Articles by Paul Bryant

The Latest from CERT NZ What’s New? CERT NZ is a central organisation that receives cyber incident reports from both individuals and businesses. It tracks attacks and incidents, and provides advice and alerts. The quarterly updates from CERT provide a valuable snapshot of what’s going on with cyber security in NZ, and give us a useful insight into trends and concerns. Their latest update was released last week. It shows a decrease in the number of incidents reported from last quarter, but an increase in the type and complexity of scams. Decrease in Incidents isn’t the Whole Story There was

Background Software is constantly changing. Application and package authors tweak and update existing code more or less continually to provide features, improvements, fixes and workarounds. Also, most software is constructed, at least in part, from third party or open source components or packages, such that large parts of the code are integrated by, but not actually written by, the developer or vendor of the overall application. Given this continual change, and these varying sources of code, it is incredibly common for applications of all types to have as yet unknown security vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities come to light over time, either

If the Kaseya attack was a “supply-chain attack” in terms of the industry accepted definition then it is a stretch of that definition. The distinction is important, because software supply-chain compromises are harder for customers of software solutions to detect using usual defensive measures, and generally involve exploitation techniques that fall outside the scope of web application penetration testing standards. So there is a feeling that essentially no blame rests with the software customer, and perhaps reduced blame rests with the software vendor. In this post we explore the implications for Kaseya of mis-categorising this attack as a supply-chain attack.

What’s New? Cert NZ has released its first quarterly report for 2021. The Cert NZ reports provide an interesting snapshot of recent cyber security incidents reported by both individuals and organisations in New Zealand. The latest report shows that a total of 1,431 incident reports were made to CERT NZ in the first quarter of 2021, involving losses of almost $3 million. Notable Increases Reports of ‘unauthorised access’ increased significantly this quarter. Unauthorised access involves an attacker gaining access to an account without your knowledge. Often this happens because of weak passwords, or login credentials that have been leaked in

Online Security Online apps and tools have become an integral part of how we live and work. If you own or run one of these systems, you will be aware of the constant threat of a cyberattack, and the risks this poses to your business. If you use cloud services you should also be aware of the assumptions you are making about the security of those services, or have a basis for trusting the security assertions the vendor is making. Regular, pre-emptive penetration testing (or “pen-testing”) can mitigate these risks, provide knowledge and confidence, and improve the security and privacy

As you might expect, the bad guys are trying to use the global Covid-19 pandemic for malicious purposes.  The hunger for information, plus the disruption from half the world going into lock-down, perhaps combined with increased receptiveness to community support, all make this a pandemic rich and morally decrepit online hunting ground. The purpose of this post is not to add fear or reduce receptiveness to (online) community support.  But we do think it is important to know what sorts of things are going on, and to be on the look-out for them, particularly in this early period where everything

Many of us are already working from home (WFH), to do whatever we can to “flatten the curve” and reduce the potential burden on our healthcare system for those who need it, and those who have to operate in it.  Even more people are likely to start working from home this week, as we head into proper lockdown, and schools close. Not everyone is super practiced at working away from the office, and for many people remote access has just meant getting emails and maybe some cloud file access on a mobile, tablet, home PC or work-issued laptop.  But working

The Coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic is causing ongoing global disruption, in addition to the obvious illness and loss of life in most corners of the globe. Many countries are at different levels of lock-down, supported by the requirement or strong advice to work from home (WFH) if you possibly can.  This is putting some strain on the technical capabilities and budget of many individuals and organisations who were not previously well prepared for ongoing remote working.  Some of that strain is technical and quite visible, and some of it is security-related and more hidden. Here we wanted to let you know what

An altogether different type of virus Although we don’t like to appear alarmist, we are in the business of pre-empting and managing risk and so we prefer to be early and prepared, and to communicate well in advance of predictable scenarios. We are mindful of the potential disruptions that may be caused by the novel Coronavirus and the Covid-19 illness it causes, depending on how the pandemic progresses in Australasia. This is a just short post setting out our own processes and future plans in this regard. We do not anticipate any business continuity issues at phew in the event