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The UK High Court of Justice approved a freezing injunction on over $1 million paid by an English insurance company to ransomware actors. The Honorable Mr. Justice Bryan announced his approved judgement in a decision released for publication by the High Court of Justice on January 17, 2020. As relayed in the judgement, a Canadian […]… Read More
The post UK High Court Approves Freezing Injunction on $1M Ransomware Payment appeared first on The State of Security.
One of the only things that is constant in life is change. It’s the same with cybersecurity. There are different types of changes to consider. Changes that we accept Changes that are good Changes that are bad A lot of changes in our everyday life are out of our control. It can be hard to […]… Read More
The post Change Is Inevitable: Tripwire File Analyzer appeared first on The State of Security.
There are loads of ways to loop in JavaScript! How do you know which one to choose, and when? It can be a minefield for those new to the language. In this article, we are going to cover 7 of...
The post JavaScript Loops 101 appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
An investigation claims that the UK’s National Health Service, which was hit hard by the notorious WannaCry worm in 2017, has seen a marked fall in ransomware attacks since. A report published by Comparitech, based upon Freedom of Information requests, reveals the somewhat surprising news that since WannaCry there have only been six recorded ransomware […]… Read More
The post The NHS has suffered only six ransomware attacks since the WannaCry worm, investigation reveals appeared first on The State of Security.
A Ryuk sample was reportedly responsible for a ransomware infection at a contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). According to ZDNet, Electronic Warfare Associates (EWA) suffered a ransomware infection in which the offending malware encrypted its web servers. The company ultimately took down the affected web servers, but security researchers nonetheless found evidence […]… Read More
The post Ryuk Reportedly Behind Ransomware Infection at DOD Contractor appeared first on The State of Security.
There are dozens of implementations of authorization mechanisms. When there are complex requirements dictated by business processes, authorization mechanisms may often be implemented incorrectly or, at least, not optimally. The reason for that, in my opinion, is the low attention of both the customer and developers to this aspect in the initial stages of the […]… Read More
The post On Authorization and Implementation of Access Control Models appeared first on The State of Security.
Digital criminals posted customers’ payment card details exposed in the 2019 Wawa data breach for sale on a dark web marketplace. In December 2019, the Joker’s Stash first announced what it called the “BIGBADABOOM-III” breach. Advertisements posted by the dark web marketplace announced that the breach included over 30 million payment card details exposed in […]… Read More
The post Payment Cards Exposed in Wawa Breach Offered for Sale on Dark Web appeared first on The State of Security.
Listen and subscribe to our new podcast! Tripwire’s cybersecurity podcast features 20-minute conversations with the people who protect people from cyber threats. Hosted by Tripwire’s VP of Product Management and Strategy, Tim Erlin, each episode brings on a new guest to explore the evolving threat landscape, technology trends, and cybersecurity best practices. Spotify: https://ift.tt/2U4sAnF Stitcher: […]… Read More
The post (Podcast) Episode 01: What “Attack Surface” Means in 2020 appeared first on The State of Security.
De nos jours, il est de plus en plus courant de travailler où on le souhaite, et dans une flexibilité horaire importante voire totale. Des solutions technologiques existent et donnent aux collaborateurs cette flexibilité accrue, tels que les environnements de …
We are living in a world where technology information and resources are easily available, all thanks to the Internet. Today you can learn anything about web development, data science, UX design, and much more without spending a fortune. And yet,...
The post What is the Best Way to Become a JavaScript Developer? appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
ServiceNow announced this morning that it has acquired Passage AI, a startup that helps customers build chatbots, something that should come in handy as ServiceNow continues to modernize its digital service platform. The companies did not share terms of the deal.
With Passage AI, ServiceNow gets a bushel of AI talent, which in itself has value, but it also gets AI technology, which should fit in nicely with ServiceNow’s mission. For starters, the company’s chatbot solutions gives ServiceNow an automated way to respond to customer/user inquiries.
Even more interesting for ServiceNow, Passage includes an IT automation component that uses ” a conversational interface to submit tickets, handle queries, and take direct action through APIs,” according to the company website. It also gets an HR automation piece, giving the company an intelligent tool it could incorporate across its Now Platform in tools like ServiceNow Virtual Agent and Service Portal, Workspaces in multiple languages.
The multi-lingual support was an aspect of the deal that appeals to Debu Chatterjee, senior director of AI Engineering at ServiceNow. “Building deep learning, conversational AI capabilities into the Now Platform will enable a work request initiated in German or a customer inquiry initiated in Japanese to be solved by Virtual Agent,” he said in a statement.
Companies are increasingly looking for ways to solve common customer problems using chatbots, while only bringing humans into the loop when the bot can’t answer the query. Passage AI gives ServiceNow much deeper knowledge in this growing area.
Passage AI, which launched in 2016, has raised $10.3 million, according to Crunchbase data. The company website lists a variety of large customers including MasterCard, Shell, Mercedes Benz and SoftBank. The acquisition comes less than a week after the company purchased another AI-focused startup, Loom Systems, one that concentrates on automating operations data.
The deal is expected to close this quarter. ServiceNow will be announcing earnings on Wednesday afternoon.
Cooks Venture, the agtech company looking to revolutionize the chicken industry, has today announced the close of a $4 million funding round led by Golden West Food Group.
Cooks Venture has been working in stealth for many years, but launched onto the scene in 2018 with a plan to reshape agriculture from the ground up. And the key to that strategy? Chickens.
Cooks Venture geneticists and scientists have spent years isolating genetic lines of chickens to create a new breed, called the Heirloom chicken. Most folks don’t know that, no matter what brand of chicken you buy at the store, chances are that it’s one of two breeds, the Cobb 500 or the Ross 308, which are produced by Cobb and Aviagen respectively.
Both of these breeds of broilers are fast-growing (they’re ready to be processed in about a month) and use a three-phase feed system for growth. This system, and these breeds, are a big reason why animal activist groups express so much concern over the wellbeing of chicken livestock, often explaining that the birds are too young to carry around all the weight they put on so quickly.
Cooks Venture looked to science to solve the problem. The company’s Heirloom chicken can eat a highly diverse diet, and can be raised in about two months. This means that the Heirloom chickens are truly free range, wandering around the farm. It also means that these chickens, with a digestive track that can handle a diverse diet and the ability to exercise, are actually healthier to eat and taste better than your average Cobb 500 or Ross 308, according to the company.
But the chickens themselves are only part of the solution. A byproduct of the proliferation of these fast-growing chickens produced by Cobb and Aviagen is that they have to eat, and their diet is very specific. That means that farmers must produce a great deal of one or two crops to feed the millions of chickens out there. The result is that our agricultural land is not being used in an efficient or eco-friendly way.
In fact, Cooks Venture founder Matt Wadiak says that 97 percent of our crop production in the United States is used for ethanol or animal feed, which indexes towards corn and soy. Many farmers would love to implement regenerative agricultural practices, a big part of which includes creating a biodiverse ecosystem with many different crops, but who would they sell the extra low-demand crops to?
The answer now can be Cooks Venture. With strong digestive systems, Cooks Venture chickens can eat a diet that comes from a more biodiverse farm. Moreover, when Cooks Venture is ready to expand globally, the chickens are able to eat crops local to the ecosystems of emerging nations, such as yucca and quinoa.
Cooks Venture has its own farm, and works with farm partners to set up regenerative agricultural practices around producing Heirloom chicken feed. Cooks also does its own processing at its own plant.
Golden West Food Group is a manufacturer of meat products and value-add food products like marinated chicken, such as Jack Daniels pulled pork. It’s worth noting that GWFG is not a competitor to Cooks Venture, as it produces no meat products whatsoever, but rather an important distribution partner for the brand.
Through the partnership with GWFG, Cooks can start to ramp up commercialization of its chickens, which are currently sold through some retailers, on the Cooks website, and on HelloFresh.
As part of the announcement, Cooks Venture is also bringing on Ankur Agrawal as Chief Financial Officer. Wadiak, a cofounder at Blue Apron, worked with Agrawal back in the Blue Apron days and says that his understanding of agricultural finance is top of the line.
Remote conferencing services provider Zoom patched a vulnerability that could have allowed an attacker to find and join active meetings. Check Point explained that the issue stemmed from the way in which Zoom secured certain meetings: If you use Zoom, you may already know that Zoom Meeting IDs are composed of 9, 10 or 11 […]… Read More
The post Zoom Bug Potentially Allowed Attackers to Find and Join Active Meetings appeared first on The State of Security.
Marketing and sales automation — tools that leverage the advances and data of our digital age to better identify and then interact with customers — is big business, with the whole market expected to generate some $6.6 billion in revenues for related companies by 2025.
But “companies” is the operative word here: it’s a very fragmented space, with dozens of hopefuls covering different aspects of marketing and sales, each with its own unique approach. There is an alternative trend, though, and today a customer experience automation company called ActiveCampaign, catering not just to large enterprises but small and medium businesses too, has raised a large round of funding to build out its own one-stop-shop model. It includes the tools to run email and messaging-based marketing campaigns; marketing automation across sites and events; and sales and CRM.
The Chicago-based company is today announcing that it has closed a Series B of $100 million, money that it will use to invest in building out new technology and to expand internationally. The funding is being led by Susquehanna Growth Equity, with PE firm Silversmith Capital Partners also participating.
ActiveCampaign is not your typical startup. It has been around since 2003, and this is only the second time that it has raised money — the first time was in 2016, a modest $20 million round from Silversmith. Fundraising is not the only thing that sets it apart: it’s also profitable and has been for years (one reason it hasn’t raised money), and it’s actually already quite large, with 90,000 customers in 161 countries.
Yet it’s something of a theme in the world of “startups” — meaning tech companies that are still privately owned and raising from VCs and related backers — particularly those that are B2B focused, that some of the more interesting and successfully bootstrapped of them at some point turn to VC and private equity when it comes to needing an extra boost to move beyond what has become its natural growth rate.
In the case of ActiveCampaign, it had a taste of what a little outside investment could do in the last few years: Jason VandeBoom, founder and CEO of ActiveCampaign, said that the company has seen its annual recurring revenues grow 6x since 2016 to $90 million, with employees booming from 65 to more than 550.
The company’s core proposition is that it provides a less fragmented approach to businesses interested in building in some digital marketing or sales tools into their outreach and then considering what to do next.
“What we are up against are a number of companies focused on a single slice of customer experience, either CRM or a customer success platform,” VandeBoom said. “We’re still at this point in the industry where the category is taking shape,” which spells a ripe opportunity for ActiveCampaign.
The need for what ActiveCampaign provides is a basic one: whether you are an online retailer or any business that wants to expand its audience or make sure to stay connected to the one you already have, you need tools to reach users, figure out what they want to see from you, and connect in a relevant way.
VandeBoom added while there are no specific plans for acquisitions that can be discussed now, the funding also gives the company “optionality” in terms of what it might do next.
Part of the company’s approach is to build technology in-house, but in the spirit of all-in-one platforms, its value also lies in how many other things its users can plug into using ActiveCampaign.
The company has some 260 technology partners and a “recipe library” with more than 250 automations already built, or users can build and customise themselves from more than 300 possible apps that can be integrated, including Shopify, Square, Facebook, Eventbrite, and Salesforce.
With this round, Martin Angert, Director at Susquehanna, is joining ActiveCampaign’s board of directors. His existing roles on the boards of Workfront, WhiteSource, XebiaLabs, and Allocadia speaks to interesting potential strategic partnerships for ActiveCampaign.
“ActiveCampaign and the CXA category have grown significantly and our investment in the series B reconfirms Silversmith’s commitment to ActiveCampaign’s future,” said Todd Maclean, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Silversmith Capital Partners, in a statement.
The proliferation of data breaches based on leaked passwords, and the rising tide of regulation that puts a hard stop on just how much user information can be collected, stored and used by companies have laid bare the holes in simple password and memorable-information-based verification systems.
Today a startup called Persona, which has built a platform to make it easier for organisations to implement more watertight methods based on third-party documentation, real-time evaluation, and AI to verify users, is announcing a funding round, speaking to the shift in the market and subsequent demand for new alternatives to the old way of doing things.
The startup has raised $17.5 million in a Series A from a list of impressive investors that include Coatue and First Round Capital, money that it plans to use to double down on its core product: a platform that businesses and organisations can access by way of an API, which lets them use a variety of documents, from government-issued IDs through to biometrics, to verify that customers are who they say they are.
Current customers include Rippling, Petal, UrbanSitter, Branch, Brex, Postmates, Outdoorsy, Rently, SimpleHealth and Hipcamp, among others. Persona’s target user today is any company involved in any kind of online financial transaction to verify for regulatory compliance, fraud prevention and for trust and safety.
The startup is young and is not disclosing valuation. Previously, Persona had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Kleiner Perkins and FirstRound, according to data from PitchBook. Angels in the company have included Zach Perret and William Hockey (co-founders of Plaid), Dylan Field (founded Figma), Scott Belsky (Behance) and Tony Xu (DoorDash).
Founded by Rick Song and Charles Yeh, respectively former engineers from Square and Dropbox (companies that have had their own concerns with identity verification and breaches), Persona’s main premise is that most companies are not security companies and therefore lack the people, skills, time and money to build strong authentication and verification services — much less to keep up with the latest developments on what is best practice.
And on top of that, there have been too many breaches that have underscored the problem with companies holding too much information on users, collected for identification purposes but then sitting there waiting to be hacked. While a number of services have arisen to help protect identity for repeat users of products — for example Duo and Okta on the enterprise front, or authenticators for online applications as a more secure alternative to two-factor authentication using text messaging — these don’t really fill the use case of verification for the kinds of companies that are typical Persona customers.
The name of the game for Persona is to provide services that are easy to use and as wide as possible in their applicability. For those who can’t or don’t access the code of their apps or websites for registration flows, they can even verify users by way of email-based links.
“Digital identity is one of the most important things to get right, but there is no silver bullet,” Song, who is the CEO, said in an interview. “I believe longer term we’ll see that it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.” Not least because malicious hackers have an ever-increasing array of tools to get around every system that gets put into place. (The latest is the rise of deep-fakes to mimic people, putting into question how to get around that in, say, a video verification system.)
At Persona, the company currently gives customers the option to ask for social security numbers, biometric verification such as fingerprints or pictures, or government ID uploads and phone lookups, some of which (like biometrics) is built by Persona itself and some of which is accessed via third-party partnerships.
Added to that are other tools like quizzes and video-based interactions. Song said the list is expanding, and the company is looking at ways of using the AI engine that it’s building — which actually performs the matching — to also potentially suggest the best tools for each and every transaction.
It’s notable to me that the platform has been conceived of and built in part by an engineer from a payments company.
API-based platforms taking out some of the extreme complexity of payment systems by doing all the hard work “under the hood” have been a building block of how a lot of financial services get integrated into workflows in cases where the business in question may rely on them but is actually not actually a fintechs (or payment tech provider) in and of themselves. This has been the premise of companies like Stripe, Adyen, CurrencyCloud and even Square to an extent, since its customers are integrating the tool that Square has built for them.
Another key point with Persona is that it provides a way for its customers to access and use information for verification by linking up with other databases, meaning the data is then not kept by the customer itself.
This is a moving target, and one that is becoming increasingly harder to focus on, given not just the rise in malicious hacking, but also regulation that limits how and when data can be accessed and used by online businesses.
Persona notes a McKinsey forecast that the personal identify and verification market will be worth some $20 billion by 2022, which is not a surprising figure when you consider the nearly $9 billion that Google has been fined so far for GDPR violations, or the $700 million Equifax paid out, or the $50 million Yahoo (a sister company now) paid out for its own user-data breach.
Each year on January 28, the United States, Canada, Israel and 47 European countries observe Data Privacy Day. The purpose of Data Privacy Day is to inspire dialogue on the importance of online privacy. These discussions also seek to inspire individuals and businesses to take action in an effort to respect privacy, safeguard data and […]… Read More
The post 5 Ways Your Organization Can Ensure Improved Data Security appeared first on The State of Security.
Trust, respect, understanding. These are all two-way relationships that must be earned over time. Whilst someone being hired in a senior position will likely already have a certain level of each, part of your job is to continuously cultivate all three of these elements with colleagues no matter your grade. When working within a cybersecurity […]… Read More
The post Navigating ICS Security: Having your Action Plan Ready appeared first on The State of Security.
In Part 1 of the Plights of the Round Table, the executive staff of Camelot was working on the strategic plan for the following year. Morgan, the CEO, needs to decide how to spend her limited budget for the best interest of Camelot. Lana, the VP of Sales, thinks they should invest in horses for […]… Read More
The post Plights of the Round Table – Strategic Lessons from the Casino appeared first on The State of Security.
Workplace Experience is made up of three elements: Where you work. How you work. Why you work.
Citrix has partnered with Quartz to help you rethink what shapes a workplace in the digital economy. With the tap of a finger, …
Two state senators from New York State introduced bills that would ban municipalities from meeting ransomware attackers’ demands. On January 14, 2020, NYS Senator Phil Boyle of the 4th Senate District proposed Senate Bill S7246. Senator Boyle along with his cosponsors Senator George M. Borrello of the 57th Senate District and Senator Sue Serino of […]… Read More
The post NY Bills Would Ban Municipalities From Meeting Ransomware Demands appeared first on The State of Security.
California's new gig economy law, AB5, is not being well received by independent creative professionals. Freelance writers, musicians, actors, artists, and other creative professionals are finding the new law is damaging their livelihoods.
Indie musicians are a good example. Key quote from the musician's Change.org anti-AB5 petition:
AB5 will have a devastating and catastrophic impact on independent musicians, their livelihoods and the music industry in general in California. Musicians’ businesses operate in a substantially different way than many other types of industries, and the changes brought by AB5 are not sustainable with our business model.
The petition also points out what we think is one of the biggest problems with AB5, which is the way the law is written is scaring off companies from hiring independent workers, even if they are properly classified as contractors.
Again from the musicians' petition:
"We are, frankly, terrified of AB5 as it applies to us. The ABC test is so strict and the fines are so high that many entities will simply stop using California musicians altogether."
And it's not just musicians that need to be worried about this.
We're hearing from a number of companies that they either reducing or eliminating hiring California-based independent contractors in a wide range of professions due to AB5.
They're doing this because they believe the law is so broadly and vaguely worded - and the penalties so severe - that hiring even independent contractors they believe are properly classified as independents is simply not worth the risk.
Instead, they're hiring remote contractors, moving the work to other states or outsourcing the work to agencies of various kinds.
The good news is the mounting backlash against AB5 has the California legislature's attention. Because of this, they are working on various ways to clean up AB5 and reduce its negative impacts on legitimate independent workers.
For more on how indie musicians view AB5, see Ari's Take's blog post I MET WITH SENATE MAJORITY LEADER OF CA ABOUT AB5. HERE'S HOW IT WENT.
In a previous article, we discussed what the NIS Directive is. The European Union developed the Directive in response to the emerging cyber threats to critical infrastructure and the impact cyber-attacks have on society and the European digital market. The NIS Directive sets three primary objectives: to improve the national information security capabilities of the […]… Read More
The post Who Are the Digital Service Providers (DSP) under the NIS Directive? appeared first on The State of Security.