STE WILLIAMS

When you look at social media, you get the impression that there is a serious shortage in security professionals — and at the same time, you can’t imagine why anyone would want to work in cybersecurity in the first place. Judging by Twitter, it seems as if security professionals are frequently at each other’s throats and, with few prominent role models, it’s a terrible place for women. All you have to do is look at last year’s DerbyCon controversy for proof of how dysfunctional the community can appear online.

But here’s a not-so-secret secret: The large majority of security professionals don’t have time for the drama on social media, and social media is not representative of the profession as a whole.

The security professionals who post on Twitter frequently make valuable contributions to the security community as a whole. However, they are not representative of their million or so industry colleagues who go to work and then go back to their families and real life when work is over, and rarely get on social media.

These people don’t necessarily go to hacker cons; they do their security related jobs and then leave their work in the office. They work for government agencies such as the NSA, Cyber Command, DISA, the FBI, military commands, NIST, etc. Then there are government contractors, the security teams at major banks made up of hundreds and sometimes thousands of people, professionals who work at the Big Four consulting firms with thousands of security professionals each, thousands of people who perform security work at telecommunications companies such as Verizon and ATT, on top of the hundreds of thousands of people working in other government agencies around the world. Tech companies such as Cisco, IBM, HP, and others have thousands of employees as well. I’d guess relatively few of these people are active on social media.

The reason I want to highlight the difference is that I recently read a post from a woman on Twitter who said she saw no comparable female role models in the industry who would be making $200,000 per year. I saw one or two people mention someone, but what surprised me was the complete void in recognition of some of the most notable women in the profession — women who are not active on Twitter but active within the security community as a whole.

Quick examples who come immediately to mind include:

• Myrna Soto, former CISO, Comcast, and now a venture capitalist
• Renee Guttmann, CISO, Campbell Soup Company, and previously Coca-Cola, Time Warner, and Royal Caribbean
• Dawn Cappelli, CISO, Rockwell Automation
• Jennifer Minella, Chair, (ISC)² Board of Directors and VP Carolina Advanced Digital,
• Terry Grafenstine, former Chair, ISACA Board of Directors and Managing Director at Deloitte
• Shelley Westman, Partner, EY
• Mischel Kwon, CEO, MKACyber, and former director, US-CERT
• Sandra Toms, General Manager, RSA Conference
• Illena Armstrong, VP, SC Media
• Rhonda MacLean, former CISO, Bank of America and Barclays, and board member to several cybersecurity companies
• Dr. Chenxi Wang, venture capitalist
• Dr. Cynthia Irvine, Distinguished Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, who trained a generation of military cybersecurity professionals
• Dr. Dorothy Denning, an icon of the field, who people refer to as the “Mother of Computer Security”

To be sure, women such as Katie Moussouris and Parisa Tabriz, accomplished and active in both social media and in the larger community, serve as outstanding role models. Yet even with the visibility of these prominent women, social media represents only a subset of the cyber universe. Furthermore, what people who rely solely on Twitter as their window to cybersecurity are missing is not just incredible role models, but also job opportunities, training opportunities, professional networking opportunities, and volunteer opportunities.

Don’t get me wrong. I personally get a great deal out of social media, and have developed many friends who I only know through that forum. But I also remain active in the mainstream, including traditional conferences, local ISSA, (ISC)², ISACA, Infragard chapter meetings, vendor events, and online forums associated with these groups. The bottom line is that it is to everyone’s benefit that people within the hacker and traditional cybersecurity communities look beyond their own echo chambers as much as possible.

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Join Dark Reading LIVE for two cybersecurity summits at Interop 2019. Learn from the industry’s most knowledgeable IT security experts. Check out the Interop agenda here.

Ira Winkler is president of Secure Mentem and author of Advanced Persistent Security. View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/careers-and-people/the-twitterverse-is-not-the-security-community-/a/d-id/1334260?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

Two related reports from the General Accounting Office (GAO) point out significant issues with the IT systems involved in managing and servicing more than $22 trillion in federal debt. The reports — one a GAO financial audit of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, and the other a management report on the Federal Reserve — each conclude that there are problems with the configuration and control systems within IT. And while those problems have not yet resulted in system breaches, according to the reports, they’re worthy of immediate attention and remediation.

In the financial audit of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, auditors include a section in which they underscore the importance of a significant deficiency in information system controls. “These general control deficiencies increase the risk of unauthorized access to, modification of, or disclosure of sensitive data and programs and disruption of critical operations,” they say. In particular, the audit mentions the lack of least privilege access as a security concern for systems.

The audit also lists broad suggestions for remediation, though it doesn’t express any great optimism for the implementation of those steps. “We continued to identify instances in which known information system vulnerabilities were not being remediated on a timely basis. We also continued to identify instances in which implemented configuration settings were not effectively monitored against baseline security requirements,” they say.

Federal Reserve Banks are charged with implementing many of the practical steps of dealing with the national debt. Although the GAO didn’t audit the banks, it did conduct a management review looking at issues similar to those raised in the Bureau of the Fiscal Service audit. The GAO issued a pair of reports, one limited to staff and the board of governors, and the other a high-level public report.

The public management report points out deficiencies in configuration management. “These new and continuing control deficiencies increase the risk of unauthorized access to, modification of, or disclosure of sensitive data and programs,” it says.

Though the deficiencies have not resulted in breaches, the response has not come through improvements to the technology and its use. Rather, the GAO found the deficiencies were “mitigated primarily by Fiscal Service’s compensating management and reconciliation controls to detect potential misstatements of the Schedule of Federal Debt.”

Each report points out that some of the issues identified in previous audits and reports have been mitigated, while others remain to be dealt with.

Read more here and here.

Join Dark Reading LIVE for two cybersecurity summits at Interop 2019. Learn from the industry’s most knowledgeable IT security experts. Check out the Interop agenda here.

Dark Reading’s Quick Hits delivers a brief synopsis and summary of the significance of breaking news events. For more information from the original source of the news item, please follow the link provided in this article. View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities---threats/gao-finds-deficiencies-in-systems-for-handling-national-debt/d/d-id/1334266?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

It’s in the best interest of insurance companies to have their customers protected from cybersecurity losses. That, in a nutshell, is why a number of global insurers are collaborating on a rating system for cybersecurity products.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Marsh McLennan, a professional services company specializing in risk and insurance, will evaluate enterprise cybersecurity technology in a program called “Cyber Catalyst.” The article states, “Marsh will collate scores from participating insurers, which will individually size up the offerings, and identify the products and services considered effective in reducing cyber risk.”

Companies that choose security products from among the approved selection may find themselves qualified for improved insurance terms and conditions. Insurers already signed up to participate include Allianz SE, AXA SA, Axis Capital Holdings Ltd, Beazley PLC, CFC Underwriting Ltd., Munich Re, Sompo International, and Zurich Insurance Group AG.

Read more here.

Dark Reading’s Quick Hits delivers a brief synopsis and summary of the significance of breaking news events. For more information from the original source of the news item, please follow the link provided in this article. View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/risk/insurers-collaborate-on-cybersecurity-ratings/d/d-id/1334258?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

Nearly 90% of small- to midsized businesses (SMBs) would consider hiring a new managed services provider (MSP) if they offered the right cybersecurity solution, and nearly half would pay at least 20% more for the right security solution from a new MSP. 

“We found that SMBs understand that they are not well protected,” says Brian Downey, senior director of security product management for Continuum, which collected data from 850 SMBs in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Belgium, for its new SMB security report. “And … they are willing to pay more for the right service and would even trade out an existing MSP.”

Nearly 25% of SMBs have already changed MSPs in the aftermath of a cyberattack, he says.

Some 77% of SMBs anticipate that at least half of their cybersecurity needs will be outsourced in five years – and 78% are planning to invest more in cybersecurity in the next 12 months. Downey says SMBs understand what a breach can do to their businesses, and that the average total cost of cybersecurity attacks experienced in the past two years can vary by company size.

For example, the average cost of an attack for a company with 10- to 24 employees runs $38,437. That number increases to $70,357 for companies with 500- to 1,000 employees. The average cost across all the SMBs surveyed was $54,650.  

“There’s a growing recognition among SMBs that a security event can impact customer loyalty,” Downey says. “In fact, we found that 89% of SMBs surveyed saw security as one of their top five business priorities. As consumer awareness of security has increased following the 2016 election, SMB owners realized they need to focus on security so they can protect their companies.”

Martha Vazquez, senior research analyst for infrastructure services at IDC, says there’s no question SMBs are becoming more security-aware. “SMBs are still looking at price, but they wouldn’t go with a Secureworks or IBM” because they are out of their price range, she says. “However, they will pay for providers that offer more advanced threat detection and analytics. They’re looking at the security talent the providers have, plus the 24×7 support.” 

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Join Dark Reading LIVE for two cybersecurity summits at Interop 2019. Learn from the industry’s most knowledgeable IT security experts. Check out the Interop agenda here.

Steve Zurier has more than 30 years of journalism and publishing experience, most of the last 24 of which were spent covering networking and security technology. Steve is based in Columbia, Md. View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/cloud/small-businesses-turn-to-managed-service-providers-for-security/d/d-id/1334259?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

News this week about attackers compromising an automatic software update mechanism at ASUS to distribute malware to targeted victims has refocused attention on best practices for addressing risks to organizations from trusted vendor and channel partner relationships.

ASUS on Tuesday announced that it has addressed an issue with a version of its Live Update utility that last year allowed an attacker to distribute malware disguised as legitimate software updates to some customers of the company’s notebook computers.

The Taiwanese computer maker said it has also implemented “multiple security verification mechanisms” to prevent attackers from manipulating the company’s automatic software update mechanisms in the future.

It also released a diagnostic tool that customers of its notebook computers can use to quickly determine if their systems were infected via the compromised Live Update utility. ASUS is urging customers with infected systems to back up their files and restore the operating system to factory settings.

ASUS announced these new measures less than one day after Kasperksy Lab released a report describing how a threat group called Barium had embedded poisoned, digitally signed files in ASUS’ software update servers and pushed them out as legitimate firmware and software updates.

The so-called ShadowHammer attacks happened between June and November of last year and impacted ASUS notebook customers that had enabled Live Update, a utility that automatically searches for and installs new software and firmware updates from ASUS.

Kaspersky researchers described the ShadowHammer campaign as potentially impacting over one million ASUS devices, although the attackers seemed specifically interested in just 600 or so of them. In a blog Tuesday, security vendor Avira said it had observed at least 438,000 ASUS devices on which the initial malware installer was executed.

ASUS itself downplayed the scope of the attack. In its statement Tuesday, ASUS did not say how many of its notebook computers might have been impacted, and that a “very small number” of specific user groups were targeted in the attack.

The ASUS attack is similar to other incidents in recent years where attackers have managed to distribute malware tools to targeted victims by embedding malicious code in trusted software products. A 2017 incident involving Avast’s CCleaner software and another one the same year in which attackers inserted malware dubbed ShadowPad in a product from NetSaranag Computers are two relatively recent examples.

Such attacks are hard to detect and stop because they take advantage of the trusted relationships organizations have with software vendors, suppliers, and other channel partners. In ASUS’ case, the challenge was complicated by the fact that the attackers signed their malware using legitimate ASUS digital certificate.

Here are key best practices to protect against this type of attack:

1. Identify and Monitor High-Risk Vendors

Tech companies that issue remote patches and remote updates to customers are big targets for attackers because of their broad trusted relationships with customers, says Jake Olcott, vice president at BitSight.

“As a risk management best practice, organizations must identify their most high-risk vendors, include security performance requirements in contracts with those suppliers, and monitor the cyber posture of those suppliers on an ongoing basis,” he says.

The challenge is that such assessment and monitoring process can be extremely time-consuming, he says. But simply turning a blind eye to this risk all together can have detrimental consequences, he notes.

2. Know What to Look for and Monitor

“When performing due diligence, you’re not auditing every line of a vendor’s code,” says Mike Jordan, senior director at The Shared Assessments Program, an organization focused on third-party risk mitigation. Rather look for indications of practices that should catch problems like the one at ASUS, Jordan says. 

Make sure you can identify whether the vendor is following secure coding practices and reviews during and after development, especially if the vendor’s software can cause a high degree of harm, he advises.

Verify if the vendor has adopted Threat Modeling practices, because that’s one of the most effective ways to gain assurance about the vendor’s security habits. “Not all software vendors do this, but those who want to be considered reliable and secure partners should.”

3. Review and Prioritize

Automatic software update mechanisms are not all equally risky. So organizations should first prioritize the software that could have the most serious impact if attacked in the way that happened with ASUS, says Jordan.

“What the software does and where the updates go are important when determining its risk profile,” he says. With the ShadowHammer attack, the software updater utility went to about a million different computers, he notes. That gave the threat actors a huge attack surface to go after by replacing just one file.

“In an organization that uses a lot of computers from one vendor, that vendor should be much riskier than one whose software is used on only one computer in the organization,” Jordan says. “However, if that one computer has the crown jewels on it, you’d want to prioritize it.”

4. Trust But Verify

To mitigate risk from software updates, verify that the file you are installing is the file that the vendor intended, says Colin Little, senior threat analyst at Centripetal Networks. “A lot of popular software development companies will post the expected file hash of the package,” when making the update available for download, he says.

The goal is to give recipients a way to verify that the file hash of the file they downloaded is the same as the expected value. Any change in the package would change the hash value.

While security experts consider such hash comparisons an extra precaution, it does not work all the time. With the ASUS attacks, for instance, comparing the new files to the legitimate update using hash values would have been of little use since the attackers replaced legitimate updates on the server with their own, says Mark Orlando, CTO, cyber protection solutions at Raytheon.

5. Monitor Your Own Code-Signing Processes

Code-signing certificates are fundamental to establishing trust and are therefore a coveted commodity for attackers. For cybercriminals, such certificates provide a way to make malware seem trustworthy and therefore undetectable to threat detection systems.

Unfortunately, at many organizations the responsibility for protecting code-signing processes lies mostly with developers that are not prepared to defend these assets, says Kevin Bocek, vice president of security strategy and threat intelligence at Venafi. “Security teams must know where code-signing is being used; you can’t secure what you don’t know about,” Bocek says.

“Second, everything throughout the software delivery pipeline must be secured and continuously monitored,” he notes. This includes approval, use of keys and auditing of signing operations.

“It’s not good enough to just place a code signing key in an HSM or upload code to the cloud for signing.”

Related Content:

• Attackers Compromise ASUS Software Update Servers to Distribute Malware
• Chinese APT Backdoor Found in CCleaner Supply Chain Attack
• Avast CCleaner Compromised Amid Rise in Supply Chain Threats
• 10 Security Product Flaw Scares 

Join Dark Reading LIVE for two cybersecurity summits at Interop 2019. Learn from the industry’s most knowledgeable IT security experts. Check out the Interop agenda here.

Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year … View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/asus-shadowhammer-attack-underscores-trusted-third-party-risks/d/d-id/1334261?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple