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Research Exposes Attacks on Military, Diplomats, Executives

December 11, 2014 Paul Roberts

Researchers from Blue Coat Systems said on Wednesday that they have identified an online attack framework that is being used in highly targeted attacks on executives in industries like oil, finance and engineering as well as military officers, diplomats and government officials. The attacks are designed to steal sensitive information and Blue Coat, in a report, said that the attackers went to extreme lengths to cover their tracks: routing all communications between the hackers and the compromised systems they controlled through a “convoluted network of router proxies and rented hosts” in countries like South Korea. The framework, dubbed “Inception” is global in scope, but appears to have started out targeting individuals in Russia. Attacks spread via phishing e-mail messages that contained malicious attachments, including key logging tools and remote access Trojan horse programs, BlueCoat said. The company has released a full report on the incident, which can be found here. (PDF) [Read more Security Ledger coverage […]

Big Data, Security Drive Dell In Post-PC Future

December 9, 2014 Paul Roberts

If you consider how the Internet of Things is transforming the technology industry, one of the most interesting and thought-provoking areas to pay attention to is what we might consider technology “majors” – firms like HP and IBM and Cisco that made their mark (and their hundreds of billions) serving the needs of an earlier generation of technology consumers. How these established technology firms are pivoting to address the myriad challenges posed by the “Internet of Things” tells us a lot about how the IoT market is likely to shake out for consumers and – more pressingly- the enterprise.

Internet of Things Demands Visibility-Driven Security

December 1, 2014 Scott Harrell

In an earlier blog, I discussed essentials for visibility-driven security and the importance of having both visibility and correlation to quickly assess events in real-time. In this post, we will examine the different dimensions of visibility across the attack continuum and how crucial it is to have these dimensions in place in order to defend against known and emerging threats. Visibility-driven capabilities are critical if cybersecurity professionals are to do their job effectively. In order to accurately see what’s really happening across dynamic, changing, environments and provide a full understanding of malicious incidents, visibility must provide an accurate picture of users, devices, data, threats, and the relationships between them. And it must do so in near real-time and across a wide range of infrastructures to support new business models related to mobility, cloud, and the Internet of Things (IoT). For many security breaches, the gap between the time of compromise and the […]

NIST Sets Course For Handling Sensitive Data

November 26, 2014 Paul Roberts

The Snowden leaks were a wake-up call for U.S. Government agencies that the tools and processes to protect classified and sensitive data were woefully out of step with the current environment of small, capacious storage devices and powerful cloud-based secure communications and hosting platforms. But what about all the data that is stored on systems belonging to the (many) contractors that the government works with? Last week brings some clarification: a draft document from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) “Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information in Nonfederal Information Systems and Organizations.” (Draft Special Publication 800-171). The new NIST document outlines steps for protecting sensitive unclassified federal information that resides in nonfederal information systems and environments. Those include non-federal information systems that lie outside of the scope of existing laws like the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and any components of nonfederal systems that process, store, or transmit CUI. Read more […]

Security Needs Context in IoT| SC Magazine

November 24, 2014 Paul Roberts

SC Magazine has a worthy editorial on IoT and security by John Barco, VP of product management at the firm ForgeRock on how Internet of Things (IoT) technologies requires both security and a better understanding of what Barco calls “context.” “It’s not just about protecting IoT devices but the entire ecosystem, from the customer to the partner, the web page, mobile device, mobile app, the cloud and everything else in between,” he writes. Organizations that do not grasp the complex interactions between static devices, mobile devices and (of course) the cloud risk leaving sensitive, regulated data or intellectual property at the mercy of malicious actors. Barco’s recommendations? More and better user authentication to support IoT use cases outside the firewall, and future-proofing your IoT deployment by eschewing proprietary platforms and technologies. To quote Barco: “open source gives IT a platform it can build on and customize, while open standards offer the flexibility to adapt to future […]