Tunnel #3

By cliangNo Comments
See thru tunnel TLS is breakable. Similar post is here. This is normally done at the Internet gateway. Anything flowing thru the tunnel will be visible and web surfers don't even know. The major rationales for Deep Packet Inspection are: Organizations impose DLP (Data Leakage Protection) technology Certain regions control the contents Therefore, don't expect privacy even the padlock is displayed in the web browser bar. Either you exercise further content protection before passing out to cloud folder, use VPN or even going extreme using the Dark Web. ...
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Integrity

By cliangNo Comments
Here, I am not talking about the fundamental of information security, the CIA aspects. Most often, we trust the policy enforcement is honestly executed. Imagine the parking ticket is issued to vehicle with time expired. How do we ensure this is done unbiased, i.e. the actual time is expired in the meter rather than issuing the parking ticket at wish? We are not yet coming to the point of technology failure (incorrect display, incorrect calculation etc.). Personal integrity is important and that's why human is the success factor in cyber security. I have seen incompetent cybersecurity practitioner raising subjective opinions or manipulate the situation based on a buggy policy without looking in the real situation nor listen to feedback. This is the most biggest risk to an organization. The risk is no longer due to hackers, human error, insecure configuration, lack of cyber maintenance and those typical FUD issues. Therefore, evaluating the competency of the...
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ZTNA

By cliangNo Comments
Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) is suddenly becoming eye-catching in ICT. No doubt, this will enhance cybersecurity as untrusted by default. The theory is simple: going thru multiple policies (technical configuration settings) and authentication before gaining access to the designated network resources. The controls are applied on who (access roles), when (time of day), what (network resources), where (network location) & why (what type of transaction or business reason). In a nutshell, who to access what resources from where and when with legitimate reason (why). The pitfall is the "how" … how does the existing environment fit with this access model and not-to-mention the changes in user experience. A M2M (Machine to Machine) ZTNA might be applicable use case but this will definitely take a while to transform for access involving human. Even worst, some cybersecurity practitioners introduce this ZTNA model in the ICS environment to combat against cyber threats which are even just conceptual because the ICS environment has...
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Trust #3

By cliangNo Comments
Driving on the road is risky in the physical world. The worst consequence is fatality. There are life-saving measures like air bag, seat belt in the vehicle. As a driver, how do you ensure these measures will work when needed? No, we can't but to trust these safety measures will work per design. At most these are checked during vehicle maintenance but no guarantee they work without actually activating the trigger. Similarly a data exchange link is purposely built to convert TCP with DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) to serial communication in getting around the so-called vulnerable routable protocol in a lock down (both physical & cyber aspect) environment. Assessment of this communication link appears reasonable to verify properly configured but extending the scope to its surrounding systems how well they are secure will be excessive, overkill and waste of resources. There are many things we must trust based on our instinct and exercise professional judgment. Otherwise, there is no...
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Policy and Usability

By cliangNo Comments
I came across certain cybersecurity practitioners who are obsessive with technical controls and insist a strict binary decision in determining policy compliance. Otherwise, so-called non-compliance process needs to be initiated with necessary executive signature as acceptance. Even worst, the policy is badly written and lack of precise generic as well as precise specific at the appropriate scenarios. Such mentality is not securing the business but an major obstacle in digital transformation and competitiveness with peers. As competent cybersecurity practitioners, our roles is to explain what are protection in place to neutralize the published cyber threats rather than creating FUD to management. Sometimes, a management directive with disciplinary action for non-compliance is far much cost-effective than technical controls. Example is password complexity and MFA, this only make password sharing harden but not impossible. Education is another domain why we should not doing so. More technical controls means complexity. Complexity doesn't make it more secure but user will try to evade or circumvent the...
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Safety and Cybersecurity

By cliangNo Comments
In any field work, safety is the most important thing. Yet, we cannot totally eliminate the likelihood of fatality no matter which types of organization. What we can do is to demonstrate that there is safety system, culture, management committment, user education, pre-work assessment to reduce the likelihood. Likewise, there no 100% cyber secure business. Do not introduce unnecessary controls or else more chance of human error, technology failure that all these will impact the business outcome rather adding protection. Think also the likelihood of exploit from physical aspect rather than just drill down in the cyber aspect. The best strategy is to ensure resilience to resume business operation because there are too many threats in the wild that we don't know. We can only protect what we know and that is worth to protect. ...
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Patches

By cliangNo Comments
One of the key activities in cybersecurity is to deploy security patches on regular basis. This is intended to upkeep cyber protection strength of the ICT or ICS infrastructure, platform and application. Certain cybersecurity practitioners are just blindly follow text book knowledge to mandate missing patches are policy violation and need to follow exception process. The cyber protection has undergone various strategical changes over the years: from prevention to detection and now resilience because there are a lot of unknowns to make prevention nor detection effective; from physical location centric to context-based because data are everywhere. Bottom line is to apply patches according to the specific business environment via assessing likelihood of exploitation. If the system is isolated from the Internet with strong physical access control and removable media control, there is no urgency to deploy so-called zero-day vulnerability patch. Follow the now, next or never philosophy because some patches are not even needed like the log4j that has been over-amplified to incur...
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Information Security

By cliangNo Comments
It is the early term in this domain. It covers everything under the sun regarding information.As time goes by, information containers are moving into digital and seldom in hardcopies making it cyber nature and then cybersecurity becomes a fashion and buzzword. We have already replaced fax machine by email or secure electronic communication, carrying thumb drive instead of bundle of hardcopies, balance in stock account replacing the stock certificates. It is true for most of the cases but there are still information in hardcopy forms like birth certificate, marriage certificate, dealth certificate, passport, deed of assignment, legal documents in court etc. Therefore, these are outside the "cyber" sense and we must not forget the necessary protection to secure these kinds of information. The challenge is the "backup" which will require certified true copy issued by authenticated body. Sometimes, you can only have the original copy without backup like passport. Safekeeping the information container in possession is the prime protection. ...
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Policy #10

By cliangNo Comments
In an organization, policy affects the culture and work practices. A good policy is practically achievable, acceptable and having buy-in with all levels why they have to follow these directives. In contrast, badly written policies will create conflict, politics and non-compliance because auditors will point out you are not doing the work according to the policies. Even worst in cybersecurity, certain cybersecurity practitioners micro-manage the protection technology down to brand name but no published standard is available. Everything is just in their mind with word slipping out from their mouth as recommendation. We must always bear in mind that cybersecurity is to help running business securely and don't overkill with unnecessary controls. There are lots of threats outside the cyber domains affecting business. The bottom line is to adopt resilience approach for prompt recovery rather than adding protection because you never know the threats outside your knowledge domain. Protections will require overheads to sustain their effectiveness too. ...
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Infected

By cliangNo Comments
A leaft in a plant is infected. Saving the plant should contain and neutralize the infected from spreading to other peers. Similarly if a computer in a Plant system is compromised, the recovery is to contain, neutralize and rectify it to avoid affecting the neighouring nodes. On a strategic approach, if the ingress/egress points with external systems including removable media are tightly controlled and the O&M activities are strictly following the administrative controls, the likelihood of being compromised if rare to none; even security patching is not in regular fashion. This is the common practice in industrial automation control systems. However, certain cybersecurity practitioners always believe the same maintenance practice including technical controls as if in IT should be adopted. This will definitely consume unnecessary resource and likely break things causing severe damage to the plant. ...
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