It is Tax season and there will be a new wave of spam/phishing attacks. The IRS suggests the following steps to avoid becoming a victim of phishing:

• Be Vigilant – Employers and businesses providing tax services can best protect themselves from phishing attacks by educating employees with Security Awareness Training. Employees are trained on phishing tactics in order to heightened their sense of security, making it easier to spot a malicious email and avoid becoming a victim.
• Use Security Software – the use of email, web, and DNS scanning solutions can reduce the number of potentially malicious messages that reach an Inbox.
• Use strong passwords – the emphasis is on using unique passwords for each account used.
• Use Multi-Factor Authentication – when available, use MFA to better secure access to online applications, websites, and data.

Emails impersonating the IRS can be forwarded to phishing@irs.gov.

As we move to the Cloud based business model we should also consider changing our Security Model closer to "Zero Trust".

Zero Trust - assume everything is on the open internet.

Here is the first (in the multi-part series) blog on the same subject from Microsoft - Identity and access management.

BTW, do you remember the statement "identity is the new perimeter", more and more people are beginning to agree with it

https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/microsoftsecure/2018/12/17/zero-trust-part-1-identity-and-access-management

Attention Internet Explorer Users - Microsoft has released a patch for a new vulnerability - CVE-2018-8653 - An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could take control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.

Another reason why regular users should not have local admin privileges (Best Practice)

https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-US/security-guidance/advisory/CVE-2018-8653

VPN is safe , not if you are using free HolaVPN.

1. It could provide a gateway into the enterprise network for malicious software of many varieties
2. It Uses customer computers and devices as exit points for spam and  phishing message.
3. The software for HolaVPN failed to provide encryption for users depending on the service to protect their data from theft
4. 85% of the HolaVPN traffic they analyzed was concerned with mobile ads and other mobile-related domains and software.

https://www.darkreading.com/network-and-perimeter-security/trend-micro-finds-major-flaws-in-holavpn/d/d-id/1333515

Backup is important but, can be dangerous when we cannot track and delete old data. This is where "Cryptographic Erasure" can be useful. It is a simple process, you encrypt the data and when it is time to delete it, DELETE THE ENCRYPTION KEY INSTEAD . Data is as good as deleted.

It has two important advantages:
1. We do not need to restrict ourselves to using a single key that encrypts an entire drive or data set. Instead, we can have as many unique keys as we need, encrypting data at the granularity that serves our purposes

2. Second,it entirely bypasses the issue of tracking data flows. Whether the data resides in a remote data center, in someone else's cloud, is irrelevant. It is sufficient to know where our keys and delete them.

https://www.darkreading.com/endpoint/cryptographic-erasure-moving-beyond-hard-drive-destruction/a/d-id/1333492

True or False - Larg companies have greater resources,skilled security teams, are better defended against cyberattacks. FALSE, they may have more resources but, also have many more devices connected to the Net and a greater attack surface area.

Here are some stats to back it: 
1. An average Fortune 500 firm had approximately 500 servers and devices connected to the Internet, with five- to 10 systems exposing Windows file-sharing or Telnet services (yest telnet)

2.  Fifteen out of the 21 industry sectors had at lease one member allowing public access to a Windows file-sharing service.

3. One company in each of the aerospace & defense, chemical, and retail industries had more than 20,000 systems accessible through the Internet

https://www.darkreading.com/perimeter/lax-controls-leave-fortune-500-overexposed-on-the-net/d/d-id/1333497

Google Home Smart speaker is a nice gadget to show to our friends. Here is some not-so good news. Remember Magellan (not the explorer) SQLite vulnerability, your gadget is also affected by it. Meaning, it could lead to remote code execution, leaking program memory or it can cause program crashes.

The good news is there is no evidence of it being used in the wild (but,it could change anytime)

https://www.scmagazine.com/home/security-news/remote-code-execution-flaw-found-in-google-home-smart-speaker/