Tag: Cybersecurity

New York, USA – Cybersecurity company HUMAN, formerly known as White Ops, has announced a US$100m growth funding round led by WestCap with additional investment from NightDragon and other current investors to support the company in its next phase of growth.

For Tamer Hassan, co-founder and CEO of HUMAN, said funding will help expand their leadership position as a cybersecurity firm to build a more secure and more human internet.

“HUMAN plays to win through collective protection by verifying the humanity of 15 trillion interactions per week, enabling us to defeat attackers–changing the odds to the side of the good,” Hassan said.

Some of HUMAN’s efforts to solve enterprise-wide pain points include its product offerings MediaGuard for Ad Security that protects digital media and advertising from fraud and abuse, BotGuard for Applications that protects sites and applications from digital fraud and abuse, and BotGuard for Growth Marketing that protects digital marketing investments from fraud and abuse.

Some of the cybersecurity endeavors HUMAN had executed include taking down PARETO—a sophisticated CTV botnet—in cooperation with Roku and Google and disrupting botnet 3ve, bringing together the FBI, Google, Facebook and many others in the industry.

Meanwhile, Dave DeWalt, founder and managing director at NightDragon and vice chairman of the board of HUMAN, commented that since they have engaged with HUMAN over the past year, they have proven to the industry that they are best positioned to stop these cybersecurity threats by stopping attacks at the source.

“Through our experience in engaging with hundreds of enterprises and their cybersecurity teams, we know that automated attacks on applications and websites creating fraud and abuse is a critical point of risk to every enterprise,” DeWalt concluded.

Singapore – Life insurance company Prudential in Singapore has partnered with Ngee Ann Polytechnic and ST Engineering to equip small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with the knowledge and resources on how to go digital in a safe and secure manner.

The initiatives include a digital commerce playbook launched in collaboration with Ngee Ann Polytechnic in September 2021 to help SMEs kickstart their digital journey. Said playbook was developed together with students from the Ngee Ann Poly School of Business & Accountancy who specialize in business digitalization. 

Meanwhile, with ST Engineering, Prudential is offering training to improve SMEs’ cybersecurity awareness so they can better safeguard their business.

For Goh Theng Kiat, chief customer officer at Prudential Singapore, digitalization is important for businesses to better engage their employees and customers, as well as optimize processes.

“SMEs recognize that going digital is not just about being future-ready but a matter of survival in the current pandemic. To support SMEs through this challenging time, we are collaborating with different industry players to empower them with knowledge, experience and tools, to accelerate their digital transformation so they can stay relevant to their customers,” Goh said.

Meanwhile, Goh Eng Choon, president of cyber at ST Engineering, commented, “The collaboration between ST Engineering and Prudential will empower the SMEs, equipping them with the knowledge and resources to elevate their cybersecurity readiness. We draw upon our deep cybersecurity competencies to provide robust and latest technologies, solutions and services to enhance their cyber resilience.”

In October 2020, the company launched the SME Skills Accelerator programme to equip SMEs with the skills and resources to grow and innovate, upskill their employees, and improve employee retention. It is a collaboration between Prudential and SkillsFuture Singapore, under the SkillsFuture Queen Bee partnership.

Singapore – Despite 57% of internet users in Malaysia experiencing a personal data breach or knowing someone who had, 93% of the respondents admit to practicing poor online habits, including sharing, recycling and using guessable passwords. The findings are part of Google’s latest digital responsibility study conducted across APAC.

The study found that 80% of respondents in Malaysia use the same passwords for multiple sites, with 45% of the respondents admitting to recycling passwords for up to 10 unique sites. Among these password recyclers, 40% say they do so in fear of forgetting new passwords, while 41% say it is simply convenient to use the same ones.

“We know from past research that people who have had their data exposed by a breach are 10 times more likely to be hijacked. When we share, recycle and use guessable passwords we put our personal information, including payment data, at exponential risk,” said Chuah Jia Wen, industry head of CPG and retail at Google Malaysia.

Furthermore, 51% of local respondents confessed to using guessable passwords, spanning the most easily crackable combinations from significant dates and significant others to pet names and even postal codes. Worse still, 25% of the respondents admit to saving their passwords in the ‘Notes’ app of their mobile phones, most of which are not encrypted by default.

In regards to security in online transactions, 60% of the respondents admit to making purchases on pages without the secure symbol on the page’s hyperlink. Notable too is that 70% of respondents who save financial information online also share passwords with friends and family, putting themselves at greater risk of a personal data breach with passwords used across multiple devices.

Despite these online security lapses, 64% of respondents say that they are likely to adopt two-factor authentication (2FA), even if it is not mandatory. Meanwhile, 80% of respondents also say that in the face of a potential data breach, they will choose to change their password immediately. Interestingly, 33% of those who would not change their passwords immediately are believed to be acting out of caution, citing that the breach notification could well be a scam on its own.

“It is clear from our findings that internet users in Malaysia desire to get better at managing their digital health. The challenge, however, lies in the gap between knowledge and action, and key to plugging this gap is access to tools that can adequately equip people with both security and convenience,” Chuah stated.

She added, “That’s why we focus on providing easy to use tools to help people take charge of their online safety, and we strongly encourage everyone to take full advantage of them especially in this year-end season, where the need to safeguard against holiday hacking is more crucial than ever before.”

Singapore – The onset of the global pandemic has pushed former brick-and-mortar businesses to the digital realm, and with this,small and medium businesses (SMBs) saw the need to implement their own cybersecurity measures, as well as setting their own digitalization roadmap, 

According to new insights from global technology company Cisco, about 94% of SMBs in the APAC region have implemented at least some sort of cybersecurity measure, while 90% revealed that they have also implemented a digitalization roadmap for their business to follow.

In terms of the implementation of the said roadmaps, 65% of APAC SMBs have implemented them, while 50% have deployed them.

Part of the growing trend of APAC SMBs realizing these digital strategies are fears over cybersecurity flaws in their business systems, with 56% of business respondents admitting that they have fallen victim to one of the many cybersecurity threats such as email phishing and malware attack, which clocked at 85% of the threats most of these businesses experienced.

With these fears in hand, about 62% of respondents have said that a cyber incident had disrupted their operations and 61% noting that it resulted in a loss of revenue. In addition, 57% saw a loss of trust with customers, while 66% said that a cyber incident affected the company’s reputation negatively.

“It is not a surprise that three quarters of SMBs said they are more concerned about cybersecurity today than they were 12 months ago. This is significant. But it is also encouraging because it demonstrates increased levels of awareness of cyber risk among SMBs,” Cisco said in their report.

As the large number of APAC SMB respondents have noted the consequences of cyber attacks, more and more of these institutions are now setting aside investment and budget for their cybersecurity and digitalization measures, with 63% of SMBs in the APAC region spend at least 4% of annual revenue on cybersecurity on average, with 30% of businesses spending at least 6% of their annual revenue, and 9% spending over 10%.

In terms of challenges, SMBs said keeping pace with continually evolving technologies and security requirements (77%); keeping pace with constantly evolving cyber threats (76%); challenges with engaging employees around responsibilities (75%); too much complexity in the industry (75%); and the ability to recruit (73%) are the top barriers they face to increasing cybersecurity resilience.

“The growing maturity in SMBs’ understanding of cybersecurity is perhaps best highlighted by the fact that they are looking at preparedness holistically. However, even with investments in solutions, talent, and training, SMBs do find themselves at the wrong end of a cyber attack. It’s just the nature of the industry,” Cisco explained.

The report added, “With a growing understanding of the potential impacts of a cyber incident on business, and increased legal implications, SMBs are turning towards cybersecurity insurance as a key investment area. This provides them with a cover to cushion the financial impact any such incident might have on their business.”

Tel Aviv, Israel – Global in-game advertising platform Anzu and cybersecurity company HUMAN, formerly White Ops, have announced a new partnership, with the objective of safeguarding the in-game advertising space by detecting invalid traffic (IVT), general invalid traffic (GIVT), and sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) among Anzu’s programmatic gaming inventory across mobile and PC.

By leveraging HUMAN’s pre-bid and post-bid solutions, MediaGuard, Anzu ensures that campaigns run across its inventory retain low fraud levels, allowing them to continue to harbor a safe space where both advertisers and publishers can feel confident working together to effectively reach gamers around the world.

Part of the inspiration between the partnership can be traced back to the fact that losses due to ad fraud are expected to continue to cost the industry billions of dollars each year, and sophisticated bots pose a significantly increasing threat to the gaming world.

For Itamar Benedy, co-founder and CEO at Anzu, he states that the company remains committed to making advertising in games better and putting ad quality at the heart of everything they do, adding that they aim at bringing in digital standards in-game and partnering with the industry leaders that advertisers know and trust.

“We continue to partner with the world’s brand safety, transparency, measurement, and data privacy leaders to ensure our clients can measure media value across channels and build their media strategy accordingly. This new partnership with HUMAN will take our commitment to create a brand-safe, fraud-free ecosystem to the next level,” Benedy stated.

Furthermore, said partnership ensures that customers and partners will be protected from emerging forms of in-game SIVT-background ad activity, hidden ads, misrepresentation/spoofing, measurement manipulation and more, while guaranteeing always-on filtering and measurement across the platform.

“Anzu ensures gamers can play without interruption while enabling brands to enter into a trusted marketplace that is native, creative and dynamically updateable. This forward-looking partnership with HUMAN will strengthen our ability to fight sophisticated cybercrime while ensuring a seamless user experience across the advanced in-game advertising platform,” says Tamer Hassan, co-founder and CEO at HUMAN.

HUMAN achieves the scale of ad verification through its continued expansion in cybersecurity, now offering a suite of products to protect the complete digital customer journey: BotGuard for Applications, BotGuard for Growth Marketing and MediaGuard. With new partners and enterprises now able to leverage one of its products, Human Verification Engine™, comes an even deeper understanding of the cybercrime landscape, enabling HUMAN to adapt continuously, staying ahead of adversaries and offering their clients collective protection against threat models they have yet to encounter.

Singapore – Catering to a new age of work based on hybrid and remote workspaces, telco operator MyRepublic and global IT solutions operator Inspira Enterprises have announced the launch of its cybersecurity suite that will benefit small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore.

MyRepublic and Inspira aim to bridge this gap and make it simple for SMEs to adopt up-to-date cybersecurity tools and best practices that can be implemented consistently across their organization. This includes managed services such as managed firewall and managed endpoint, giving customers the peace of mind to focus on their business whilst their company is being protected by a globally recognized security provider.

The cybersecurity suite includes cybersecurity consulting, incident response, data protection, and vulnerability testing. Potential customers will benefit from a free end-to-end assessment to determine their exact requirements and the solutions that are best fit for their operations.

Lawrence Chan, managing director at MyRepublic Singapore, said that as more SMEs shift to remote or hybrid work environments, cybersecurity threats targeting their vulnerabilities will continue to rise.

“MyRepublic believes that all organizations deserve world-class protection no matter their size. Our new cybersecurity solutions bring enterprise-grade protection to small and medium businesses and give them one less thing to worry about, as they continue to manage the impact of the pandemic,” Chan stated.

The announcement comes after data from the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA), shows that cybercrime cases accounted for 43% of total crime reported in Singapore in 2020. In particular, there were significant spikes in ransomware and botnet attacks last year. The former rose by a staggering 154%, mostly targeting SMEs in the manufacturing, retail, and healthcare sectors. 

Josef Figueroa, vice president of ASEAN at Inspira, commented, “SMEs are more susceptible to cyberattacks because they may lack the knowledge and ability to deal with such threats. Our experience with SMEs also shows that they may be reluctant to adopt modern cybersecurity tools due to their perceived high cost and complexity.”

The cybersecurity suite solves some of the potential misconceptions SMEs have regarding cybersecurity. For instance, SMEs may think basic antivirus software installed on employee laptops are sufficient protection against today’s sophisticated threats. They might also rely on various business tools riddled with vulnerabilities and incompatibilities of which they are not aware.

“In a digital economy, it’s not a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when’ you will be targeted. Our suite of cybersecurity solutions are designed to help SMEs get their modern threat protection up and running with minimal hassle. We look forward to contributing a new line of cybersecurity defense to Singapore’s fight against cybercrime,” Chan concluded.

Singapore – When it comes to marketing strategies, thought leadership content may not be looked to as the most reliable, with its nature not necessarily one to be said as a ‘hard sell’. 

For one, thought leadership content banks on the bulk and credibility of content rather than, say, the impact and swiftness of creative copy. Thought leadership would also of course at the onset, require thought leaders, and this alone takes a process to establish or develop; however, when it comes to chief information security officers (CISOs) as consumers, the persuasion of thought leadership may be stronger than it is given credit for. 

According to research by Code Red, a global PR-communication security network, which surveyed 52 IT security decision-makers in Singapore, about 46 percent of CISOs in the country claim to have used thought leadership content when making a final decision to appoint a cybersecurity company. 

Furthermore, even if a deal has already been agreed on, thought leadership remains a paramount guide, with 38 percent of the surveyed CISOs increasing their business with an existing supplier because of strong thought leadership. 

According to the study, 83 percent of CISOs in Singapore would pay a premium to work with cybersecurity vendors that are simply thought leaders. 

Indeed, cybersecurity companies have a lot to learn from this insight. Not only is it an effective tool in building trust among potential customers, it’s that it also presents as a reliable way to manage retention among consumers, showing to be influential in every stage of the customer buying life cycle among CISOs.  

The effectiveness of thought leadership may be owed to the sophisticated nature of both the consumer and the vendor of this situation, with cybersecurity naturally being a complex product. The study just further proves that cybersecurity vendors ought to treat such type of content as a whole funnel tactic, rather than just top-line awareness. 

Studying further on how CISOs locate trusted thought leadership content, the research found three key approaches they use: independent research using keywords, reviewing content shared by friends or family, and reading trade media publications. 

“This ‘trusted triangle’ is the gateway between thought leadership and its target audience,” said Code Red. 

The study found that 73 percent of CISOs in Singapore measure credibility based on whether the content provides detailed information on the subject that they are interested in, with the same volume of respondents – 73 percent – confirming that IT and cybersecurity trade media is their preferred format of content.

Robin Campbell-Burt, CEO at Code Red, comments on the findings, “Thought leadership is a fundamental prerequisite for successful marketing campaigns, and the report findings are testament to that. Establishing yourself as an industry thought leader is no mean feat as it takes effort and persistence, but those who commit themselves to this marketing approach will gain an important competitive advantage and build value for stakeholders in their own business.” 

Australia – The minister for the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources in Australia has announced Tuesday, 28 April, that its Cyber Security Business Connect and Protect Program has already provided a total of A$6.9M in funding to 14 trusted organizations that will work directly with businesses to help them amplify their cybersecurity efforts. 

The program was established to provide trusted organizations that advise SMEs with funding to raise awareness of cybersecurity risks and promote the necessary action to address these risks.

Some of the organizations include are IT Connexion, Murray Hume Business Enterprise Centre, Loyal I.T. Solutions, and Hunter Business Centre. Each of the 14 organizations will be implementing its unique cybersecurity programs to provide support to businesses in both regional and metropolitan areas in every state and territory.

One particular project to receive funding is Western Sydney University’s Oz Cyber Security Aid Centre in Parramatta, which has received specifically a A$745,920 grant. The university will partner with four NSW cybersecurity companies to set up an online call line and physical Cyber Security Aid Centre.

Minister Christian Porter said that building digital security and capability among SMEs is a government priority and vital to its continuing economic prosperity and development.

“SMEs make up 99 percent of all Australian businesses and employ about half our workforce, so it is essential to our economy and national security that SMEs continue to expand and improve their digital capabilities in a secure way,” Porter said. 

“The assistance provided through this grant program will support businesses in recognizing cyber risks and opportunities, particularly in the wake of the strong digital uptake during the COVID-19 pandemic,” he added.. 

The grants support the Australian Government’s Cyber Security Strategy 2020 and its vision of creating a more secure online world for Australians, their businesses, and the essential services upon which everyone depends. 

The minister also said that the grants will coincide with the newly released Cyber Security Assessment Tool, which is available on business.gov.au. This tool is free to use for all SMEs and provides easy-to-follow, actionable advice on how to secure one’s business from cybersecurity threats. 

A list of successful applicants under the program can be found here. 

Singapore – HUMAN, a cybersecurity company and formerly White Ops, has launched a new program that aims to defraud connected television (CTV) systems, in partnership with the newly-launched initiative ‘The Human Collective’ composed of Omnicom Media Group, The Trade Desk, and Magnite, as well as support from Google and Roku.

The launch of the program was in response to the spread of PARETO, a botnet that, according to nearly a million infected mobile Android devices, is pretending to be millions of people watching ads on smart TVs and other devices. The botnet used dozens of mobile apps to impersonate or spoof more than 6,000 CTV apps, accounting for an average of 650 million ad requests every day.

PARETO worked by spoofing signals within malicious Android mobile apps to impersonate consumer TV streaming products running Fire OS, tvOS, Roku OS, and other prominent CTV platforms. The botnet took advantage of digital shifts that were accelerated by the pandemic, hiding in the noise in order to trick advertisers and technology platforms into believing ads were being shown on CTVs. 

HUMAN’s research arm Satori Threat Intelligence and Research Team found the PARETO operation in 2020 and has been working with the HUMAN team to prevent its impacts on clients ever since. The operation is named for The Pareto Principle, an economics concept that dictates that 80% of the impact in any given situation is carried out by only 20% of the actors.

“CTV provides massive opportunities for streaming services and brands to engage with consumers through compelling content and advertising. Because of this opportunity, it is incredibly important for the CTV ecosystem and brands to work together through a collectively protected advertising supply chain to ensure fraud is recognized, addressed, and eliminated as quickly as possible,” said Tamer Hassan, CEO and co-founder at HUMAN.

HUMAN also observed a far smaller but connected effort attempting to spoof consumer streaming platforms. The operation detected a single developer on Roku’s Channel Store with apps connected to PARETO. The apps linked to the developer, impacting less than one half of one percent of Roku’s active devices globally, were designed to communicate with the server that operates the PARETO botnet. The primary operation was associated with 29 Android apps and the secondary operation was associated with one Roku developer delivering the malware to infected devices.

“What’s especially striking about this operation is its scale and sophistication. The actors behind PARETO have a fundamental understanding of numerous aspects of advertising technology, and used that to their advantage in how they hid their work within the CTV ecosystem. Their efforts included low-level network protocol spoofing, which is especially hard to detect, but which our team at HUMAN spotted,” said Michael McNally, chief scientist at HUMAN.

The Satori Threat Intelligence and Research Team used numerous tools to identify the sources of the botnet, whose information has been shared with law enforcement.

Singapore – Video advertising solutions Aniview has partnered with global cybersecurity company White Ops to protect its client’s ad inventory through White Ops’ ad verification feature.

Through the partnership, Aniview will integrate the White Ops Advertising Integrity solution to help optimize protection and ensure its customers’ safety from malicious and sophisticated cybersecurity risks. As a result, publishers and advertising networks have another avenue by which they can access White Ops protection for their inventory. 

Furthermore, Aniview and its customers can leverage White Ops’ privacy-sensitive detection technology to identify threats and automated fraud attempts, ensuring their advertising inventory can be trusted and fraud-free. This then allows Aniview to provide its clients an effective solution to identify and prevent malicious video-bot traffic. The partnership represents the next step in Aniview’s mission to provide verified traffic and protection against video ad fraud. 

“The most common types of video fraud occur when malicious fraudsters misrepresent their display units as video inventory in programmatic exchanges. These sophisticated bots are deployed through malware embedded in software, essentially performing device-hijacking on a mass, organized scale. With the significant dangers ad fraud poses to the video supply chain, safety has become an increasingly critical issue and, as such, dangers are being met with innovative solutions,” White Ops said in a press statement.

White Ops operates two key features for video advertisers to use: White Ops Advertising Integrity, where platforms can tap into comprehensive pre-bid prevention and post-bid detection capabilities to verify the validity of advertising efforts across all channels, and the White Ops Fraud Mitigation Platform, which spots and stop sophisticated bots and fraud by using technical evidence, continuous adaptation, machine learning, and threat intelligence. 

“We’re excited to join together with Aniview in the optimization of fraud-free video advertising solutions. This partnership strengthens our presence in digital video while providing easier access to our platform for publishers and networks. The more partners that we have in this fight, the bigger our knowledge base grows and the better we can optimize our tactics against potential new threats from bad actors,” said Ellie Windle, vice president, global strategic partnerships and alliances at White Ops.

Meanwhile, Roy Cohen, CTO of Aniview commented that the recent partnership with White Ops responds to the greater need for protection against ad fraud as online video content is booming.

“Working with White Ops and our internal fraud detection tools, we will develop greater application integrity by identifying and blocking bot traffic with the highest degree of accuracy and speed to stay ahead of adversaries,” Cohen added.