Josh Breaker Rolfe

As attackers wield artificial intelligence with increasing precision and scale, Information Security Buzz spoke with Sean Lim, Senior Vice President at EC-Council. He is urging defenders to rethink cybersecurity. Lim has spent his career on the front lines of ethical hacking, talent development, and enterprise risk reduction. But now, he says, the game has changed, and only AI can keep up.   The Compliance Illusion  “Let me ask you something,” Lim said. “Are risks rising? Are losses rising? Are breaches rising? Of course they are. And yet, don’t we already have regulations? Don’t we have cybersecurity companies anywhere?”  The real problem,…

In the first quarter, phishing scammers impersonated Microsoft more than any other single brand, with the IT giant accounting for 36% of all brand phishing attempts, according to a recent report from Check Point Research. This marks a continuation of scammers favoring Microsoft from previous quarters, as cybercriminals continue to exploit the company’s widespread usage and familiarity among users. Google and Apple Follow as Prime Targets Fellow tech giants Google and Apple took second and third place, accounting for 12% and 8% of brand impersonation attempts, respectively. The report highlights the increasing trend of cybercriminals leveraging the credibility of major…

Email remains the most exploited attack vector for cybercriminals and disinformation campaigns, even as organizations race to implement defenses, a new report from Valimail has revealed. The 2025 Disinformation and Malicious Email Report highlights that artificial intelligence has supercharged phishing attacks, while gaps in domain protection have left organizations across a range of industries dangerously exposed. “In 2024, we witnessed some of the most sophisticated email-based attacks in history,” said Al Iverson, Industry Research and Community Engagement Lead at Valimail. “Cybercriminals are exploiting weaknesses in email systems with increasing precision, eroding trust in digital communications.” AI Drives Attacks The report…

AI-related API vulnerabilities have increased by 1025% year over year, underscoring the escalating risks associated with autonomous agentic AI systems. Wallarm’s ThreatStats report for Q1 2025, titled “The Rise of Agentic AI,” highlights that evolving API threats are fueled by the rise of agentic AI systems, growing complexity in cloud-native infrastructure, and a surge in software supply chain risks. “In the first quarter of 2025, overall API threats continued to increase across multiple industries, from healthcare to AI and beyond,” said Ivan Novikov, CEO and Co-Founder of Wallarm. “Our research shows that AI agent security risk largely stems from APIs.” …

Organized crime networks are using artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance their operations, creating unprecedented challenges for law enforcement, warned Europol in its European Serious Organised Crime Threat Assessment (EU-SOCTA) report.  “Criminal networks have demonstrated the ability to rapidly adapt to new technological solutions,” the report said. “This includes AI, a solution that has transformed the modern world with unprecedented speed and impact. Indeed, the very qualities that make AI revolutionary – accessibility, versatility, and sophistication – have made it an attractive tool for criminals.” AI’s Role in Cyber Fraud With expanding complexity and availability, AI and other cutting-edge technologies are…

The EU AI Act represents a crucial step towards responsible AI development, deployment, and use of AI in the European Union. However, Lamprini Gyftokosta, Director of Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights at Homo Digitalis, raises serious questions about its effectiveness and implementation. Ultimately, Gytfokosta believes that the EU AI Act is necessary but flawed. I recently spoke with her to find out why.  A Market-Driven Approach with Unclear Goals According to Gyftokosta, the Act’s purpose extends beyond simply regulating AI. “What the Act is really trying to do,” she said, “is improve the functioning of the EU’s internal AI market.…

Despite mounting threats and high incident rates, organizations in the UK’s critical national infrastructure (CNI) sector display an alarming overconfidence in their cybersecurity defenses. According to Bridewell’s latest Cyber Security in Critical National Infrastructure Organizations report, confidence that critical systems are protected from cyber threats has grown steadily since 2025, despite 95% of respondents admitting they suffered a breach within the past year.   Organizations Overestimate Cyber Defenses This overconfidence is most obvious when it comes to risk assessments: 90% of respondents were confident that their organization’s current cyber risk assessment approach reflected their cyber risk posture, but only 25% are…

2025 is set to be a massive year for MSPs, the latest MSP Horizons 2025 Report from N-able suggests. Fuelled by robust cybersecurity investments, AI-driven automation, and a surge in M&A activity, the industry is poised for significant growth, with new revenue opportunities abounding. A Market on the Upswing The report reveals that global managed IT services are currently valued at an impressive $525 billion, with managed services revenue growing by just 11% from 2023. Understandably, optimism is rife among the MSP community, with 59% of respondents expecting over 20% revenue growth in 2025 and 49% anticipating similar growth, specifically…

A global effort led by Fortra, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU), and the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) has reduced access to weaponized versions of the powerful hacking tool Cobalt Strike by 80%. Dramatic Reduction in Dwell Time The initiative, which focused on dismantling the distribution and use of unauthorized, legacy copies of Cobalt Strike and compromised Microsoft software, slashed the average “dwell time” – the period between initial detection and takedown of malicious activity – to less than one week in the United States and less than two weeks worldwide. Operation MORPHEUS In July 2024, Operation MORPHEUS,…

Broadcom has issued a security alert warning VMware customers about three zero-day vulnerabilities attackers are actively exploiting in the wild. The flaws – CVE-2025-22224, CVE-2025-22225, and CVE-2025-22226 – impact VMware ESX products, including VMware ESXi, vSphere, Workstation, Fusion, Cloud Foundation, and Telco Cloud Platform. The VMware Nightmare: What You Need to Know Broadcom’s advisory states that CVE-2025-22224, the most severe of the three with a CVSS score of 9.3, is a critical VMCI heap overflow vulnerability impacting VMware ESXI and Workstation. Attackers with local administrative privileges on a virtual machine (VM) can exploit this vulnerability to execute code as the…