By Lorna Trayan, Associate Partner Security at IBM Security Services As I realized that the year is almost over, I had a thought: wouldn’t it be great if we could get a crystal ball and see what the future holds for us? Although I would love to know about my personal life, it’s the cybersecurity world I’m referring to here! Alas, since that’s not possible, we will all have to settle on reading the reports coming out and talking about future “predictions” of the security realm. Predictions, even if sometimes don’t come exactly true, would still assist us in taking a certain direction. As I embarked on the path of report reading, I came across a variety of very good

New guidelines, increased government oversight, and mounting stress in cybersecurity With the 4th quarter underway, we are starting to see lots of predictions about what the cybersecurity industry can expect to see come 2018. Thinking about the future makes it easy to forget about what is happening right now, though. Let’s take a look back at the news that happened this week to remind us of where we are, before we focus too much on where we’re going. Arguably the biggest industry-wide news of the week was the Senate Commerce Committee hearing, “Protecting Consumers in the Era of Major Breaches. If you listened to any of the testimony, it should come as no surprise that the Security and Exchange Commission

This week’s National Cybersecurity Awareness campaign focused on feeding the pipeline to narrow the skills gap in the cybersecurity workforce. While StaySafeOnline declared “The Internet Wants You: Consider a Career in Cybersecurity,” Ransomware hopped to the headlines.   Rabbit on the run ‘Bad Rabbit’, the third global outbreak of the year with similarities to NotPetya, struck companies throughout Russia and Eastern Europe with file-encrypting malware. This strand of ransomware metaphorically knocks on the user’s door by way of a malicious pop-up offering a Flash update. Though the outbreak was first reported, it’s suspected that the group behind the attack has been preparing since at least July.   Bountiful Rewards Security researchers got good news at the start of the week

Fresh from Austin, here are the top headlines from (ISC)2's 2017 Security Congress: Let's talk about risk, baby. That's the language c-level executives and board members want to hear from the security team. Keynote speaker and Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI, Donald Freese, spoke about a non-emotional approach to security.  CSO Online quotes Dylan Thomas, who was probably talking about cybersecurity practitioners when he said "Do not go gently into that good night." Garfield loves lasagna and hates cyberbullying. Infosecurity Magazine was with us in Austin and spoke to the CISO of the state of Missouri, Michael Roling, CIO of the Truth Initiativev, Derrick Butts, and CISO of the U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services, Steven Hernandez.  Ransomware – Tales from

Spying, stealing, defacing. It’s been a busy week. These are the top security headlines for the week of August 28, 2017: The U.S. Navy says there’s no evidence of a cyber attack in the crash of the USS John S. McCain – but hypothetically, this is how it would work. Reuters reports cyber spies are using malware to target India and Pakistan – including decoy clickbait with Reuters reports. Yes, you read that right. Hurricane Harvey is a once in a 1,000 years disaster, but be careful before you donate. Scammers are registering domains to collect “donations” for bogus organizations. Have you ever wondered what happened to that old malware? CSO has a “Where are they now?” Ransomware is so