The World’s Most Popular Coding Language Happens to be Most Hackers’ Weapon of Choice

Python will soon be the world’s most prevalent coding language. That’s quite a statement, but if you look at its simplicity, flexibility and the relative ease with which folks pick it up, it’s not hard to see why The Economist recently touted it as the soon-to-be most used language, globally...

Imperva Joins Global Cybersecurity Tech Accord

Imperva is dedicated to the global fight to keep people's data and applications safe from cybercriminals. What this means for our Imperva Threat Research team is that we spend a lot of time researching new cyber attacks, creating mitigations and writing powerful software. We believe that nothing...

Microsoft and Imperva Collaboration Bolsters Data Compliance and Security Capabilities

This article explains how Imperva SecureSphere V13.2 has leveraged the latest Microsoft EventHub enhancements to help customers maintain compliance and security controls as regulated or sensitive data is migrated to Azure SQL database instances. Database as a Service Benefits Platform as a Servic...

Explainer Series: RDaaS Security and Managing Compliance Through Database Audit and Monitoring Controls

As organizations move to cloud database platforms they shouldn't forget that data security and compliance requirements remain an obligation. This article explains how you can apply database audit and monitoring controls using Imperva SecureSphere V13.2 when migrating to database as a service clou...

Taking Stock: The Internet of Things, and Machine Learning Algorithms at War

It’s in the news every day; hackers targeting banks, hospitals, or, as we’ve come to fear the most, elections. Suffice to say then that cybersecurity has, in the last few years, gone from a relatively obscure industry – let's qualify that: not in the sense of importance, but rather how folks have...

Imperva Recognized as a 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant WAF Leader, Five Years Running

Gartner has named Imperva as a Leader in the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Application Firewalls WAF -- for the fifth year in a row! Our combination of on-premises appliances, cloud WAF, shared threat intelligence and flexible licensing once again cement us as the best choice for companies ...

Report: Nearly Half of Security Professionals Think They Could Execute a Successful Insider Attack on Their Organization

As potential threats and entry points into organizations’ databases keep growing, so does the amount of money folks are throwing at detecting and actioning insider threats. In fact, the ballooning amount of money being spent on cybersecurity overall clearly highlights the seriousness with which...

Explainer Series: What is Clickjacking?

Here we go, another online trap ready to ensnare unsuspecting – well, until now anyway – users. As if Phishing, Cryptojacking, credential stuffing and old school scamming wasn’t enough, folks really just can’t catch a break these days. Anyway, we’re here to chat about clickjacking, for those of y...

Static vs Dynamic Data Masking: Why Are We Still Comparing the Two?

Earlier this month a leading analyst released their annual report on the state of Data Masking as a component of the overall Data Security sector; which included commentary on what’s known as ‘static’ data masking and an alternative solution known as ‘dynamic’ data masking. And these two solution...

Read: Apache Struts Patches ‘Critical Vulnerability’ CVE-2018-11776

On August 22, Apache Struts released a security patch fixing a critical remote code execution vulnerability. This vulnerability has been assigned CVE-2018-11776 S2-057 and affects Apache Struts versions 2.3 to 2.3.34 and 2.5 to 2.5.16. The vulnerability was responsibly disclosed by Man Yue Mo fro...

A Bug in Chrome Gives Bad Actors License to Play ‘20 Questions’ with Your Private Data

In a 2013 interview with The Telegraph, Eric Schmidt, then CEO of Google was quoted as saying: “You have to fight for your privacy or lose it.” Five years later, with the ‘Cambridge Analytica’ data breach scandal fresh in our memory, Eric Schmidt’s statement rings as a self-evident truth. Similar...

Watch: An Account Takeover Attack Using Credential Stuffing, and How to Protect Against It [Video]

As cryptocurrencies continue to grow in diversity, so too do the threats they face, specifically those targeting the cryptocurrency exchange. Now, more than ever, cryptocurrency exchanges are facing security threats in the form of volumetric and application layer DDoS and account takeover ATO...

Enhanced Infrastructure DDoS Protection Analytics: Targeted Visibility for Greater Accuracy

We've rolled out enhanced infrastructure protection analytics which shows top traffic patterns for traffic flowing through our Incapsula Infrastructure DDoS Protection service. Imperva clients can now view network statistics categorized by source or destination IPs and ports, or by packet size fo...

Onwards and Upwards: Our GDPR Journey and Looking Ahead

At Imperva, our world revolves around data security, data protection, and data privacy. From our newest recruits to the most seasoned members of the executive team, we believe that customer privacy is key. For the better part of the last two years, Imperva has laid the foundation for our complian...

A Quick-Start Introduction to Database Security: An Operational Approach

The recent SingHealth data breach incident exposed around 1.5 million patients’ records. In its aftermath, the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore published a set of security measures aimed at improving the protection of Personally Identifiable Information PII data. The recommended security measur...

Imperva to Acquire DevOps Security Leader Prevoty

Today, we announced that we entered into an agreement to acquire Prevoty, an innovator and leader in building application security that can block attacks and monitor interactions inside application stacks using DevOps and agile development. I’m incredibly excited that the Prevoty team will join...

Fortnite Scammers Approaching $1m in Annual Takings

When something seems too good to be true, it probably is. It’s a hard lesson to learn and, in this case, one that’s being taught by scammers. The perpetrators are abusing the fact that online players of Battle Royale games may be very eager to get free in-game currency and items, and are willing ...

The Data Breach ‘Kill Chain’: Early Detection is Key

Today, organizations rely heavily on data, with a big portion of that data made up of sensitive information. As organizations become the custodians of more and more sensitive information, the frequency of data breaches increases accordingly. In some cases, the origin of a data breach is outside o...

Imperva Cloud Security Now Available Through UK Government’s GCloud 10 Digital Marketplace

Building on the success of Imperva listing our market-leading, single stack Incapsula cloud platform for DDOS protection; CDN; load balancing and WAF on the GCloud 9 framework, Imperva has now added more products to the GCloud 10 portfolio. As the UK pushes for even greater digital adoption on a...

Drupal, Phishing and A New Cryptomining Botnet

It’s a well-known fact that security solutions must quickly adapt to new attack methods. There are several ways to achieve this goal, regularly applying security patches and updates, relying on threat intelligence and more. At Imperva, we use pattern anomaly detection as one of the tools to...

Need for Speed: Optimizing Data Masking Performance and Providing Secure Data for DevOps Users

Let’s start with a pretty common life experience -- you identify a need e.g., transportation, you evaluate your options e.g., evaluate car manufacturers, various features, pricing, etc., and you decide to purchase e.g., vehicle X. This process repeats itself over and over again regardless of the...

Building an Effective API Security Strategy: Easy If You Have the Right Tools

In their approach to application programming interface API security, organizations exposing web APIs must balance ease of access with control. Like the bank robber attacking banks because "that's where the money is," the use of APIs to provide access to applications and to business-critical data...

A WordPress SPAMbot Wants You to Bet on the 2018 FIFA World Cup

Our researchers recently picked up on a spike in SPAM activity directed at sites powered by WordPress, which, naturally, led them to take a closer look. Turns out the attack was launched by a botnet and implemented in the form of comment SPAM - meaningless, generic text generated from a template...

The Trickster Hackers – Backdoor Obfuscation and Evasion Techniques

A backdoor is a method for bypassing the normal authentication or encryption of a system. Sometimes developers construct backdoors to their own programs for various reasons. For example, to provide easy maintenance, developers introduce a backdoor that enables them to restore the manufacturer’s...

Optimizing A Monitoring System: Three Methods for Effective Incident Management

Picture this: You’ve just returned from a well-deserved vacation and, upon opening up your security monitoring system you’re faced with the prospect of analyzing thousands of events. This isn’t an imaginary scenario, the security monitoring world actually monitoring in general is full of anomalie...

WordPress Arbitrary File Deletion Vulnerability Plugged With Patch 4.9.7

On Jun 26 an arbitrary file deletion vulnerability in the WordPress core was publicly disclosed, the vulnerability could allow an authenticated attacker to delete any file and in some cases execute arbitrary code. WordPress is a free, popular, and open-source content management system currently...

Cloud Security For The Healthcare Industry: A No-Brainer

The healthcare industry has become one of the likeliest to suffer cyber-attacks, and there’s little wonder why. Having the financial and personal information of scores of patients makes it a very appetizing target for attackers. Just over a year ago, the WannaCry ransomware attack wreaked havoc o...

Back to Basics: Let’s Forget About the GDPR… For A Moment

At this point it’s fairly safe to assume that most everyone in the business of “data” has heard of the European Union EU-wide General Data Protection Regulation GDPR that was signed into law in late April 2016; with the compliance deadline having come into effect on May 25, 2018. Clearly, this ne...

Read: Our Top Picks for 2018’s Biggest Cybersecurity Stories… So Far

Our threat research team's been burning the candle at both ends this year, what with the sheer number of nasties out there at any given time. But with so many to choose from, how did we populate a list with just seven cybersecurity threats, and why? For one, it'll take the rest of the year to...

Cloud Migration Fundamentals: Overcoming Barriers to App Security [Infographic]

As more organizations move to the cloud, the line of responsibility in securing applications can become rather blurred. The concept of control has historically rested in physical location and ownership. With the move to the cloud, however, the idea of security by proxy is changing and so should o...

5 Key Factors to Consider When Comparing Cloud Security Solutions [Video]

Migrating to the cloud can be a challenge, and so can securing your platform once you’re there. It means having a security solution that is quick, adaptable and equipped to handle a wider breadth of attacks. Whether you’re in the market for a new security product, or you’re looking to switch, the...

How To Leverage Data Access Analytics for Effective Breach Detection

Detecting and preventing data breaches is a challenge for most, if not all, enterprises. In fact, according to a study released in 2017, 78% of all CISOs are concerned that data breaches go undetected, while only 19% admit they are effective at breach prevention. Simply put, breaches happen almos...

The Gartner CISO Playbook: Leveraging Effective Control in the Cloud

For as long as we can remember, the concept of control has rested comfortably in physical location and ownership. It’s simple, if you could see something or you knew exactly where it was, it would be easier to assume that you’d have some measure of control over its security. With the move to the...

Clustering App Attacks with Machine Learning Part 3: Algorithm Results

In the previous blog posts in this series, we discussed the motivation for clustering attacks and the data used and how to calculate the distance between two attacks using different methods on each feature we extracted. In this final blog post, we’ll discuss the clustering algorithm itself – how ...

Indonesian Hacker Group Cashes In On Blockbuster Movie Titles

When breaking the law isn't a barrier, there’s always a way to make a quick buck. We see it every day, and this time from an Indonesian cybercrime campaign infecting vulnerable websites by luring their visitors to a network of scam websites using blockbuster movies. The attack part I: Recruiting...

Monitoring Data & Data Access to Support Ongoing GDPR Compliance – Part III: Tools

The new European Union EU-wide General Data Protection Regulation GDPR was signed into law in late April 2016, and the compliance deadline came into effect on May 25, 2018. The Regulation is expansive and covers a variety of subject areas, provisions, and actions in the form of documented Article...

Clustering App Attacks with Machine Learning Part 2: Calculating Distance

In our previous post in this series we discussed our motivation to cluster attacks on apps, the data we used and how we enriched it by extracting more meaningful features out of the raw data. We talked about the many features that can be extracted from IP and URL. In this blog post we’ll discuss...

Clustering App Attacks with Machine Learning Part 1: A Walk Outside the Lab

A lot of research has been done on clustering attacks of different types using machine learning algorithms with high rates of success. Much of it from the comfort of a research lab, with specific datasets and no performance limitations. At Imperva, our research is done for the benefit of real...

Zero to Account Takeover: How I ‘Impersonated’ Someone Else Using Auth0

Since the publication of this blog, attempts have been made to discredit our findings, methodology and accuracy. Imperva stands by our research. Our findings were reported to Auth0 as part of their own bug bounty program, following their official process. Auth0 was kept informed of our findings a...

New research shows 75% of ‘open’ Redis servers infected

Since our initial report on the RedisWannaMine attack that propagates through open Redis and Windows servers, we’ve been hearing about more and more attacks on Redis servers. Redis is a great tool, it can serve as in-memory distributed database, cache or a message broker and is widely popular...

Leveraging Imperva Solutions for GDPR Compliance Part II: Pseudonymization

Down to the wire- the GDPR compliance deadline is here. It’s May 25 and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation GDPR is live. As you know by now, the risk and potential costs associated with a failure to comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation GDPR are substantial. GDPR...

Five Ways Imperva Attack Analytics Helps You Cut Through the Event Noise

The maddening volume of events security teams have to deal with each day is growing at an exponential pace, making it increasingly difficult to effectively analyze and process credible threats. As more organizations move to cloud-based solutions, applications now reside at multiple locations – on...

Survey: 27 Percent of IT professionals receive more than 1 million security alerts daily

Imagine trying to tackle over one million security alerts in a day. That number is so huge that it may sound like hyperbole, but this is exactly what many security teams face. Dealing with such a high volume of potential threats on a regular basis can quickly lead to alert fatigue. Sure, we expec...

See If You’re GDPR-Ready With Our Last-Minute Checklist

Time’s just about run out to get all your ducks in a row for the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation GDPR going into effect on May 25, and we’ve put together a little refresher toolkit to help you dot your Is and cross your Ts. Whether you’re planning on sticking to the new GDPR guidelines or...

Healthcare IT Leaders Most Concerned about Ransomware and Insider Threats: Survey

Just over a year ago, the WannaCry ransomware attack wreaked havoc on the UK National Health Service NHS, ultimately disrupting a third of its facilities and causing a rash of canceled appointments and operations. Breaches are always a concern in healthcare, but this incident brought to light its...

Database Activity Monitoring: Configuring a Cluster in Four Easy Steps

Imperva SecureSphere Database Activity Monitoring DAM offers multiple deployment modes, including managing your gateways in a cluster. There are four steps to configuring a gateway cluster and we’ll be discussing them in this post. But first, let’s review the advantages of using a cluster: High...

Facebook, GDPR and the Right to Privacy: Three’s a Crowd?

Back in 2016 the European Union voted to pass the mother of all security laws, aimed at further extending the rights of its citizens to control how their data is used. The General Data Protection Regulation GDPR guards users against having their information shared without their explicit consent,...

72 Hours: Understanding the GDPR Data Breach Reporting Timeline

We're down to the wire with respect to the General Data Protection Regulation GDPR compliance deadline of May 25, 2018. Organizations that fail to comply could face fines of up to €20M roughly $22M or 4 percent of their annual global turnover from the prior year and we’ll soon see just how EU...

New DDoS Attack Method Demands a Fresh Approach to Amplification Assault Mitigation

Amplification attack vectors are some of the most commonly used tools in the DDoS attacker’s arsenal. In the last quarter of 2017, we saw NTP amplification employed in roughly 33 percent of all DDoS assaults against our customers, while DNS and SSDP amplification vectors played a part in 17 perce...

Imperva Python SDK – We’re All Consenting SecOps Here

Managing your WAF can be a complicated task. Custom policies, signatures, application profiles, gateway plugins… there’s a good reason ours is considered the best in the world. Back when security teams were in charge of just a handful of WAF stacks and a few dozen applications, things were...