A lot of attention gets paid in the press to “zero-day” threats — attacks that wreak havoc on organizations while they’re still completely unknown to the cybersecurity community. But the truth is that 60 percent of breaches are the result of known vulnerabilities that have been left unpatched.

The problem is that patching practices in many organizations are slow and disorganized. Too many teams are in charge of patching too many different systems, and security leaders typically lack visibility into who is staying on top of patching and who isn’t. The good news is that many organizations already have a powerful tool to help streamline vulnerability management — the service management platform ServiceNow. Although some organizations use the platform primarily to manage help desk tickets, it’s capable of much more. The solution can also help organizations shore up vulnerabilities across their IT environments.

Here’s how.

Recent events turned our working lives upside down. With very little notice, millions of people around the world were sent home from their offices to suddenly adopt a remote work lifestyle. Four months into this adventure, most knowledge workers have adapted to working styles that replace conference rooms with video meetings and coffee chats with virtual happy hours.

I believe that we’ve arrived at a new normal where remote work will become a standard arrangement for knowledge workers. Both companies and employees will benefit from this approach. While employees can better balance their lives, companies will be able to reduce overhead expenses by consolidating and eliminating expensive physical offices. This work style comes with new cybersecurity considerations, and I urge organizations to adopt six key practices to adapt to our new working patterns.

The global pandemic and social distancing measures have redefined the office for many people. Industries that never would have considered allowing their office employees to work from home were forced to rethink decades of business as usual.

This change has also brought new technology needs. Since these businesses had built technology infrastructures that relied on traditional network and application architecture, a shift had to occur. Suddenly, IT departments were dealing with overloaded VPNs or having to deploy a VPN that they never had to maintain before. Compound that with the fact that users are now accessing company resources from networks or assets that corporate IT has no control over, that most home routers are still vulnerable to exploitation and that, in many cases, the network gates were flung open in the name of productivity ― it’s enough to give any CISO an ulcer.

So how can companies mitigate these risks? Now that everyone is settling into a routine and we’re adjusting to this “new normal,” it’s an ideal time to reach out to your users and talk about security.

On Jan. 14, 2020, mainstream support for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be ended. If you do nothing, your servers will no longer receive regular security updates from Microsoft after this date. Why is this of concern? Most companies must comply with many different regulatory requirements. Regulatory agencies often have mandates…

Our nation’s financial system is fragile. The technology we depend on today for the secure exchange of funds between banks dates back decades to a system that was first built to facilitate funds transfers using Morse Code. Today’s incarnation of that system takes advantage of modern computing standards, such as TCP/IP networking, but that convenience…