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Every industry has its buzzwords and acronyms. When I transitioned from working for the Navy to working in cyber security, I learned that many of the terms I knew meant different things in cyber than they did in DoD.
In the state of Kentucky for example, the acronym CVE stands for “Commercial Vehicle Enforcement” which is a state police program to promote safe driving, particularly for commercial vehicles. (I am a big fan of this especially after I was stuck on the side of I-64 with a blown tire two weeks ago while tractor-trailers were zooming by at 80 mph and NOT moving to the left lane…but I digress.)
However, in the cyber security arena, CVE refers to “Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures.“ But what does that mean in English?
The CVE list is a database of publicly disclosed cyber security vulnerabilities that, if not patched or otherwise fixed, may be exploited by cyber criminals to breach your network.
Most cyber security and information technology professionals are very familiar CVE alerts and may receive notifications from various organizations. For local governments, the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) sends out email alerts with CVE notifications that may impact local governments. These MS-ISAC alerts also identify the level of threat to large, medium, and small government entities as well as large, medium, and small businesses.
The latest and most critical is CVE-2022-30190, also known as “Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool Vulnerability”. The MS-ISAC alert indicated the threat level for all entities is HIGH.
Unfortunately, there is no patch for this vulnerability. However, there are steps that can be taken to protect your system. These are described in the alerts that IT administrators should have access to. Additionally, any system that has comprehensive cyber security protections will have EDR and other technologies implemented that can detect exploits of these vulnerabilities before damage is done.
All counties and businesses should contact their IT staff to ensure they are implementing the workarounds. Your cyber security team should already be aware of and working to protect you from this threat.