This Week in Security #9
- 2 minsNavigating the ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity can feel like a whirlwind—new threats, innovations, and incidents that are constantly reshaping the digital world. This week’s post breaks down some of the developments and that took place last week.
Rapid-fire:
- LockBit alleged that they had US Federal Reserve data, turns out they lied
- Cybersecurity company Blackberry beats revenue estimates… but is still not profitable yet
- Popular open-source browser support project, Polyfill.js is the root of a supply chain attack affecting over 100 thousand websites
Cybersecurity and the Bottom Line
In good times, insurance might seem like a luxury rather than a necessity, but it’s invaluable when trouble strikes. Unfortunately, many corporations have adopted a similar mindset toward their security culture, viewing it as an unnecessary expense rather than a crucial investment.
As trends have shown that cybersecurity incidents will continue to occur at increasing rates, the cost of not having a dependable security solution has become too high to ignore. The only issue? There aren’t enough professionals to fill the growing need…
In 2013 there were an estimated 1 million job openings in the security industry, this number has since ballooned to 3.5 million in 2023. Why the employment gap?
- Graduates of security programs are often not seen as employable because of how quickly the cybersecurity landscape evolves
- Today’s threats are vastly different than the ones we faced ten years ago and will be different than what we may face only a few years from now
- Moreover, it is exceedingly rare to find entry level positions in the industry and employers
- Lastly, employers are unable or unwilling to compete with salaries offered by other companies
So now what? There needs to be a major mindset shift. While increasing salaries is the “easiest” first step, mentorship and up-skilling through employment may be even more important for the long term success of this industry.
Security Fundamentals
Buffer Overflow: A buffer overflow occurs when data is written to unallocated memory due to the absence of bounds checking. These bugs are commonly associated with programs written in languages like C or C++ where there is no built-in protection against accessing out-of-bounds memory.
- Attackers will often exploit this kind of vulnerability to run their own malicious code instead of the original program
Siddhantha Bose
Living, learning, and meeting people along the way