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Two years ago, we asked the question: What actually works in cybersecurity?
Not what everyone’s doing—because there are plenty of cybersecurity reports out there that answer that question—but which data-backed practices lead to the outcomes we want to implement in cybersecurity strategies?
The result was the first Security Outcomes Report, in which we analyzed 25 cybersecurity practices against 11 desired outcomes. And thanks to a large international respondent group, together with the mighty data science powers of the Cyentia Institute, we got some good data that raised as many questions as it answered. Sure, we found some strong correlations between practices and outcomes, but why did they correlate?
Last year, our second report focused in on the top five most highly correlated practices and tried to reveal more detail that would give us some guidance on implementation. We found that certain types of technology infrastructure correlated more with those successful practices, and therefore with the outcomes we’re seeking. Is architecture really destiny when it comes to good security outcomes? It does appear to be the case, but we had more research ahead of us to be more confident in a statement that sweeping.
All the while, we’ve been listening to readers considering what they’d like to glean from this research. One big question was, “How do we turn these practices into management objectives?” In other words, now that we have some data on practices we should be implementing, how do we set measurable goals to do so? I’ve led workshops in the UK and in Colombia to help CISOs set their own objectives based on their risk management priorities, and we’ve worked to identify longer-term targets that require close alignment with business leaders.
Another question that took a front-row seat in our presentations and just wouldn’t leave: the topic of cyber resilience, or security resilience. It’s almost reached the status of a buzzword in the security industry, but you can understand why it’s ubiquitous.
“Among the upheaval of the pandemic, political unrest, economic and climate turbulence, and war, everyone is struggling to find a new ‘business as usual’ state that includes being able to adapt better to the shaky ground beneath them.”
But what exactly is security resilience, anyway? What does it mean to security practitioners and executives around the world? And what are the associated cybersecurity outcomes that we can identify and correlate? We know it doesn’t simply mean preventing bad things from happening; that ship has sailed (and sunk). We also know that security resilience doesn’t always mean full recovery from an event or condition that has knocked you down. Rather, it means continuing to operate during an adverse situation, either at full or partial capacity, and mitigating the effects on stakeholders. Ideally speaking, security resilience also means learning from the experience and emerging stronger.
Security resilience is the focus of the third volume of our Security Outcomes Report: Achieving Security Resilience. It tells us how 4,700 practitioners across 26 countries are prioritizing security resilience: what it means to them, what they’re doing successfully to achieve it, and what they’re struggling with. Once again, the data gives us interesting ideas to ponder.
A stronger security culture boosts resilience by as much as 46%. By “culture,” we don’t mean annual compliance-driven awareness training. Cybersecurity awareness is what you know; security culture is what you do. When organizations score better at being able to explain just what it is that they need to do in security and why, they make better decisions in line with their security values, and that leads to better overall security resilience.
It doesn’t matter how many people you have; it matters whether you have any of them available in reserve to respond to events. Organizations with a flexible pool of talent internally (or on standby externally) show anywhere from 11% to 15% improvement in resilience. Which makes sense, as a fully leveraged team will be strained if they have to work even harder to take on an incident.
Because so many organizations around the world are looking to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework as a guidepost for cybersecurity practices, we also analyzed which NIST CSF capabilities correlated most strongly with our list of resilience outcomes. For example, our survey respondents that do a great job tracking key systems and data are almost 11% more likely to excel at containing the spread and scope of security incidents. From one angle, this seems like an obvious result, hardly worth mentioning. On the other hand, it’s worth presenting to your management some data that shows that investing in asset inventory solutions really does have long-range effects on your ability to stop an intrusion.
And there’s much more. The report identifies—and then explores—seven success factors that, if achieved, boost our measure of overall security resilience from the bottom 10th percentile to the top 10th percentile. These include establishing a security culture and properly resourcing response teams, among others.
I hope this introductory blog—the first in a series exploring this latest report—whets your appetite to read the report itself. And remember, we are always aiming to reveal the next undiscovered insight that leads to better security outcomes. Please share your feedback and research requests with us in the comments below, or talk to us at the next security conference.
For more insights like what you’ve seen in today’s blog take a look at the Security Outcomes Report, Volume 3: Achieving Security Resilience.
Explore more data-backed cybersecurity research and other blogs on security resilience:
We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with Cisco Secure on social!
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Have you ever been browsing online and clicked a link or search result that took you to a site that triggers a “your connection is not private” or “your connection is not secure” error code? If you’re not too interested in that particular result, you may simply move on to another result option. But if you’re tempted to visit the site anyway, you should be sure you understand what the warning means, what the risks are, and how to bypass the error if you need to.
A “your connection is not private” error means that your browser cannot determine with certainty that a website has safe encryption protocols in place to protect your device and data. You can bump into this error on any device connected to the internet — computer, smartphone, or tablet.
So, what exactly is going on when you see the “this connection is not private” error?
For starters, it’s important to know that seeing the error is just a warning, and it does not mean any of your private information is compromised. A “your connection is not private” error means the website you were trying to visit does not have an up-to-date SSL (secure sockets layer) security certificate.
Website owners must maintain the licensing regularly to ensure the site encryption capabilities are up to date. If the website’s SSL certificate is outdated, it means the site owners have not kept their encryption licensing current, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they are up to no good. Even major websites like LinkedIn have had momentary lapses that would throw the error. LinkedIn mistakenly let their subdomain SSL certificates lapse.
In late 2021, a significant provider of SSL certificates, Let’s Encrypt, went out of business. When their root domain officially lapsed, it created issues for many domain names and SSL certificates owned by legitimate companies. The privacy error created problems for unwitting businesses, as many of their website visitors were rightfully concerned about site security.
While it does not always mean a website is unsafe to browse, it should not be ignored. A secure internet connection is critical to protecting yourself online. Many nefarious websites are dangerous to visit, and this SSL certificate error will protect you from walking into them unaware.
SSL certification standards have helped make the web a safer place to transact. It helps ensure online activities like paying bills online, ordering products, connecting to online banking, or keeping your private email accounts safe and secure. Online security continues to improve with a new Transport Layer Security (TLS) standard, which promises to be the successor protocol to SSL.
So be careful whenever visiting sites that trigger the “connection is not private” error, as those sites can potentially make your personal data less secure and make your devices vulnerable to viruses and malware.
Note: The “your connection is not private” error is Google Chrome‘s phrasing. Microsoft Edge or Mozilla Firefox users will instead see a “your connection is not secure” error as the warning message.
If you feel confident that a website or page is safe, despite the warning from your web browser, there are a few things you can do to troubleshoot the error.
Remember, you are taking your chances anytime you ignore an error. As we mentioned, you could leave yourself vulnerable to hackers after your passwords, personal information, and other risks.
Your data and private information are valuable to hackers, so they will continue to find new ways to try and procure it. Here are some ways to protect yourself and your data when browsing online.
As we continue to do more critical business online, we must also do our best to address the risks of the internet’s many conveniences.
A comprehensive cybersecurity tool like McAfee+ Ultimate can help protect you from online scams, identity theft, and phishing attempts, and ensure you always have a secure connection. McAfee helps keep your sensitive information out of the hands of hackers and can help you keep your digital data footprints lighter with personal data cleanup.
With McAfee’s experts on your side, you can enjoy everything the web offers with the confidence of total protection.
The post “This Connection Is Not Private” – What it Means and How to Protect Your Privacy appeared first on McAfee Blog.
Since releasing SecureX orchestration, we’ve regularly published two types of content for our customers to import and use: atomic actions and workflows. Atomic actions are small, re-usable functions that allow you to do simple things like isolating an endpoint in Cisco Secure Endpoint. Workflows are more complex combinations of activities, often made up of multiple atomic actions, that accomplish a broader objective. One of our most popular workflows fetches blog posts from Talos and then conducts an investigation into each post using a customer’s SecureX-integrated products. As of this blog post’s publishing, we’ve released 75 workflows. So, let’s talk about what’s new…
In the past, when you wanted to communicate with SecureX APIs, you had to go through a multi-step process to generate an API client, use that API client to get a token, and then refresh the token every 10 minutes. This process wasn’t exactly simple, so in April we released the new SecureX Token account key. This special type of account key allows you to integrate with SecureX APIs without creating an API client, generating a token, or worrying about when the token expires. Simply use a SecureX target in conjunction with a SecureX Token account key and the platform takes care of the tokens. For more information about this update and how to take advantage of this new functionality, check out our documentation. Keep in mind that if your orchestration tenant was created prior to April 2022, you may need to create a SecureX Token.
Now that we have SecureX Token account keys and customers have been using them for a few months, we decided it was time to update all of our previously published workflows to be fully compatible with the new account key type. All 24 workflows using SecureX APIs have now been updated to leverage SecureX Tokens. For more information about Cisco-published workflows, check out our workflow list.
Since Cisco Secure Firewall is almost always deployed on-premises and behind a firewall, integrating it with SecureX orchestration in the cloud has required the use of a SecureX orchestration remote. Not all of our customers are interested in deploying an on-premises virtual machine or they lack a VMware ESXi deployment within which to run the VM. Now, with the release of the SecureX Security Services Exchange (SSE) API proxy, you can integrate your SSE-registered FMC devices with orchestration workflows without the need for additional remotes or virtual machines. To show how this works and highlight how easy this integration is, we re-released five of our existing FMC workflows with support for the SSE API proxy:
To stay updated on what’s new with SecureX, check out the following resources:
We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with Cisco Secure on social!
Cisco Secure Social Channels
The word is out! Cisco Secure Endpoint’s effectiveness is off the charts in protecting your enterprise environment.
This is not just a baseless opinion; however, the facts are rooted in actual test results from the annual AV-Comparative EPR Test Report published in October 2022. Not only did Secure Endpoint knock it out of the park in enterprise protection; but Cisco Secure Endpoint obtained the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) per agent at $587 over 5 years. No one else was remotely close in this area. More to come on that later.
If you are not familiar with the “AV-Comparatives Endpoint Prevention and Response Test is the most comprehensive test of EPR products ever performed. The 10 products in the test were subjected to 50 separate targeted attack scenarios, which used a variety of different techniques.”
These results are from an industry-respected third-party organization that assesses antivirus software and has just confirmed what we know and believe here at Cisco, which is our Secure Endpoint product is the industry’s best of the best.
Look for yourself at where we landed. That’s right, Cisco Secure Endpoint smashed this test, we are almost off the quadrant as one of the “Strategic Leaders”.
We ended up here for a combination of reasons, with the top being our efficacy in protecting our customers’ environments in this real-world test that emulates multi-stage attacks similar to MITRE’s ATT&CK evaluations which are conducted as part of this process (click here for an overview of MITRE ATT&CK techniques). Out of all the 50 scenarios tested, Secure Endpoint was the only product that STOPPED 100% of targeted threats toward enterprise users, which prevented further infiltration into the organization.
In addition, this test not only assesses the efficacy of endpoint security products but also analyzes their cost-effectiveness. Following up on my earlier remarks about achieving the lowest cost of ownership, the graph below displays how we stacked up against other industry players in this space including several well-known vendors that chose not to display their names due to poor results.
These results provide a meaningful proof point that Cisco Secure Endpoint is perfectly positioned to secure the enterprise as well as secure the future of hybrid workers.
Enriched with built-in Extended Detection and Response (XDR) capabilities, Cisco Secure Endpoint has allowed our customers to maintain resiliency when faced with outside threats.
As we embark on securing “what’s next” by staying ahead of unforeseen cyber threats of tomorrow, Cisco Secure Endpoint integration with the complete Cisco Secure Solutions portfolio allows you to move forward with the peace of mind that if it’s connected, we can and will protect it.
Now that you have seen how effective Secure Endpoint is with live real-world testing, try it for yourself with one of our live instant demos. Click here to access instructions on how to download and install your demo account for a test drive.
Click here to see what analysts, customers, and third-party testing organizations have to say about Cisco Secure Endpoint Security efficacy, easy implementation and overall low total cost of ownership for their organization —and stay ahead of threats.
We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with Cisco Secure on social!
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NetWitness and Cisco released the third annual Findings Report from the RSA Conference® 2022 Security Operations Center (SOC).
The RSA Conference® SOC analyzes the Moscone Center wireless traffic, which is an open network during the week of the Conference.
The role of the SOC at RSA Conference is an educational exhibit sponsored by NetWitness and Cisco. It has elements of a SOC like you would create to protect an organization. The RSAC SOC coordinated with the Moscone Center Network Operation Center for a SPAN of the network traffic from the Moscone Center wireless network. In the SOC, NetWitness had real time visibility of the traffic traversing the wireless network. Cisco provided automated malware analysis, threat intelligence, DNS visibility and Intrusion Detection; brought together with SecureX.
The goal of the RSAC SOC is to use technology to educate conference attendees about what happens on a typical wireless network. The education comes in the form of daily SOC tours and an RSA Conference® session. You can watch the replay of the ‘EXPOSURE: The 3rd Annual RSAC SOC Report’ session here.
The findings report addresses several security topics, including:
Look forward to seeing you in 2023!
Download the RSA Conference® 2022 Security Operations Center Findings Report here.
Acknowledgements: Our appreciation to those who made the RSAC SOC possible.
Percy Tucker
Steve Fink
Bart Stump
Dave Glover
Jessica Bair Oppenheimer – Cisco SOC Manager
Ian Redden – Team Lead & Integrations
Aditya Sankar / Ben Greenbaum – SecureX & Malware Analytics
Alejo Calaoagan / Christian Clasen – Cisco Umbrella
Dinkar Sharma / Seyed Khadem-Djahaghi – Cisco Secure Firewall
Matt Vander Horst – SecureX Orchestration
Doug Hurd – Partnerships
Eric Kostlan
Navin Sinha
Zohreh Khezri
Eric Goodwin
Gabe Gilligan and the amazing staff at XPO Digital!
We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with Cisco Secure on social!
Cisco Secure Social Channels
Just a few years ago when the topic of supporting offsite workers arose, some of the key conversation topics were related to purchase, logistics, deployment, maintenance and similar issues. The discussions back then were more like “special cases” vs. today’s environment where supporting workers offsite (now known as the hybrid workforce) has become a critical mainstream topic.
Now with the bulk of many organization’s workers off-premise, the topic of security and the ability of a security vendor to help support an organization’s hybrid workers has risen to the top of the selection criteria. In a soon to be released Cisco endpoint survey, it’s not surprising that the ability of a security vendor to make supporting the hybrid workforce easier and more efficient was the key motivating factor when organizations choose security solutions.
Today, when prospects and existing customers look at Cisco’s ability to support hybrid workers with our advanced security solution set and open platform, it’s quite clear that we can deliver on that promise. But, yes, good tools make it easier and more efficient, but the reality is that running a SOC or any security group, large or small, still takes a lot of work. Most organizations not only rely on advanced security tools but utilize a set of best practices to provide clarity of roles, efficiency of operation, and for the more prepared, have tested these best practices to prove to themselves that they are prepared for what’s next.
Knowing that not all organizations have this degree of security maturity and preparedness, we gathered a couple of subject matter experts together to discuss 5 areas of time-tested best practices that, besides the advanced tools offered by Cisco and others, can help your SOC (or small security team) yield actionable insights and guide you faster, and with more confidence, toward the outcomes you want.
In this webinar you will hear practical advice from Cisco technical marketing and a representative from our award winning Talos Threat Intelligence group, the same group who have created and are maintaining breach defense in partnership with Fortune 500 Security Operating Centers (SOC) around the globe.
You can expect to hear our 5 Best Practices recommendations on the following topics;
Check out our webinar to find out how you can become more security resilient and be better prepared for what’s next.
We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with Cisco Secure on social!
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Microsoft Corp. is investigating reports that attackers are exploiting two previously unknown vulnerabilities in Exchange Server, a technology many organizations rely on to send and receive email. Microsoft says it is expediting work on software patches to plug the security holes. In the meantime, it is urging a subset of Exchange customers to enable a setting that could help mitigate ongoing attacks.
In customer guidance released Thursday, Microsoft said it is investigating two reported zero-day flaws affecting Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, 2016, and 2019. CVE-2022-41040, is a Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerability that can enable an authenticated attacker to remotely trigger the second zero-day vulnerability — CVE-2022-41082 — which allows remote code execution (RCE) when PowerShell is accessible to the attacker.
Microsoft said Exchange Online has detections and mitigation in place to protect customers. Customers using on-premises Microsoft Exchange servers are urged to review the mitigations suggested in the security advisory, which Microsoft says should block the known attack patterns.
Vietnamese security firm GTSC on Thursday published a writeup on the two Exchange zero-day flaws, saying it first observed the attacks in early August being used to drop “webshells.” These web-based backdoors offer attackers an easy-to-use, password-protected hacking tool that can be accessed over the Internet from any browser.
“We detected webshells, mostly obfuscated, being dropped to Exchange servers,” GTSC wrote. “Using the user-agent, we detected that the attacker uses Antsword, an active Chinese-based opensource cross-platform website administration tool that supports webshell management. We suspect that these come from a Chinese attack group because the webshell codepage is 936, which is a Microsoft character encoding for simplified Chinese.”
GTSC’s advisory includes details about post-compromise activity and related malware, as well as steps it took to help customers respond to active compromises of their Exchange Server environment. But the company said it would withhold more technical details of the vulnerabilities for now.
In March 2021, hundreds of thousands of organizations worldwide had their email stolen and multiple backdoor webshells installed, all thanks to four zero-day vulnerabilities in Exchange Server.
Granted, the zero-day flaws that powered that debacle were far more critical than the two detailed this week, and there are no signs yet that exploit code has been publicly released (that will likely change soon). But part of what made last year’s Exchange Server mass hack so pervasive was that vulnerable organizations had little or no advance notice on what to look for before their Exchange Server environments were completely owned by multiple attackers.
Microsoft is quick to point out that these zero-day flaws require an attacker to have a valid username and password for an Exchange user, but this may not be such a tall order for the hackers behind these latest exploits against Exchange Server.
Steven Adair is president of Volexity, the Virginia-based cybersecurity firm that was among the first to sound the alarm about the Exchange zero-days targeted in the 2021 mass hack. Adair said GTSC’s writeup includes an Internet address used by the attackers that Volexity has tied with high confidence to a China-based hacking group that has recently been observed phishing Exchange users for their credentials.
In February 2022, Volexity warned that this same Chinese hacking group was behind the mass exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability in the Zimbra Collaboration Suite, which is a competitor to Microsoft Exchange that many enterprises use to manage email and other forms of messaging.
If your organization runs Exchange Server, please consider reviewing the Microsoft mitigations and the GTSC post-mortem on their investigations.
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