Beyond SolarWinds, Russian Hackers Target Austin, Texas

… access data via these connections.

“These inactive applications often represent a trial usage that was abandoned from a user’s perspective, or applications where the business contract may have expired but the vendor access was not removed,” he said. “These application connections remain authorized until that access has been revoked.”

Individual users frequently approve third-party connections without any security oversight, O’Connor said. These applications provide pathways into an organization’s most sensitive data. These cloud-to-cloud connections exist outside the firewall and cannot be detected by traditional scanning and monitoring tools.

“We’ve known this is a problem for quite some time,” he said. “Looking back at the Apollo breach, we saw the compromise of a third-party app as the stepping stone to dumping 200 million contacts from a major SaaS application.”

Cloud applications are one of the biggest blind spots, O’Connor said.

“This year we have seen a huge increase in cloud adoption driven by the pandemic and work from home,” he said. “Existing investments in security technologies that focus on the network or the endpoint cannot help us with this challenge. It’s not that our premises tools have failed, the data has moved where they can’t see it.”

Successful organizations will have a process for continuously scanning and monitoring their cloud applications, and a review and approval program for third-party connections.

StrikeForce First Security Company to Launch Video Conferencing

StrikeForce Technologies is rolling out SafeVchat, the first video conferencing platform developed by a cybersecurity company.

SafeVchat leverages StrikeForce’s authentication and keystroke protection technology. That makes it the only platform of its kind that incorporates a proprietary meeting authorization and two-factor authentication for every meeting participant.

Additionally, SafeVchat Premium includes protection for the camera, microphone, speakers, keyboard and clipboard. It also prevents unwanted screenshots with PrivacyLok.

George Waller is StrikeForce‘s executive vice president and co-founder.

StrikeForce’s George Waller

“Every existing platform claims to have strong security features,” he said. “But time and time again they’ve proven to be vulnerable.”

SafeVchat offers a “tremendous” opportunity for StrikeForce’s partners, Waller said.

“Prior to COVID-19, the video conferencing marketplace was expected to grow from $2.6 billion in 2019 to around $6.6 billion by the end of 2025,” he said. “When COVID-19 hit and the world changed, video conferencing is now part of the new normal.”

The market should now reach $50 billion in the same time frame.

“This explosive growth has also created a focal point for hackers looking to steal data,” Waller said. “That’s why the FBI and Department of Justice alerted the public about hackers going after video conference users.”

Video conferencing platforms are now used to share health care data, financial data, employee and corporate data, and more.

“It’s for these reasons why companies are running away from many of these big-name, no-security video conferencing platforms,” Waller said. “They are not cybersecurity people; they are video conferencing providers. StrikeForce is at the convergence point of cybersecurity and video conferencing.”

Since announcing SafeVChat, more than 300 companies have reached out wanting to use the system, he said. Every one of those opportunities went to StrikeForce partners.