Brian

What is the Dark Web?

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Before we get into monitoring the dark web, let’s quickly learn what it is.

The dark web is a hidden part of the Internet that is generally not accessible through standard browsers and search engines. Access to the dark web is achieved using special browsers (e.g., Tor Browser) and technologies.

One of its most distinctive features is that it offers an environment where users and websites remain anonymous. This provides an avenue for both legitimate and illegal activities.

Access to dark websites is provided through private networks such as Tor (The Onion Router). These networks provide anonymity by hiding users’ real IP addresses.

Darkweb sites usually have the “.onion” extension and can only be accessed through the Tor browser.

There is a lot of different content on the dark web. While these include legitimate content such as political activism, censorship evasion, journalism, and more, unfortunately, the Darkweb is also used for illegal activities, drug dealing, arms sales, cybercrime, and much more negative content.

Extreme care should be taken when navigating this area, as it is a popular area for cybercriminals. Malware, fake sites, and other threats pose a constant risk to visitors.

The dark web can be likened to the part of the internet just below the surface of the iceberg. While the so-called “Surface Web” constitutes only a small part of the internet we use on a daily basis, the Deep Web and Dark Web are larger and more difficult to access parts of the internet. Conscious and ethical use of these concepts is especially important for cybersecurity professionals.

Well, we talked about three different concepts: “Surface Web”, “Deep Web,” and “Dark Net”. It would be very useful to take a quick look at what these are.

Surface Web

It covers the websites we use daily and can access with standard web browsers. For example, news sites, social media platforms, online shopping sites, etc.

Access to information on the Surface Web is possible through standard search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.).

It usually contains information that is recorded and publicly available. Most of the content is publicly available.

Deep Web

It is a part of the internet that is not indexed by standard search engines. Therefore, it is difficult to access these contents without a direct access link.

Deep Web content can be accessed via direct links, database queries, or private networks. For example, academic databases, private social media profiles, personal email inboxes, and some government resources are included in the Deep Web.

The Deep Web makes up a large part of the internet. This only includes information that is not indexed or accessed with special permissions. Although it has a “profound” name, most of the content is innocent.

DarkWeb

The Dark Web is the anonymous part of the Internet accessible only through private browsers and networks, such as Tor and I2P. It often hosts illegal activities, but it also has legitimate uses such as activism and uncensored communications.

Access to the dark web is achieved using special browsers (e.g., Tor Browser). These sites usually have special domain extensions such as “.onion”.

The dark web provides users and operators with a high degree of anonymity. This provides an avenue for both legitimate and illegal activities. Although it is used for drug dealing, arms sales, cybercrime activities, and similar illegal activities, it can also be an important platform for journalists, activists, and individuals under repressive regimes to evade censorship.

Failure to restrict URL access

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As with many other web application vulnerabilities, this one also aligns with access control rights. Applications use URL restrictions to prevent non-privileged users from accessing privileged data and resources. Every clickable button in a web application directs to a URL. A failure to restrict access vulnerability means that while clicking the button in the application would prevent access, directly using the URL into the browser allows access. When an application fails to restrict URL access, malicious actors can use “forced browsing” for an attack.

For example, a web application might have a URL structure that looks like this:

www.insecurewebapp.com/failure… the attackers know that the last item in that URL is the data type, they can try to take guesses at the URL structure for a specific type of sensitive information.

www.insecurewebapp.com/failure… the application has a failure to restrict URL access vulnerability, plugging that URL directly into the browser gives the attacker access.

What is Digital Forensics?

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Digital forensics is a scientific discipline that involves the collection, examination, analysis, and reporting of evidence from digital devices and electronic storage media during criminal investigations and legal proceedings. This field aims to investigate illegal and unauthorized activities carried out on various digital platforms, such as computers, mobile phones, tablets, networks, and cloud technologies, or that leave traces on these platforms.

The scope of digital forensics is broad, encompassing cybercrime, data breaches, identity theft, fraud, malware analysis, and digital copyright infringement. It is also critical in determining whether a crime has occurred, identifying perpetrators, and gathering evidence of how the crime occurred.

The importance of digital forensics has increased as digital technologies pervade every aspect of our lives. The increase in the prevalence and complexity of cybercrime necessitates continuously developing the skills and techniques necessary for effective digital forensics investigations. In addition to ensuring that criminals are brought to justice, this discipline contributes to improving cybersecurity measures and protecting digital assets for individuals, organizations, and governments.

In summary, in a world where technology is advancing rapidly and digital crime is a growing concern, digital forensics plays a critical role in delivering justice and protecting digital security. Professionals in this field must possess both technical skills and ethical values, and be meticulous in collecting, analyzing, and reporting evidence.

Scope of Digital Forensics

Digital forensics plays a significant role in our lives, as technology intersects with almost every aspect. From cybersecurity incidents and criminal investigations to civil litigation and corporate investigations, the discipline plays a critical role in collecting and presenting digital evidence.

Cybersecurity Incidents

Digital forensics plays a crucial role in investigating and mitigating cybersecurity incidents, including data breaches, network attacks, malware, and unauthorized access. It helps in identifying the source of the attack, the methods used, and the extent of the damage.

Criminal Investigations

Law enforcement agencies rely on digital forensics to collect and analyze digital evidence related to criminal activity. This may involve uncovering evidence of fraud, cybercrime, intellectual property theft, or child exploitation by examining computers, mobile devices, storage media, or network logs.

Civil Litigation

In litigation, digital forensics can be used to gather evidence for civil cases. This may involve examining digital communications, analyzing data on electronic devices, or reconstructing digital events to support legal claims or defenses.

Corporate Investigations

Organizations conduct internal investigations to uncover unauthorized activities such as data breaches, intellectual property theft, employee misconduct, or policy violations. Digital forensics helps gather and analyze evidence to determine the extent of the incident and take appropriate action.

Types of DIFR Investigations

Digital forensics investigations involve the use of technology in crimes or legal matters. These investigations can range widely, from cybercrime and data breaches to internal company reviews and civil litigation. Some common types of digital forensics investigations include:

Cybercrime Investigations

​​These investigations involve crimes committed over the Internet by individuals or groups. Cybercrime can include identity theft, online fraud, the distribution of child pornography, and unauthorized access to computer systems. Digital forensics experts use a variety of tools and techniques to identify perpetrators, understand the methods used, and gather evidence of the crime.

Data Breach Investigations

These investigations are conducted when unauthorized access to sensitive data belonging to organizations or individuals is detected. Digital forensics experts perform in-depth analyses to determine how the breach occurred, the scope of the affected data, and potential damages. They may also provide recommendations to prevent future breaches.

Employee Misconduct Investigations

These investigations involve suspected policy violations, intellectual property theft, or other unauthorized activities by employees within a company. The goal of these investigations is to gather evidence of policy violations by examining electronic communications, file transfers, and other digital activities.

Mobile Device Forensics

Mobile device forensics refers to the analysis of digital evidence stored on smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. Investigations can include examining messages, call records, application data, and location information. Mobile device forensics plays an important role in both criminal and civil investigations.

Civil Litigation Investigations

Digital forensics is used in civil litigation to gather and present evidence. These investigations can cover a range of issues, including copyright infringement, contract disputes, and divorce cases. Digital communications, electronic documents, and the reconstruction of digital events can be crucial in resolving cases.

What is SIEM?

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Learn what SIEM is and why it’s useful for your organization.

If you’ve taken a dip into cybersecurity, you’ve likely heard of SIEM — often pronounced “sim.” SIEM stands for Security Information and Event Management; SIEM solutions collect data that help IT admins analyze their system’s behavior. This can include things like:

  • Suspicious events, like unusual login location or time
  • Network activity
  • Data from servers, firewalls, computers, applications, and so on

SIEMs digest this data and make it easier for IT and Security teams to understand and work with. This could include dashboards, charts, graphs, and more. SIEMs also notify admins when something looks amiss, helping them stay up to date with the condition of their systems and act quickly if need be.

Why is SIEM important?

The information gathered by an SIEM solution is valuable for IT and Security teams because it helps them understand what is going on with their infrastructure. It’s beneficial in the event of a cyber attack, as this data can help them determine the timeline and method of the attack, as well as the affected systems. Data from one part of their infrastructure can be correlated with others, giving admins a more thorough picture of the attack.
Understanding what happens when your organization is attacked isn’t just a “nice-to-have” feature — keeping your information secure is crucial. Attacks show where your systems are vulnerable, and the data processed by SIEMs can help inform how you reinforce your security posture.

Data processing

SIEMs act as a central place for data collection, storage, and analysis — meaning less work for IT and Security teams that need to understand the data. Suppose your organization’s CISO or other executive needs a security report. In that case, SIEMs make it easy to pull the necessary data and present it in a digestible form, whether for a technical or non-technical audience.
SIEMs use machine-based sorting to classify telemetry data. When the SIEM detects potential threats and/or vulnerabilities, it categorizes them based on their severity and impact. This way, IT and Security teams can prioritize their response according to the potential consequences of the event.

Threat detection and incident response

When SIEMs leverage machine learning, they can be a powerful tool to spot advanced threats — including those that the cybersecurity community hasn’t discovered. Since SIEMs are a centralized data processor, they can correlate events in separate parts of your system. This contributes to SIEMs’ ability to interpret suspicious activity; this activity may seem relatively innocent on its own, but when associated with other events, the data starts to show indicators of malicious activity.

Compliance

SIEMs are a great tool to determine your devices’ compliance status. They can create reports for use in a compliance audit, for regulations like:

  • HIPAA: The US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act protects medical records and other personal health information.
  • PCI DSS: The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards protect data related to credit card use.
  • GDPR: The EU General Data Protect Regulation governs how personal data is handled, giving users more control over their personal information.
  • SOX: The US Sarbanes-Oxley Act mandates how to handle financial information.
  • FERPA: The US Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act governs how student information can be accessed.

SIEMs and Mobile Device Management

Notifications and alerts from SIEMs tell admins when to take action. Remediating issues doesn’t happen within the SIEM — that’s where Mobile Device Management (MDM) comes in.
Organizations can integrate their SIEMs and MDM systems to correlate inventory data and respond to incidents. For instance, say your SIEM identifies a device with a vulnerable software version. With this data, your MDM can take action and update the software to help restore the device’s compliance status. MDMs also offer SIEMs rich inventory data that can be correlated with other events.

Why Do You Need an Incident Response Plan?

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Not long ago, many organizations thought that security incidents only affected others. However, the recent surge of cyber attacks targeting infrastructure used by thousands of organizations has revealed the vulnerabilities in information security practices. The consequences of a successful cyber attack can vary significantly, ranging from minor disruptions in business operations to severe financial and legal repercussions. Therefore, when incidents occur, it’s crucial to understand who is responsible for what. Having an effective incident response plan is essential to keep your actions organized and minimize operational risks.

An Incident Response Plan (IRP) is essential for organizations to effectively manage and mitigate security incidents. Here’s why having one is crucial:

1. Minimizes Damage and Downtime

  • A well-prepared IRP allows for quick containment and resolution of security breaches, reducing operational disruptions and financial losses.

2. Ensures Regulatory Compliance

  • Many industries, such as healthcare (HIPAA), finance (PCI-DSS), and government (NIST, GDPR), require an incident response plan to meet legal and regulatory obligations.

3. Protects Sensitive Data

  • A structured response helps prevent data breaches, reducing the risk of exposure for confidential business or customer information.

4. Enhances Incident Detection and Response

  • Clear guidelines help security teams quickly identify, analyze, and respond to threats before they escalate.

5. Reduces Financial and Reputational Impact

  • Cyber incidents can be costly, both in direct financial terms (fines, legal fees) and reputation loss. An IRP helps minimize these risks.

6. Facilitates Coordination and Communication

  • Provides a clear framework for internal teams and external stakeholders (law enforcement, customers, vendors) to follow during an incident.

7. Improves Post-Incident Learning

  • An IRP includes post-incident analysis to understand what happened, improve defenses, and prevent future occurrences.

8. Mitigates Legal Risks

  • A documented and well-executed response plan can demonstrate due diligence, potentially reducing liability in case of legal action.

What is PGP Encryption?

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PGP encryption (Pretty Good Encryption) is a data encryption program used to authenticate and provide cryptographic privacy for data transfers.

PGP encryption is used to secure all forms of data and digital transmissions. It’s capable of encrypting and decrypting:

Text messages

Emails

Computer files

Disk partitions

PGP is a quick-to-implement and cost-effective encryption method.

What’s the Difference Between PGP and OpenPGP

PGP was originally created to protect files posted on Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). This computerized messaging system allowed users to post messages onto a public message board using a dial-up modem. Bulletin Board Systems were used until the mid-nineties. The retirement of this technology led to PGP being sold multiple times before it was finally acquired by Symantec in 2010. OpenPGP (also known as Open-source PGP, was created by one of the PGP’s inventors, Phil Zimmerman, to overcome the patent restrictions preventing PGP’s liberal use. OpenPGP Standard is now the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) approved standard that permits any company to develop and sell PGP-compatible products. GoAnywhere Open is an example of one such solution that offers PGP encryption free of charge. GnuPG is a variant of OpenPGP. It’s also free, but its algorithm differs slightly from PGP. The downside to using this encryption standard over the Symantec-owned PGP is that it doesn’t come with technical support – the bane of all open-source software.

Benefits of PGP Encryption

PGP’s current popularity is due to its original availability as freeware and its long history – originally created in 1990. It’s now the standard form of encryption in finance, healthcare, technology, and other highly regulated industries.

PGP encryption offers the following security benefits:

Reduces the risk of data loss prevention.

Prevents information from being modified during the transfer.

Protects sensitive information from unauthorized access.

Allows the secure sharing of information with multiple parties.

Verifies the authenticity of email senders.

Prevents the recovery of deleted sensitive data.

Ensures email communications are not intercepted.

Protects emails from malicious compromise.

Very blunt learning curve – no training is required to achieve PGP encryption proficiency.

How Does PGP Encryption Work?

To secure sensitive data, PGP combines data compression, password hashing, symmetric-key cryptography, and public-key cryptography.

This feature list is a combination of two file encryption types:

Symmetric key encryption

Public-key encryption

The encryption algorithm can protect data in transit and at rest – especially when coupled with a threat detection solution. PGP assigns users at each end of the communication trajectory with randomly generated public and private keys. For sent messages to be successfully decrypted, they must be authenticated with specific private keys that only intended recipients will have.

The end-to-end process of PGP email security is described below:

Sender A requests to send Recipient B a secure email.

Recipient B generates a random PGP public key and private key.

Recipient B keeps the private key and transmits the public key to Sender A.

Sender A uses the recipient’s public key to encrypt the message before sending it.

Recipient B receives the encrypted message and decrypts it with its retained private key. ​

Recipient B reads the message.

This process prevents anyone without the correct key pair from decrypting intercepted messages.

What is the Red Team?

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The world has reached a point where you can’t live without technology. Technology to communicate, to travel, to escape unbearable weather, to have clean water, to ease up the digging of earth, to increase up the flames of fire, to have a cleansed and cool air, and so much more. Wherever you go, you’ll always find technology around you spread around like air. You complete most of the tasks using technology like shopping, selling, calling, messaging, listening to music, watching a movie, capturing a photograph, and the list goes on. Since the world runs on the effect of cause and causality, this digital and technical world has cons too. The flaws and vulnerabilities in technology become the cons in this world. These vulnerabilities are the reasons you fall victim to cyber crimes. The bigger reason for you to fall victim to cyber crimes is cyber criminals. This issue present in the world brings up the term “Red Team”.

Let’s discuss it. The first question that arises is, “What is Red Team?”.

“Red Team” is basically a term that focuses on the security of a system regardless of whether it is for an individual or an organization itself. “Red Team” is a military term that is given to a team of experts that specialize and prioritize in the penetration testing, assessment, and designing of secure systems. Red Teaming is a process that follows steps to detect vulnerabilities in a system or a network and exploit those vulnerabilities by stepping into the shoes of an attacker just to get to know how can an attacker exploit those vulnerabilities and intrude the system. Following the path of an attacker is an important step in red teaming because, by this step only, a designer can get to know how can an attacker intrude into a system and what steps will be necessary to prevent that intrusion.

There’s a lot of stuff across the world regarding cybersecurity. The question that is often asked is “Why is Red Team necessary?”.

Cyber threats have been spread all across the world causing trouble and harm to a huge population. There have been a lot of cyber attacks in the past that has cost a great loss of either money or life. There were attacks in past, there will be in the future. That’s how the world works. Therefore, it is necessary to take steps to prevent the attacks that are hovering above us. Red Teaming is necessary because of the way this process works. Security policies, efficient configuration, secure system and network designs, security patches applied, removal of vulnerabilities, and so much more layers are added into a system to make it secure and prevent it from being attacked. A thorough red teaming process will include testing of a system, a network and all the networking devices used in a system.

A lot of words but one thing in conclusion. Red Teaming is basically an overall process where all the steps are taken that are necessary to provide security.

How Penetration Testing Tools Can IT Support Engineers

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Nmap

Nmap, short for Network Mapper, is a reconnaissance tool that is widely used by ethical hackers to gather information about a target system. This information is key to deciding the proceeding steps to attack the target system. Nmap is cross-platform and works on Mac, Linux, and Windows. It has gained immense popularity in the hacking community due to its ease of use and powerful searching and scanning abilities.

Using Nmap you can:

  • Audit device security
  • Detect open ports on remote hosts
  • Network mapping and enumeration
  • Find vulnerabilities inside any network
  • Launch massive DNS queries against domains and subdomains

Wireshark

Wireshark is free open-source software that allows you to analyze network traffic in real-time. Thanks to its sniffing technology, Wireshark is widely known for its ability to detect security problems in any network, as well as for its effectiveness in solving general networking problems. While sniffing the network, you’re able to intercept and read results in a human-readable format, which makes it easier to identify potential problems (such as low latency), threats and vulnerabilities.

Main features:

  • Saves analysis for offline inspection
  • Packet browser
  • Powerful GUI
  • Rich VoIP analysis
  • Inspects and decompresses gzip files
  • Reads other capture file-formats including Sniffer Pro, Tcpdump, Microsoft network monitor, Cisco Secure IDS IP log, etc.
  • Exports results to XML, PostScript, CSV, or plain text

Wireshark supports up to 2000 different network protocols, and is available on all major operating systems including:

  • Linux
  • Windows
  • Mac OS X

Wapiti

Wapiti is a free open-source command-line based vulnerability scanner written in Python. While it’s not the most popular ethical hacking tool in this field, it does a good job of finding security flaws in many web applications. Using Wapiti can help you to discover security holes including:

  • XSS attacks
  • SQL injections
  • XPath injections
  • XXE injections
  • CRLF injections
  • Server-side request forgery

What are Best Practices for Data Security?

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Data security relies on defense-in-depth, so there are many parts to a best-in-class data security program. But what is sufficient in one industry may be criminally negligent in another.

Best practices should be adopted to achieve the industry’s minimal expected data security level.

1. Data Governance

Data governance is data management 101. Information is grouped into different buckets based on its sensitivity and legal requirements. To limit the risk of data exposure from leaked credentials, users should only have access to the least amount of data they need to do their job.

2. Secure Privileged Access Management

Secure Privileged Access Management (PAM) is integral to a data security strategy. PAM empowers organizations to control the permissions of all users so that sensitive data and intellectual property documentation are only accessible by those that absolutely require it. With a secure PAM strategy, cybercriminals will have difficulty accessing all sensitive data types if they breach an IT boundary. This is especially an important security control for highly regulated industries like healthcare.

3. Encryption

Encryption can protect against man-in-the-middle attacks and make it harder for potential attackers to gain unauthorized access to stored or in transit information. Never store sensitive data in plain text and avoid providing login credentials to websites that lack SSL certificates.

4. Education

Teach staff how to recognize common cyber threats to transform them into human firewalls Some of the most popular cyber threats staff should be aware of include: Phishing attacks, Email spoofing, Domain hijacking, Ransomware attacks, and Different forms of malware attacks, Social engineering attacks.

Besides cyberattacks, staff should also be trained in best cybersecurity practices such as avoiding public Wi-Fi networks and the basics of OPSEC and network security. The complexity of cyberattacks is rapidly rising, so it’s no longer acceptable to solely rely on antivirus programs to prevent malicious code injection. Cybersecurity train needs to become a standard inclusion in staff onboarding programs.

5. Data Security Testing

Test your organization’s data security by sending fake spearphishing campaigns and dropping USB traps around the office. Understand that it is easier to prevent data breaches than rely on digital forensics and IP attribution to understand what happened once a data breach has occurred. Once exposed, data can easily end up for sale on the dark web; many of the biggest data breaches end up there.

6. Incident Response Plan

When your security is compromised, the last thing your organization and your customers need is panic. An incident response plan can limit the amount of data exposed and outline clear next steps to recover lost data or close the attack vector.

7. Regular Data Backups

Ransomware attacks targeting data centers on-premises or accidental deletion devastated business continuity, but this can be avoided with regular backups and a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) program.

8. Secure Deletion

Avoid hoarding data no longer in use, including physical data like folders or paper documents. That said, comply with industry guidelines or regulations that dictate how long you must store data.

9. Third-Party and Fourth-Party Vendor Monitoring

Data breaches are often caused by poor security practices at third-party vendors; you need to monitor and rate your vendors’ security performance. An ideal solution should include a real-time automation component to security posture lapses to ensure that attack surface disturbances are rapidly addressed. According to the latest data breach report by IBM and the Ponemon Institute, automation controls could reduce data breach costs by up to 80%.

10. Accidental Data Exposures and Leaked Credentials Monitoring

Data isn’t always exposed on purpose; this is why it pays to continuously monitor your business for accidental data exposures and leaked credentials.

How to Store Data Securely on a USB Flash Drive

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It is strongly advised that you avoid storing confidential information on a USB flash drive and choose more secure storage devices to ensure the safety of your data. The compact size of USB flash drives makes them convenient to carry but also increases the chances of losing or stealing them. This vulnerability poses a severe threat of data loss, leaks, and breaches, which can result in significant financial loss and damage to the reputation of organizations.

Using a flash drive, follow these 7 tips to secure your data.

  1. Buy an Encrypted USB.

Encryption secures sensitive data by making it accessible only to those with a decryption key. When purchasing a flash drive, opt for a military-grade one with 256-bit AES hardware encryption, the most robust algorithm.

Other features to look for in an encrypted USB flash drive include:

  • Tamper-proof protection
  • Anti-virus scanning
  • Brute-force protection
  • Password protection
  • TAA Compliance
  • Remote management capabilities
  • FIPS 140-2 Certification (Level 3)
  • Compliance with industry security standards, such as HIPAA, SOX, and GLBA.

2. Use USB Encryption Software.

Microsoft Windows users can use BitLocker to encrypt their flash drives instead of buying an encrypted flashdrive. Note that encryption hardware provides better security than software.

Microsoft’s instructions for enabling BitLocker are available below:

View instructions for enabling BitLocker in Windows 10
View instructions for enabling BitLocker in Windows 11‍

3. Have a Backup

You may only recover the stored data if your flash drive is recovered, stolen, or damaged. Even if a lost or stolen flash drive is returned, you shouldn’t use it again as it could potentially have ransomware or another type of malware installed. The best assurance of recovering the data on your flash drive is to have a backup of all files saved in another storage location, such as cloud storage.

4. Delete Data After Use.

After you have saved, edited, and transferred your data from a USB stick, it is recommended that you delete it immediately. You should then remove the flash drive from the USB port and store it securely to prevent any possibility of losing it or having it stolen.

5. Install Anti-Virus Protection

With different types of malware emerging daily, keeping your software up-to-date is crucial. Use antivirus software that offers malware protection across all endpoints, including hard drives, USB devices, and SD cards – one can infect all.

6. Keep Software Up to Date

Zero-day exploits take advantage of unpatched software vulnerabilities – a common attack vector that can have devastating consequences. Cybercriminals can easily access, edit, and steal data from vulnerable systems and devices, including USB storage. Installing software updates as soon as possible prevents cybercriminals from taking advantage of these vulnerabilities. Most operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS / Apple iOS, and Linux, offer auto-updates to ensure you remain protected.

7. Use Alternative Storage Methods

Flash drives, there are better answers than not to take your data security seriously. Even the most secure USB drives differ from modern data storage methods, like cloud storage. Cloud services offer many innovative security features, such as the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). SASE is a cloud security model that leverages firewalls, cloud access service brokers (CASBs), secure web gateways (SWG), and zero-trust network access (ZTNA). Cloud security mechanisms include Cloud Security Posture Management and Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM).

Despite their strong security capabilities, like all third-party vendors, cloud services carry third-party risks and other risks specific to their functionality. Organizations and individuals must conduct due diligence to ensure their cloud providers are following appropriate data security requirements.