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Byron Acohido · RSAC 2022 - Applying search tools, analytics towards solving data sprawl

RSAC insights: Concentric AI directs Google’s search techniques towards locking down data sprawl

By Byron V. Acohido

In order to extract value from the Internet, data sprawl first must get reined in. This has always been the case.

What good is connecting applications, servers and networks across the public cloud if you’re unable to securely operationalize the datasets that these interconnected systems store and access?

Solving data sprawl has now become a focal point of cybersecurity. It’s about time. Much of the buzz as RSA Conference 2022 happens this week (June 6 – 9)in San Francisco will be around innovations to help companies make sense of data as it gets increasingly dispersed to far-flung pockets of the public cloud.

I had the chance to visit with Karthik Krishnan, CEO of San Jose, Calif.-based Concentric AI, which is in the thick of this development. Concentric got its start in 2018 to help companies solve data sprawl — from the data security and governance perspective – and has grown to 50 employees, with $22 million in venture capital backing. For a full drill down of our discussion, please give the accompanying podcast a listen. Here are a few key takeaways.

Crawling, classifying

Jeff Bezos solved data sprawl for selling books and gave us Amazon. Larry Page and Sergey Brin solved data sprawl for generalized information lookups and gave us Google.

In much the same sense, companies must now solve data sprawl associated with moving to an increasingly interconnected digital ecosystem. And addressing data security has become paramount.

Byron Acohido · RSAC 2022 - The case for more in-depth VM

RSAC insights: Why vulnerability management absolutely must shift to a risk-assessment approach

By Byron V. Acohido

Vulnerability management, or VM, has long been an essential, if decidedly mundane, component of network security.

Related: Log4J’s long-run risks

That’s changing — dramatically. Advanced VM tools and practices are rapidly emerging to help companies mitigate a sprawling array of security flaws spinning out of digital transformation.

I visited with Scott Kuffer, co-founder and chief operating officer of Sarasota, FL-based Nucleus Security, which is in the thick of this development. Nucleus launched in 2018 and has grown to over 50 employees. It supplies a unified vulnerability and risk management solution that automates vulnerability management processes and workflows.

We discussed why VM has become acutely problematic yet remains something that’s vital for companies to figure out how to do well, now more so than ever. For a full drill down, please give the accompanying podcast a listen. Here are the key takeaways:

MY TAKE: ‘Digital trust’ has a huge role to play mitigating cybersecurity threats, going forward

By Byron V. Acohido

Modern digital systems simply could not exist without trusted operations, processes and connections. They require integrity, authentication, trusted identity and encryption.

It used to be that trusting the connection between a workstation and a mainframe computer was the main concern. Then the Internet took off and trusting the connection between a user’s device and a web server became of paramount importance.

Today we’re in the throes of digital transformation. Software-defined-everything is the order of the day. Our smart buildings, smart transportation systems and smart online services are all network-connected at multiple levels. Digital services get delivered across a complex amalgam of public cloud, hybrid cloud and on-premises digital systems.

It is against this backdrop that digital trust has become paramount. We simply must attain — and sustain — a high bar of confidence in the computing devices, software applications and data that make up he interconnected world we occupy.

GUEST ESSAY: Best practices checklists each individual computer user still needs to follow

By Peter Stelzhammer

In the days of non-stop attacks on personal and work devices, the common day consumer wouldn’t know where to begin in order to protect their devices.

The rise of attacks is unavoidable and with the everyday announcement of a new strain of malware, ransomware and now data wipers, consumers find themselves asking: where do I start? How do I do this?

Whether you are focused on your home computer, work laptop or business operating system as a whole, it’s important to learn the key steps you can take to ensure your defenses are active and up to date.

Update checklist

•Use and keep your security software (i.e. anti-virus program) up to date and turned on. Many users switch off their real-time protection to gain some speed, but safety should come before. We strongly recommend making sure that you use the latest version of the anti-virus software, and for that matter of any software that you are using on your computer. Newest versions come with improved and additional features to enhance software capability.

•Keep your firewall turned on. Software based firewalls are widely recommended for single computers, while hardware firewalls are typically provided with routers for networks. Some operating systems provide native software firewalls (such as Windows OS). For Microsoft Windows home users we recommend using the firewall in its default settings.

GUEST ESSAY: Leveraging ‘zero trust’ and ‘remote access’ strategies to mitigate ransomware risks

By Den Jones

Ransomware? I think you may have heard of it, isn’t the news full of it? Well, the stats are even scarier with over 50% increase in ransomware attacks in 2021, compared to 2020.

The media paid close attention to ransomware attacks last year, as they had a significant impact on Colonial Pipeline, the nation’s largest fuel distributor, and JBS, the nation’s largest meat distributor. In fact, Colonial Pipeline shut down, causing major problems at the gas pumps for days.

When these ransomware attacks occurred, RiskyBiz podcast host Patrick Grey commented that the U.S. would respond: “Don’t take away our gas or burgers.” What an outstanding response! And, he’s not wrong. When supply chain attacks start impacting everyone’s daily life, it becomes very real for us all.

Ransomware is likely going to be here for years to come. It’s such a big industry that Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) actually offers criminals customer service and tech support. This means it’s now a commoditized industry leveraging backend services and capabilities all built for scale.

Best practices

Let’s walk through some practical steps organizations can take today, implementing zero trust and remote access strategies to help reduce ransomware risks:

•Obvious, but difficult – get end users to stop clicking unknown links and visiting random websites that they know little about, an educational challenge. As an enterprise security team, you could restrict internet access at your egress points, but this doesn’t do much when the workforce is remote.

GUEST ESSAY: Defending ransomware boils down to this: make it very costly for cybercriminals

By Derek Krein

From financial institutions to meat producers, it seems every industry has been impacted by ransomware in the past year — maybe even the past week. The world’s largest enterprises to the smallest mom-and-pop shops have been devastated by cybercriminals who are looking to hold assets hostage for a big pay day.

Why the stark increase? Put simply, ransomware attacks are on the rise because of profits. This return on investment is bringing in new players, and the ransomware monster continues to grow…and we’re not ready to fight it off. Why? We’re not prepared to defend against persistent threats.

With ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) as popular as it is, the attribution conversation becomes more difficult. Most of the ransomware attacks that use RaaS are done by affiliates who bounce from service to service, often using two to four different services at the same time. Shutting down a service doesn’t stop the attacks – the affiliates move to another RaaS provider, the RaaS owners just rename, retool, and go again.

While it’s nice to see law enforcement and governments go after the gangs, that won’t stop the monster that has grown out of control, that we, as an industry, continue to feed. While attribution and following the money can get a few wins, we need a multi-pronged strategy to slay the ransomware beast.

GUEST ESSAY: NewsCorp hack shows cyber espionage, squelching of press freedom on the rise

By Toby Lewis

As the dust settles following the recently disclosed hack of NewsCorp, important lessons are emerging for the cybersecurity and journalism communities.

The Chinese government is well known for its censorship– and frequent harassment and intimidation of foreign journalists. These are the foremost reasons China is ranked fourth worst globally regarding press freedoms.

China has enclosed its national internet servers within what is colloquially called ‘the Great Firewall.’ This firewall even goes as far as to block the latest versions of the encryption service TLS (v1.3) because it puts mechanisms in place to prevent third parties from decrypting traffic.

Internationally, there is no doubt that this predominantly serves to facilitate the detection and blocking of topics sensitive to the Chinese Communist Party, such as the events of June 4, 1989, in Tiananmen Square. The recent Western reporting on the Uyghur internment camps in Xinjiang triggered further sensitivity around how the international community views the Chinese Communist Party’s domestic policies.

In a recent statement, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC) commented, “Covering China is increasingly becoming an exercise in remote reporting, as China cuts off new visas and expels journalists.” Only 4 percent of respondents to an FCC poll said their organization received a new J-1 visa in 2021, and 46 percent said their bureaus were understaffed because of a lack of visas.

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The Last Watchdog

Privacy

RSAC insights: Concentric AI directs Google’s search techniques towards locking down data sprawl

By Byron V. Acohido

RSAC insights: Why vulnerability management absolutely must shift to a risk-assessment approach

By Byron V. Acohido

MY TAKE: ‘Digital trust’ has a huge role to play mitigating cybersecurity threats, going forward

By Byron V. Acohido

GUEST ESSAY: Best practices checklists each individual computer user still needs to follow

By Peter Stelzhammer

GUEST ESSAY: Leveraging ‘zero trust’ and ‘remote access’ strategies to mitigate ransomware risks

By Den Jones

GUEST ESSAY: Defending ransomware boils down to this: make it very costly for cybercriminals

By Derek Krein

GUEST ESSAY: NewsCorp hack shows cyber espionage, squelching of press freedom on the rise

By Toby Lewis