Sense of Security

By cliangNo Comments
This is largely based on preception and trust. How do I trust if the infrastructure or system is secure? We need to look at these core elements: Any regulatory mandate in this industry sector? Pick public transportation as example, mandatory insurance coverage, regular inspection for license renewal, periodic operator training, compliance with safety regulations etc.How well is the service provider doing among peers? Let's say, the type and severity or incidents of this provider in past years among others, rating from customer reviews and comments.How does the service provider demonstrate what has been done to secure? Common examples are personal data handling transparency via the published privacy policy, alert end user on login from other rare locations, security tips in their official portal, committed service level pledge. All the above are applied in both the physical and cyber worlds. ...
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Risk Taking

By cliangNo Comments
We can't have 100% secure solution in the course of business. We need to evalate risk and reduce to acceptable level to achieve our mission. The hard part is an objective assessment of risk with predicted likelihood and the associated value tied with the consequence. The decision support is to review the business outcome values vs the cost to reduce the likelihood. For cyber risk, it is more challenging since when new threats are uncovered, they become immediate impacts. The frequency cannot be predicted using traditional approach. At worst, be prepared bad thing happens with reasonable efforts to recover instead to prevent any KNOWN threats, because there are so many unknowns beyond imagination. ...
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When Security System Fails

By cliangNo Comments
Security function of the business or physical process is protected by security system. Specific security system for the latter is the SIS (Safety Instrumented System). When security system fails, its intended function fails too. It could be lost of view, view being manipulated, sub-standard product produced, high value asset damage, environment pollution and most seriously human fatality. When assessing business impacts, we must not forget to assess the entire ecosystem including these auxiliary systems. ...
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Broken Process

By cliangNo Comments
Secure process by design should be secure if operated according to prescribed scenarios. Passenger screening for human and hand-carried items before entering the departure zone deploys multiple means: Administrative: limited quantity of fluid and no sharp objects, Technical enforcement: human and bags scanning to detect violation If everything goes into departure zone thru this process, then exception can be picked up and assure the policy mandate. But what about supplies to the shops inside the zone? Do these go thru similar process? If not, it's backdoor and a broken process....
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Deception

By cliangNo Comments
Everything on earth has good or evil perspectives, same for deception in cyber world. We heard a lot about phishing or scam that is the evil side of deception. However, there is the need for good deception in the cyber space.  To understand how threat actors penetrate or launch attacks, honeypots are established to let them take the bait.  Honeypots can be vulnerable web sites, decoy email address or decoy social network identity that are under monitoring. For vulnerable systems, researchers are able to understand the behaviors and TTP of threat actors from reconnaissance, access, ex-filtrate data, cover the track. Effective counter-measures can be developed in the cyber kill chain. For phishing, researchers are able to spot if new exploits are deployed in content rich email or attachment to masquerade the malicious attempts then alert the community. Scams from social network could also be traced to inform law enforcement agency to take down the malicious identities....
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If Not Now, When?

By cliangNo Comments
It has been used in S4x13 theme. This blog is part 1 of 2. Most often, security technology sales send security alerts to top management to demonstrate their value preposition. Top management is likely forward this "intel" to cybersecurity management team simply with "Please handle" to relieve their obligations from getting intel but do nothing. Cybersecurity management team obtains this directive, then drives the ICT/ICS workforce to apply the recommended work around (change system configuration, apply security patch) and compiles a dashboard for reporting completion status. The ICT/ICS workforce dare not to say no but to accommodate such executive order at extra work load from routine work. This isn't an effective cybersecuruty management. The proper means is to assess the threat, current protection and business consequence. The "Now, Next, Never" in S4x19 best describes the correct attitude. So, if not now, could be next or even never....
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Assumption #2 (2nd topic)

By cliangNo Comments
No matter individual or enterprise, there are information stored in the cloud. The pre-requisite to use cloud is the communication line from your end point to the hosting location. Most rely the as-built cyber protections like TLS, 2-step authentication offered by the provider. No doubt, these are deemed secure. But if your information is of high value, you need to consider the appropriate level of extra layers, e.g. single tenancy, dedicated hosting location with physical access control,  further end-to-end communication encryption, database level encryption or tokenization, periodic security assessment, regular situation awareness to keep your people from being victim of spear phishing attack. All these don't mean 100% security but to demonstrate your due diligence to secure your data....
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Supporting System

By cliangNo Comments
Mostly, people put focus cybersecurity on critical infrastructure. We must not forget the cybersecurity for supporting systems are equally important as they are also network connected for information exchange or control from the control center. These systems automate protection for the core system. Examples are those commonly known like facility management (or FM such as fire fighting, CRAC, access control, UPS), SIS (Safety Instrumented Systems). If these systems fail, it will impact to the core systems. There is recent incident for cyber attack on SIS. Imagine, if the FM fails, the information processing facility will fail too. More severe impact is the SIS failure, it will affect environment or human safety....
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Penetration

By cliangNo Comments
Cybersecurity is becoming commodity skill and therefore same terminology will have different interpretation by different parties. Pick penetration test (pTest) as an example. For beginners they simply pick up automated scanner then scan the network and hosts. Whatever reported in the scanner and recommendations are their findings and that's all. A more skillful pTester will review the reported finding, validate its applicability with owner for a practical and achievable follow up before reporting. A professional pTester will go beyond further. Before engagement Understand what is the target of evaluation Advise owner the risk of doing automated scan rather than blindly perform the scan because others say so Agree on approach of execution to set expectation Agree on picking representable samples to manage resources (for both sides) Determine where to place the scanner - before or behind any network perimeter Before execution Load scanner with updated signature and agree on types of test (brute force password attack? DoS test?) Validate target node is accessible ...
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Threat Hunting

By cliangNo Comments
Suddenly, new market jargon "threat hunting" is spreading around under cybersecurity domain. It is a kind of proactive measure to uncover if your environment has already been penetrated and critical info are being exfiltrated. This kind of exercise is best executed by 3rd party periodically, because: If this is due to insider threat, it won't be surfaced In-house workforce might have assumption for certain things that won't go wrong Periodic check is for assurance because the threat hunting only spots situation at a particular point in time and its past, it cannot predict the future A more holistic approach is to augment this threat hunting exercise with workforce and business process strengthening to identify vulnerabilities for effective risk reduction....
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