The Lack Of Cybersecurity Professionals, IoT Botnets Are A Work Of A Vast Minority And More In This Weeks News

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The shortage of cybersecurity professionals

ISACA predicts that by 2019 there will be a shortage of two million cyber security professionals globally. This is great news if you’re an upcoming security professional, but very bad news for companies looking for more security talent. Akamai writes about this problem in detail in one of their newest articles – one of the key takeaways is the fact that 70% of respondents in an ESG and ISSA survey state that security skill shortages are impacting their organization.

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Are IoT botnets a work of a ‘vast minority’?

KrebsonSecurity posted an article with a transcript of an interview Brian Krebs (the blog author) had with Allison Nixon. Allison is a security expert whose research into the Dark Web and its various malefactors is especially useful when talking about Mirai botnet and the likes.

When I look at the IoT DDoS activity and the actual human beings doing this, the vast majority of Mirai attacks, attack infrastructure, malware variants and new exploits are coming from a vast minority of people doing this. That said, the way I perceive the underground ecosystem is probably different than the way most people perceive it.
– Allison Nixon, Director of security research at Flashpoint

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Cloudflare launches Cloudflare Access

Modelled on Google’s BeyondCorp, Cloudflare released a new service called Cloudflare Access, what it bills as “a perimiter-less access control solution for cloud and on-premise applications”. Cloudflare’s self-proclaimed mission was always to “democratize the tools of the internet giants” and this is a step that fits well into the whole story considering the remote access per user will be valued ad only $3.

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Drop in traffic from Congo reported

It has somewhat become Cloudflare’s tradition to report on everything interesting that is happening regarding the internet traffic in general. This time they’ve disclosed some traffic reports from Congo that show internet access has been decreased by the government for 3 days during the anti-Kabila protests.

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Norway healthcare data breach

Nearly half of the Norway population is now exposed due to a healthcare data breach performed by an unknown hacker or a group of hackers that reportedly stole info and health records of some 2.9 million Norwegians. So far there’s also no evidence if the stolen data theft has had any consequences for or effects on patients’ safety. However, the healthcare organisation assured that security “measures had been taken to limit the damage caused by the burglary.”

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