If you’re in cybersecurity, you’ve heard nonstop about the attack surface. But what if the surface is more of an atmosphere?

That’s what some experts in the field are saying as the shape and location of attacks is changing. An attack atmosphere is more accurate, the theory goes, because it encompasses myriad threats.

Chris Goettl, VP of product management at Ivanti, told IT Brew that the atmosphere term is a shift in mindset to understand the environment as a whole. Attackers have become more and more sophisticated, often not even threatening the critical vulnerabilities but rather chaining existing CVEs or using social engineering.

“Each of those things are just an evolution of behaviors that existed before with threat actors,” Goettl said. “They’re just getting more and more sophisticated.”

Attacks are changing. Here’s how to fight back.—EH

When Mark Ellzey, a senior security researcher at Censys, stumbled upon exposed water facilities online, he thought it might have been a joke, or even a honeypot. The more the team dug, the worse it got—Censys found almost 400 web-based Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs) for water facilities in the US unprotected online.

In order to start remediation efforts, Ellzey, Censys Principal Security Researcher Emily Austin, and the team contacted the host of the critical infrastructure, or industrial control systems (ICS), which had a “tepid response.” So, the team contacted the Environmental Protection Agency.

“A lot of people, when they think of critical infrastructure and ICS, it’s some complex protocol and stuff like that,” Ellzey said. “When all I had to do was look [on the internet]…That’s bad these things have been sitting out there for who knows how long. It feels bad in that way because it’s an exposure that should not exist.”

Within nine days of the systems being found in October, 24% of them had been secured. As of May, less than 6% of the systems are still online in read-only or unauthenticated states.

Why water facilities are under threat.—CN

Guess who’s back, back again?

The European Union’s (EU) desire for cloud sovereignty has seemingly been reignited as geopolitical tensions push organizations to reevaluate the region’s reliance on the US for its digital infrastructure needs.

Last week, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced it had launched a new European parent company and three subsidiaries incorporated in Germany for its European Sovereign Cloud offering. The parent company will be “locally controlled” and led by EU citizens. AWS European Sovereign Cloud is expected to roll out by the end of the year.

“There will be zero operational control outside of EU borders; the AWS European Sovereign Cloud will be operated entirely by residents of Europe,” the tech giant wrote in a blog post. “Only AWS employees, residing in the EU, will control day-to-day operations, including access to data centers, technical support, and customer service for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.”

The EU is taking cloud sovereignty seriously.—BM

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