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Can you smell the turkey cooking? Before the holidays begin, let’s catch up on the latest cyber threats, a wrap up of cybersecurity awareness month, and BlindSPOT developments.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Let’s start off with the obvious, every month should be cybersecurity awareness month. 

We kicked off the month at WJXT News4Jax, highlighting easy and free ways to keep your data safe.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month: OnDefend Explains How You Can Keep Your Data Safe > OnDefend

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Cybersecurity companies are not just made up of hackers. From project managers to product development, we wanted to give an inside look at who actually works at a cybersecurity company.

Getting To Know The Different Roles Within A Cybersecurity Company > OnDefend

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While not everyone who works at OnDefend is a hacker, we wouldn’t be able to offer our red-team capabilities without a few. In the Pentester Roundtable, we sat down with two ethical hackers and deep dived into getting into and staying in this career.

Pentester Round Table- Part 1 – YouTube

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We’re lucky enough to work with some pretty interesting partners and industry leaders. It’s safe to say they have seen a few interesting moments throughout their career. While we could never cover them all, here’s a highlight of some of the worst ” Cybersecurity Horror Stories.”

Cybersecurity Horror Stories > OnDefend

Cybersecurity Roundup: Top Stories from the Digital Frontlines

Ransomware attacks are stealing more than just data, but potentially lives.  In the beginning of 2023, The US Department of Health and Human Service Office for Civil Rights was hit with a total of 327 reported data breaches. The massive increase of over 100 percent from the 160 breaches they had on record by mid-2022.

Ransomware: The Unseen War Holding Lives Hostage (thecyberexpress.com)

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Having trouble getting ChatGPT to work? Open AI, the parent company of ChatGPT confirmed the outages can be linked to ongoing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. While OpenAI has yet to publicly confirm who exactly is behind the attacks, a threat actor known as Anonymous Sudan claimed to be behind them due to the ongoing conflict in Israel.

OpenAI confirms DDoS attacks behind ongoing ChatGPT outages (bleepingcomputer.com)

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The US government has launched a new campaign to promote critical infrastructure security and resilience, focusing on broad, strategic strategies. The Shields Ready campaign complements CISA’s Shields Up campaign, which focuses on specific, time-sensitive actions.

US launches “Shields Ready” campaign to secure critical infrastructure | CSO Online

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Okta is blaming the recent hack of its support system on an employee who logged into a personal Google account on a company-managed laptop, exposing credentials that led to the theft of data from multiple Okta customers. According to the company, the username and password of the service account had been saved into the employee’s personal Google account.

Okta Hack Blamed on Employee Using Personal Google Account on Company Laptop – SecurityWeek

OnDefend in the Spotlight

OnDefend CTO Ben Finke shares his thoughts and recommendations for cybersecurity compliance standards with Forbes Technology Council.

Billions of dollars are spent on cybersecurity every year, yet the problem of ransomware outbreaks, data breaches, and identity thefts continues to grow.
How do you raise the bar without adding unnecessary regulations?

You can check out Finke’s recommendations here: Why Cybersecurity Compliance Standards Still Have A Long Way To Go (forbes.com)

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OnDefend is celebrating its second consecutive year as one of the fastest-growing companies on the First Coast. Despite the challenges of the past few years, we are proud to announce that we have achieved the 14th spot!

OnDefend named 14th fastest growing company on the First Coast

BlindSPOT

Did you miss our inaugural BlindSPOT newsletter? We are constantly updating the product from simulation libraries to new reporting graphics. This bi-monthly newsletter is meant to give every user an understanding of what’s new and what to expect in regard to updates. Here’s a sneak peek of what to expect in next month’s newsletter from OnDefend CTO Ben Finke:

“We’re always looking to build tools that helps you keep your organization safe. BlindSPOT attack simulations do a great job helping you find “blindspots”, but once you have those fixed, how do you make sure they stay fixed? Stay tuned for our next newsletter where we tell you all about Alert Validation.”

Missed out on last months? Catch up now.

BlindSPOT Newsletter: The Inaugural Edition > OnDefend

Anybody else feel like we just scratched the surface? That’s because we did. Stay tuned for this bi-monthly newsletter, for all of OnDefend’s latest and greatest.

If you want to stay in the loop about what’s happening at OnDefend, including our upcoming webinars, the latest cybersecurity trends, and product updates, then follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn @ondefend.