A 'BYO' Too Far?

Undoubtedly, most of you will have seen the amazing story about the developer who secretly outsourced his own role to China, investing 20% of his annual salary to free up almost all his work time. The ruse came to light when the firm, who were pushing forward with a more flexible working package, noticed anomalous VPN activity and called in their telecom provider to investigate. The logs indicated that their lead programmer, "Bob," was apparently regularly telecommuting from Shenyang despite being peacefully sat at his desk surfing the Internet for amusing cat videos.

It transpires that "Bob" had FedExed his SecurID token to China and was allowing the remote development company VPN access to his employer's network so that they could do his day job for him.

Irrespective of the terrible security implications here, and they are pretty horrid, "Bob" was delivering high-quality code to schedule.  In fact, his performance review regularly identified him as the best developer they had!  And what "Bob" did here was not difficult – many sites offer the services of dedicated professionals such as developers, designers, proofreaders, even lawyers, for a small price.

In a business environment where we encourage flexible working, allow personal devices, and seek to incentivize workers for innovation, excellence, and performance, "Bob" could be held up as a role model, but at what cost to the enterprise?

Read more

The Atlantic Ocean Divides Financial Aspirations For CISOs In 2013

 

As 2012 came to a close, we studied the financial position of many CISOs and asked about their expectations for 2013. Unsurprisingly, it was apparent that 2012 was another difficult year and that CISOs had been keeping their belts tight once again. When compared with the other IT departments, however, it became clear that this budgetary flat-line actually represented quite a success, as 2012 had seen most other teams face further cutbacks and spending restrictions.

When we looked ahead to 2013, we saw the usual hopeful optimism from the CISOs – proving once again that any allegation of a correlation between ‘pessimists’ and ‘security professionals’ is complete nonsense.  It was interesting, however, to note a marked difference in attitudes dependent upon which side of the Atlantic the respondent was located.  Put simply, North American based CISOs had a much more buoyant view of security related finances in 2013 than their European peers.

 

Read more

The Elephant And The Internet

A little while ago I bumped into a journalist friend at a trade conference. We chatted about the event to try and identify hot topics and trends from our discussions and supplier meetings, and both sat there deflated when the stories that came to the surface were the same old ones of fear-mongering around APT and “cyber” threats.

CISOs have a habit of missing the boat,” I said, thinking of how virtualization, social media, and consumerization had all crept into wide-scale adoption before many security teams had managed to turn their attention to them, “so, what topic should we be looking ahead to that CISOs are not talking about?” This question was much more interesting and we came to realize that the elephant that is currently pushing its way into the room is the Internet of Things (IoT).

My friend pointed out that he had raised this topic with several CISOs and was surprised at their lack of appreciation for the potential change that the IoT could bring to industry, consumers, and the Security & Risk (S&R) role — as the digital and physical world entwine, for example, we can envisage huge safety risks that the CISO would be best placed to address. We also decided that the stakes were surprisingly high, as the IoT has the potential to revolutionize technology innovation to such an extent that the eCommerce and social media bubbles will appear both sluggish and trivial by comparison.

Read more

CISOs Need To CYA - 'Comprehend Your Assets'

I recently went for coffee with a very interesting gentleman who had previously been responsible for threat and vulnerability management in a global bank – our conversation roamed far and wide but kept on circling back to one or two core messages – the real fundamental principles of information security. One of these principles was “know your assets.”

Asset management is something that many CISO tend to skip over, often in the belief that information assets are managed by the business owners and hardware assets are closely managed by IT. Unfortunately, I’m not convinced that either of these beliefs is true to any great extent.

Take, for example, Anonymous’ recent hack of a forgotten VM server within AAPT’s outsourced infrastructure. VM "sprawl" is one of the key risks that Forrester discusses, and this appears to be a classic example – a virtual server created in haste and soon forgotten about. Commonly, as these devices fall off asset lists, they get neglected – malware and patching updates are skipped and backups are overlooked – yet they still exist on the network. It’s the perfect place for an attacker to sit unnoticed and, if the device exists in a hosted environment, it can also have the negative economic impact of monthly cost and license fees. One anecdote I heard was of a system administrator who, very cautiously and very successfully, disabled around 200 orphaned virtual servers in his organisation – with no negative business impact whatsoever.

Read more

Go Beyond Technology To Build An Effective Security Practice

It’s common knowledge that the security landscape has shifted over the past few years and the once-strong perimeters that CISOs relied upon have become stretched, fragmented, and overrun by increasingly mature attackers. There are many reasons for this change — from the increasing value of intellectual property and ideas to the business’ desire for agility and flexibility  — but it comes down to the fact that the technology controls that CISOs are so used to deploying simply can’t stay ahead of the threats.

Increasingly, Security & Risk (S&R) Professionals are being asked not only to protect the organization from hackers but also to protect their organization’s brand and competitive advantage whilst enabling efficient and agile business processes. In this environment, we need to realize that technology is just one piece of an increasingly complex puzzle, and it’s a puzzle we have to solve without ever saying “no.” As one security expert Forrester interviewed put it, the right question is “How do I make sure this boat doesn’t crash?”; it isn’t, “How do I make sure this boat doesn’t even reach the ocean?”

It’s essential that CISOs shift their focus beyond technology to the wider spectrum of responsibilities that comprise an effective security practice. By redefining the situation and evolving their role, S&R professionals can:

Read more

Categories:

Is The Time Right To Spread Your Risk?

For many years, security professionals have lived by the three pillars of risk management – AVOID, TREAT, ACCEPT.  These great tenets have served the profession well, enabling CISOs to build appropriately secure networks at a tolerable level of cost. Unfortunately, as evidenced by the litany of security breaches we have seen over the past 12 months, it’s clear that the landscape is changing.  More than ever before, security is clearly a ‘no-win’ game.

The high profile attackers, state-sponsored or otherwise, are one threat – but it goes deeper than this.  The keys to the kingdom are no longer in the hands of the generals and policy makers; their decisions and discussions are enabled by email, IM and IP telephony, all of which sit firmly in the domain of the IT department and system admin – and stressed, poorly paid employees do not make the ideal custodians of such critical information. As an example, Anonymous claims to have access to every classified government database in the US, but they didn’t hack them – disaffected system administrators and employees simply opened the doors for them, or sent them the access codes. 

As the broadening gap between our ambitions for a secure enterprise and our abilities to deliver on such a vision become self-evident, the time has come to pay equal attention to the poor cousin of risk management, “TRANSFER.”  For many CISOs, risk transference is a topic that is largely theoretical as, even when a task is outsourced, the risk associated with a breach commonly remains with the data owning organisation. Cyber insurance offers a different solution.

Read more

The Psychology Of Bad News

 

Last night I stumbled across a documentary on BBC2 (content only available to UK residents – sorry!) about the human brain. One section talked about how the brain perceived risk issues – obviously an interesting topic for security folk!

A test subject was placed into a brain scanner and asked to estimate the likelihood of 80 different negative events occurring to him in the future – from developing cancer, to his house being burgled, to breaking a leg etc.  Once he had stated his opinion, the real likelihood was then displayed to him.

At the end of the 80 events, the process resets and the subject is presented with the same events and asked to, once again, state his perceived likelihood, although this time with some knowledge of the actual answers.

The results are surprising. 

Where his initial response had been too pessimistic, the test subject adjusted his perception to align with the actual likelihood. However, where he had initially been too optimistic, his opinion remain largely unchanged by the facts! It was apparent that the brain proactively maintained a ‘rose-tinted’ view of the risks, accommodating a more optimistic view but shunning anything more negative.

The scientists argued that this was the brain did this for two main reasons

1 – To minimise stress and anxiety, for the resultant health benefits; and

2 – Because an optimistic outlook helps drive success, support ambition and keep humanity striving for a better future.

Read more

Starving The Golden Goose

The new revolution in apps and social media continues at a stunning rate. Nearly every day a colleague tells me of another app or site that is bubbling up and about to hit the big time. Many will not break through, but some will capture the imagination and become the next generation of YouTube and Facebook.

The behaviour of certain apps/sites, however, gives me some cause for concern. As a recent entrant to Pinterest, I was alarmed to note that the site takes a copy of the pinned image and serves that from its own servers. The burden of managing copyright issues seems to sit firmly with the users, most of whom never give such legislation a second thought. There is a method for removing content however, unsurprisingly, it’s not half as simple as pinning new content.  Pinterest’s terms and conditions are also interesting, giving it “irrevocable, perpetual, royalty-free” permission to “exploit” member content.

The Pinterest site is building its value on other people’s content — which is fine as long as those people have consented.  I recently looked at some interesting Infographics pinned on the site, all of which must have taken considerable resources to put together, yet I never once needed to visit the source site, which may have perhaps triggered advertising income vital to enabling them to continue their work. I wonder if they even realize their content is available in this way?  

Read more

Security Pros Need To Value Pragmatism Above All Else

Last night I attended a vendor presentation about cloud-based risk and the threat from nation state attacks. Unfortunately, due to a busy schedule and a difficult journey, I arrived just as the final presentation moved to its Q&A stage. Listening to a Q&A session when I had no idea what the content of the presentation had been was actually quite an interesting experience, unfortunately not for all the best reasons.  A section of the audience immediately dived into the detail and tried to find fault with the solutions that had evidently been outlined. They poked and prodded the presenter until she admitted that no solution was 100% and, yes, there were ways to mount a successful attack even with her recommendations in place. At that point, the questioners sat back in their seats, triumphant – they had won.  There seemed little interest in continuing the conversation to figure out ways to minimize the remaining risk, and their body language suggested that they had mentally discounted everything that had been said.

I was a little disappointed by this. Some S&R pros seem to treat information security as an academic exercise, a challenge where the best argument wins and security is a mere footnote. These folk are often also the ones who overreact to very complex, and very unlikely, technical threat scenarios while overlooking behaviors and processes that may be fundamentally flawed. They appear unhappy with any security solution that isn’t perfect. I had hoped that we all recognized that good security was not about hitting a home-run; it’s much more about applying the 80/20 rule over and over again, iteratively reducing the risk to the organization.

Read more

Open & Honest - Should Breach Disclosure Be Mandatory?

A few months ago I shared a flight with a very pleasant lady from a European regulatory body.  After shoulder surfing her papers and seeing we were both interested in information security (ironic paradox acknowledged!) we had a long chat about how enterprises could stand a chance against the hacktivist and criminal hordes so intent on stealing their data.

My flight-buddy felt that the future lay in open and honest sharing between organisations – i.e. when one is hacked they would immediately share details of both the breach and the method with their peers and wider industry; this would allow the group to look for similar exploits and prepare to deflect similar attacks. Being somewhat cynical, and having worked in industry, I felt that such a concept was idealised and that organisations would refuse to share such information for fear of reputational or brand damage – she acknowledged that it was proving tougher than she had expected to get her organisations to  join in with this voluntary disclosure!

Across the US and Europe we are seeing a move toward ‘mandatory’breach disclosure; however they have seemingly disparate intentions.  US requirements focus on breaches that may impact an organisations financial condition or integrity, whilst EU breach notification is very focussed on cases where there may have been an exposure of personal data.  Neither of these seem to be pushing us toward this nirvana of ‘collaborative protection’.

In the UK, I’m aware that the certain organizations, within specific sectors, will share information within their small closed communities, unfortunately this is not widespread and certainly does not reflect the concept of ‘open and honest’ as my flight-buddy would have envisaged.

Read more
Syndicate content