Security Insights

Critical infrastructure, and geopolitical risk - Mathieu Gorge

In the current climate, operators of critical infrastructure are finding themselves in the front line.

And it is not just the obvious and traditional fields of CNI, such as energy or transport, that are under threat. The banking system, healthcare, manufacturing and food supply are all part of geopolitical risk, and at risk of cyber attack.

So just how vulnerable is critical infrastructure to cyber attack? And how should governments and industry work together to improve security?

Our guest this week is security and risk consultant Mathieu Gorge. He also runs the Vigitrust Global Advisory Board think tank. He speaks to Security Insights' editor Stephen Pritchard

 

We apologise for the audio quality in parts of this episode.

Malware, security and the cloud

In this episode we look at the risks and threats facing the cloud, with Ray Canzanese, director at Netskope’s Threat Labs.

 

The firm has just released its latest Cloud and Threat Report, and Canzanese talks through some of the highlights, including the use of PDFs and search engines to deliver malware, and the (mis)use of cloud storage.

Red Teams and Cyber War

How do organisations prepare for cyber attacks? Does “red teaming” work? And how close are we to cyber war?

Over the last few years, more firms have turned to red team security testing, putting their organisations through realistic attack simulations. But how do we balance the cost and time these tests demand, with the wider needs of the business?

Our Insights Interview guest this week is Reuven Aronashvili, founder and CEO of Israeli cybersecurity company CYE. Today, he works with large enterprises globally to help them tackle the most difficult cyber challenges.

Before that, he was one of the founders of Israel’s Red Team intelligence unit. As such, he has some unique insights into the line between a hacking incident and cyber terrorism and cyber warfare – and how close we are to crossing it.

 

Interview by Stephen Pritchard.

 

Surviving a crisis: the psychology of cyber attacks

Nearly everyone in cyber talks about people, process and technology. But often, the people side is mentioned only in passing.

But it is people that determine how well an organisation handles a cyber attack, and how quickly it recovers. Processes and technology are vital, of course. But as our guest this week says, behind every piece of wire, there is a human being.

Rebecca McKeown is the director of human sciences at Immersive Labs. A psychologist who has worked with militaries, aviation, governments and organisations involved in critical national infrastructure, she argues that we’re not investing sufficiently in the human side of security response.

And she also discusses the results of a recent report into the way firms prepare their people for cyber incidents, the Cyber Workforce Benchmark report.

Interview by Stephen Pritchard

Denial of service: attacks on the rise?

Distributed denial of service attacks -- or DDoS -- are up 14 per cent on 2019's figures, according to research by security firm NETSCOUT. 

And attacks are becoming more complex, with some using as many as 26 different vectors.

At the same time, there is a massive online market for DDoS attacks, with a terabit-class attack costing as little as $6500. Sites on the dark web even offer criminal hackers free trials of their wares, so the barriers to entry are effectively zero.

 

What, then, can security teams do to counter the DDoS threat? And could governments do more? Our guest this week is Richard Hummel, ASERT Threat Intelligence Lead at NETSCOUT. He discusses this, and more, with editor Stephen Pritchard.

Is mobile a security weak spot?

Are we underestimating the security threats to mobile devices – and indeed the threats to mobile infrastructure?

Organisations of all sizes now depend heavily on mobile devices. But, although mobile security rarely makes the headlines, the risks posed by ever more powerful devices, and networks, are all too real.

In fact, this week's guest argues that mobile devices were never designed to operate on corporate networks.

Andy Brown is the CTO at Mobliciti. His firm’s been running mobile infrastructure for enterprises since 2009, and he monitors the mobile threat closely. He discusses how the way mobile technology has changed the way we work, and what that means for cybersecurity, with Stephen Pritchard.

Identity, deception and compromised credentials

Stolen or compromised identities have been an attack vector for years, if not decades. Even now, organisations are failing to protect against compromised identity. Identity is one of security’s critical weak spots. But why is this? 

Once an attacker breaches defences, it is still too easy for them to move laterally, and to attack higher value targets, or as we've seen recently, attack an organisation with ransomware.

Our guest this week is chief security architect and formally the chief deception officer at Attivo, Carolyn Crandall

She argues that it is changing technology and changing work patterns, with the need to access information anywhere, and at any time, that is making these attacks both more common, and more damaging.

Interview by Stephen Pritchard

 

 

 

The tale of a stolen iPad

What happens if your personal devices are stolen? Few victims of theft recover their goods. But the loss of the hardware might only be the start of their problems.

There is a growing black market in stolen devices, but also in tools that can unlock them, to steal credentials or to attack other networks. People who lose a device can be a victim twice over, if hackers then use their own property to target their identity.

In this week’s episode, security researcher Adalsteinn Jonsson explains how this is exactly what happened to his partner, and how the incident prompted him, to undertake their own investigations. He, and fellow researcher at cyber security company Cyren, Magni Reynir Sigurðsson, take up the story.

Interview by Stephen Pritchard

Ageism in Infosec: Are we losing the older generation?

Is ageism a problem in cybersecurity, and IT?

The pandemic has accelerated a trend that observers were already warning about: older staff are leaving IT security. And with them, their knowledge and experience leaves too.

What then can be done to encourage older workers to stay in the industry? Is ageism a problem, and if it is, how do we counter it?

This week’s guests are inter-generational diversity expert and author, Henry Rose Lee and Gernot Hacker, from cybersecurity firm Appgate. Appgate recently commissioned a focus group study looking at attitudes to age in cyber security, as they explain.

Interview by Stephen Pritchard

The security of things: protecting the IoT

The Internet of Things continues to grow at pace. But are its security flaws being addressed?

 

Industrial, operational technology and consumer devices are increasingly connected, but security is too often an afterthought, with flaws such as default passwords and insecure firmware. And many IoT devices are hard to patch, if they can be upgraded at all.

 

The result is an expanding attack surface, that risks undermining the benefits of IoT technology. But could 2022 be the year this is changes? The UK has introduced a voluntary code of practice, Secure By Design, and the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill should become law this year.

Our guest this week is John Moor, MD at the IoT Security Foundation. He discusses the risks posed by the technology, and how manufacturers, governments and end users can help to solve it, with Security Insights' editor Stephen Pritchard.