I've just had a discussion with a fellow Head of Cybersecurity around vulnerabilities and two things struck me that people need to understand: firstly, vulnerabilities have different states and secondly, scanning tools don't have all the context so can't actually tell you what risk you are running.  Our discussion started with a statement from them that vulnerabilities are black and white - they're either there or not. It's actually a bit more nuanced than that though. Without making this more complicated than it needs to be, inherently there are two states a vulnerability can be in: exploitable or unexploitable (sometimes called active or dormant with other subtleties). This doesn't mean that they are being exploited, but that it is either possible to exploit the vulnerability in the current configuration (however hard that may be) or it isn't without some other change happening first.  In our discussion, my peer argued that if it is unexploitable then ther...

I often get asked what I look for when hiring security professionals and my answer is usually that I want the right attitude first and foremost - knowledge is easy to gain and those that just collect pieces of paper should maybe think about gaining experience rather than yet more acronyms. However, it's difficult to get someone to change their mindset, so the right attitude is very important. But what is the right attitude? Firstly, security professionals differ from developers and IT engineers in their outlook and approach, so shouldn't be lumped in with them, in my opinion. The mindset of a security professional is constantly thinking about what could go wrong (something that tends to spill over into my personal life as well, much to the annoyance of my wife). Contrast this with the mindset of a developer who is being measured on their delivery of new features. Most developers, or IT engineers, are looking at whether what they have delivered satisfies the requirements fr...

Security professionals can't afford to work in isolated bubbles when the attackers are openly sharing information about system vulnerabilities... Watch my video interview for SCMagazine here .

Ok, so I'm being a little facetious, but I do think that putting Security departments under IT is a bad idea, not because they don't naturally fit well there, but because usually it gives the wrong impression and not enough visibility. Security is far more wide reaching than IT alone and touches every part of the business. By considering it as part of IT, and utilising IT budgets, it can be pigeonholed and ignored by anyone who wouldn't engage IT for their project or job. Security covers all information, from digital to paper-based and is concerned with aspects such as user education as much as technology. There is a clear conflict of interest between IT and Security as well. Part of the Security team's function is to monitor, audit and assess the systems put in place and maintained by the IT department. If the Security team sits within this department then there can be a question over the segregation of duties and responsibility. In addition to this, Security depar...

There is often a fundamental disconnect between security professionals and senior management. As I have stated in a previous post about slips, mistakes and violations, if senior management don't 'buy in' to security then nor will the rest of the organisation and ultimately it will fail. Middle management want to be senior management and will model themselves on them, often seeing the breaking of rules as a mark of status. So, it is vital that senior management lead by example. Unfortunately, it is often very hard to get senior management to 'buy in' to this concept and not have a 'them-and-us' attitude of there being those rules that apply to the rest of the organisation and those that apply to them. This is as much the fault of the security professionals as senior management though. Security professionals have spent so long saying "no" to everyone and stalwartly refusing to budge or see someone else's point of view that people have stopped ...

I have seen so many websites hosted and developed insecurely that I have often thought I should write a guide of sorts for those wanting to commission a new website. Now I have have actually been asked to develop a web hosting security policy and a set of guidelines to give to project managers for dissemination to developers and hosting providers. So, I thought I would share some of my advice here. Before I do, though, I have to answer why we need this policy in the first place? There are many types of attack on websites, but these can be broadly categorised as follows: Denial of Service (DoS), Defacement and Data Breaches/Information Stealing. Data breaches and defacements hurt businesses' reputations and customer confidence as well as having direct financial impacts. But surely any hosting provider or solution developer will have these standards in place, yes? Well, in my experience the answer is no. It is true that they are mostly common sense and most providers will conform...

Security teams often attract antagonism from the business that they are supposed to serve, appearing as self-appointed policemen in a police state. This is unhelpful and not what we are or should be aiming for. Security departments should be providing a secure environment in which business users are free to do what they want. Obviously this environment will have boundaries, but they must be agreed with the business and not just imposed arbitrarily. Take an example from children's play areas, children should be safe within the confines of the soft play area and not too much harm will come to them. They can run around and play whatever game they like as long as they stay within the boundaries. Children can't wear shoes in a soft play area as they may hurt another child, but this doesn't stop them from doing what they want as the play area has been engineered so that they don't need shoes to stop them from hurting their feet or getting wet and dirty. The same principle...

I have blogged about 3M's privacy filters before and their gold filter still remains, in my opinion, the best privacy filter on the market. If you want to find out more about that one and why you need a privacy filter, see my previous blog post " Why do I need a privacy filter? (3M's new Vikuiti Gold Privacy Filter) ". I also blogged about their mobile phone privacy filter . The problem with their mobile phone privacy filter last year was that it was only available in their standard grey louvered filter, so didn't work well with accelerometer phones that can be used in portrait or landscape modes - you had to pre-select which orientation you wanted to use your smartphone in. Also, the light transmission wasn't as good as the gold filter nor was the touch quite as good after applying it. Well, they've addressed this and lanuched a new filter for mobile phones and slates at InfoSecurity Europe. The filter is now significantly thinner with excellent tou...

InfoSecurity Europe is over for another year. Once again there were several interesting companies and sessions worth noting. The 'themes' (if they can be called that) or 'hot topics' were cloud security again, social media and mobile access/the consumerisation of IT. The big difference seemed to be in the attitudes of people - more 'how can we reduce the risks to an acceptable level?' rather than 'we can't secure it, so we won't allow it!' We are seeing a shift in the types of systems end users are accessing the corporate network from. The IT department are no longer dictating what will or will not be allowed. More and more users want to use their own personal devices, such as iPhones or iPads, on the network. In the past IT departments have resisted this and said no to the users. However, this attitude is beginning to change and there were a raft of organisations with solutions to help secure these devices and manage the data they contain. How...

Once again InfoSecurity Europe was an interesting place to visit. Lots of good sessions and interesting people to talk to. Most of the usual protagonists were there and the organisers have increased the educational part of the exhibition as well, which is good. I thought I would put down a few things that I thought were noteworthy from the exhibition. I've already blogged about the GrIDsure anti-phishing sender verification and the new 3M mobile phone privacy filters , but there were a few other things I want to mention. The first one is Panda Security's new Panda Cloud Internet Protection . This is a cloud-based service that provides consistent security and access policies to all machines within an organisation. The key thing is that it will protect mobile machines that are outside the corporate network with the same policies as those within the network. Protecting corporate machines when mobile is a big concern and a good way to reduce malware or hacking problems on the...

At this year's InfoSecurity Europe I visited the 3M stand again to see what developments they had for their privacy filters. They had their excellent Gold filter there of course, which is now properly on sale in the UK and the best on the market in my opinion. I previously blogged about this filter in my post " Why do I need a privacy filter? (3M's new Vikuiti Gold Privacy Filter) ". So what's this blog post about? Well, they have now produced privacy filters for mobile phones. Let's add a bit of context to this decision. How many businesses provide mobile devices to their employees that are connected to the corporate network with access to email, contacts, calendars and corporate documents? If you were reading an email from a client or reviewing a sensitive document would you be happy for someone to peer over your shoulder? Maybe you're paranoid like me and try to avoid reading emails in public places and stand with your back to the wall, shielding th...

It is quite common in Information Systems to use pseudo code to describe a process. I have often thought that the same principle can be applied to the process of hacking an organisation, which may help people understand the process and how to protect themselves. Below is my proposal for this pseduo-code for the hacking process. This is very much a work in progress. I would welcome feedback on it and I will update it as suggestions are made or as I feel it needs revising. organisation = proposed target organisation. footprint (value, effort, risk) profit = value - (effort * risk) if profit > 0 then   organisation. enumerate ()    select attack_type      case DoS        engage_botnet (myBotnet)       myBotnet. launchDDoS (organisation)      case Access       organisation. gainAccess (myAccount)     ...

In this day of doing everything online, we still rely heavily on services delivered over POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). Banks and credit card companies still require the telephone to make certain changes, queries and security checks, even though most functions can be performed online. Medical records, bank details, security key order requests, etc., are routinely transferred by facsimile. However, are these secure? Are they more or less secure than doing the same thing online? I'm not going to talk about the underlying security of POTS , but concentrate on a couple of easy attack vectors on the end device of the user that I have recently observed. A couple of weeks ago, I needed to amend something on one of my credit card accounts (I would tell you which bank, only it's my personal credit card and I don't want phisers knowing which banks I have accounts with). This bank has an automated telephone answering system to make things more efficient and reduce staff require...

Human failures are often described as Slips, Lapses, Mistakes and Violations. These are grouped into two categories: Errors and Violations. The difference here is the intent - violations result from conscious decisions to disregard policies and procedures, whereas errors have no malicious intent. Also, violations often involve more than one form of misconduct, whereas errors are often isolated. Don Turnblade has stated that in his experience "well trained staff had a 3.75% unintentional non-compliance rate; they did not realize that installed software compromised data security. About 0.4% of end users were intentionally non-compliant, generally willful persons with strong technical skill or organizational authority who were unaccustomed to complying with computing restrictions." So what are the different types of error? Dealing with each in turn, we have Slips, Lapses and Mistakes. Slips - actions not carried out as intended, e.g. pressing the wrong key by accident. Sl...

Computer Weekly recently conducted a survey via Twitter on how many organisations allow their users access to corporate email from their own private phone. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any results from this survey as yet, but it made me think about organisations that do allow private devices to attach to the network, not just mobile phones. I have also had many comments on my blog post entitled ' Mobile Device Data Breaches ', which have fed into this post. In one of those comments, someone pointed out that in their experience users are often a weak link. Isn’t it always the case that users are the weakest link? A poorly educated/trained user can compromise the best security. Unfortunately, I have seen so many organisations that do not adequately train their users or make them aware that there are policies, let alone what they mean to their daily usage of the corporate systems. I have also come across one organisation where a top executive had all the system passwords st...

Comodo Vision Video Blog Responsibility for the notorious Heartland Payment Systems data breach late last year has been debated recently, with Heartland’s CEO suggesting that their PCI auditors let the firm down, while the auditors insist they can’t be responsible for checking absolutely everything. This case brings to light the reality that absolute security is an impossible goal, and that audits are only as good as an organization’s vigilance in following proper security procedures after the audit has been completed. See my second video blog here .

Comodo Vision Video Blog Several recent data breaches at major enterprises and governmental agencies stemmed from the loss or theft of mobile computers and USB drives. While encrypting the data on these devices isn’t a bad idea, the larger question is why was sensitive personal information stored on the mobile device in the first place? See my first video blog for Comodo Vision here .

I recently read an article in New Scientist entitled " Want to clone bank cards? Just press 'print' ". They state that it has been discovered that "... a devious piece of criminal coding that has been quietly at work in a clutch of cash machines at banks in Russia and Ukraine. It allows a gang member to walk up to an ATM, insert a "trigger" card, and use the machine's printer to produce a list of all the debit card numbers used that day, including their start and expiry dates - and their PINs. Everything needed, in fact, to clone those cards and start emptying bank accounts." This is possible because ATM Terminal vendors have succumbed to financial pressures, and the demand for greater functionality, and moved to using standard modular PC architectures and off-the-shelf operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows and Linux. These ATM devices then become vulnerable to similar malware as their desktop counterparts. SpiderLabs, part of Trust...

These are my slides on Information Security Risk Assessment, presented at the Intensive Programme on Information and Communication Security ( IPICS ). The topics covered are: the System-Holistic Approach to ICT Security; Risk Assessment approaches, strategies & terminology; Three Card RAG / Obstacle Poker; OCTAVE ® - Operationally Critical Threat, Asset and Vulnerability Evaluation. A PDF of the slides can be downloaded from here . (updated) I will publish more information on the topics covered in due course (and if anyone asks). However, more information on Three Card RAG / Obstacle Poker can be found in a previous blog post .

I have been tasked with rolling out a trial multi-factor authentication system that must be user-friendly, secure, low-cost and have zero impact on the existing network and users who won't be on the trial. That should be simple! A trawl round the InfoSecurity Europe show always helps, as you can get the latest state of play from all the major vendors. This year there were the obvious keyring tokens, SmartCards, USB tokens, SMS solutions and some innovative software solutions, including GrIDsure. Before making any decisions about the solution to go for, several things need to be decided, among which are: how much security is required? What is considered user-friendly to a normal, non-technical user? What metrics should we use for authentication? To answer these we need to look at what authentication is first: Authentication is the binding of an identity to a subject. The subjects we're talking about in this case are users and we're trying to bind their digital identity, ...