My Take

Byron Acohido · An introduction to CAASM - 'cyber assets attack surface management'

MY TAKE: How ‘CAASM’ can help security teams embrace complexity – instead of trying to tame it

By Byron V. Acohido

The shift to software-defined everything and reliance on IT infrastructure scattered across the Internet has boosted corporate productivity rather spectacularly.

And yet, the modern attack surface continues to expand exponentially, largely unchecked. This dichotomy cannot be tolerated over the long run.

Encouragingly, an emerging class of network visibility technology is gaining notable traction. These specialized tools are expressly designed to help companies get a much better grip on the sprawling array of digital assets they’ve come to depend on. Gartner refers to this nascent technology and emerging discipline as “cyber asset attack surface management,” or CAASM.

I sat down with Erkang Zheng, founder and CEO of JupiterOne, a Morrisville, NC-based CAASM platform provider, to discuss how security got left so far behind in digital transformation – and why getting attack surface management under control is an essential first step to catching up.

For a full drill down, please give the accompanying podcast a listen. Here are my takeaways:

MY TAKE: Log4j’s big lesson – legacy tools, new tech are both needed to secure modern networks

By Byron V. Acohido

Log4j is the latest, greatest vulnerability to demonstrate just how tenuous the security of modern networks has become.

Log4j, aka Log4Shell, blasted a surgical light on the multiplying tiers of attack vectors arising from enterprises’ deepening reliance on open-source software.

This is all part of corporations plunging into the near future: migration to cloud-based IT infrastructure is in high gear, complexity is mushrooming and fear of falling behind is keeping the competitive heat on. In this heady environment, open-source networking components like Log4j spell opportunity for threat actors. It’s notable that open-source software vulnerabilities comprise just one of several paths ripe for malicious manipulation.

By no means has the cybersecurity community been blind to the complex security challenges spinning out of digital transformation. A methodical drive has been underway for at least the past decade to affect a transition to a new network security paradigm – one less rooted in the past and better suited for what’s coming next.

Log4j bathes light on a couple of solidifying developments. It reinforces the notion that a new portfolio of cloud-centric security frameworks must take hold, the sooner the better. What’s more, it will likely take a blend of legacy security technologies – in advanced iterations – combined with a new class of smart security tools to cut through the complexities of defending contemporary business networks.

Byron Acohido · The genesis of NTT's Health & Wellbeing initiative

MY TAKE: What if Big Data and AI could be intensively focused on health and wellbeing?

By Byron V. Acohido

Might it be possible to direct cool digital services at holistically improving the wellbeing of each citizen of planet Earth?

A movement aspiring to do just that is underway — and it’s not being led by a covey of tech-savvy Tibetan monks. This push is coming from the corporate sector.

Last August, NTT, the Tokyo-based technology giant, unveiled its Health and Wellbeing initiative – an ambitious effort to guide corporate, political and community leaders onto a more enlightened path. NTT, in short, has set out to usher in a new era of human wellness.

Towards this end it has begun sharing videos, whitepapers and reports designed to rally decision makers from all quarters to a common cause. The blue-sky mission is to bring modern data mining and machine learning technologies to bear delivering personalized services that ameliorate not just physical ailments, but also mental and even emotional ones.

That’s a sizable fish to fry. I had a lively discussion with Craig Hinkley, CEO of NTT Application Security, about the thinking behind this crusade. I came away encouraged that some smart folks are striving to pull us in a well-considered direction. For a full drill down, please give the accompanying podcast a listen. Here are a few key takeaways:

A new starting point

Modern medicine has advanced leaps and bounds in my lifetime when it comes to diagnosing and treating severe illnesses. Even so, for a variety of reasons, healthcare sectors in the U.S. and other jurisdictions have abjectly failed over the past 20 years leveraging Big Data to innovate personalized healthcare services.

MY TAKE: Why companies had better start taking the security pitfalls of API proliferation seriously

By Byron V. Acohido

APIs are putting business networks at an acute, unprecedented level of risk – a dynamic that has yet to be fully acknowledged by businesses.

That said, APIs are certain to get a lot more attention by security teams — and board members concerned about cyber risk mitigation — in 2022. This is so because a confluence of developments in 2021 has put API security in the spotlight, where it needs to be.

APIs have emerged as a go-to tool used by threat actors in the early phases of sophisticated, multi-stage network attacks. Upon gaining a toehold on a targeted device or server, attackers now quickly turn their attention to locating and manipulating available APIs.

“Threat actors have become aware that APIs represent a ton of exposed opportunity,” says Mike Spanbauer, security evangelist at Juniper Networks, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based supplier of networking technology.

Over the past year, I’ve had several deep conversations parsing how APIs have emerged as a two-edged sword: APIs accelerate digital transformation, but they also vastly expand the attack surface of modern business networks.

ROUNDTABLE: What happened in privacy and cybersecurity in 2021 — and what’s coming in 2022

By Byron V. Acohido

In 2021, we endured the fallout of a seemingly endless parade of privacy controversies and milestone cyber attacks.

The Solar Winds hack demonstrated supply chain exposures; the attempted poisoning of a Tampa suburb’s water supply highlighted public utilities at risk; and the Colonial Winds ransomware attack signaled cyber extortionist rings continuing to run rampant.

On the privacy front, California beefed up its consumer data privacy regulations even as Facebook and Apple publicly feuded over how each of these tech giants abuse of consumer privacy and loosey handle sensitive data.

Meanwhile, President Biden issued a cybersecurity executive order finally putting the federal government’s regulatory stamp on foundational cyber hygiene practices many organizations should have already been doing, yet continue to gift short shrift.

Last Watchdog sought commentary from technology thought leaders about lessons learned in 2021– and any guidance they might have to offer heading into 2022.

SHARED INTEL: Here’s why it has become so vital to prioritize the security-proofing of APIs

By Byron V. Acohido

Application Programming Interface. APIs. Where would we be without them?

APIs are the snippets of code that interconnect the underlying components of all the digital services we can’t seem to live without. Indeed, APIs have opened new horizons of cloud services, mobile computing and IoT infrastructure, with much more to come.

Yet, in bringing us here, APIs have also spawned a vast new tier of security holes. API vulnerabilities are ubiquitous and multiplying; they’re turning up everywhere. Yet, API security risks haven’t gotten the attention they deserve. It has become clear that API security needs to be prioritized as companies strive to mitigate modern-day cyber exposures.

Consider that as agile software development proliferates, fresh APIs get flung into service to build and update cool new apps. Since APIs are explicitly used to connect data and services between applications, each fresh batch of APIs and API updates are like a beacon to malicious actors.

Organizations don’t even know how many APIs they have, much less how those APIs are exposing sensitive data. Thus security-proofing APIs has become a huge challenge. APIs are like snowflakes: each one is unique. Therefore, every API vulnerability is necessarily unique. Attackers have taken to poking and prodding APIs to find inadvertent and overlooked flaws; even better yet, from a hacker’s point of view, many properly designed APIs are discovered to be easy to manipulate — to gain access and to steal sensitive data.

Meanwhile, the best security tooling money can buy was never designed to deal with this phenomenon.

MY TAKE: lastwatchdog.com receives recognition as a Top 10 cybersecurity webzine in 2021

By Byron V. Acohido

Last Watchdog’s mission is to foster useful understanding about emerging cybersecurity and privacy exposures.

The Last Watchdog

My Take

MY TAKE: How ‘CAASM’ can help security teams embrace complexity – instead of trying to tame it

By Byron V. Acohido

MY TAKE: Log4j’s big lesson – legacy tools, new tech are both needed to secure modern networks

By Byron V. Acohido

MY TAKE: What if Big Data and AI could be intensively focused on health and wellbeing?

By Byron V. Acohido

MY TAKE: Why companies had better start taking the security pitfalls of API proliferation seriously

By Byron V. Acohido

ROUNDTABLE: What happened in privacy and cybersecurity in 2021 — and what’s coming in 2022

By Byron V. Acohido

SHARED INTEL: Here’s why it has become so vital to prioritize the security-proofing of APIs

By Byron V. Acohido

MY TAKE: lastwatchdog.com receives recognition as a Top 10 cybersecurity webzine in 2021

By Byron V. Acohido