Blog | Cyber Attacks & Digital Risks

What we’re reading this month: May 2022

May 18, 2022 | 7 Min Read

Where is the year going? It only seems like yesterday that we celebrated the turn of the year, with the...

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Advanced persistent threat group feature: Mustang Panda

May 17, 2022 | 7 Min Read

Advanced persistent threat (APT) groups are often tricky to wrap your head around. By their nature, state-associated groups are well-resourced...

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Five years after the WannaCry dumpster fire, ransomware remains a global threat

May 11, 2022 | 7 Min Read

It has been five years since the dumpster fire we all remember as WannaCry. WannaCry is self-propagating ransomware that held...

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ALPHV: The First Rust-Based Ransomware

May 6, 2022 | 7 Min Read

In late 2021, we observed a new ransomware operation named “ALPHV” (also known as BlackCat) emerge. The group operates as...

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Colonial Pipeline One Year Later: What’s Changed?

May 4, 2022 | 10 Min Read

For the first half of 2021, ransomware groups looked unstoppable. Ransomware gangs were adding victim after victim on their dark...

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The Russia – Ukraine war: Two months in

April 28, 2022 | 10 Min Read

The two-month mark of the Russia and Ukraine war has passed, with Russia almost certainly having failed to meet its...

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Opportunity in the midst of chaos: Russian-speaking cybercriminals grapple with sanctions and forum takedowns

April 27, 2022 | 8 Min Read

As a threat intelligence professional, it’s difficult to ignore how major developments in the real world affect the lives of...

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The Power Of Data Analysis In Threat Intelligence – Part 2: Machine Learning

April 21, 2022 | 12 Min Read

This blog is the second part of our Data Analysis in Threat Intelligence series, where we focus on the tools...

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What We’re Reading This Month: April 2022

April 20, 2022 | 7 Min Read

As an intelligence analyst, it’s paramount to stay on top of what’s happening in the world around you. To inform...

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The role of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) in facilitating cybercrime

April 20, 2022 | 8 Min Read

You’d have to have been living under a rock to have avoided the excitement surrounding Non-Fungible-Tokens (NFTs) in the last...

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Q1 2022 Vulnerability Roundup

April 14, 2022 | 6 Min Read

In the first quarter of 2022, several high-severity vulnerabilities were targeted by threat actors to facilitate malicious campaigns. The first...

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Q1 2022 Ransomware Roundup

April 12, 2022 | 12 Min Read

As the new year has reached the end of its first quarter, it’s time for us to go back and...

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Intelligence Collection Plans: Preparation breeds success

April 7, 2022 | 6 Min Read

It’s been a little over a month since I wrote about how intelligence requirements (IRs) can help plan a cyber...

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Team A vs Team B: What is Motivating Lapsus$?

April 6, 2022 | 8 Min Read

In the past few weeks, the Lapsus$ threat group captured the security community’s attention with a series of brazen and...

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Five things we learned from the Conti chat logs

April 5, 2022 | 11 Min Read

At the end of February, the cybersecurity community was rocked by the appearance of alleged chat logs recording conversations between...

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The Power of Data Analysis in Threat Intelligence – Part 1: Data Collection and Data Mining

March 31, 2022 | 8 Min Read

In 2020, there was an estimated 59 trillion gigabytes of data in the world. Most of which was created in...

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“Your rubles will only be good for lighting a fire”: Cybercriminals reel from impact of sanctions

March 29, 2022 | 10 Min Read

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the Digital Shadows Photon team has been following multiple aspects of the tragic...

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Vulnerability Intelligence Round-up: Russia-Ukraine War

March 24, 2022 | 6 Min Read

One month ago, the Russian government began the invasion of Ukraine, triggering one of the most severe security crises in...

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The Okta breach: What we know so far

March 23, 2022 | 10 Min Read

What we know about the Okta breach, Lapsus$ group, and what you can do today to protect your...

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Russia’s Second Front: The War on Information

March 22, 2022 | 9 Min Read

You would think that it would be nearly impossible to industrialize propaganda in the 21st century, especially with the tremendous...

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Meet Lapsus$: An Unusual Group in the Cyber Extortion Business

March 17, 2022 | 5 Min Read

In December 2021, a new cyber threat group began attracting the security community’s attention, after conducting several high-profile extortion attacks...

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The Russia-Ukraine War And The Revival Of Hacktivism

March 16, 2022 | 4 Min Read

The international reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has manifested in a few distinct ways, as outlined in our...

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Biden’s Executive Order on Crypto: What you need to know

March 15, 2022 | 7 Min Read

On 9 Mar 2022 US President Biden signed a new executive order (EO) to ensure the responsible development of cryptocurrency...

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Exploring SIM Swapping Services on Cybercriminal Forums

March 10, 2022 | 10 Min Read

If you’ve made it to 2022 (congratulations), there’s a fairly good chance you own a mobile phone (again, congrats). You’re...

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Can cryptocurrency be used to bypass the impact of sanctions being applied against Russia?

March 9, 2022 | 10 Min Read

In an interview on 28 Feb 2022, former Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton criticized several cryptocurrency exchanges that had decided against...

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What We’re Reading this Month: March 2022

March 3, 2022 | 7 Min Read

Roll up roll up, it’s that time for the monthly what we’re reading blog, in which some of us in...

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Intelligence Requirements: Planning your cyber response to the Russia-Ukraine war

March 1, 2022 | 11 Min Read

At the end of last week, Digital Shadow’s CISO, Rick Holland, released his blog Russian Cyber Threats: Practical Advice For...

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Cybercriminals React to Ukraine-Russia Conflict

February 25, 2022 | 7 Min Read

As the world reacted to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 Feb 2022, cybercriminals were also formulating their own opinions...

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Russian Cyber Threats: Practical Advice For Security Leaders

February 25, 2022 | 11 Min Read

As I spent Wednesday night doom scrolling into the early hours of the morning, I felt pretty powerless as I...

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Russia Invades Ukraine: What happens next?

February 24, 2022 | 5 Min Read

On 23 Feb 2022, Russian forces started a military operation targeting Ukraine. Reporting indicates that shelling in several Ukrainian cities...

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Recruitment Fraud in 2022

February 23, 2022 | 3 Min Read

Earlier this month, the FBI released a public service announcement titled “Scammers Exploit Security Weaknesses on Job Recruitment Websites to...

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Of Death and Taxes: File Early To Beat The Scammers

February 22, 2022 | 7 Min Read

Tax season has officially started! The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the US will be accepting tax returns between January...

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“No cards = no work = no money”: Russian law enforcement’s assault on carding platforms

February 18, 2022 | 9 Min Read

Arguably the biggest cybersecurity event of the year so far was the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) arresting suspected members...

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Initial Access Brokers in 2021: An Ever Expanding Threat

February 16, 2022 | 11 Min Read

To say that 2021 was a turbulent year for security teams would be a massive understatement. Last year, we observed...

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Automate Alert Investigation and Response with XSOAR and SearchLight

February 11, 2022 | 3 Min Read

We are excited to announce an expanded set of XSOAR playbooks that make use of Digital Shadows intelligence. In this...

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Valentine’s Day: Share your love, not your credentials

February 9, 2022 | 6 Min Read

Roses are red, violets are blue. Your files are encrypted. Please send BTC to address two twenty-two. As the yearly...

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Growing Tension Between Russia and Ukraine: Should you be concerned?

February 9, 2022 | 9 Min Read

Russia and Ukraine have had a particularly tense relationship since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. In the past weeks,...

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CVEs You Might Have Missed While Log4j Stole the Headlines

February 8, 2022 | 19 Min Read

The past three months have been a particularly challenging time for security teams. 2021 rounded off in the most spectacular...

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Beijing 2022: Why you should or shouldn’t care about the Winter Olympics

February 3, 2022 | 9 Min Read

When asked to write about the Winter Olympic Games this year, I immediately thought about my alpine holiday in Niseko....

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What We’re Reading This Month – January 2022

February 2, 2022 | 8 Min Read

January. The month also known as the time of the year where most of the Great New Year’s Resolutions come...

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Vulnerability Intelligence: Introducing SearchLight’s Newest Capability

January 31, 2022 | 4 Min Read

Digital Shadows’ new vulnerability intelligence capability brings a unique context to CVEs. Armed with this intelligence, security teams can better...

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Life in Prison: The Cybercriminal Perspective

January 27, 2022 | 9 Min Read

While some of us might be taking it easy after the excesses of the Christmas period, January certainly hasn’t been...

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Vulnerability Intelligence: A Best Practice Guide

January 26, 2022 | 4 Min Read

Vulnerability intelligence is fast emerging as one of the most valued threat intelligence use cases. It provides information about how...

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Navigating the Threat Intelligence Market in 2022

January 20, 2022 | 4 Min Read

Every year attacks become more prevalent and more sophisticated. Last year was no exception. If you then throw in a...

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Ransomware Q4 Overview

January 19, 2022 | 12 Min Read

2021 has finally come to an end and it is time for us to look back at some of the...

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Making Sense of the REvil Arrests

January 14, 2022 | 7 Min Read

On 14 January 2022, our seemingly quiet Friday afternoons were shattered by a piece of breaking news, detailing the arrest...

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How Do Ransomware Groups Launder Payments?

January 10, 2022 | 7 Min Read

Ransomware continued to represent arguably the biggest headache for incident responders and blue teams in 2021, and the upcoming year...

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Cyber Threats to Education

January 6, 2022 | 3 Min Read

Universities and higher education institutions were some of the most popular targets in 2021. According to Microsoft, education is the...

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ShadowTalk Year in Review: Top 5 Episodes of 2021

December 30, 2021 | 3 Min Read

And just like that, we’ve come to the end of another year. “But wait” you say, “wasn’t it just January?”...

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AlphaBay’s Return: A slow-burning masterpiece, or a flash in the pan?

December 28, 2021 | 4 Min Read

A few months back, we wrote about how AlphaBay, the infamous dark web marketplace, has returned. For those who missed...

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Year in Review: Our Top Blogs of 2021

December 23, 2021 | 9 Min Read

I’m sure we can all agree that this year has been busy for anyone who had anything, even remotely, to...

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Log4j: Tokyo Drift

December 22, 2021 | 5 Min Read

Just when we thought we were through the significant bits of Log4j issues, a new problem appeared this past weekend....

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US Ban on Huawei: Is this the right approach?

December 22, 2021 | 7 Min Read

On 11 Nov 2021, US President Joe Biden banned the use of Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE within the US,...

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Discord: Do You Need to Be Concerned This Christmas?

December 21, 2021 | 7 Min Read

Picture the scene. It’s Christmas Day, and your child/loved one/other has just opened their present from you…a new games console....

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Log4j: What’s Happened Since

December 15, 2021 | 5 Min Read

Last Friday, we published a blog on the latest significant vulnerability, CVE-2021-44228, which involves a flaw in the Log4j program...

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Cone of Plausibility: Forecasting Ransomware Scenarios in 2022

December 14, 2021 | 10 Min Read

Note: This blog is part of a series of articles related to the use of Structured Analytic Techniques in the...

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The Log4j Zero-Day: What We Know So Far

December 10, 2021 | 6 Min Read

There’s nothing in the cyber threat intelligence world like having a severe remote code execution (RCE) zero-day drop on a...

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Latin American Financial Services: Sunny Climes and Cybercrimes

December 9, 2021 | 8 Min Read

Few things make my eyes sparkle like talking about Latin America. Back in 2018, I had the privilege of being...

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2021: An APAC Cyber-security Odyssey

December 8, 2021 | 9 Min Read

Last year, I rounded up the three most significant events for 2020 and crossed my fingers for brighter days ahead....

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Outside the Perimeter: The New Digital Risk Landscape

December 7, 2021 | 6 Min Read

Alastair Paterson, CEO of Digital Shadows, recently sat down with Ryan Floyd, cofounding Managing Director of Storm Ventures, to discuss...

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Cyber Threats to Government

December 2, 2021 | 3 Min Read

Exploring cyber threats to Government and Public bodies, including ransomware targets and initial access...

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When acting turns criminal: Deepfakes and voice impersonators in the cybercriminal underground

December 1, 2021 | 13 Min Read

You’ve probably heard the old adage: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Falling for...

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To Disclose, or Not to Disclose: The PoC Dilemma

November 30, 2021 | 6 Min Read

At the beginning of our conversation on vulnerability intelligence a couple of weeks ago, I briefly touched on a fictional...

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The Patching Nightmare

November 24, 2021 | 7 Min Read

Note: This blog is part of a three-blog series on Vulnerability Intelligence that accompanies the release of Digital Shadows’ latest...

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Black Friday: Is there a threat actor in your shopping cart?

November 23, 2021 | 9 Min Read

Black Friday represents a huge opportunity for consumers to purchase a range of items at cut-rate prices: Electrical items, furniture,...

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Emotet is back again: what does it mean?

November 16, 2021 | 4 Min Read

Emotet is back again on the scene and, to be fair, we’re not surprised. Its predictable return has come just...

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Vulnerability Intelligence: What’s the Word in Dark Web Forums?

November 16, 2021 | 7 Min Read

Note: This blog is part of a three-blog series on Vulnerability Intelligence that accompanies the release of Digital Shadows’ latest...

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What is Vulnerability Intelligence?

November 11, 2021 | 6 Min Read

Picture this: it’s a Monday morning, and you’ve just found out that a critical vulnerability was announced on your favorite...

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Vulnerable smart contracts and fake blockchains: What do investors need to know?

November 10, 2021 | 10 Min Read

Well, here we are again. Another blog on a topic that’s often spoken about but little understood: cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency-related decentralized...

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What We’re Reading This Month

November 9, 2021 | 6 Min Read

As an intelligence analyst, it’s paramount that you stay on top of what’s happening in the world around you. To...

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Initial Access Brokers in Q3 2021

November 3, 2021 | 9 Min Read

As the end of the year approaches, it’s time once again to look at the initial access broker (IAB) activity...

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Managing your External Attack Surface with SearchLight

November 2, 2021 | 4 Min Read

Recently we have been hearing plenty about External Attack Surface Management (EASM). While Digital Shadows focuses on digital risk protection...

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ENISA 2021 Threat Landscape: Initial Thoughts

November 1, 2021 | 12 Min Read

The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) has released its yearly threat landscape report, which contains some handy insights. The...

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REvil Dead, And Other Spooky Security Tales

October 27, 2021 | 6 Min Read

I can’t start off this blog with the R-word. You know the one. I’ve poked fun at it before because...

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Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Week 4 – Cybersecurity first (…middle and last)

October 26, 2021 | 6 Min Read

Our blog series for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM) has come to an end. So far, we have looked at...

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Ransomware Q3 Roll Up

October 25, 2021 | 11 Min Read

We have reached the end of another quarter, and it is time again for us to have a look back...

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What Is Intellectual Property Protection?

October 20, 2021 | 2 Min Read

Growing costs of intellectual property theft Intellectual property theft is defined by the FBI as “robbing people or companies of...

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Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Week 3 – Explore. Experience. Share

October 19, 2021 | 11 Min Read

We’re into the third week of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM). In the last two weeks, we have covered How...

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REvil Domains Hijacked, Forum Representative Announces Group’s Intention to Go Offline

October 18, 2021 | 5 Min Read

The ransomware group REvil (aka Sodinokibi) has been one of the most significant characters in the evolving ransomware drama that...

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Strategic Threat Intelligence and You: What Does It All Mean?

October 14, 2021 | 4 Min Read

What is strategic threat intelligence? In another blog about tactical threat intelligence, we talked about how tactical and strategic threat...

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Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Week 2 – Fight the Phish!

October 13, 2021 | 9 Min Read

Welcome to Digital Shadows’ second installment of our National Cyber Security Awareness Month-themed blogs! You can go back and read...

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What is Third Party Risk?

October 6, 2021 | 3 Min Read

Third party risk is the process of managing risks introduced by suppliers and third parties, often specifically to sensitive data...

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Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Week 1 – Managing Your Digital Shadow

October 5, 2021 | 8 Min Read

This week is the first week of National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), which runs from October 1 to October...

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What We’re Reading This Month: September Edition

September 29, 2021 | 8 Min Read

In the Cyber Threat Intelligence world, a reasonably popular question for interviews or establishing street cred on Twitter is asking...

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Tactical Threat Intelligence and You: What Does It All Mean?

September 29, 2021 | 5 Min Read

What is tactical threat intelligence? If threat intelligence is the umbrella, within that umbrella lies strategic and tactical intelligence, next...

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Why CISOs and Executives Should Care About IABs

September 23, 2021 | 3 Min Read

Initial access brokers (IABs) are enablers of high-level cybercriminal activity. They identify weak points in their targets’ systems and networks,...

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Data Leakage Detection Best Practices

September 22, 2021 | 3 Min Read

This blog provides an overview of our recently-published Data Leakage Detection Solutions guide, which provides best practices and free tools...

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Ukrainian-language Cybercriminal Platforms: A Gap In the Market?

September 21, 2021 | 7 Min Read

Most readers will be aware of the threat posed by Russian-speaking cybercriminals, be that big players in the ransomware game,...

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Building successful teams on the cybercriminal underground

September 15, 2021 | 7 Min Read

We’ve all been socialized since childhood to the concept of teamwork. As we progress through life, we see the value...

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Enhance Executive Protection with SocialMonitor

September 14, 2021 | 3 Min Read

Today we’re announcing the release of SocialMonitor, an industry-leading capability to better protect executives from social media impersonation. Read on...