ZeroHour

Search: “Step Security”

14 stories in the last 7d

35 Actionable Password Statistics for Businesses in 2026 | Huntress

Huntress compiles 2026 password statistics showing 94% of 19 billion leaked passwords were reused and 37% of identity threats used stolen credentials.

Huntress published a compilation of password security statistics drawing on sources including Cybernews, Verizon's 2026 DBIR, IBM, and Bitwarden. Cybernews found 19 billion exposed passwords from roughly 200 incidents between April 2024 and April 2025, with only 6% unique and 94% reused across accounts. Huntress telemetry reports 37% of identity-based threats in 2026 involved stolen or suspicious credentials, while Verizon cites credential abuse in 39% of breaches. The piece argues weak and reused passwords remain a top entry point and recommends improved password hygiene.

Huntress · 6d agoIndustry

Enterprise Threat Intelligence Buying Guide: How to Choose the Right Solution

ANY.RUN published a buyer's guide for enterprise threat intelligence platforms, outlining evaluation criteria and promoting its own TI products.

ANY.RUN, whose sandbox, TI Lookup, and TI Feeds products are featured throughout, published guidance for selecting an enterprise threat intelligence provider. The guide recommends defining SOC or MSSP requirements first, then weighing intelligence quality and freshness, integrations including STIX/TAXII support, privacy, scalability, and proof-of-concept testing with real alerts. It emphasizes context and enrichment over raw data volume, citing figures such as TI Lookup results in about 2 seconds and 99% validated IOCs in its feeds.

ANY.RUNupdated · 1h agofirst · 2h agoIndustry 4 sources

Cyber-Attacks Cost Organizations $52,000 on Average

Hiscox's 2026 survey of 6,800 security leaders found 29% of organizations hit by successful attacks averaging $52,000 in costs and 32.8 hours of downtime.

The Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report 2026, based on a survey of 6,800 security decision-makers across the UK, Europe, and US, found 29% of organizations suffered at least one successful cyber-attack in the past 12 months, averaging four incidents per victim. UK firms were most attacked at 38% while US firms were least at 20%; average incident cost was $52,000 globally, peaking at $134,138 in Italy, with 32.8 hours of average downtime. Impacts included growth delays (32%), financial penalties (28%), and burnout or toxic culture (69%). Businesses invest about $51,000 annually in resilience, and 32% now tie executive compensation to cybersecurity outcomes.

Infosecurity Magazine · 22h agoIndustry

Your Critical Vulnerabilities Might Not Be Your Biggest Risk

Autonomous penetration testing advocates prioritize exploitable attack paths over raw vulnerability severity for continuous security validation.

The article argues that scanner severity scores lack context: a critical flaw behind strong segmentation may be low priority, while a medium flaw on internet-facing systems can provide a foothold chained toward sensitive data. It positions autonomous penetration testing and attack path validation as the execution layer for continuous security validation, replacing point-in-time assessments. The piece is vendor-authored thought leadership rather than incident or vulnerability news.

The Hacker News · 5d agoIndustry1

Exein Secures $270M at $1.7B Valuation for Physical AI Security

IoT security firm Exein raised $270 million at a $1.7 billion valuation to expand runtime protection and physical AI security agents.

Italy-based IoT security startup Exein announced a $270 million oversubscribed round led by Headline, bringing total funding above $600 million and valuing the company at $1.7 billion. Exein builds embedded and kernel-level runtime protection for IoT devices and is developing a proprietary foundation model for physical AI security powering autonomous defense agents. The funding will accelerate expansion, particularly into the US market.

SecurityWeek · 1d agoIndustry

What is Proactive Threat Intelligence? | Recorded Future

Recorded Future publishes a vendor explainer on proactive threat intelligence, arguing external adversary context helps teams act before alerts fire.

Recorded Future published a conceptual blog on proactive threat intelligence, describing how external context on adversaries, infrastructure, stolen credentials, and vulnerability exploitation helps security teams act before intrusions surface internally. The piece outlines a four-step program: defining intelligence requirements, collecting external sources including OSINT and dark web, analyzing relevance to the organization, and driving security actions. Use cases include prioritizing CVEs by real-world exploitation activity and identifying external exposure before it becomes an internal incident.

Recorded Future · 3d agoIndustry

How to level up from security pro to security leader

Career advice piece argues aspiring CISOs must pair technical depth with business fluency, communication, and cross-department influence.

The article offers guidance for security professionals moving into CISO and security leadership roles, drawing on interviews with CISOs at ExtraHop, BlueVoyant, Infosys, and others. It emphasizes translating technical risk into business priorities, building trust across departments, and understanding how the company makes money. An analysis of CISO job postings found employers value communication skills, regulatory knowledge, and business education over mastery of specific security platforms.

CSO Online · 3d agoIndustry

Threat Intelligence Alone Won't Close the Exploitation Gap

Pentera argues threat intelligence alone leaves a validation gap, promoting threat-led penetration testing that auto-tests leaked credentials against real attack surfaces.

A contributed Pentera piece argues that threat intelligence signals such as leaked credentials and vulnerability advisories often sit unactioned in queues because teams lack the offensive capacity to validate them against live environments. It promotes threat-led penetration testing (TLPT) and highlights Pentera's integration with Recorded Future, which triggers automated validation of leaked credentials against an organization's external attack surface. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts cybersecurity VP Joseph Gothelf is quoted supporting the convergence of threat intelligence and security validation.

The Hacker News · 22h agoIndustry

AI is exposing a security structure built for yesterday’s threats

EY's Jeffrey Sallet argues AI-driven deepfakes and impersonation require integrating cybersecurity, physical security, HR and legal functions.

The opinion piece contends AI-powered impersonation, deepfakes and automated social engineering cross digital, physical and operational boundaries that siloed security programs cannot cover. It cites an EY survey of 250 corporate leaders where only 12% feel most prepared to detect a targeted physical attack, and describes transnational groups using deepfakes and stolen identities to bypass virtual HR hiring loops. The author urges unified cross-functional verification pipelines and shared threat intelligence between CISOs and chief security officers.

CSO Online · 2d agoIndustry

AI Changed the Exposure Problem. Validation Needs to Change With It.

Picus Security argues vulnerability validation must combine exploitability, control validation, and agentic pentesting as AI accelerates disclosure volume.

Picus Security reports 35,853 CVEs were published in H1 2026, roughly 49% more than the prior year, while only 495 were catalogued as exploited in the wild and 116 were attacked on disclosure day. The vendor argues CVSS-based triage is inadequate and promotes combining exploitability validation, security control validation, and agentic pentesting into one program. The post also cites Anthropic data showing Mythos-class models surfaced 26,153 open-source vulnerability candidates with only 421 patched upstream, and promotes Picus's Validation Summit '26 on October 14-15.

The Hacker News · 2d agoIndustry

How AI and cybersecurity are reshaping ServiceNow

Analysis argues ServiceNow's $7.75B Armis acquisition and AI-driven consumption pricing are reshaping its ITSM platform amid SaaS market anxiety.

CSO Online examines how AI agents, vibe-coding fears, and a reported 30% share price drop are pressuring ITSM leader ServiceNow, and how the company is pivoting toward consumption-based revenue and cybersecurity. The piece highlights ServiceNow's $7.75 billion cash acquisition of Armis, priced at roughly 23 times the vendor's $340 million annual revenue, as a strategic move to supercharge ITSM workflows with accurate device inventory and orchestration rather than to sell a standalone security product. Experts note this ends Armis's vendor-neutral position, introduces the CISO as a new buyer, and will likely lead to aggressive Armis bundling at contract renewals.

CSO Online · 5d agoIndustry

Microsoft Offers Up to $30,000 for Critical AI Flaws in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform

Microsoft expands AI bug bounty to Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, paying up to $30,000 for critical inference manipulation flaws.

Microsoft's bug bounty program offers up to $30,000 for critical 'Inference Manipulation' or 'Inferential Information Disclosure' bugs in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, including Copilot Studio, AI Builder, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Dataverse. Payouts scale by report quality ($30,000/$20,000/$12,000 for critical) with important-severity AI flaws earning $6,000-$20,000, plus 20% multipliers for Dataverse privilege escalation and Plugin Sandbox escapes. Prompt injection affecting only the attacker, hallucinated execution, and system-prompt disclosure are excluded from scope.

Cyber Security News · 2d agoIndustry

Google’s new search redirects make links harder to check before you click

Google routes some search result links through encoded google.com/goto?url= redirects, breaking hover-to-verify link checks and raising scraping costs.

Google has started routing some search result links through opaque google.com/goto?url=... redirects using a custom Google-specific encoding, with the destination visible only via the redirect response's Location header. Google confirmed the rollout as an anti-abuse measure, most likely to make bulk extraction of destination URLs from search results more difficult and costly. Malwarebytes warns the change undermines the standard hover-before-clicking safety advice, while legitimate rank-tracking, SEO auditing, archival, and accessibility tools now face the same rate limits and costs as abusive scrapers.

Malwarebytes Labs · 2d agoIndustry

Rapid7 Named Among Notable Vendors in Forrester MDR Landscape: Why the Future is Exposure-informed, Preemptive MDR

Rapid7 touts its listing in Forrester's Q3 2026 MDR Landscape, arguing MDR must converge with exposure management for measurable risk reduction.

Forrester's Managed Detection and Response Services Landscape, Q3 2026 names Rapid7 among notable providers and predicts MDR services will converge with exposure and posture improvement. Rapid7 pitches its exposure-informed, preemptive MDR built on its own SIEM, combining vulnerability findings and asset risk scoring with detection and response. The service includes unlimited incident response and a human-led, AI-enhanced investigation model. Forrester advises buyers to demand providers prove investigations rather than narrate dashboards.

Rapid7 Blog · 2d agoIndustry