP, or cyber security vendor. Meet us at booth #2936. We can’t wait to see you at Black Hat USA 2024!

For more event information, click here. For additional cutting-edge cyber security insights, click here. Lastly, to receive cyber security thought leadership articles, groundbreaking research and emerging threat analyses each week, subscribe to the CyberTalk.org newsletter.

 

The post A preview of the upcoming Black Hat conference… appeared first on CyberTalk.

Pete has 32 years of Security, Network, and MSSP experience and has been a hands-on CISO for the last 17 years and joined Check Point as Field CISO of the Americas. Pete’s cloud security deployments and designs have been rated by Garter as #1 and #2 in the world and he literally “wrote the book” and contributed to secure cloud reference designs as published in Intel Press: “Building the Infrastructure for Cloud Security: A Solutions View.” 

In this interview, Check Point’s Field CISO, Pete Nicoletti, shares insights into cyber security consolidation. Should your organization move ahead with a consolidated approach? Or maybe a workshop would be helpful. Don’t miss Pete Nicoletti’s perspectives.

What kinds of struggles and challenges are the organizational security leaders that you’re working with currently seeing?

Many! As members of the World Economic Forum Council for the Connected World, we drilled into this exact question and interviewed hundreds of executives and created a detailed report. The key findings are:  Economic Issues, IoT risks, increase in ransomware, and security personnel shortages all impacting budgets. Given these issues, our council recommended that security spend remain a priority, even in challenging times, since we all know that security incidents cost 10x to 100x verses budgeted expenditures.

How are CISOs currently building out or transitioning their information security programs? What kinds of results are they seeing?

In challenging times, CISO’s are looking hard at their tool set and seeing if there is overlap, or redundant tools, or underutilized tools. CISO’s are also evaluating their “play-books” to ensure that the tools in-use are efficient and streamlined. CISO’s are also keen to negotiate ELA’s that give them lower costs with flexibility to choose from a suite of tools to support the “speed of business.”

Security teams need to be trained and certified on their tools in use, and those budgets are under pressure. All these drivers lead to tool consolidation projects. Our customers are frequently very pleased with the normally mutually exclusive benefits: Costs Savings and better efficacy once a consolidation program is launched.

What are the key considerations for CISOs in deciding on whether or not to consolidate information security solutions? Can CISOs potentially lose capabilities when consolidating security and if so, how can this be addressed, if at all?

Losing features when consolidating is a valid concern, however, typically we find more advantages after consolidation: Lower training costs, higher staff satisfaction, fewer mistakes made, and the real gem: higher security program efficacy. We also see our customers leveraging the cloud and needing to extend their security protections quickly and easily, and our Check Point portfolio supports this using one console. With all the news of our peers experiencing exploited security vulnerabilities and other challenges, we are continuing to gain market share and happy customers.

How should CISOs go about deciding on whether or not to consolidate cyber security? Beyond cost, what should CISOs think about?

The number one consideration should be efficacy of the program. CISO’s are realizing that very small differences in efficacy lead to very large cost savings. The best security tool for the job should always be selected knowing this. An inventory of tools and the jobs they are doing should be created and maintained. Frequently, CISO’s find dozens of tools that are redundant, overlap with others, add unnecessary complexity, and that are poorly deployed or managed and not integrated into the program. Once the inventory is completed, work with your expert consultant or reseller to review and find redundancies or overlaps and kick-off a program to evaluate technical and cost benefits.

What can organizations achieve with a consolidated cyber security solution?

As mentioned previously, the number one goal of the program should be improving efficacy and our customers do report this. Efficacy lowers the number of false positives, lowers the number of real events and decreases overall risk. Other savings are found with lower training costs, faster run book execution, fewer mistakes and the ability to free up security analysts from wasting time on inefficient processes. Those analysts can now be leveraged into more productive efforts and ensure that the business growth and strategies are better supported.

As a seasoned professional, when you’ve worked with CISOs and security teams in moving to a consolidated solution, what’s gone right, what’s gone wrong, and what lessons can you share with newbie security leaders?

Any significant change in your tool set needs careful consideration and evaluation. Every new tool needs to be tested in lab and moved, as appropriate, into production. You need to find all the gotcha’s with any new tool going inline before they cost impact.

Don’t rush this testing step! Ensure that you have good measurements of your current program so you can easily determine improvements with new tools or consolidation efforts.

If CISOs decide against consolidation, how can they drive better value through existing solutions?

Ensure that the solutions you are using are fully deployed and optimized. We frequently uncover many tools that are underutilized and ineffective. Sit with your staff and watch their work. If they are cutting and pasting, logging into and out of multiple tools, not having the time to address every alert, or are making excessive mistakes, it may be time to have Check Point come in and do a workshop. Our very experienced team will review the current program and provide thoughts and ideas to improve the program. Even if consolidation is not selected, other findings may help improve the program!

Are there any other actionable insights that you would like to share with cyber security leaders?

Every security program is different, and your challenges are unique. But, you can’t know everything, so, consider working with your trusted partners and invite Check Point in to do a free discovery workshop. Cloud maturity, consolidation program consideration, Zero Trust program formulation, and many others are available. As a CISO, you may have some initiatives that need extra validation, and we are standing by to help propel your program.

And for an even stronger security strategy, be sure to attend Check Point’s upcoming CPX 360 event. Register here.

Lastly, to receive cutting-edge cyber security news, best practices and resources in your inbox each week, please sign up for the CyberTalk.org newsletter. 

The post Unconsidered benefits of a consolidation strategy every CISO should know appeared first on CyberTalk.

In this edited interview excerpt from a Nasdaq TradeTalk, Check Point CEO Gil Shwed discusses artificial intelligence, the cyber pandemic, ransomware and so much more. Don’t miss this!

What is the big security concern around AI chat technologies, such as ChatGPT?

GS: Oh, there are so many. I think that these technologies are producing a lot of great opportunities for the world, but they are also creating a lot of security threats.

For example, ChatGPT can write malware. You no longer have to be an expert in order to write malware. You can simply use ChatGPT to write malware.

And even when it comes to simple things like writing a phishing email, ChatGPT does an amazing job. We’ve already seen some of these examples in the wild…

How did we enter a cyber pandemic?

GS: I think that when the coronavirus pandemic started and we were forced to work remotely, a lot of things moved to the digital world. In many respects, this is good, but the attack surface also expanded at the same time…

The attack surface is no longer just an enterprise’s network. It’s every home desktop or employee laptop, each of which could potentially be used as a launch point for an attack. If these devices are exploited, attacks can occur fairly quickly and can get out of control.

Why are cyber attackers interested in going after cloud-based networks?

GS: A lot of the computing environment is expanding or even moving to the cloud. And the cloud creates an unbelievable opportunity for attackers. Motives include anything from bitcoin mining (which is simple, but a financial risk), all the way to migrating data out of the cloud and stealing it.

And it’s not only that – When you think about the traditional IT environment, it’s protected by so many layers of security that make it difficult to penetrate. On the cloud, if there is a small breach, it can go directly to the heart of things…

What are the top industry sectors that cyber criminals find most attractive?

GS: First of all, cyber attackers are trying to access almost every attack surface, and they’ll succeed wherever it’s easiest. I don’t think that we should say that if you’re in one sector, you’re not at risk, while if you’re in another sector, you are at risk. Instead, we should say that if you’re not protected with adequate cyber security, you’re at a higher risk of a cyber attack.

However, we have found that certain sectors, like healthcare and government, are more susceptible to cyber attacks. Sometimes, this is because the aforementioned sectors are less protected. And when I’m talking about the government, I’m not talking about the national defense forces – I’m talking about schools (which fall under the government sector umbrella)…or local governments, like city councils and so on…These organizations, in many cases, are not big enough to develop the right security policies or the right security tools.

Can you frame the ransomware problem? Why is it getting worse when there are so many cyber security companies out there?

GS: That’s a very very good question. So first, ransomware hackers have found a very effective means of monetizing their attacks. In the past, people did hacking for ideological reasons, for government-to-government espionage…etc. Some pursued hacking in order to steal money, but it was a difficult undertaking.

With ransomware, hackers found an amazing opportunity to create an attack type and to translate it into ‘big money’. And by the way, when you look at the evolution of ransomware attacks, five or six years ago, a ransomware attack brought in $300-$600. Today, a ransomware attack can bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars. We’ve even seen ransomware attacks that have resulted in companies paying more than $10 million. It’s become a big business.

The problem with security today is that there are so many solutions, there’s so much complexity, and these solutions don’t work together. So, something that would have been blocked on your PC yesterday, could come through your remote access network tomorrow, and it won’t be identified.

It’s our job to work together collaboratively to block these attacks and to build architectures that are far more consolidated and complete in order to block attacks on all attack fronts. At Check Point, we are trying to do just that, and we are investing all of our resources in it.

This article content is an edited excerpt from an interview that was originally broadcast as a Nasdaq TradeTalk. Please watch the entire video clip – here.

If your organization needs to strengthen its security strategy, be sure to attend Check Point’s upcoming CPX 360 event. Register now.

Lastly, to receive cutting-edge cyber security news, best practices and resources in your inbox each week, please sign up for the CyberTalk.org newsletter. 

The post How a fast-changing threat landscape catalyzed a cyber pandemic appeared first on CyberTalk.