With a growing number of threat sources and successful cybersecurity attacks, organizations find themselves in a tricky spot if they wish to survive cyberspace. Oftentimes, the adversaries are not the challenge; the obstacle is the organization’s culture. Just like culture influences who we are as a people, culture influences the cybersecurity tone of an organization. Every organization has its own unique fit and feel.
The purpose of every security team is to provide confidentiality, integrity and availability of the systems in the organization. We call it “CIA Triad” for short. Of those three elements, integrity is a key element for most compliance and regulations. Some organizations have realized this and decided to implement File Integrity Monitoring (FIM). But many of them are doing so only to meet compliance requirements such as PCI DSS and ISO 27001.
Have you ever worked with a company that operates as “close to broken” as reasonably possible? Companies that follow that mindset usually do not have the most robust security practice, and they certainly will walk very close to the edge of compliance. Even if you don’t work in such a dysfunctional enterprise as described above, many companies still do not appreciate the interconnection of security and compliance.
We see the word “cyber” everywhere today. It’s included in all the hashtags, events names and even in hand sanitizer available for purchase at Toys ‘R Us: Cyber Clean (72% ethanol alcohol, with aloe.) With the market booming and the buzzword exploding, many of us still don’t understand what this vague word means.
Business Email Compromise (BEC) scammers, who have made rich returns in recent years tricking organisations into transferring funds into their accounts, have found a new tactic which attempts to swindle Wall Street firms out of significantly larger amounts of money. According to a newly published-report by Agari, scammers are seeking to defraud Wall Street businesses and their customers out of US $809,000 on average per incident.
As Marcus Hutchins was on his way home to the UK after attending Def Con and Black Hat in Las Vegas, NV, the FBI arrested him. This event sparked immediate internet outcry, especially among the cybersecurity community, as Hutchins was better known as MalwareTech and had just made cybersecurity fame by stopping the WannaCry ransomware outbreak a few months prior. So, why did the FBI arrest a newly famous cybersecurity expert?
Ransomware today is a billion-dollar industry. It’s crippled industries like healthcare. In 2017, for instance, WannaCry brought much of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service to its knees using the EternalBlue exploit. It was just a few weeks later when the NotPetya ransomware strain leveraged that same vulnerability to attack lots of industries.
Have you ever noticed how closely your role as the CISO of your organisation resembles that of the Wizard from “The Wizard of Oz?” As the Wizard, you are expected to be all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful. Your role is to keep everyone safe from the evils of the world while frantically pulling levers, pressing buttons and turning dials behind the curtain.
Misconfigurations remain one of the most common risks in the technology world. Simply telling organisations to “fix” this problem, however, is not as easy as it might first seem because there’s a myriad of technologies at play in modern infrastructure deployments. All of this results in a complicated mix of hardening approaches for each system. What is key, then, is to identify where hardening is required and then consider the methodology for each area.
I subscribe to a newsletter from Gary Burnison, CEO of Korn Ferry. His messages address a wide variety of career and personal issues in a thoughtful and educational manner. A recent Special Edition message was titled Exceeding Potential. It specifically addressed how opportunities present themselves and how to view and leverage them. He closed his message with this statement: It’s true that leaders are in the “what,” “how,” and the “when” business.
