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(And Why I Did It) For those of you who work in web application security, maybe you’re familiar with Burp.

We all know that cybercriminals are now a thing.

Though most are familiar with malware and viruses that infect computers and delete files or display advertisements, there’s a much more sinister form of malicious technology that’s becoming increasingly commonplace in corporate computer networks: ransomware.

Background First coined in 1994 by Stephen Marsh in his doctoral thesis, Formalising Trust as a Computational Concept, the term Zero Trust was later popularized by a Gartner research analyst. Some years later in 2011, when Google announced its internal implementation of Zero Trust architecture, the concept helped spark a new, wide-spread interest in the technology and security communities. In response to this increased public interest, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in coordination with the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE), developed a special publication (SP 800-207) on Zero Trust architecture and have since published additional information on implementation practices.

In January of 2021, the Department of Health and Human Services issued an amendment to the Health Information Technology for Economic Clinical Health (HITECH) Act regarding certain security practices of covered entities and business associates. They define adequate security practices as “standards, guidelines, best practices, methodologies, procedures, and processes developed under section 2(c)(15) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Act, the approaches promulgated under section 405(d) of the Cybersecurity Act of 2015, and other programs and processes that address cybersecurity and that are developed, recognized, or promulgated through regulations under other statutory authorities.”

Yesterday, on May 12th, President Biden issued the “Executive Order (EO) on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity.” Given that the Order features 11 sections that include both policy and general provisions among others, its 8,080 words is arguably the equivalent of multiple EOs. Such an effort is, no doubt, purposeful by the President—this is significant, and will certainly impact the security worlds of both the government itself and those companies that provide it with software and services.

About This Report The Cyberthreat Defense Report (CDR) is the most geographically comprehensive vendor agnostic study of IT security decision makers and practitioners.  Rather than compiling cyberthreat statistics and assessing the damage caused by data breaches (other researchers do a great job there), the CDR surveys the perceptions of actual IT security professionals, gaining insights into how they see the world.

As global cyberattacks become more common, organizations are fine tuning, or even implementing, a cybersecurity risk management program — and there is no better way to validate your cybersecurity risk management program than with an independent validation.