Category: News

Malcolm Marshall, KPMG partner and head of the firm’s Information Protection & Business Resilience team, said: “Increased awareness of cyber security threats is a positive trend, but indications are that organisations now need to focus on putting into place the fundamentals of intelligence management to gain real value from what they know. These revolve around creating an intelligence-led mindset within organisations, implementing an operating model similar to those employed by the intelligence community and building a decision-making process which is centred on a tightly controlled “information gathering programme”.

“Cyber threat: intelligence and lessons from law enforcement” argues that an intelligence-led mindset establishes a direct connection between the threats and vulnerabilities organisations face and the consequences of their compliance or inaction.

The report also goes on to argue that to embed intelligence-led decision-making, business leaders should follow the example set by law enforcement agencies. For example, rather than simply collating data, KPMG’s report urges organisations to set parameters for the type of information being gathered, so that haphazard approaches to analysis and actions can be avoided.

Link: http://www.investortoday.co.uk/news_features/cyber-threat-well-understood-but-organisations-lack-E28098intelligenceE28099-to-deal-with-it

Malcolm Marshall, KPMG partner and head of the firm’s Information Protection & Business Resilience team, says: “Increased awareness of cyber security threats is a positive trend, but indications are that organisations now need to focus on putting into place the fundamentals of intelligence management to gain real value from what they know. These revolve around creating an intelligence-led mindset within organisations, implementing an operating model similar to those employed by the intelligence community and building a decision-making process which is centred on a tightly controlled ‘information gathering programme’.

‘Cyber threat: intelligence and lessons from law enforcement’ argues that an intelligence-led mindset establishes a direct connection between the threats and vulnerabilities organisations face and the consequences of their compliance or inaction.

For example, rather than simply collating data, KPMG’s report urges organisations to set parameters for the type of information being gathered, so that haphazard approaches to analysis and actions can be avoided.

Link: http://www.actuarialpost.co.uk/article/companeis-lack-the—–039intelligence—-039-to-deal-with-cyber-threats-5096.htm

James Clapper, the United States’ director of national intelligence, also reports in the “US Intelligence Community’s Worldwide Threat Assessment” of March that there has been a significant increase in state actors’ use of cyber capabilities, and this could possibly lead to an increase in the probabilities of miscalculations, misunderstandings and unintended escalation. The CSIS report suggests that malicious activity in cyberspace, which could inflame existing tensions or increase misperception and miscalculation among governments of the intent and risk of cyber actions, poses the greatest cyber risk to security in Asia. Furthermore, there is no international or regional agreement on clear and harmonised definitions for what constitutes “cyber security”, “cyber attack” or “cyber defence” – lines between cyber crime, cyber espionage and cyber attack are also ambiguous.

In light of these developments, and in addressing non-traditional security issues, the ASEAN Political-Security Community seeks to promote the renunciation of aggression and of the threat or use of force or other actions in any manner inconsistent with international law.

Confidence-building measures and preventative diplomacy, such as exchanges among defence and military officials, can also be enhanced to ensure escalation does not occur between ASEAN member states or between ASEAN member states and third countries.

A joint EU-US Working Group on Cyber Ssecurity and Cyber Crime was created in November 2010, and the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs report of 2012 calls for accelerating cooperation and exchange of information on how to tackle cyber security issues with third countries, such as its proposals to engage the BRICS countries. The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), whose partners include the ASEAN Plus Three, 27 EU members and the European Commission, can also be engaged to explore these issues of common concern in an open and informal fashion in order to complement bilateral and multilateral cooperation efforts.

Cooperation in tackling cross-border cyber threats should also be included within the ASEM 2012-2014 work programme and placed on the agenda of the 10th ASEM summit, which is due to be held in 2014.

In the future, ASEAN member states should agree a common position on shared norms for responsible state behaviour in cyberspace and the applicability of international law for the use of advanced cyber capabilities and techniques.

Link: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/Tackling-cyber-threats-will-require-regional-coope-30209055.html

The Obama administration has been focused on Iran because the attacks have given the Iranian government a way to retaliate for tightened economic sanctions against it, and for the American and Israeli program that aimed similar attacks, using a virus known as Stuxnet, on the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant.

In a letter to the editor of The Times, responding to a May 12 article that reported on the new attacks’ similarity to the Saudi Aramco episode, Alireza Miryousefi, the head of the press office of the Iranian mission to the United Nations, wrote that Iran “never engaged in such attacks against its Persian Gulf neighbors, with which Iran has maintained good neighborly relations.”

American officials have not offered any technical evidence to back up their assertions of Iranian authorship of the latest attacks, but they describe the recent campaign as different from most attacks against American companies — particularly those from China — which quietly siphon off intellectual property for competitive purposes.

The White House would not confirm that Iran was the source, but Laura Lucas, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said that “mitigating threats in cyberspace, whether theft of intellectual property or intrusions against our critical infrastructure” was a governmentwide initiative and that the United States would consider “all of the measures at its disposal — from diplomatic to law enforcement to economic — when determining how to protect our nation, allies, partners, and interests in cyberspace.” But Homeland Security was able to issue a broader warning because of an executive order, signed in February, promoting greater information sharing about such threats between the government and private companies that oversee the nation’s critical infrastructure. It said the government was “highly concerned about hostility against critical infrastructure organizations,” and included a link to a previous warning about Shamoon, the virus used in the Saudi Aramco attack last year.

Government officials also say Iran was the source of a separate continuing campaign of attacks on American financial institutions that began last September and has since taken dozens of American banks intermittently offline, costing millions of dollars.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/25/world/middleeast/new-computer-attacks-come-from-iran-officials-say.html