PROCIRCULAR BLOG

Educating your business on the importance of cybersecurity

How to Prioritize Cybersecurity Before a Recession

Posted by ProCircular Team on Jul 28, 2022 3:08:13 PM

Cybersecurity is one of the main factors to incorporate into your organization’s recession planning. One notorious online cybercriminal group, the Cobalt Cybercrime Gang, has been operating since 2013, completing over 100 heists totaling over EUR 10 billion in losses to the European financial industry. In a time when attackers are highly motivated and financial and reputational losses can have significant effects, it is crucial to have a clear picture and action plan regarding your cybersecurity posture.

With new threats emerging daily, it is essential to identify and address technical and operational risks proactively. Ensuring reliable and uninterrupted function of your operations during an incident means preparing for, protecting against, responding to, and recovering from a cyberattack.

A recession can occur unexpectedly with little to no warning and leave companies vulnerable to opportunistic and persistent threat actors. The two-fold impact of an economic downturn would be that companies reduce spending, often cybersecurity spending, and highly skilled individuals across the globe become desperate for income, possibly turning to “black hat” or malicious hacking. Successful cyberattacks lead to significant financial and reputational losses. Businesses need a mature cybersecurity program that is resilient to today’s complex and often uncertain threat environment.

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Topics: Cybersecurity, vulerability assessment, Penetration Testing, Incident Response, vCISO, Recession

How Often Should You Do Penetration Testing?

Posted by Willie Zhang on Jun 29, 2022 2:16:30 PM
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Topics: Penetration Testing

Benefits Of Application Penetration Testing & Ethical Hacking

Posted by ProCircular Team on Apr 28, 2022 8:59:20 AM

How does a new application transition from being theoretically secure to real-world secure? Security controls are necessary, but it’s even more important to ensure they are implemented, enforced, and hardened correctly before the application is exposed to the internet. Start with an Application Penetration Test to reveal the most critical areas for improvement and outline a clear path to securing those vulnerabilities. This assessment is performed similarly to an External & Internal Network Penetration Test; an ethical (white hat) hacker scours your site (or network) for low-hanging fruit and hidden weaknesses, so you can put up the right defenses before the hackers in the wild have a chance to attack!

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Topics: Penetration Testing

Legality of Ransom Payments

Posted by Aaron R. Warner on Feb 1, 2022 3:44:30 PM

As clients begin to recognize and prepare against the threat of ransomware attacks, one tricky question keeps coming up. Is paying a ransom “illegal yet?”. No company is champing at the bit to make unplanned payments, especially not to potential terrorists on the OFAC list, but the legality of the matter depends on a few factors. *Please note that ProCircular does not provide legal advice, rather, we disseminate guidance from the top legal authorities.

As a cybersecurity professional and business owner, I keep a close eye on the everchanging recommendations surrounding ransomware attacks and incident management. I found the following document to be one of the more up-to-date (at least by government standards) and straightforward pieces available on the topic. Here's the short version:

“In the context of hostage-taking, for example, DOJ clarified in 2015 that it “has never used the material support statute to prosecute a hostage’s family or friends for paying a ransom for the safe return of their loved one.”67

Basically, there is a low likelihood of prosecution for making ransom payments, even when it is paid to a known threat actor on the OFAC denied persons list. I would only expect to see legal action taken if a very large company went through with the payment while it was expressly illegal. Even then, the punishment would be intended to make an example rather than punish the victim.

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Topics: Incident Response, Ransomware

How To Prepare A Cyber Security Incident Response Plan & Incident Response Team For A Cyber Attack

Posted by ProCircular Team on Jan 13, 2022 11:22:24 AM

New cyberattacks are discovered every single day. Organizations should not be considering if they will be attacked, but rather when they will be attacked and what proactive measures must be taken to ensure the company will survive.

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Topics: Incident Response

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ProCircular is a Full-Service Information Security Firm

We are passionate about helping businesses navigate the complex world of information security, and our blog is another great source of inforamtion. We can assist you no matter where you are in your security maturity journey:

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