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BEST PRACTICES: How testing for known memory vulnerabilities can strengthen DevSecOps

By Byron V. Acohido

DevOps wrought Uber and Netflix. In the very near future DevOps will help make driverless vehicles commonplace.

Related: What’s driving  ‘memory attacks’

Yet a funny thing has happened as DevOps – the philosophy of designing, prototyping, testing and delivering new software as fast as possible – has taken center stage. Software vulnerabilities have gone through the roof.

Over a five year period the number technical software vulnerabilities reported to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Vulnerability Database  (NVD) more than tripled – from 5,191 in  2013 to a record 16,556 in 2018.

Total vulnerabilities reported in the NVD dropped a bit in 2019, down to 12,174 total flaws. Some credit for that decline surely goes to the DevSecOps movement that has come into its own in the past two to three years.

DevSecOps proponents are pushing for security-by-design practices to get woven into the highly agile DevOps engineering culture. Still, 12,000-plus fresh software vulnerabilities is a lot, folks. And that’s not counting the latent vulnerabilities getting overlooked in this fast-paced environment – flaws sure to be discovered and exploited down the line by opportunistic threat actors.

San Jose-based application security vendor, Virsec, is seeking to tilt the balance a bit more to the side of good.

Comment | Read | April 30th, 2020 | Best Practices | For technologists | Podcasts | RSA Podcasts | Steps forward | Top Stories

NEW TECH: CASBs continue evolving to help CISOs address multiplying ‘cloud-mobile’ risks

By Byron V. Acohido

It can be argued that we live in a cloud-mobile business environment.

Related: The ‘shared responsibility’ burden

Most organizations are all caught up, to one degree or another, in migrating to hybrid cloud networks. And startups today typically launch with cloud-native IT infrastructure.

Mobile comes into play everywhere. Employees, contractors, suppliers and customers consume and contribute from remote locations via their smartphones. And the first tools many of them grab for daily is a cloud-hosted productivity suite: Office 365 or G Suite.

The cloud-mobile environment is here to stay, and it will only get more deeply engrained going forward. This sets up an unprecedented security challenge that companies of all sizes, and in all sectors, must deal with. Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASBs), referred to as “caz-bees,” are well-positioned to help companies navigate this shifting landscape.

I had the chance to discuss this with Salah Nassar, vice president of marketing at CipherCloud, a leading San Jose, CA-based CASB vendor. We met at RSA 2020 and had a lively discussion about how today’s cloud-mobile environment enables network users to bypass traditional security controls creating gaping exposures, at this point, going largely unaddressed.

Comment | Read | April 29th, 2020 | For technologists | New Tech | Podcasts | RSA Podcasts | Steps forward | Top Stories

MY TAKE: Why COVID-19 ‘digital distancing’ is every bit as vital as ‘social distancing’

By Byron V. Acohido

As coronavirus-themed cyber attacks ramp up, consumers and companies must practice digital distancing to keep themselves protected.

Related: Coronavirus scams leverage email

As we get deeper into dealing with the coronavirus outbreak, the need for authorities and experts to communicate reliably and effectively with each other, as well as to the general public, is vital.

That, of course, presents the perfect environment for cybercrime that pivots off social engineering. Sadly, coronavirus phishing and ransomware hacks already are in high gear.

“There’s a special ring of hell reserved for those who take advantage of a public health crisis to make money,” says Adam Levin, founder and chairman of CyberScout, a Scottsdale, AZ-based  supplier of identity and data theft recovery services. I agree wholeheartedly with Levin on this, as I imagine most folks would.

Social engineering invariably is the first step in cyber attacks ranging from phishing and ransomware to business email compromise (BEC) scams and advanced persistent threat (APT) hacks.

“While this kind of fraud is the new normal, often fine-tuned for specific holidays and big news stories, a global health disaster creates an even more fertile field than usual for fraudsters,” Levin observes.

Comment | Read | April 28th, 2020 | For consumers | For technologists | My Take | Top Stories

SHARED INTEL: New book on cyber warfare foreshadows attacks on elections, remote workers

By Byron V. Acohido

It’s difficult to convey the scope and scale of cyber attacks that take place on a daily basis, much less connect the dots between them.

Related: The Golden Age of cyber spying

A new book by Dr. Chase Cunningham —  Cyber Warfare – Truth, Tactics, and Strategies —   accomplishes this in a compelling, accessible way. Cunningham has the boots-on-the-ground experience and storytelling chops to pull this off. As a  cybersecurity principal analyst at Forrester,  he advises enterprise clients on how to stay in front of the latest iterations of cyber attacks coming at them from all quarters.

Cunningham’s 19 years as a US Navy chief spent in cyber forensic and cyber analytic operations included manning security controls at the NSA, CIA and FBI. He holds a PhD and MS in computer science from Colorado Technical University and a BS from American Military University focused on counter-terrorism operations in cyberspace.

Cunningham sets the table in Cyber Warfare by relating detailed anecdotes that together paint the bigger picture. Learning about how hackers were able to intercept drone feed video from CIA observation drones during the war in Iraq, for instance, tells us a lot about how tenuous sophisticated surveillance technology really can be, out in the Internet wild.

And Cunningham delves into some fascinating, informative nuance about industrial systems attacks in the wake of Stuxnet. He also adds historical and forward-looking context to the theft and criminal deployment of the Eternal Blue hacking tools, which were stolen from the NSA, and which have been used to cause so much havoc, vis-à-vis WannaCry and NotPetya. What’s more, he comprehensively lays out why ransomware and deep fake campaigns are likely to endure, posing a big threat to organizations in all sectors for the foreseeable future.

Comment | Read | April 27th, 2020 | Book Excerpts | For consumers | For technologists | Steps forward | Top Stories

NEW TECH: Semperis introduces tools to improve security resiliency of Windows Active Directory

By Byron V. Acohido

Ransomware continues to endure as a highly lucrative criminal enterprise.

Ransomware hacking groups extorted at least $144.35 million from U.S. organizations between January 2013 and July 2019. That’s the precise figure recently disclosed by the FBI — the true damage is almost certainly a lot steeper, given only a portion of cyber crimes ever get reported to law enforcement.

To get a foot in the door, ransomware purveyors direct weaponized email at a targeted employee. Once inside a network, they move laterally to locate and encrypt mission-critical systems; a ransom demand for a decryption key follows. In many cases, the lateral movement phase is being facilitated by the hijacking of an ubiquitous network administrator’s tool: Windows Active Directory, or AD.

I had a chance, once again, to discuss the yin vs. yang relating to Active Directory’s pivotal placement in the heart of corporate networks with Mickey Bresman,  co-founder and CEO of Semperis, an identity-driven cyber resilience company based in the new World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. We met at RSA 2020. For a drill down on our discussion, give the accompanying podcast a listen. Here are key excerpts.

Ransomware uptick

AD enables IT staffers to manage access to servers and applications across the breadth of any Windows-based network; it’s used in 90 percent of U.S. organizations, which translates into tens of thousands of companies and agencies. In the spring of 2017, the WannaCry and NotPetya ransomware worms blasted around the globe, freezing up the Active Directory systems of thousands of companies.

One Comment | Read | April 16th, 2020 | For technologists | Podcasts | RSA Podcasts | Steps forward | Top Stories

STEPS FORWARD: How the Middle East led the U.S. to implement smarter mobile security rules

By Byron V. Acohido

We’ve come to rely on our smartphones to live out our digital lives, both professionally and personally.

When it comes to securing mobile computing devices, the big challenge businesses have long grappled with is how to protect company assets while at the same time respecting an individual’s privacy.

Reacting to the BYOD craze, mobile security frameworks have veered from one partially effective approach to the next over the past decade. However, I recently learned about how federal regulators in several nations are rallying around a reinvigorated approach to mobile security: containerization. Containerizing data is a methodology that could anchor mobile security, in a very robust way, for the long haul.

Interestingly, leadership for this push came from federal regulators in, of all places, the Middle East.  In May 2017, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) implemented its Cyber Security Framework mandating prescriptive measures, including a requirement to containerize data in all computing formats. A few months later the United Arab Emirates stood up its National Electronic Security Authority (NESA) which proceeded to do much the same thing.

Earlier this year, US regulators essentially followed the Middle East’s lead by rolling out sweeping new rules — referred to as Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC)  — which require use of data containerization along much the same lines as Saudi Arabia and the UAE mandated some three years ago. The implementation of CMMC represents a big change from past U.S. federal data handling rules for contractors, for which compliance was by-and-large voluntary.

Comment | Read | April 13th, 2020 | For technologists | Podcasts | RSA Podcasts | Steps forward | Top Stories

MY TAKE: ‘Network Detection and Response’ emerges as an Internet of Things security stopgap

By Byron V. Acohido

There’s no stopping the Internet of Things now.

Related: The promise, pitfalls of IoT

Companies have commenced the dispersal of IoT systems far and wide. Data collected by IoT devices will increasingly get ingested into cloud-centric networks where it will get crunched by virtual servers. And fantastic new IoT-enabled services will spew out of the other end.

The many privacy and security issues raised by IoT, however, are another story. The addressing of IoT privacy and security concerns lags far, far behind. Commendably, the global cybersecurity community continues to push companies to practice cyber hygiene. And industry groups and government regulators are stepping up efforts to incentivize IoT device makers to embed security at the device level.

Very clearly, something more is needed. That’s where a cottage industry of security companies in the Network Detection and Response (NDR) space comes into play. NDR vendors champion the notion that it’s a good idea for someone to be keeping an eagle eye on the rivers of packets that crisscross modern enterprise networks, especially packets flooding in from IoT systems. That can be done very efficiently today, and would markedly improve network security without waiting for better security practices or tougher industry standards to take hold, they argue.

I had a fascinating discussion about this with Sri Sundaralingam, vice president of cloud and security solutions at ExtraHop, a Seattle-based supplier of NDR technologies. We spoke at RSA 2020. For a full drill down on our conversation, give the accompanying podcast a listen. Here are the key takeaways:

IoT surge

According to Fortune Business Insights, the global IoT market will top $1.1 trillion by 2026, up from $190 billion in 2018. That’s a compounded annual growth rate of a whopping 24.7 percent.

One Comment | Read | April 9th, 2020 | For technologists | My Take | Podcasts | RSA Podcasts | Steps forward | Top Stories

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