[From the desk of Paul Davis – his opinions and no-one else’s, apart from the reporter’s opinions ]<\/p>\n
* Think tanks mull Geneva Convention for cybercrime
\n* IT Governance urges law firms to adopt information security practices to avoid surge in ransomware attacks
\n* Rising cybercrime costing companies millions
\n* Hackers would like to join your LinkedIn network – and you’d probably accept them
\n* Five Security Threats to Watch Out for This Summer
\n* No-Brainer Ransomware Defenses
\n* The number of corporate users hit by crypto ransomware is skyrocketing
\n* Five Reasons Why Classification Is the First Step to Successful Data-Loss Prevention
\n* Cybersecurity: Why do we spend more but get less?
\n* Metadata as a Divining Rod for Security
\n* The SEC Makes Clear There is No Room For Error in Cybersecurity
\n* Vulnerability Spotlight: Pidgin Vulnerabilities
\n* Where does your cloud data live? 3 questions to ask
\n* Supporting the IT edge is expensive, full of potential security risks
\n* VoIP Vulnerabilities: Protecting Against Evolving Threats<\/p>\n
Think tanks mull Geneva Convention for cybercrime
\nA Geneva Convention on cyberwar: That’s how a panel of experts proposes to deal with the growing threat to critical infrastructure posed by the possibility of cyberattack.
\nWhile a gentleman’s agreement might not seem like much protection, for a nation to break such a taboo would be to risk an all-out attack in retaliation, the commission suggested in “One Internet,” a new report on the future of the Internet.
\nAn agreement won’t eliminate all risks of cyberattack for civilian infrastructure, of course: Just as with the protection afforded hospitals and the like under the existing Geneva Conventions, there will always be those willing to ignore the rules.
\nThe report is not just about cyberwar.
\nIts whistle-stop tour of Internet ethics also takes in surveillance, privacy, anonymity, censorship and child protection, with additional chapters on reducing online crime and the threat that blockchain technologies pose to the established order.
\nThe Global Commission on Internet Governance is chaired by former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt and was set up by two think tanks: Chatham House in the U.K. and the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Canada.
\nCIGI was founded by former BlackBerry co-CEO Jim Balsillie.
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IT Governance urges law firms to adopt information security practices to avoid surge in ransomware attacks
\nELY, CAMBRIDGESHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM, June 22, 2016 \/EINPresswire.com\/ — IT Governance, the global provider of cyber security, IT governance, risk management and compliance expertise, is urging organisations within the legal sector to adopt information security best practice to avoid falling victim to a ransomware attack.
\nAlan Calder, the founder and executive chairman of IT Governance, says: \u201cLaw firms have notoriously been targets for cyber criminals because of the sensitive information they possess such as financial data, mergers and acquisition intelligence, and other sensitive information.
\nLike any other business, law firms often do not discover a data breach or ransomware attack until long after they\u2019ve started.
\nThe scale and devastation of ransomware and cyber breaches means that law firms urgently need to adopt stronger cyber security safeguards.\u201d
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Rising cybercrime costing companies millions
\nKUALA LUMPUR: An independent Global Economic Crime Survey revealed that more and more local companies are falling prey to hackers and cybercrime costing them millions in losses annually.
\nPwC Consulting Services Associates (M) Sdn Bhd\u2019s senior executive director and forensic lead Alex Tan said the results were based on a survey of 17 industries from from the private sector, government and state enterprises.
\n\u201cThe survey showed that cybercrime had dropped from 31% in 2014 to 30% this year.
\n\u201cHowever, what we have to realise is that, if we go back to 2012, it was only 5% and this is a huge jump,\u201d he told reporters at a press conference when announcing the findings carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) here on Thursday.
\nBased on the survey, Tan said males between 31 and 40 years old with university or college education and have worked with the company for between three and five years are likely to commit fraud or cybercrime against their own company.
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Hackers would like to join your LinkedIn network – and you’d probably accept them
\nIn fact, according to a survey of 2,000 people by cybersecurity researchers at Intel Security, nearly one quarter (24 percent) say they’ve connected to someone they don’t know on LinkedIn, thus potentially allowing hackers to access to a wealth of information which could be used for spear-phishing, malware drops, and other nefarious means.
\nIn fact, according to a survey of 2,000 people by cybersecurity researchers at Intel Security, nearly one quarter (24 percent) say they’ve connected to someone they don’t know on LinkedIn, thus potentially allowing hackers to access to a wealth of information which could be used for spear-phishing, malware drops, and other nefarious means.
\nHe also suggests that the corporate employer has to take some responsibility, especially now that personal and professional online personas are becoming ever more intermixed.
\n“Explain to people about the types of attacks and what criminals do, how they may go after you personally,” he explained.
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Five Security Threats to Watch Out for This Summer
\nSensationalized political posts for 2016 elections
\nPhishing emails focused on travel and vacation
\nZika virus and other health concerns
\nMajor sporting events
\nKids on summer vacation
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No-Brainer Ransomware Defenses
\n“The only effective solution for ransomware is backup … and disaster recovery,” says Mark James, an IT security specialist at security firm ESET.
\nEven with verified, offline backups to hand, and the ability to rapidly restore systems, organizations may still need to take affected PCs or servers offline for some period of time.
\nBut the alternative, James says, involves the ethically dubious – at best – prospect of paying ransom money to criminals and trusting that they will indeed then share decryption keys for crypto-locked systems (see Please Don’t Pay Ransoms, FBI Urges).
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The number of corporate users hit by crypto ransomware is skyrocketing
\nBased on an analysis by security vendor Kaspersky Lab, more than 2.3 million users encountered ransomware between April 2015 and March, a jump of almost 18 percent over the previous 12 months.
\nThis includes programs that only lock the computer’s screen to prevent its use as well as those that hold the data itself hostage by encrypting it — the so-called cryptors.
\nThe rise of cryptors in particular has been significant, accounting for 32 percent of all ransomware attacks last year compared to only 7 percent the year before, according to Kaspersky Lab.
\nThe number of users hit by crypto ransomware during the period studied grew 5.5 times to reach more than 700,000, while the number of corporate users in particular who encountered such threats rose from 27,000 to 159,000 — an almost six-fold increase.
\nThe number of users hit by crypto ransomware during the period studied grew 5.5 times to reach more than 700,000, while the number of corporate users in particular who encountered such threats rose from 27,000 to 159,000 — an almost six-fold increase.
\nIn some countries, like Italy and Germany, crypto-ransomware accounted for around 90 percent of all ransomware attacks last year, whereas the year before it was under 10 percent.
\nBacking up critical data regularly to offline or offsite locations that are not permanently accessible from endpoint computers is the best way to prevent being extorted by ransomware creators.
\nTraining users on how to recognize phishing emails and keeping software on computers up to date, especially browser plug-ins, is also very important.
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Five Reasons Why Classification Is the First Step to Successful Data-Loss Prevention
\n1 Data Security Is a Business Problem That Technology Alone Cannot Solve
\n2 Classification Fosters a Security Culture
\n3 DLP Systems Must Know the Data to Know How to Manage It
\n4 DLP Works Best on Known Threats
\n5 Additional Benefits of Classification
\nAlthough data-loss prevention systems are extremely powerful and useful in the bid to keep private data private, the technology alone won\u2019t guarantee success.
\nBy empowering users to classify their data, it\u2019s possible to foster a culture of security awareness.
\nProviding classification definitions and clear feedback makes it easy for users to correctly apply the right classification, which helps the DLP to enforce the correct handling policy.
\nThe application of classification markings to the document or email provides an extra reminder to staff, resulting in greater attention to security and fewer errors.
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Cybersecurity: Why do we spend more but get less?
\nThere are two reasons:<\/p>\n
We have an archaic view on security.
\nWe are spending money on the wrong things
\nThe problem is that once a threat is past the mouth of the cave, or the castle wall, or our firewall, it is usually free to roam at will without further challenge.
\nIt is a single point of protection and a single point of failure.
\nOur view of security, i.e. protecting something behind a stronger, higher, thicker wall is flawed.
\nIt didn\u2019t work in the Middle Ages.
\nIt didn\u2019t work in Berlin.
\nIt isn\u2019t working in Israel.
\nIt isn\u2019t working on the American-Mexican border, and it doesn\u2019t work for our networks.
\nThe idea is just archaic and it doesn\u2019t work.
\nWhich brings us to the second point.
\nWe are spending money on stronger, thicker, higher walls in the form of better firewalls.
\nBut an analysis of breaches shows us that very few breaches are the fault of a weak firewall.
\nIn fact, the Ponemon Institure 2016 Cost of Data Breach: Global Analysis reveals that 25% of breaches are due to human error.
\nSomeone clicked on a phishing attempt.
\nSomeone left a web session open with admin rights.
\nSomeone inadvertently exposed a record set while doing testing.
\nThe salient point is that each of the preceding examples started with the word \u201csomeone\u201d.
\nThe problem is people.
\nSecurity is not a technology problem; it is a people problem.
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Metadata as a Divining Rod for Security
\nMetadata is data about data.
\nUsing the telephone network as an analogy, metadata more closely resembles a phone bill than a recording.
\nIt doesn\u2019t allow for continual analysis but can still provide rich detail, as well as summarizing hours of conversation (or data) in just a few lines.
\nA phone bill can show who\u2019s been talking to whom, at what time, for how long, from where, to where, everything but the content of the phone call itself.
\nLooking at a phone bill, it\u2019s easy to check for interesting patterns.
\nFor instance, frequent calls to the same number, calls at odd hours or to and from unusual locations, calls that are very long.
\nEach of these can serve as clues that help to narrow investigations to only the most relevant conversations.
\nThe same principle can be applied to security.
\nProviding security tools with summary takes of the packet data traversing networks, metadata can become a powerful weapon for enterprises looking to separate signals from noise, reduce time to threat detection, and improve overall security efficacy.
\nIn the future, it simply won\u2019t be possible for security appliances to conduct all of the security functions required to find bad actors moving in high-bandwidth links.
\nHowever, the job of the security appliance becomes more manageable if it can focus on analyzing the relevant data and this is where metadata comes in.
\nThis small but mighty as yet unleveraged security super power can help accelerate time to detection and expedite response to breaches by enabling SIEMs, forensic solutions, and other big data security analytics technologies to approximate where in the network data breaches may have occurred.
\nSummary information or metadata can provide valuable clues to lingering threats inside networks.
\nBehavioral and security analytics using metadata gives organizations an approximation of the location of hot spots or areas of suspected threat activity \u2013 much like a divining rod points its user in the direction of water.
\nRather than searching the entire network, security analysts can focus on the identified trouble spots and conduct a more thorough investigation by using traffic or packet analysis.
\nConsider the example of a DNS request made by a laptop to a suspicious server.
\nMetadata flags the anomalous request.
\nThen using tools capable of deep inspection security pros can examine all connectivity to and from that device to ascertain if the endpoint is indeed infected, whether it has forwarded malicious data and what other devices might be implicated.
\nSo in the not too distant future, ensuring that security models and analytic processes are informed by not only lots of data, but the right data, will be key to making threat detection pragmatic and effective in high-bandwidth networks.
\nMetadata is key to that future of effective security and breach detection because it can expedite behavior base-lining as well as anomaly detection making effective big data security analytics a reality for the masses.
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The SEC Makes Clear There is No Room For Error in Cybersecurity
\nThe SEC recently agreed to a $1,000,000 settlement of an enforcement action against Morgan Stanley for its failure to have sufficient data security policies and procedures to protect customer data.
\nThe settlement was significant for its amount.
\nThe true noteworthiness here, however, lies not in the end result but the implications of how it was reached: (1) the \u201creasonableness\u201d of a company\u2019s data security safeguards shall be judged in hindsight, and (2) almost any data breach could give rise to liability.
\nThe SEC has left no room for error in making sure that your cybersecurity procedures and controls actually and always work.
\nThere are some important practical takeaways for companies from this settlement: (1) perform a risk assessment to determine how your organization could suffer from a similar risk (employee transferring corporate information to a personal device); (2) implement an authorization module and other policies and procedures to limit access (and identify unauthorized access) to sensitive information to those who have a legitimate business need; and (3) make sure you audit and test these controls so ensure that they actually work.
\nAdditionally, CISOs, compliance officers, and in house counsel would be well served to ensure that the story of this enforcement action becomes part of their organization\u2019s data security training as part of the onboarding and annual training process.
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Vulnerability Spotlight: Pidgin Vulnerabilities
\nThese vulnerabilities were discovered by Yves Younan.
\nTalos has identified multiple vulnerabilities in the way Pidgin handles the MXit protocol.
\nThese vulnerabilities fall into the following four categories.
\n– Information Leakage
\n– Denial Of Service
\n– Directory Traversal
\n– Buffer Overflow
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Where does your cloud data live? 3 questions to ask
\ncloud data liveThere\u2019s a common thread behind every security pro\u2019s cloud-related fears: control.
\nWhether your company\u2019s infrastructure revolves around a cloud-centric strategy or regulates cloud projects to a minor scale, the same security concerns dominate every interaction an organization could have with cloud services.
\nOnce your data is sent to a cloud provider, or an SaaS vendor using a cloud-hosted application, that company owns your information \u2013 on your end, good faith is all that can ensure its security.
\nRecently, a report from Blue Coat Systems\u2019 Elastica Cloud Threat Labs examined data from 63 million documents stored in major cloud applications, such as Microsoft Office 365, Google Drive, Salesforce and Box.
\nThe team found that one in 10 of the documents contained sensitive data \u2013 such as personally identifiable information, source code, health and financial information, and more.
\nThe report also highlighted the top three security threats facing organizations that use cloud apps: data theft, data destruction and account takeovers.
\nOrganizations using the cloud in any capacity can use the above findings as a guide for protecting data.
\nTo begin, ask the below questions at the start of any new cloud project.
\n1- Can my SaaS provider destroy sensitive data?
\n2- Are we overlooking sensitive information in our data?
\n3- Will my cloud provider\u2019s security measures negate the intended cost savings of the cloud?
\nThere\u2019s no reason to fear the cloud \u2013 but there\u2019s also no reason to dive into a cloud project with the intention of cutting IT costs, only to sacrifice the security or privacy of your data.
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Supporting the IT edge is expensive, full of potential security risks
\nOrganizations are facing multiple challenges when managing the IT edge \u2013 at remote and branch offices.
\nA Riverbed survey asked IT professionals about the various challenges they face in provisioning and managing remote and branch offices (ROBOs) and found supporting the IT edge was expensive, resource-intensive and full of potential data security risks.
\nThe top three challenges of managing ROBOs in order of importance are:
\n1- Handling ROBO disaster recovery (54%)
\n2- High costs of providing ROBO IT (46%)
\n3- Providing adequate IT staff to support ROBOs (46%)
\nThe survey also found that respondents would like alternative options to storing data generated at remote office locations locally in the ROBO.
\nWhen data is stored locally on physical servers in remote facilities or branch offices, it is especially susceptible to security risks, such as theft, human error or natural disasters.
\nNot surprisingly, three quarters (75%) of respondents said that it would be \u201csomewhat to extremely desirable\u201d to store their remote data in the data center or in the cloud.
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VoIP Vulnerabilities: Protecting Against Evolving Threats
\nSecurity is quickly becoming the primary concern of many businesses, and protecting VoIP vulnerabilities is critical.
\nIn addition, the use of cloud-based communications is growing rapidly, but according to the a 2015 PwC global information security survey, only 50% of businesses have a security strategy in place for cloud computing.
\nThis same research showed that information security incidents increased 45% over the previous year.
\nAs cyberattacks evolve, organizations must fully understand the different types of threats in order to combat them effectively.
\nModern threats fall into four main categories.
\nData predators are crafty, but not completely original, and they utilize one or more of these methods of attack.
\n– Call Fraud
\n– Malware & Viruses
\n– Denial of Service (DoS)
\n– Call Hijacking & VoIP Tampering
\nNetwork security threats are constantly evolving and protection measures must advance similarly.
\nSafeguarding proprietary business information and sensitive customer data should always remain paramount.
\nCustomer, employee, and internal records data remain top targets of cyberattacks, and the damage to brand reputation climbed 81%, as PwC reported.
\nBusinesses must be vigilant in order to avoid costly and inconvenient security breaches.
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[From the desk of Paul Davis – his opinions and no-one else’s, apart from the reporter’s opinions ] * Think tanks mull Geneva Convention for cybercrime * IT Governance urges law firms to adopt information security practices to avoid surge in ransomware attacks * Rising cybercrime costing companies millions *…<\/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-1240","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\/1240","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=1240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3727,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions\/3727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}