When I first started researching ATT&CK last year, Persistence was the tactic which made me fall in love. Even though I have been in the industry for some time, I learned more from digging into the various techniques here than any other tactic. While I knew about fun tricks like replacing sethc.exe with cmd.exe and hitting the shift key a bunch of times from a lock screen, there were many other techniques that were brand new to me.
We all know there are a number of different security devices that need to be continually monitored because they represent attack vectors. That’s why understanding configuration management is critical to security hygiene. As practitioners, we need to adhere to CIS controls as they provide a critical baseline for maintaining our security framework and keeping up our integrity monitoring processes.
New technologies often present interesting challenges for security teams, with cloud services such as AWS, Azure and GCP providing particularly novel cases in comparison to “classic” on-premise systems. As cloud services race to add new features that drive new customer interest and increase retention of existing clients, there is a very real risk of exposing new threat vectors to the business if even the most minor of misconfigurations occurs.
Amidst all the pandemic doom and gloom, we finally have something positive come from the chaos: NERC filed a motion recently (April 6, 2020) to defer three Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Reliability Standards (as well as 1 PER, and 3 PRC standards) for three months due to the national emergency declared on March 13th by President Trump. As the original implementation date was July 1, 2020, this means that should FERC approve the motion, the new implementation date would be October 1, 2020.
One item that comes up a lot in conversations is how security teams or IT teams struggle to speak the “business language” to business leaders, mainly to members of the senior leadership that make the final decisions on spending and investments. This problem could have its roots in IT, and later security, teams historically having their management lines within the accounting department, ultimately being accountable to the Chief Financial Officer.
Digital fraudsters have seized upon coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) as a lure for their new scams and attack campaigns. Together, these malicious operations constitute nothing short of a deluge. Barracuda revealed that it spotted 9,116 coronavirus-themed spear-phishing emails between March 1 and March 23, 2020—a 667% increase over the 1,188 attacks detected a month earlier. By comparison, the security firm spotted just 137 coronavirus-themed email campaigns in January.
Why leveraging live environment simulations and putting ICS tools to the test is the best way to evaluate their fitness. Track and field was one of my favorite sports growing up. I didn’t begin competitively participating until I was a teenager, but I was instantly hooked once I started. Why? Because the clock didn’t lie. The tape measure didn’t lie. The fastest time always won, and the longest throw always won. I like to think of ICS security tools in a similar way.
What’s happened? Well, Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) happened. Okay, smart alec. I know about that. What else is going on? Well, because so many people are (wisely) staying at home, they’re using videoconferencing and chat technology like Zoom to keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues. In fact, Zoom says that daily usage has soared from approximately 10 million daily meeting participants in December 2019 to over 200 million today. Zoom must be pleased. I’m sure they are.
The current pandemic has certainly shown the utility of electronic collaboration tools such as videoconferencing platforms. Once an expensive perk of solely enterprise companies, the video call is now used not only for executives remotely attending board meetings but also for the following... At the moment, it’s important for public health that everyone stays distant from one another.
