At Stern Security, we have declared February 2nd as Two-Factor Authentication Day! The date is 2/2 so naturally it’s the best day for this holiday. This is a day to spread awareness about 2-factor authentication which is one of the most important ways to protect your online accounts at home and at work. Using a […]
In its first annual healthcare data breach report, Stern Security has critically analyzed over 4,000 data breaches since the Department of Health and Human Services began tracking the information in 2009. Stern Security utilized data from their HealthcareBreaches.com website as well as published information from Health and Human Services to create this comprehensive report. This […]
Healthcare breaches have recently reached a grim milestone. As of June 10th, 2022, the number of Protected Health Information (PHI) records breached has reached 341,995,928. To put in prospective, this number surpasses the United States population which is at 332,759,097 (United States Census Bureau, 2022). It must be noted that these numbers only include reported healthcare […]
Background Our company mission is to “Secure the Planet”. This means that we aim to provide education and solutions that any company in the world can use to reduce cyber risk. Our flagship product, Velocity, is a web application (SaaS product) which companies can use to evaluate their own cybersecurity posture as well as to […]
Introduction Not all vulnerability scans are created equal. The configuration of a vulnerability scan makes an enormous impact on your results. Authenticated vulnerability scans will provide much greater insight into an organization’s security posture than unauthenticated scans. However, there is a place for unauthenticated vulnerability scans. This article discusses the differences between authenticated and unauthenticated […]
Introduction Velocity helped a large hospital system quadruple the speed of third-party risk assessments, increase accuracy of reviews, create a continuous assessment process, and track internal risk using the Center for Internet Security (CIS), NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), and the HIPAA Security Rule. Background The hospital was struggling to manually review hundreds of vendor (business […]
Background Technology has dramatically changed almost all aspects of human life, giving us amazing communication ability, a healthcare revolution, financial opportunities, and safe energy, all growing at exponential rates. These benefits become risks if the technology is not made secure. At Stern Security, our mission is to secure the planet, business by business, industry by […]
The CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) reporting structure is a hotly debated topic and the solution often differs depending on the organization. This question has perplexed many organizations. It’s a topic of growing importance as cyber attacks grow in frequency and breach costs increase. Many organizations initially place the cybersecurity responsibility within the IT department […]
If the SolarWinds hack taught us anything, it’s that the security of a company’s infrastructure is dependent on the resilience of their vendors. A breached vendor is a trojan horse that bypasses normal defenses and accesses the trusted areas of the network. Threat actors have cunningly discovered that a trusted vendor is often the easier […]
A Vulnerability Scan is NOT a Penetration Test. Unfortunately, when we perform third-party reviews or risk analyses, we often see that organizations get these two terms mixed. In this article, we are providing information about the differences so companies get the accurate services they need (and paid for) and they can achieve their compliance goals. […]