Tag Archive for: Pitfalls

The pitfalls of relying only on your ISP for DDoS protection

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Relying on your Internet Service Provider (ISP) for DDoS protection is like going to a restaurant known for the freshest, tastiest seafood and ordering beef. Sure, they have it on the menu and they are happy to sell it to you, but the experience is not likely to compare well to what you’d have in a fine steak house.

To be sure, ISPs have good reason to provide their users with DDoS protection services. ISPs with a better track record of mitigating DDoS attacks enjoy a better reputation for security, which improves sales and allows them to charge more. They can then use their increased earnings to invest in better DDoS solutions. The cycle reinforces itself.

This is a simplified version of how things should go. Reality is often vastly different. ISPs are rarely able to provide best-in-class security to their users. As I said, while DDoS protection is an important value-add for ISP providers, cybersecurity is not their core expertise. This leads to understandable compromises that impact the quality of the security they can offer.

The 2021 DDoS Threat Landscape Report shows attacks are constantly evolving in size, volume, frequency, and complexity. What doesn’t change is the attackers’ focus: the infrastructure their targets depend on most. That could be customer-facing applications, cloud services, network infrastructure, or an ISP itself. As organizations continue to pursue digital transformation, the technologies that drive this – cloud services, mobile networks, and IoT devices – are becoming targets for DDoS attacks. New vectors are being weaponized all the time, and ISPs are finding it difficult to stay on top of an ever-changing threat landscape.

In this post, we’ll examine the growing complexity and volume of the DDoS landscape, and explain why organizations should think critically about augmenting the DDoS protection provided by their ISP with technology that secures all assets at the edge and ensures uninterrupted business operations.

All DDoS attacks are not created equal

What if every cyberattacker in the world shared a single DDoS attack strategy and never changed their plan? In this scenario, it would be easy to provide a single DDoS mitigation solution…

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Improving Cybersecurity Pitfalls With Self-Education, System Assessments And Skills Training

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Michael Moniz, Co-Founder, President, and CEO of Circadence, a leader in cybersecurity learning and training solutions. 

Every election is an uphill battle when it comes to ensuring the proper cybersecurity precautions are in place. Cybersecurity plays a big role in the election process even though it’s not the first thing people always think about when heading to the polls or filling out their mail-in ballot. Cybersecurity practices help protect the votes of the American people. Below is a summary of what and how cybersecurity pitfalls can cause challenges during an election and a few ways to overcome them with human-centered cyber skills training. 

The Vulnerabilities Of Election Security

There are many ways cyberthreats can infiltrate an election system and cause adverse effects. Some of these are at in-person voting polls, hacktivists groups threatening voter data, social media hacktivist manipulation, and a lack of cybersecurity training for election workers and volunteers.

Vulnerability during an election is nothing new to our country. Hacktivist groups compromise election security through various technology loopholes, such as:

• Shutting down a voter registration database at voting polls.

• Uploading voter files with false information.

• Compromising a county’s social media account and posting fake voting locations, news and headlines.

• Shutting down cell towers in specific areas.

The progress and pains that the 2020 general election has brought are prompting federal, state, city and county agencies to recalculate, recalibrate and reevaluate their election systems, processes and technology to address the threat of election interference and voter fraud.

Social Media Fabrications 

Over the last year, we’ve seen how the digital age and social media play a role in how voters obtain news and information, even if it’s from unauthorized sources. Unfortunately, hacktivist groups can infiltrate social media accounts, create new authoritative-looking accounts and use social sharing to release unverified information that tries to alter the political opinions of the public.

Years ago, political smear campaigns took place during TV…

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The pitfalls and potential of inexpensive 3D scanning solutions

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The odd documentary, feature article, or typical marketing hype may make you think that today’s 3D scanning can perfectly capture the real world, but that’s only true with expensive, professional equipment (not to mention considerable editing and post-processing). Generally, current consumer versions of 3D scanners produce decidedly modest results.

Still, personal 3D scanning has made great strides in recent years. And though it continues to take a backseat (in market- and mind-share) to 3D printing, 3D scanning has grown into a technological revolution worth exploring all on its own. So let’s look closer at two of the main personal 3D scanning categories available: software- or hardware-based solutions that work with equipment you may already have and hardware-based solutions that are mostly self-contained. As a bonus, we’ll also look at services where you can view and store 3D models, as well as ways to turn your 3D models back into physical objects.

While it’s impossible to provide an exhaustive look at the ever-growing number of 3D scanning products, this selection of solutions should provide a solid overview of what’s currently possible and where this technology might be headed next.

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Technology Lab – Ars Technica