Aug 16 2022

Organisations Must Invest in Cyber Defences Before It’s Too Late

Category: Cyber maturity,Information SecurityDISC @ 8:22 am

We’ve all been feeling the effects of inflation recently. Prices rose by 8.2% in the twelve months to June 2022, with the largest increases being seen in electricity, gas and transport prices.

Meanwhile, the cost of renting commercial property continues to rise, despite the decreased demand for office space amid the uptick in remote work.

It should be obvious why costs are on the rise; substantial disruption remains related to COVID-19, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has disrupted supply chains and interest rates have been raised several times this year.

The Bank of England says that the causes of rising inflation are not likely to last, but it has warned that the prices of certain things may never come down.

Clearly, then, rising costs are not simply a temporary issue that we must get through. We must instead carefully plan for how we will deal with increased costs on a permanent basis.

One apparent measure is to look at ways your organisation can cut costs. For better or worse, the most likely targets will be parts of the business that don’t contribute to a direct return on investment.

However, before you start slashing budgets, you should consider the full effects of your decisions.

Take cyber security for example. It’s already notoriously underfunded, with IT teams and other decision makers being forced to make do with limited resources.

According to a Kaspersky report, a quarter of UK companies admit underfunding cyber security even though 82% of respondents have suffered data breaches.

The risk of cyber security incidents is even higher in the summer months, when staff holidays mean that cyber security resources are even more stretched than usual.

What’s at stake?

The global cost of cyber crime is predicted to reach $10.5 trillion (£8.8 trillion) in the next three years, more than triple the $3 trillion (£2.5 trillion) cost in 2015.

We’ve reached record numbers of phishing attacks, with the Anti-Phishing Working Group detecting more than one million bogus emails last quarter. Meanwhile, there were more ransomware attacks in the first quarter of 2022 than there were in the whole of 2021.

These are worrying signs for organisations, and an economic downturn will only make cyber criminals more determined to make money – especially as they know their targets are focusing on cutting costs.

But it’s not just the immediate costs associated with cyber attacks and disruption that organisations should be worried about. There are also long-term effects, whether that’s lingering operational disruption, reputational damage or regulatory action.

Consider the ongoing problems that British Airways faced after it suffered a cyber attack in 2018. It took the airline more than two months to detect the breach, creating enduring difficulties and ultimately resulting in a £20 million fine.

The ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office), which investigated the incident, found that British Airways was processing a significant amount of personal data without adequate security measures in place, and had it addressed those vulnerabilities, it would have prevented the attack.

There were several measures that British Airways could have used to mitigate or prevent the damage, including:

  • Applying access controls to applications, data and tools to ensure individuals could only access information relevant to their job;
  • Performing penetration tests to spot weaknesses; and
  • Implementing multi-factor authentication.

In addition to the fine, British Airways settled a class action from as many as 16,000 claimants. The amount of the settlement remains confidential, but the cost of the payout was estimated to be as much as £2,000 per person.

Remarkably, the penalty and the class action represent a case of strikingly good fortune for British Airways. Had it come earlier, it would have been at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when airlines were severely affected, and were it any later, it would have come during a period of massive inflation.

It’s a lesson that other organisations must take to heart. The GDPR is being actively enforced throughout the EU and UK, so organisations must ensure compliance.

Failure to do so will result in unforeseen costs at a time when every precaution must be taken to reduce costs.

Invest today, secure tomorrow

It’s long been accepted that it’s a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ you will suffer a cyber attack. When you do, you’ll have to invest heavily in security solutions on top of having to paying remediation costs.

In times of uncertainty, you need your services to be as reliable as possible. The challenges your organisation will face in the coming months as a result of falling consumer confidence are enough to deal with without having to contend with cyber crime and its inevitable fallout.

Investing in effective cyber security measures will enable your organisation to make the most of its opportunities in straightened circumstances.

You can find out how you can bolster your organisation’s defences quickly and efficiently with IT Governance’s range of training courses.

We want to help our customers get the most from their cyber security training this August.

Book any classroom, Live Online or self-paced training course before the end of this month and automatically receive:

Tags: defense in depth


May 28 2009

PCI compliance is essential and why you have to

Category: pci dssDISC @ 3:18 pm
Image result for pci dss compliance

 

During this down turn economy organized cyber crime is a booming underground business these days. Most of the security expert and FBI agree that cybercrimes are on the rise and pose a biggest threat to US vital infrastructure. Cybercriminals are thieves in cyberspace who will swipe the sensitive data and sell to other criminals in their community, who might turn around and ask for ransom to keep the data private or perhaps resell to the highest bidder again in the black market. The risk of getting caught is minimized by legal jurisdiction and neglected by huge monetary gains. Motivated by potential gains, cybercriminals are determined to exploit the vulnerabilities of the target rich environment. Another issue to this problem is that our personal and private information has potential to be exploited at various locations such as banks, credit card companies, credit debit card processor, credit report companies and merchants etc…

Level 1, 2 and 3 merchants usually follow security best practice, allocate enough resources and try to maintain PCI compliance. On the other hand level 4 merchant are usually not compliant and have security vulnerabilities which are easy picking for cybercriminals, which is a primary reason why more security breaches happens to level 4 merchants. PCI was apparently created to safeguard the credit card and debit card data. PCI DSS standard are managed by PCI Security Standard Council.

The most significant reason to comply with PCI is because you have to.

 

PCI DSS address the baseline security for payment card infrastructure and ROI is a total cost of ownership. PCI DSS cannot guarantee absolute security but making organization to adhere to due care security justify its cost and use. As far as liability goes the security breach will be very detrimental in the state of non compliance which will include fines, legal fee and possibly lose the credit card processing ability. To motivate themselves, merchants should also remember that their customer’s data is worth a lot of money to cyber criminals.

The trick is keeping the state of compliance – true security of credit card holder data requires nonstop assessment and remediation to ensure that likelihood and impact of the security breach is kept as low as possible. PCI compliance is not a project; it’s an ongoing process of assessment. PCI assessor utilized defined set of controls objectives to assess the state of compliance. PCI provides an option of doing internal assessment with an officer sign off.
Merchants should monitor and assess to keep compliance on ongoing basis. Implement defense in depth mechanism and apply security control at every layer (network, application, operating system, and data). The idea is to make their job hard enough so the attacker moves on to easier target.

Check my previous posts regarding PCI DSS.
pci-dss-misconceptions-and-facts
pci-dss-significance-and-contractual-agreement

Vulnerability Scanner that scans your machine, reports back on vulnerabilities, and provides solutions to fix them

 

Recommended books to implement PCI DSS compliance process

 

Tags: Credit card, defense in depth, level 4 merchant, Merchant Services, pci dss, PCI Security Standard Council, roi, Security, Total cost of ownership


Mar 17 2009

Congressional data mining and security

Category: Information SecurityDISC @ 12:42 am

Data mining
Image by moonhouse via Flickr
“By slipping a simple, three-sentence provision into the gargantuan spending bill passed by the House of Representatives last week, a congressman from Silicon Valley is trying to nudge Congress into the 21st Century. Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) placed a measure in the bill directing Congress and its affiliated organs — including the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office — to make its data available to the public in raw form. This will enable members of the public and watchdog groups to craft websites and databases showcasing government data that are more user-friendly than the government’s own.”

Would be great if this passes BUT, Government would have to have security provisions so hackers could not manipulate databases in this case raw data. Without proper controls, databases can be easily modified and stolen, so before making the raw data available to public, Congress might need a comprehensive legislation to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the data.

Security principles and controls which should be considered in database legislation?
• Principles of least privilege
• Separation of duties
• Defense in depth at every level
• Strong auditing and monitoring controls
• Security risk assessment to assess risks based on ISO 27002 and NIST 800-53
• Comprehensive risk management program to manage risks

Congressional Data Mining: Coming Soon? (Mother Jones)


httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqpMyQMi0to

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]




Tags: Business, Data mining, database, defense in depth, iso 27002, Mike Honda, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Risk Assessment, Risk management, Security, separation of duities, Silicon Valley


Sep 29 2008

Vista and defense in depth

Category: Information Security,Vista SecurityDISC @ 3:47 pm

To be competitive and successful in today’s business environment demands a serious consideration of information security. Sometime low risk item could damage your company business and can lead to lose sensitive data. To recover from the aftermath of an incident can be a costly proposition.

One way to deal with the new threats is to be vigilant and know your weaknesses by assessing your infrastructure. On the other hand it helps a great deal to have an operating system which comes with built in security controls which you can turn on and off based on your security needs. Microsoft claims that Vista is the most secure operating system yet and was built with security as a top priority. However with all these built in security features, you may need to make some configuration changes to fit in your security requirements.

Windows Vista comes with many built in security features to protect your business assets. Below are the new security features.

[TABLE=4]

In the past access was the top priority for Microsoft operating system (open by default – start locking down as needed). Now in Vista the control is a top priority (closed by default – start opening up as needed).
Vista security development life cycle (SDLC) follows defense in depth model which compartmentalized and makes it tough for the intruder to get to the crown jewel. At the same time intruder risk the chance of detection at every layer. Defense in Depth model:

[TABLE=5]

Vista Service Hardening:
Vista service hardening is designed to run services with the least possible privileges. Four different features are utilized to achieve service hardening.

o Service isolation
o Least privilege
o Restricted network access
o Session 0 isolation

Service isolation – is a method by which a service can access an object without having a super user access account to secure the objects like registry keys.

Least privilege – Based on best practice each service should utilize the least privilege necessary to accomplish the task. Under Vista, when service initiate, it request for specific privileges provided by the local system.

Restricted network access – Under Vista, a service access can be restricted by TCP/UDP port, protocol, and direction that network traffic is flowing. Restricted network access will limit attack vector by blocking unnecessary ports, protocols and direction of the traffic.

Session 0 isolation – Vista does not allow any user application to run with session 0. All user applications must run in session 1 or higher. Only services and other non-user facing application run on session 0, to maintain isolation between services and user application.

Service hardening, when combined with other security features provides a tough defense. This defense in multiple layers is aimed to safeguard your system and also enables your business to be successful by keeping the threats at acceptable distance.


(Free Two-Day Shipping from Amazon Prime).




Tags: closed by default, compartmentalize, defense in depth, incident, intruder, least privilege, open by default, restricted network access, safeguard, sdlc, security features, sensitive data, service hardening, service isolation, session isolation