[From the desk of Paul Davis – his opinions and no-one else’s]
Apart from the reporter’s opinions 😉
So onto the news:
Dutch Data Protection Authority publishes consultation version of guidelines on breach notice law
On the heels of the enactment of the Dutch breach notice law, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (CBP) published a consultation document with draft guidelines on the breach notice obligation of data controllers in the Netherlands.
Under the law, data controllers are required to provide notice of data breaches to the CBP and, under certain circumstances, to the affected individuals.
This obligation will take effect on January 1, 2016.
The guidelines define a data breach as a security incident that has, or poses a significant risk of having, serious adverse consequences for the protection of personal data.
The CBP has invited interested parties to share their comments on the draft guidelines ultimately by October 19, 2015.
The final version of the guidelines will become effective on January 1, 2016.
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Outsourcing IT Security : A Recipe for Success or Disaster?
Is it worth it to let other people manage my sensitive data and give my company a competitive advantage?”
According to a growing number of companies, the answer is a yes.
IT research firm, Computer Economics, recently published a report called “IT Outsourcing Statistics 2015/2016,” where it has been found that more and more companies are outsourcing their IT functions.
With these tasks being outsourced, the result has been that companies are able to “preserve capital, reduce costs, improve operational flexibility, increase service levels, reduce management overhead or rapidly deploy new capabilities,” according to the study.Clearly, the outsourcing of these IT tasks have been beneficial to modern companies.
You have to be vigilant in keeping an eye on your outsourced IT security staff.
Though they may be contract-bound to keep your data private, in reality, they’ll have little to lose as opposed to your company—in case your data falls into the wrong hands.
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Using Tiger Teams during a major incident
In a major incident there are a number of Tiger Teams, up to six, that can be established to assist in resolving incidents.
These are the (Echo/Delta/Romeo/Whisky/Bravo/Alpha) teams.
We will briefly describe each of these teams below:
The Echo team is the Escalations Team and is responsible for stakeholder communications and owns the major incident from cradle to grave.
The Delta team is the team responsible for diagnostics and also collaborates with the resources responsible for detection.
The Romeo team executes the repair which includes the recovery (component has been recovered to previous state as listed in CMDB) and restore (normal business operations have resumed).
The Whisky team is responsible for workaround implementation.
The Bravo team is responsible for business continuity and serve the purpose of business resumption in the event of a high level major incident.
The Alpha team is responsible for producing an analysis of the major incident after it has been resolved.
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Cyber Weapon Market – Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 – 2021
The cyber weapon market is anticipated to grow during the forecast period owing to the increasing investment by government and utility organizations to identify zero-day vulnerabilities or exploits in a system or software application.
Intelligence agencies, government, and other organizations are increasingly investing in cyber units and other cyber resources to identify zero-day exploits and use them against enemy systems or networks when necessary.
Additionally expansion of traditional arms manufacturing companies such as Lockheed Martin Corporation, BAE Systems and Raytheon Company among others in cybersecurity business is driving the market growth.
Demand for advanced cyber warfare techniques is further fueling the growth of this market.
Furthermore, growth of cyber weapon market is attributed to the increasing need for security in critical infrastructure and utilities including national defense system, industrial control system and smart power grid among others.
The major factor restraining the growth of this market is due to the rising government regulations on non-proliferation of cyber weapons aimed to restrict usage of cyber weapon to ethical hackers, legal cyber professionals and organizations only.
Emergence of cyber as new domain for warfare is paving new opportunities for new and existing players in the market.
Cyber weapon is considered as complementary to conventional warfare techniques.
Additionally, cost-effectiveness of cyber weapons is leading to reduced funds for military expenses, thus providing new opportunities to players in the cyber weapon market.
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120-day patching gap puts many firms at risk of cyber attack, study shows
The probability of a vulnerability being exploited hits 90% between 40-60 days after discovery, but many firms are taking up to 60 days beyond that to patch, while others are failing to patch at all, a study shows
A study by risk and vulnerability software-as-a-service firm Kenna found that, despite the best intentions, most companies take an average of 100-120 days to remediate vulnerabilities.
According to the report, exploitation is almost guaranteed.
The probability of a vulnerability being exploited hits 90% between 40-60 days after discovery.
This means the length of time a company has to react before attackers strike is within 40-60 days of release for well-known vulnerabilities, the report said, which creates a remediation gap – or time that a vulnerability is most likely to be exploited before it is closed – of nearly 60 days.
According to the study report, non-targeted attacks pose a different challenge to businesses than the more widely publicised advanced persistent threats (APTs).
Due to the inability of information security teams to match the pace of automated attacks, a significant gap has appeared in the time that critical vulnerabilities appear and the time it takes for security teams to fix those vulnerabilities, the report concludes.
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Bank ratings could be cut if cyber defences are weak, S&P warns
“We view weak cybersecurity as an emerging threat that has the potential to pose a higher risk to financial firms in the future, and possibly result in downgrades,” the ratings agency said on Tuesday.
S&P’s credit analyst Stuart Plesser said banks’ retail presence, the value of the data they hold and their role in the financial system made them “natural targets facing a high threat of cyber-risk” and a successful attack could create reputational risk and “serious monetary and legal damages.”
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Why Many Organizations Still Don’t Use Threat Intelligence Portals
Their main reasons for not employing threat intel services: 44% say the attacks they’ve experienced thus far haven’t been “serious enough” to warrant using threat intel; 36% say threat intel is too expensive; 36% say it’s “not a good fit” for them; and 24% say they can’t get budget to pay for threat intel.
Even so, four out of five respondents in the survey said their organization would indeed use threat intel data if it was available to them.
Some more advanced and feature-rich threat intel feeds can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but there also are free open-source feeds.
Some 82% say they would use threat intelligence data if they had the budget for it, the survey found.
Even so, 15% say they don’t want to share their threat intelligence information with other organizations.
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Best Practices for Cybersecurity Breaches, Incident Response
The PCI Security Standards Council has announced new guidelines to help organizations respond to data breaches.
“Responding to a Data Breach: A How-to Guide for Incident Management” provides retailers and service providers with key recommendations so they can be prepared to react quickly if a breach is suspected.
It specifically suggests what they should do to contain damage and launch an effective investigation.
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