[From the desk of Paul Davis – his opinions and no-one else’s]
\nApart from the reporter’s opinions \ud83d\ude09
\nSo onto the news:<\/p>\n
3 Positive Signs for Better Security in Cloud Computing
\nWhether you\u2019re a large corporation, a nonprofit organization, or an everyday person who wants to share your data with others, you\u2019ve probably jumped on the cloud phenomenon already.
\nLike many forms of cognitive computing, cognitive security can self-learn and adapt from previous experiences based on new data it\u2019s presented with.
\nOnce it\u2019s fed this data, it will mine it for information and isolate patterns that should be followed in the future, just as iPhone\u2019s Siri can learn from its user\u2019s vocabulary and habits to focus its service.
\nAnother method employed to boost cloud security involves creating more stringent access points, where users are sent through a very particular gateway that will analyze the validity and intentions of their entrance.
\nThis has the aim of catching hackers and viruses before they ever reach the cloud.
\nProducts like these would be able to authenticate users, enforce data protection policies, and even control the way users can access applications and share information, which would allow the security system to monitor it tightly.
\nThe IBM Cloud Security Enforcer takes on a similar tactic to the gateways by monitoring what actions are being taken in the cloud with an extreme level of detail.
\nBy approving certain applications, the Enforcer only allows a user access after strictly checking their authenticity and collecting data on their habits within the cloud.
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Trend Micro: Lessons learned from 2015 cyber attacks
\nFollowing an onslaught year of massive breaches, 2016 promises to usher in more of the same, but with each breach there was a lesson to be learned, according to a Trend Micro report.
\nTrend Micro suggested organizations implement the following remedial measures:
\n\u2022 Advanced sandboxing capabilities to detect malware in spear phishing emails
\n\u2022 File integrity monitoring and log inspection to improve situational awareness of unusual network behavior and lateral movements
\n\u2022 Intrusion detection\/prevention to shield unpatched vulnerabilities
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What is \u2018infrastructure as code\u2019 and why should you embrace it?
\nIAC is a type of IT infrastructure provisioning process where systems are automatically built, managed and provisioned through code, rather than less flexible scripting or a manual process.
\nThat’s why IAC is sometimes referred to as programmable infrastructure.
\nIt makes the process faster and eliminates human error, once you get your code solid.
\nBy using code to automate the process of setting up and configuring a virtual machine or container, you have a fast and repeatable method for replicating the process.
\nSo if you build a virtual environment for the development of application, once you are ready to deploy you can repeat the process of creating that VM simply by running the same code.
\nThe first thing to remember is that IAC is not a product, it’s a methodology.
\nIt’s a process to an end, which is the rapid deployment of a virtual environment.
\nAgile is necessary because IAC is all about speed. “One of the big things is your development team will move fast.
\nThey are embracing new approaches to software development using agile.
\nActually, their sprints are much faster, so waterfall concepts are going out the window,” Riley says.
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Using surveys to gauge employees’ security perceptions
\nIn-house critics of security-related surveys say that once we get this type of information, the organization or the facility is somehow “put on notice” and will have to take immediate steps to correct every single deficiency before they can open the doors again.
\nThis is an overreaction.
\nThe truth is that every public or private facility is already at a high watermark for liability anyway.
\nWe will always be questioned by outsiders (or plaintiff\u2019s lawyers) as to the safety and security of our entire building: from slip and falls in a wet restroom; to an attack by a mentally-ill homeless person against a city employee; to a cyber-attack on our private customer list; car thefts in the employee lot; to a current or former employee active shooter situation.
\nConsider the following survey for your employees.
\nYou can modify these questions (just a bit) to fit your specific organization, but be careful not to change the meaning too much just because you might be wary of the answers.
\nYou should tell all employees that your first step is to gather their opinions, analyze and prioritize their concerns, give them an overview of what you heard from them, and then discuss what you plan to do going forward.
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Feds eye new IT security suite to prevent attacks, block websites
\nIn-house critics of security-related surveys say that once we get this type of information, the organization or the facility is somehow “put on notice” and will have to take immediate steps to correct every single deficiency before they can open the doors again.
\nThis is an overreaction.
\nThe truth is that every public or private facility is already at a high watermark for liability anyway.
\nWe will always be questioned by outsiders (or plaintiff\u2019s lawyers) as to the safety and security of our entire building: from slip and falls in a wet restroom; to an attack by a mentally-ill homeless person against a city employee; to a cyber-attack on our private customer list; car thefts in the employee lot; to a current or former employee active shooter situation.
\nConsider the following survey for your employees.
\nYou can modify these questions (just a bit) to fit your specific organization, but be careful not to change the meaning too much just because you might be wary of the answers.
\nYou should tell all employees that your first step is to gather their opinions, analyze and prioritize their concerns, give them an overview of what you heard from them, and then discuss what you plan to do going forward.
\nBureaucrats considering a little online shopping or Internet poker during business hours beware: Shared Services Canada is looking to stop you.
\nThe federal government\u2019s central IT department is looking for a new unified security platform to do everything from pinpointing individual Internet usage, to preventing malicious actors from intruding on government networks, to blocking pornography and online gaming sites.
\nTo that end, Shared Services Canada is considering buying a \u201cunified threat management\u201d (UTM) program \u2014 a single platform to provide firewalls, virus scanning, intrusion detection, web filtering, and virtual private networking to allow secure connections for public servants working remotely.
\nThe system envisioned by the central IT agency includes the ability to monitor government networks in real-time, from individual web traffic to department-wide analysis.
\nThe UTM would need to cover everyone from bureaucrats working from home to massive public offices in Ottawa.
\nShared Services hopes that the proposed security platform could help prevent future DDoS attacks, by identifying the unique communication patterns botnets produce.
\nThe platform is also expected to detect and prevent damage from malware downloaded through emails or from Internet sites.
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Cyber security incidents on the rise in Indian enterprises, but information security function not keeping pace
\nAccording to EY\u2019s Global Information Security Survey (GISS) 2015, which involved more than 200 Indian CIOs and CISOs, approximately 20% of respondents reported financial damages up to INR15 million due to information security incidents over the past year.
\nMore importantly, 27% of the respondents reported that they were unaware of the extent of financial damage due to information security incidents.
\nThis combined with the fact that close to 40% of respondents reported that their Security Operations Center (SOC) takes more than four hours to initiate an investigation on discovered\/alerted incidents, highlights the vulnerability of Indian organizations to security incidents.
\nCyber-attacks originate from a multitude of sources, including but not limited to criminal syndicates, hacktivists, lone wolves, and external contractors among others.
\nThe Global Information Security Survey found that 70% respondents considered hacktivists and 55% considered criminal syndicates as the most likely source of attack.
\nBudgetary constraints and lack of skilled resources are the major reasons which impact the contribution and value that information security function provides to the organization, indicating that the situation is deteriorating, rather than improving.
\nThe digital world does not allow any organization to feel comfortable in the area of cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities.
\nAs the saying by Sun Tzu goes, \u201cThe more we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in war\u201d, organizations will have to be on constant guard to respond to the evolving threat landscape.
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Cybersecurity incident response: Planning is just the beginning
\nAccording to the 2015 U.S.
\nCost of a Data Breach Study1 by the Ponemon Institute, last year there was an 11% increase in the total cost of a data breach, to a $217 average per lost or stolen record.
\nKey findings include:
\nSimply having a cybersecurity incident response (IR) plan is not enough.
\nIt must be reviewed and updated regularly as part of a comprehensive cybersecurity incident response program.
\nRegular training and exercises are important in keeping the IR plan effective.
\nEmployees can be a critical line of defense.
\nBoard involvement is crucial.
\nSenior management and the board need to have open dialogue about expectations regarding risk tolerances, budget considerations, IR planning and breach response.
\nGeneral liability insurance and director\u2019s insurance most likely will not cover a cybersecurity incident.
\nA full review of insurance should be an integral part of cyberrisk management.
\nThe risks of cyberattacks span functions and business units, companies and customers.
\nGiven the stakes and the challenging circumstances related to becoming cyberresilient, making the decisions necessary can only be achieved with active engagement from the CEO and other members of the senior management team.8 Cybersecurity is not a check-the-box-and-you\u2019re-done issue.
\nIt requires a commitment of time and resources.
\nIt\u2019s too late to start planning for a breach once a breach has taken place.
\nStart planning now; best practices begin with a cybersecurity incident response plan as part of a comprehensive IR program.
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Tor Project to launch bug bounty program in 2016
\nhe program, which has the Tor Project partnering with HackerOne, initially would \u201cstart out invite-only so we can get used to flow and scale up.\u201d The program will be made public \u201clater in the year to basically provide people with incentive to review our code to look for vulnerabilities that might be specific to our applications,\u201d he said.
\nPerry and his team have had a challenging year \u201ckeeping up with Firefox release treadmill,\u201d ensuring that \u201ctheir features adhere to our privacy models\u201d and that the Tor releases come out same day as the Mozilla releases so that no vulnerability is left exposed.
\nHe said there was a \u201csolid three-to-four months where we felt like we were doing a release every two weeks.\u201d
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Ransomware, attacks on wearables: Intel McAfee Labs\u2019 top security predictions for 2016
\nIntel Security has released its McAfee Labs Threats Predictions report, which enlists key security threats in 2016 till 2020.
\nThe report includes an overview of cyber-attacks and threats on hardware, wearables, cloud services, etc and the possible response of IT security industry to them.
\nPredictions through 2016
\nHardware
\nHardware
\nWearables
\nAttacks through employee systems
\nCloud services
\nAutomobiles
\nWarehouses of stolen data
\nIntegrity attacks
\nSharing threat intelligence
\nPredictions through 2020
\nBelow-the-OS attacks
\nDetection evasion
\nNew devices, new attack surfaces
\nCyberespionage goes corporate
\nPrivacy challenges, opportunities
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[From the desk of Paul Davis – his opinions and no-one else’s] Apart from the reporter’s opinions \ud83d\ude09 So onto the news: 3 Positive Signs for Better Security in Cloud Computing Whether you\u2019re a large corporation, a nonprofit organization, or an everyday person who wants to share your data with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3669,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182\/revisions\/3669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}