News

By Matthew Newton, Director of Investigations and Crisis Response, Valkyrie Last month, we posted about the lack of understanding involved in surveillance taskings. In a follow up to that post we thought we’d highlight another surveillance related issue – the importance of ‘reporting on what you see, and not what someone wants you to see […]

By Gurpreet Thathy, Director of Cyber Security and Electronic Countermeasures, Valkyrie TIK-TOK ongoing security concerns TikTok (TT), best known for short videos that are recommended to users through a recommendation algorithm, is used by more than 15m adults in the UK who spend an average of 30mins a day on the app. In Nov 22, […]

Happy Christmas from all at Valkyrie. To our clients, contacts, followers, industry partners and friends your business and support during 2022 has been very much appreciated, many thanks. Onward and upward into 2023! Enjoy Christmas but stay ‘cyber-safe’ during the break. Remain vigilant and report any suspicious emails Take your time when it comes to […]

By David Webb, Managing Director, Valkyrie As mentioned in our previous two posts, we’ve been onsite for the past two days conducting various tasks. As a routine part of any audit/inspection we conduct be it technical, physical or cyber we always report to the client findings in regard to basic lapses in security that may […]

Another busy day onsite for a client today. As they headed into the Christmas break, the client was keen to ensure their home and vehicles were free of compromise. This client had several vehicles to check and was particularly interested in how we were searching them. He asked some probing questions, including, ‘why we had […]

By Gurpreet Thathy, Director of Cyber Security and Electronic Countermeasures, Valkyrie Today Valkyrie conducted an early morning CTSCM (Cyber Technical Surveillance and Counter Measures) Inspection. Our long-standing client asked us to do a CTSCM on their private residence in London. The property had 26 access points which we had to locate and remunerate. We used […]

By Gurpreet Thathy, Director of Cyber Security and Electronic Countermeasures, Valkyrie Google has announced that corporate users of its email service will soon benefit from a new security feature that should help prevent data from falling into the wrong hands. As revealed at Google Cloud Next, the company’s annual cloud computing showcase, both Gmail and Google Calendar are set to receive […]

As the Christmas season is rapidly approaching, I thought I’d post some interesting facts about Christmas, which you may not know. There is no mention of Dec 25th anywhere in the Bible, in fact there is no mention of when Jesus was born at all. There was much debate amongst early Christians, and it wasn’t […]

By Gurpreet Thathy, Director of Cyber Security and Electronic Countermeasures, Valkyrie Apple on Tuesday (13th Dec) rolled out security updates to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and Safari web browser to address a new ‘zero-day vulnerability’. The company said it’s “aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS […]

By Matthew Newton, Director of Investigations and Crisis Response, Valkyrie Two weeks ago, we had a surveillance tasking in London that we thought was worth posting about. The task was reasonably straight forward – stakeout an address and confirm/deny whether an individual was staying/living there. The interesting part in regard to this tasking, which we […]

By Matthew Newton, Director of Investigations and Crisis Response, Valkyrie Op Elaborate is the UK’s largest-ever proactive fraud operation. The Met Police has led an international investigation targeting a website that enabled criminals to disguise their phone numbers and commit fraud, a practice known as ‘spoofing’. Criminals try to steal personal info by making it […]

By Gurpreet Thathy, Director of Cyber Security and Electronic Countermeasures, Valkyrie Another weekend overseas tasking, this time a forensic collection – Gatwick looking ‘sort of Christmassy’ on the way out. The client briefed us on the requirement and devices involved. However when we arrived and spoke to the client they had additional devices that needed […]

Yesterday, after a rather cold day on a surveillance tasking and then attending the SCI tenants Christmas drinks we went for a ‘bevvy’ in the Star Tavern just behind our office. Dave commented that he thought the word ‘tavern’ was a great word and asked me if I knew the origins of the word. Like […]

Regularly on my commute to the office, I notice poorly secured laptop bags, rucksacks over shoulders and open, and people busy on their devices giving would-be thieves the potential opportunity to steal belongings. In addition, leaving devices on a bus/train or in a café by mistake is unfortunately far too common. Speaking to Dave about […]

We conducted a physical penetration test (PPT) last month. The client gave us a 2-week window to collect intel and execute the PPT. During the reconnaissance phase, our team quickly identified that the office aspect on the 1st floor faced out over a busy road (not uncommon for offices). From the road you could identify […]