No Direction

By cliangNo Comments
The principle of governance is to enforce processes are conducted consistently per established and approved policies or directions in an organization. That way, the business outcomes are also consistent. Some incompetent cyber security practitioners I have seen are just play by ear to spell out requirements for what they think is more secure. without considering practicality and the underlying overheads. An example is to keep an register to record which OT system uses USB thumb drive. All OT systems use USB because of isolated network environment for file exchange. The key point is how to manage the use of USB securely rather than keeping such a register. We must ask how much protection is increased by adding protection (no matter technical control or administrative control) and will more risks be introduced if not doing so. We must stick to the established policies. If there are "bugs" in the policies, admit it. Schedule revisions with stakeholders involved to align with...
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Trust #4

By cliangNo Comments
A machine in the corner of the mall for digital currency exchange. Whether you use it or not is a kind of risk taking because you don't know what is behind the machine, who operates it, any proper business license to protect your money if things go wrong. In digital world, we must not solely put focus just on cyber protection. Every aspect counts towards a secure business model. From the digital currency operator's perspective, secure cyber protection is not enough. Physical security, anti-tampering to manipulate network connection, I/O port interfaces and so on are all attack vectors. From he customer perspective, trustworthy of the machine is the prime concern. ...
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Physics #3

By cliangNo Comments
In automation world, cyber components control the machinery or the physical portion. Examples of machinery are turbine, passenger lift, vehicle, vessel, aircraft, vehicle, entry control etc. I have seen certain cyber security practitioners who solely put focus on the cyber part and ignore the physical part. That's no ideal. We MUST treat both portions with sufficient protection and good operating conditions. If the components are very cyber secure while the physical wear and tear conditions are ignored, this is just like the "operation is successfully but the patient is dead". ...
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Clarity

By cliangNo Comments
Policies must be written precisely. That said, clarity is essential or otherwise it will create dispute, confusion in policy enforcement, audit exercise. The illustration has different interpretations: Apartment solely for retired government officials Government managed apartment for senior citizen If this appears in policy statement, it is not ideal. ...
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Protocol

By cliangNo Comments
Protocol requires proper data format and valid ranges in different preset fields per design to work properly. Threat actors are trying to manipulate the different fields and data ranges in order to exploit weakness of underlying process to handle the protocol. Just like the illustrated locks. It allow dual admins to unlock it where each admin has own access key. If a "malicious" admin who does not follow the protocol to make the locks in series but putting them in parallel, then access is denied to other admin because unlock will require both keys at the same time. Therefore, when we talk about security, there are lots of considerations: robustness of the process enforceable by strong technology with people acting honestly and all driven by laws & regulations (or organization policies). Protection is beyond encryption, firewall, system hardening. These are evadable.Most said human is the weakess link. Yes, this is still true but we must include factors like Incompetent cybersecurity practitioners providing recommendations without...
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Freedom

By cliangNo Comments
This is relatively speaking. Freedom is granted to certain extend. In physical world, what stops us doing bad things? It's the laws & regulations that stipulate us behave properly. For religious, there are further moral obligations to follow, say, The Ten Commandments. Then how about in the space of digital world? We are all interacting with others in the metaverse. Cyber crimes are more complex to settle because it is cross jurisdiction. We are free to use many cyber resources but that does mean we can abuse. Network activities are mostly traceable. We have to exercise the proper behaviors, be suspicious of unknown requests, learn from others' incident in keeping us as well as our connected peers safe (secure). ...
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Warning Message #2

By cliangNo Comments
In physical world, warning sign is to alert you in keeping you safe. In cyber world, warning message might be abused as phishing attack or scam because it makes use of general public not able to differentiate if real or fake. What can we do to stay cyber secure? Some tips: Be vigilant to alerts, validate as much as possible or refer to persons with sufficient knowledge what's about Maintain your devices with latest version and necessary security patches Do not install unnecessary tools, or tools from source with doubt (social network, discussion forum, advertisement) Do not bypass system built-in feature, e.g. root or jailbreak the device to run codes from other sources ...
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Defeated Control #2

By cliangNo Comments
Other than controls must be enforceable, controls must also be robust because a defeated control will be an access gateway by threat actor. Threat actors will try to evade controls to reach the jewel. Therefore, controls will need regular status check. In physical world, guard patrol is needed to observe the actual situation. With more assets staying in cyber, cyber controls will need regular verification to remain their intended purpose. This could be achieved via multiple means depending on the protected value: Regular authenticated with time of date sequence to the central station Periodic assessment to validate if false positive or false negative Red team exercise as unannounced drill for readiness of the entire protection suite ...
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Availability

By cliangNo Comments
Typical security objectives of cybersecurity are confidentiality, integrity and availability. It's just how they are prioritized in dealing with different use cases. Confidentiality is per the associated information classification to derive the necessary protection. Integrity protection is to understand consequence thru risk assessment what info entities need to protect. Then what about availability? I saw a cybersecurity practitioner developed security policy by copying textbook definition - simply to ensure information is available at all time. Without a measurement, it is not practically achievable. We have to define information must be available per the service pledge. Then, give certain margin in the service pledge with definition availability excludes planned outage for maintenance, achieving say 99.99% at all time. This is the foundation to establish cost-optimal resilience to achieve the committed target. ...
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Architect

By cliangNo Comments
In physical world, an architect is "a person whose job is to design new buildings and make certain that they are built correctly", Cambridge. If this definition applies to digital world, the system architect is to ensure the system is built correctly per business requirement. Extending to cybersecurity, the cybersecurity architect is to ensure proper protection is incorporated in the digital landscape. Most often, cyber protections are overkilled. I come across an example that USB thumb drive carrying publicly downloaded security patches requires encryption because company policy only allows encrypted drive. On the IT side, there is no issue because patches are downloaded from IT machine with Internet access. But when transferring files to the OT side, it will create issue because decryption will need running special program in the USB "public" drive where OT environment is lock down. Further, the objective of encryption is to protect sensitive information in the USB because contents could be disclosed when lost. If dedicated USB...
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