FLASH TRAFFIC: This just in!

The Washington Post is reporting a new wrinkle in cyberwarfare. In the article Defense official discloses cyberattack, the Post reports that “malicious code placed on the [flash] drive by a foreign intelligence agency uploaded itself onto a network run by the U.S. military's Central Command.” Perhaps SkyNet has become self-aware, as this malware appears to be able to “upload” itself onto a military network. We ARE nearing August 29^th…

Fascinating. Blame the flash drive. Expect the USB bashing to start again soon. SysAdmins all over will be buying up the world’s supply of epoxy and shoving those nasty USB ports full of that goop. Go long on glue manufacturers.

According to Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III, "It was a network administrator's worst fear: a rogue program operating silently, poised to deliver operational plans into the hands of an unknown adversary." This must be one awesome piece of code – sentient, silent, and “poised.”

There has been an interesting PR battle in Washington over the last few weeks about the number of massive regulations still on the administration's agenda. House Minority Leader John Boehner wrote a memo to President Obama citing a list of 191 proposed rules expected to have a more than $100 million impact on the economy (each!) and asking for clarification on the number of these pending rules that would surpass the $1 billion mark. The acting head of the Office of Management and Budget responded, saying that the number of "economically significant bills" passed last year actually represented a downward trend, and the current number on the agenda is more like 13.

For those of you wanting a little more clarification, you can search through the OMB's Unified Agenda and Regulatory Plan by economic significance, key terms, entities affected, and other criteria. Making sense of all of these proposed rules will take time, but it will help you get an idea of issues that your organization may have to face in the near future.

Coincidentally, my latest report, The Regulatory Intelligence Battlefield Heats Up, went live yesterday. In this paper, I offer an overview of different available resources to keep up with new and changing regulations as well as relevant legal guidance.

Internet security vendor BitDefender recently published the results of a study that found, unsurprisingly, that “75 percent of social networking username and password samples collected online were identical to those used for email accounts.” The SecurityWeek story reporting on the BitDefender study also noted that the report “advised users to be extra careful while creating passwords for social networking and email accounts and avoid using the same password just for the sake of convenience.”

The key word here is convenience. From the perspective of most consumers (and many enterprise employees), re-using the same password produces the most economic utility. This is the “Poor Man’s Single Sign-On” strategy (PM-SSO). It costs nothing to implement, requires the user to learn no new technologies or change habits, and is a relatively error-free operation. Moreover, the downside risks are low. With respect to identity theft, for example, most credit card issuers will refund your money if they determine your identity was stolen online. So speaking rationally, why wouldn’t you do this instead of fooling around with CardSpace, Norton Identity Safe, OAuth, OpenID, Facebook Connect or any number of enterprise SSO tools? Exactly.

Of course, from the security practitioner’s viewpoint, this is a rotten idea. It is insecure! It exposes you to risks! And it places you at the mercy of identity thieves, scammers and those nasty people that BitDefender (not to mention Mr. McAfee and Mr. Norton) has been talking about for years. Plus it is just not the right thing to do! ...somehow.

 I had the pleasure of attending Open Group Conference Boston just two weeks ago. Historically, this conference aims at bringing enterprise architects together from various industries to talk about important architectural issues. This time around, they dedicated track sessions to the security topic. Among other things, I had an opportunity to record a podcast with Dana Gardner, Gen. Harry Raduege, and Jim Hietala on the topic of cyber security.

You can listen to the full podcast at the Forrester page as well as catch the synopsis of the conversation at Dana Gardner’s blog. 

Cyber security has gained quite a bit of attention in the past year or so. Although the concept has been discussed for almost a decade, the evolving nature of threats has created lots of buzz recently. There are numerous threat vectors and thus, diverse targets. Increasingly, data espionage, identity theft, cyber attacks on the critical infrastructure, denial of service (DDOS), and advanced persistent threats (APT) are coming to the surface. Public and private sectors alike are concerned about the targeted attacks that are aimed at stealing confidential data, which produces a domino effect and harms companies' brand names and operations.  

In the past 18 months we have seen many examples and scenarios that highlight the cyber security discussion. For instance: