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Cisco supports the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework and is a launch partner of AWS Security Lake
The Cisco Secure Technical Alliance supports the open ecosystem and AWS is a valued technology alliance partner, with integrations across the Cisco Secure portfolio, including SecureX, Secure Firewall, Secure Cloud Analytics, Duo, Umbrella, Web Security Appliance, Secure Workload, Secure Endpoint, Identity Services Engine, and more.
We are proud to be a launch partner of AWS Security Lake, which allows customers to build a security data lake from integrated cloud and on-premises data sources as well as from their private applications. With support for the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF) standard, Security Lake reduces the complexity and costs for customers to make their security solutions data accessible to address a variety of security use cases such as threat detection, investigation, and incident response. Security Lake helps organizations aggregate, manage, and derive value from log and event data in the cloud and on-premises to give security teams greater visibility across their organizations.
With Security Lake, customers can use the security and analytics solutions of their choice to simply query that data in place or ingest the OCSF-compliant data to address further use cases. Security Lake helps customers optimize security log data retention by optimizing the partitioning of data to improve performance and reduce costs. Now, analysts and engineers can easily build and use a centralized security data lake to improve the protection of workloads, applications, and data.
Cisco Secure Firewall serves as an organization’s centralized source of security information. It uses advanced threat detection to flag and act on malicious ingress, egress, and east-west traffic while its logging capabilities store information on events, threats, and anomalies. By integrating Secure Firewall with AWS Security Lake, through Secure Firewall Management Center, organizations will be able to store firewall logs in a structured and scalable manner.
The eNcore client provides a way to tap into message-oriented protocol to stream events and host profile information from the Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center. The eNcore client can request event and host profile data from a Management Center, and intrusion event data only from a managed device. The eNcore application initiates the data stream by submitting request messages, which specify the data to be sent, and then controls the message flow from the Management Center or managed device after streaming begins.
These messages are mapped to OCSF Network Activity events using a series of transformations embedded in the eNcore code base, acting as both author and mapper personas in the OCSF schema workflow. Once validated with an internal OCSF schema the messages are then written to two sources, first a local JSON formatted file in a configurable directory path, and second compressed parquet files partitioned by event hour in the S3 Amazon Security Lake source bucket. The S3 directories contain the formatted log are crawled hourly and the results are stored in an AWS Security Lake database. From there you can get a visual of the schema definitions extracted by the AWS Glue Crawler, identify fieldnames, data types, and other metadata associated with your network activity events. Event logs can also be queried using Amazon Athena to visualize log data.
To utilize the eNcore client with AWS Security Lake, first go to the Cisco public GitHub repository for Firepower eNcore, OCSF branch.
Download and run the cloud formation script eNcoreCloudFormation.yaml.
The Cloud Formation script will prompt for additional fields needed in the creation process, they are as follows:
Cidr Block: IP Address range for the provisioned client, defaults to the range shown below
Instance Type: The ec2 instance size, defaults to t2.medium
KeyName A pem key file that will permit access to the instance
AmazonSecurityLakeBucketForCiscoURI: The S3 location of your Data Lake S3 container.
FMC IP: IP or Domain Name of the Cisco Secure Firewall Mangement Portal
After the Cloud Formation setup is complete it can take anywhere from 3-5 minutes to provision resources in your environment, the cloud formation console provides a detailed view of all the resources generated from the cloud formation script as shown below.
Once the ec2 instance for the eNcore client is ready, we need to whitelist the client IP address in our Secure Firewall Server and generate a certificate file for secure endpoint communication.
In the Secure Firewall Dashboard, navigate to Search->eStreamer, to find the allow list of Client IP Addresses that are permitted to receive data, click Add and supply the Client IP Address that was provisioned for our ec2 instance. You will also be asked to supply a password, click Save to create a secure certificate file for your new ec2 instance.
Download the Secure Certificate you just created, and copy it to the /encore directory in your ec2 instance.
Use CloudShell or SSH from your ec2 instance, navigate to the /encore directory and run the command bash encore.sh test
You will be prompted for the certificate password, once that is entered you should see a Successful Communication message as shown below.
Run the command bash encore.sh foreground
This will begin the data relay and ingestion process. We can then navigate to the S3 Amazon Security Lake bucket we configured earlier, to see OCSF compliant logs formatted in gzip parquet files in a time-based directory structure. Additionally, a local representation of logs is available under /encore/data/* that can be used to validate log file creation.
Amazon Security Lake then runs a crawler task every hour to parse and consume the logs files in the target s3 directory, after which we can view the results in Athena Query.
More information on how to configure and tune the encore eStreamer client can be found on our official website, this includes details on how filter certain event types to focus your data retention policy, and guidelines for performance and other detailed configuration settings.
You can participate in the AWS Security Lake public preview. For more information, please visit the Product Page and review the User Guide.
While you are at AWS re:Invent, go see a demo video of the Security Lake integrations in the Cisco Booth #2411, from November 29 to December 2, 2022, at the Cloud, Network and User Security with Duo demo station.
Learn more about Cisco and AWS on the Cisco Secure Technical Alliance website for AWS.
Thank you to Seyed Khadem-Djahaghi, who spend long hours working with the beta to develop this integration and is the primary for developer of eNore.
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After a three-year hiatus, Cisco Live 2022 Melbourne is back! Personally, it will be a special experience, attending with my team and leaders for the first time as the Asia Pacific Cybersecurity Lead.
I will be speaking on the “Top Priorities for IT and Security Leaders in 2023” on 7 December at the Cisco Secure Insights Live, covering key priorities for security leaders as we enter the new year. Please join me at the Security Experience Hub at the World of Solutions. You can also participate virtually.
Today’s businesses require a strong culture of security and resilience that is pervasive throughout the organization to withstand uncertainty and emerge stronger. Hear from our Cisco security leaders on powering resilience across the enterprise in the following presentations:
Dive into 80+ security sessions by experts to uncover best practices to address key challenges, and maximize your technology investments.
Explore the Security Experience Hub and Demo Stand at the World of Solutions Zone for exciting security activities:
For those joining us online, we have the Cisco Secure Insights Live broadcast on all things security, and Cisco Live broadcast covering keynote presentations by industry leaders.
I’m excited for you to see how we can help you achieve security resilience and look forward to meeting you at Cisco Live 2022 Melbourne. I’m ALL IN, are you?
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Throughout my career, I have noticed the way we “futurize” technology. Often, we are thinking of technology in five-to-ten-year increments. But the fact of the matter is – technology is moving faster than we can keep up. The minute we think we understand it, it’s already onto something new. That’s why here at Cisco, we’re focused on what’s NEXT. We all know technology will continue to grow at a rapid pace, our goal is to remain at the forefront of these changes.
After much anticipation, it’s finally here! I am excited to present the first episode of “NEXT” by Cisco Secure! “NEXT” is a video series illuminating simple conversations about complex topics. Our mission is twofold: First, we want to humanize cybersecurity. Second, we want to build a bridge between Cisco Secure and the ideas of the future.
CTO of Cisco Secure, TK Keanini and I sit down with Michael Ebel, CEO of Atmosfy. If you saw our preview, then you know Atmosfy is on a mission to help inspire others and support local restaurants through live videos.
Want to learn what’s NEXT for Michael Ebel and Atmosfy? Check out our episode!
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When you think about the most resilient creatures in the animal kingdom, what comes to mind?
Perhaps the camel, which can survive for 6 months with no food or water. Or maybe it’s the honey badger, which tends to drink snake venom like cranberry juice.
Or how about the immortal jellyfish? This is one of the most fascinating (and oldest) creatures on Planet Earth. Not only are they immortal, but they also live their lives in Benjamin Button-esque fashion. Turritopsis nutricula jellyfish live to the age of 50 and think, “Well that was fun, but what if I did all of that again in reverse?” When they get back to the beginning, they age forwards again…kind of like the David Fincher film playing on an endless loop, which, I must be honest, felt rather reminiscent of my watching experience.
Those are all fine contenders. But I think the award for the most resilient animal goes to the Tardigrade.
A Tardigrade is a water creature – it needs water to survive. But if there’s a shortage – say, they made their home in a lovely bunch of moss which has unfortunately dried out, they have a plan B.
A Tardigrade will curl up, slow down their metabolism by a factor of 10,000, and can go without a drop of water for decades. Then, when conditions are better, they reboot, rehydrate, and carry on as if nothing has happened. Take that, evolution.
That’s not all. They can also survive temperatures of up to 150 degrees centigrade, without so much as a flinch. How about colder temperatures? Snow problem. (Sorry.) Turn the temperature down to minus 272 centigrade (pretty much Sub Zero), and you’ll defeat the atom, but you won’t make a mark on the Tardigrade.
This one is my favorite: They can survive space travel. In 2008 European scientists sent a colony of 3,000 tardigrades into low grade orbit for 10 days. The majority were able to withstand both cosmic radiation, and the power of the Sun’s UV light.
I guess one question you might ask is, “Why?” Why does a tardigrade need such a robust defense strategy when it’s only a millimetre in size and looks like a cuddly bear under a microscope?
It comes down to adaptation. Tardigrades are water creatures who needed to adapt to occasional droughts. Sure, they may have overshot it a little by including the potential for space travel too. But, they addressed their main threat, and set a more positive course for the future. I think that’s a nice sum up of what being resilient means.
Which brings me to my main reason for this post. I’d like to talk about security resilience, and how it can be the baseline for plotting a stronger future for your organization.
I believe, as with most things, that security resilience starts with people – looking after them, giving them what they need to flourish, and in most cases, getting out of their way.
That all sounds basic. However, the scale of what our people and security teams need to protect within the enterprise and the internet as a whole, keeps getting bigger. Not everything’s in the data center, and not everything’s in the cloud. Addressing the core challenges, and adapting as needed, is central to a security resilience strategy.
This involves moving away from a siloed security policy that is only focused on threat prevention and treats all alerts and threats equally. Not only is this way inefficient – it wears defenders out. We can’t prevent everything, so we must prevent what will affect us most from a security standpoint, while increasing detection and response for anything else that may come our way.
That’s where a detection, response and recovery strategy comes into play. This strategy is underpinned by risk-based contextual analysis (i.e., “Exactly how concerned do we need to be with this new vulnerability?”) and continuous trust assessments.
For your people running daily analysis, this is crucial to help them move from the overwhelming environments that often stem from alert fatigue. Dealing with the latest headline threats is reactive, exhaustive, and is a large component as to why burnout is so prevalent in security. Context-centric security is a key factor to moving away from this.
We explore this concept and more, in our new e-book: Adapt and Overcome: Your guide to building security resilience with Cisco Secure.
In this e-book, we identify the key steps to implementing security resilience. We help you to find the priorities, so you can drive resilience faster, and more efficiently. You will also be able to see this in action, in our case study with the NFL (National Football League).
Later on, we get into some specifics about how Cisco can help you build security resilience across four key areas: risk reduction, visibility, mitigating insider threats, and what to do with actionable intelligence.
Plus, we share some security resilience success principles from other organizations around the world.
Please check out the e-book when you have a moment. I hope the stories, videos and words have meaning for you, and can help your organization as it prepares to meet its current challenges and opportunities.
And finally, remember that with the right security partner, your organization can adapt to change with speed and precision, making informed decisions with the right context at the right time.
Learn more about how Cisco Secure can help you build your resilience strategy.
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Cyber security implies protecting the confidentiality, availability and integrity of computer systems and networks. Often security researchers and security teams focus on threats to software and the risks associated with authenticating and managing users. However, computing systems are built upon a tall stack of computing resources.
Each layer within the stack is exposed to specific threats which need to be considered as part of a cyber security strategy. As the threat landscape evolves and exposure to risk changes, organizations need to review their threat exposure and consider if current mitigations are sufficient for their needs.
The recent disruption of the Nord Stream submarine gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea by an apparent act of sabotage highlights the risks to infrastructure located beneath the waves. The telecommunications infrastructure that carries internet traffic between countries and continents is often provided by submarine cables. These cables are relatively few in number but carry vast amounts of internet and enterprise traffic, potentially from many different service providers.
The seabed is a challenging environment for infrastructure. Sea water is corrosive, the pressure on the ocean floor can be extreme, while earthquakes, ship’s anchors and dredging provide additional risks to may result in the severing of a cable. Submarine cables are only expected to achieve a lifespan in the region of 25 years before failure.
Repairing or replacing a submarine cable is expensive and time consuming. It may be many months before a failed cable can be repaired or replaced. In the absence of a functioning cable, internet connections must be rerouted to avoid disruption. However, this risks saturating the remaining infrastructure and adversely affecting the quality of connections.
Organizations that require high availability international or intercontinental network connections should review their exposure to the risk of submarine cables failure. The nature of this risk will depend on how services are currently delivered.
At the time of writing there is no specific threat to undersea infrastructure. Other than attacks against terrestrial cables, no cable damage has been shown to be due to sabotage. Nevertheless, the Secretary General of NATO has stressed the importance of undersea cables to civilian society and military capability [1]. The British Chief of Defense Staff has warned how seriously intentional damage to telecommunications cables would be taken [2].
Physical infrastructure can not be taken for granted. Organizations would do well to review the impact of one or more submarine cables being taken out of service. Preparing response plans and contingencies in advance ensures that disruption is kept to a minimum in the event that such a scenario occurs.
[1]. Press Conference (22 Oct 2020), NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_178946.htm?selectedLocale=en
[2]. “Chief of Defence Staff: Russia cutting underwater cables could be ‘an act of war’” (8 Jan 2022), Forces.net.
https://www.forces.net/news/chief-defence-staff-russia-cutting-underwater-cables-could-be-act-war
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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:
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Since 1996, United Nations members have commemorated Nov. 16 as International Day of Tolerance. As a word, tolerance can mean different things to different people and cultures. The UN defines tolerance as: “respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world’s cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human.” I define it slightly differently. To me, tolerance is acceptance. Tolerance is inclusion. Tolerance is humanity. Tolerance is letting people be and live authentically as they choose.
Being able to live authentically is key. It’s about creating an environment for everyone to fit in and feel a sense of belonging. In a way, this means obfuscating the “standard” and stop paying attention to the degrees of variation from it. Tolerance is a step one in that process and a critical step toward a more diverse and tolerant world.
But if this is the goal, I say we have lots of work left in promoting this within our workforce, especially in the cybersecurity industry. I wrote extensively about this in a blog last year on why diversity matters so much to create stronger cybersecurity organizations. I pointed out that cybersecurity as a technology is multi-faceted and constantly changing. So, it would make sense that a highly diverse organization would provide different perspectives and more creative solutions to these challenges.
Even in the face of this logical goal of creating more diverse workforces, legacy recruiting, education, and even hiring practices are holding us back as an industry. I’ll look at one workforce populations specifically, women in cybersecurity. Currently, women constitute less than 25 percent of the workforce in cybersecurity. Of course, this is inclusive of all roles in cybersecurity meaning that I think it’s fair to say that the percentage of women in technical cybersecurity roles (e.g., software and hardware engineering) would be much lower. That’s discouraging, especially when there are still more than 700,000 cybersecurity positions that remain unfilled, many of them being high-paying roles.
Perhaps the more important question is “why?” The International Information System Security Certification Consortium (ISC2) commissioned a study to examine this issue closely and came up with some important conclusions that I’ll summarize.
In promoting the International Day of Tolerance, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon listed three ways we as a global society can be more tolerant: education, inclusion, and opportunities. As it happens, those are also exactly the approaches required to create more diverse workforces.
Of the three, I believe education (the earlier the better) is key as it’s foundational to being able to take advantage of inclusion and opportunities. Yes, we must continue to invest in STEM education and encourage more girls and minorities to take part. But the harder challenge is to somehow overcome the perception issue among large parts of these populations that the STEM field is not for them.
I believe that will require an investment in time and interaction in the form of mentoring and community outreach. For example, the Cisco Women in Technology employee resource organization that I’m proud to be the executive sponsor for, started a coding bootcamp targeting underrepresented populations. There will be many more bootcamps next year including weeklong camps in the summer. We need more of this, much more and I know there are many companies in cybersecurity who have similar aspirations and programs.
So, on this International Day of Tolerance, I ask my fellow cybersecurity professionals to at least think of ways they can influence someone in an underrepresented population to explore a career in the STEM field including cybersecurity. Take part in local volunteer activities at a school, especially in an inner-city one, like the kind that the Cisco Networking Academy is renowned for. Join and be an active participant in one of many cybersecurity organizations and affinity groups. Become a sponsor and a mentor to a girl or a minority and help encourage them to get ready to join this exciting and lucrative industry.
But whatever you do, get started. Author and activist Rachel Cargle spoke to us earlier this year as part of our Black History Month celebration about what it means to show up with purpose toward addressing many injustices that still exist today. “There’s an incredible disconnect here between humanity and dignity and all of this stuff in the country, and that should hopefully push you to action,” she said. Indeed, as these are issues that have existed for decades, and we will not solve them in a day, a month, or even a year. But if we don’t start, I’m afraid that the diversity issues that I’ve highlighted will be much the same in the International Day of Tolerance for years to come.
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New level unlocked. The next step for Kenna.VM users who are maturing their risk-based vulnerability management program is Kenna.VM Premier—and it’s live.
The Cisco Kenna team is excited to release a new tier of the Kenna Security platform designed specifically for customers or prospects that have reached a point of maturity in which they can and want to do more with their vulnerability management program.
In addition to the existing Kenna features and functionality you know and love, the new Kenna.VM Premier tier includes:
We’re particularly excited about the new features that are debuting with this tier. So, let’s take a closer look at everything that’s included.
On the Kenna.VM homepage, a new metric will appear at the top right corner (Figure 1). The Remediation Score, as this measurement is known, quantifies how well an organization is addressing risk overall.
The Remediation Score itself encompasses four key measurements (Figure 2), which may sound familiar to you if you’ve been reading any of the Prioritization to Prediction reports produced by Kenna and the Cyentia Institute:
These new remediation insights will allow organizations to shift away from relying on just the Risk Score itself as a measurement to assess the performance of remediation teams. While many organizations opt to use the Risk Score in this manner, there are inherent problems with evaluating performance based on the Risk Score—particularly for mature programs. A Risk Score can spike at any moment due to a suddenly high-risk vulnerability—a spike that isn’t a reflection on the remediation team themselves. And as organizations mature, they’re likely to reach a ‘steady state’ with their Risk Score, which makes it a difficult metric to use to measure progress.
Ultimately, these performance metrics will help customers better understand what areas of their remediation efforts are doing well and which might need to be adjusted.
Another new addition to the Kenna.VM platform is zero-day vulnerability intelligence powered by Cisco Talos. Talos regularly identifies high-priority security vulnerabilities in commonly used operating systems and software. The team works with vendors to disclose more than 200 vulnerabilities every year.
This new integration with Talos gives Kenna.VM users access to information on zero-day vulnerabilities documented by the Talos research team (and likely to be in their environment). With the “Zero Days” filter in Kenna.VM, users can isolate zero-day vulnerabilities, investigate, and take action leveraging Snort rule IDs provided by Talos, when applicable (Figure 3).
The last (but certainly not least) piece of the Kenna.VM Premier puzzle is the inclusion of Kenna’s recently enhanced vulnerability intelligence User Interface and API. Kenna is known for its risk scoring, but what people may not realize is just how much data we consume and turn into finished, actionable intelligence. There are more than 18+ threat and exploit intelligence feeds that power our understanding of vulnerabilities, and our vulnerability intel API and UI make of this information available to customers.
The UI provides a dashboard to research any CVE—regardless of whether or not a scanner found that vulnerability in the customer’s environment. Meanwhile, the API allows customers to query Kenna and export as much of our vulnerability intelligence on as many vulnerabilities as they wish, and use that data to enrich any existing IT, dev or security workflows, including Cisco’s very own SecureX. The data in this set includes descriptions, publication dates, CVSS data, available exploits and fixes, insight into remote exploitable vulnerabilities, and much more. Also provided is the Kenna Risk Score for each vulnerability and an indication of whether it is predicted to be exploitable—unique data points derived by Kenna’s data science.
This intelligence, combined with our new remediation scoring and Talos zero-day intelligence, rounds out the Kenna.VM Premier tier as the ideal package for any customer or prospect who is looking to take their vulnerability management program to the next stage of maturity.
Kenna.VM Premier is available today. If you’re interested in learning more, contact your sales representatives or send us a demo request to unlock the next level of your vulnerability management journey.
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SaaS Security Marketing Manager Laura O’Melia has always been interested in living and working internationally. After living in Austin, Texas for twenty years, O’Melia was ready for a new adventure and decided to move to Sydney, Australia with the support and encouragement of her manager and Cisco. The pandemic delayed her plans, but now that O’Melia’s settling into life and work in Australia, she shared how she made the move to work from anywhere and how you can, too.
What do you do?
O’Melia: I am on the Security Marketing team and focus on driving demand for our Zero Trust solution in the Asia-Pacific, Japan and China (APJC) region. I work closely with the Sales teams to do activities that will generate pipeline and educate prospects on our security solutions. I spend time finding new leads and trying new ways to engage with our top prospects while having fun along the way.
What do you like most about working at Cisco?
O’Melia: What I love most about working at Cisco is the amount of positive contributions we get to have on the world, from solving some of the world’s biggest problems around cybersecurity to giving money and resources to others in need. I also love the feeling of empowerment to create my own work/life balance as Cisco allows me the opportunity to have a flexible schedule.
What has been your career journey within Cisco?
O’Melia: I started at Duo Security in 2017. While working in Field Marketing, I was able to gain experience across many different teams. For example, I worked closely with a region in the U.S. as well as the Managed Service Provider team, which is a global team with a completely different business model. The needs differ greatly, from how we report and track metrics to the messaging and offers from one team to the next. I am now working in a very different market that is much larger and includes many more languages, so that brings a new level of understanding to how we show up in the market to achieve business goals.
“Stepping outside of my comfort zone is one of my favorite things to do.”
– Laura O’Melia
What prompted you to relocate from Austin, Texas to Sydney, Australia?
O’Melia: Austin is great and was my home for 20 years, but I still wanted to gain international work experience to learn what it would be like somewhere else and compare it to what I know.
Stepping outside of my comfort zone is one of my favorite things to do, so when I heard Duo was expanding internationally and there was an opportunity in Australia, I was immediately interested. Everyone I know that has visited Australia always has absolutely wonderful things to say, so without ever having visited I agreed to take a long-term international two-year assignment.
How has Cisco supported your relocation?
O’Melia: I worked closely with my manager on the process from start to finish. We had the support of Cisco’s Mobility Services team, a group of Cisco employees that help with relocation services. We worked with immigration to obtain my work visa. I was planning to relocate in March 2020 but as we know, the borders were closed and visas were not being processed for nearly two years. I was already in-role, so continued to support the APJC team from Austin.
When the time came, Cisco had a team of experts that I worked with to pack and ship my belongings and help get set up with an overseas bank. I also worked with a realtor to help me find a place to live, and the team even assists with my U.S. and Australian tax returns while I am away.
How has your work changed since relocating?
O’Melia: My role has expanded from doing lead-gen events for Duo in Australia and New Zealand to now being responsible for driving demand across the APJC region through digital campaigns and other marketing channels. I still strive to provide qualified leads to Sales and educate the market on our offerings. My goal is to help get Cisco Secure solutions into more doors to ultimately give users a better experience and stop the bad actors from doing harm.
What advice do you have for others who want to work from anywhere?
O’Melia: If you get the opportunity, take it. Everyone has their own path, but if you feel your career could benefit, even slightly, from the experience you will gain moving to another country and figuring things out far from what you know today, why not give it a try? You can learn so much from meeting and working with people that have a very different experience than you might know.
Ready for an adventure? If you want to solve global challenges through cybersecurity with the potential to work anywhere, check out our open roles.
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In the second part of this blog series on Unscrambling Cybersecurity Acronyms, we covered Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Managed Endpoint Detection and Response (MEDR) solutions, which included an overview of the evolution of endpoint security solutions. In this blog, we’ll go over Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions in more depth.
MDR solutions are a security technology stack delivered as a managed service to customers by third-parties such as cybersecurity vendors or Managed Service Providers (MSPs). They’re similar to Managed Endpoint Detection and Response (MEDR) solutions since both solutions are managed cybersecurity services that use Security Operations Center (SOC) experts to monitor, detect, and respond to threats targeting your organization. However, the main difference between these two offerings is that MEDR solutions monitor only your endpoints while MDR solutions monitor a broader environment.
While MDR security solutions don’t have an exact definition for the types of infrastructure they monitor and the underlying security stack that powers them, they often monitor your endpoint, network, and cloud environments via a ‘follow the sun’ approach that uses multiple security teams distributed around the world to continually defend your environment. These security analysts monitor your environment 24/7 for threats, analyze and prioritize threats, investigate potential incidents, and offer guided remediation of attacks. This enables you to quickly detect advanced threats, effectively contain attacks, and rapidly respond to incidents.
More importantly, MDR security solutions allow you to augment or outsource your security to cybersecurity experts. While nearly every organization must defend their environment from cyberattacks, not every organization has the time, expertise, or personnel to run their own security solution. These organizations can benefit from outsourcing their security to MDR services, which enable them to focus on their core business while getting the security expertise they need. In addition, some organizations don’t have the budget or resources to monitor their environment 24/7 or they may have a small security team that struggles to investigate every threat. MDR security services can also help these organizations by giving them always-on security operations while enabling them to address every threat to their organization.
One drawback to deploying an MDR security service is that you become dependent on a third-party for your security needs. While many organizations don’t have any issues with this, some organizations may be hesitant to hand over control of their cybersecurity to a third-party vendor. In addition, organizations such as larger, more-risk averse companies may not desire an MDR service because they’ve already made cybersecurity investments such as developing their own SOC. Finally, MDR security solutions don’t have truly unified detection and response capabilities since they’re typically powered by heterogenous security technology stacks that lack consolidated telemetry, correlated detections, and holistic incident response. This is where XDR solutions shine.
XDR solutions unify threat monitoring, detection, and response across your entire environment by centralizing visibility, delivering contextual insights, and coordinating response. While ‘XDR’ means different things to different people because it’s a fairly nascent technology, XDR solutions usually consolidate security telemetry from multiple security products into a single solution. Moreover, XDR security solutions provide enriched context by correlating alerts from different security solutions. Finally, comprehensive XDR solutions can simplify incident response by allowing you to automate and orchestrate threat response across your environment.
These solutions speed up threat detection and response by providing a single pane of glass for gaining visibility into threats as well as detecting and responding to attacks. Furthermore, XDR security solutions reduce alert fatigue and false positives with actionable, contextual insights from higher-fidelity detections that mean you spend less time sifting through endless alerts and can focus on the most critical threats. Finally, XDR solutions enable you to streamline your security operations with improved efficiency from automated, orchestrated response across your entire security stack from one unified console.
A major downside to XDR security solutions is that you typically have to deploy and manage these solutions yourself versus having a third-party vendor run them for you. While Managed XDR (MXDR) services are growing, these solutions are still very much in their infancy. In addition, not every organization will want or need a full-fledged XDR solution. For instance, organizations with a higher risk threshold may be satisfied with using an EDR solution and/or an MDR service to defend their organization from threats.
As I mentioned in the first and second parts of this blog series, you shouldn’t take a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to cybersecurity since every organization has different needs, goals, risk appetites, staffing levels, and more. This logic holds true for MDR and XDR solutions, with these solutions working well for certain organizations and not so well for other organizations. Regardless, there are a few aspects to consider when evaluating MDR and XDR security solutions.
One factor to keep in mind is if you already have or are planning on building out your own SOC. This is important to think about because developing and operating a SOC can require large investments in cybersecurity, which includes having the right expertise on your security teams. Organizations unwilling to make these commitments usually end up choosing managed security services such as MDR solutions, which allows them to protect their organization without considerable upfront investments.
Other critical factors to consider are your existing security maturity and overall goals. For instance, organizations who have already made significant commitments to cybersecurity often think about ways to improve the operational efficiency of their security teams. These organizations frequently turn to XDR tools since these solutions reduce threat detection and response times, provide better visibility and context while decreasing alert fatigue. Moreover, organizations with substantial security investments should consider open and extensible XDR solutions that integrate with their existing tools to avoid having to ‘rip and replace’ security tools, which can be costly and cumbersome.
I hope this blog series on the different threat detection and response solutions help you make sense of the different cybersecurity acronyms while guiding you in your decision on the right security solution for your organization. For more information on MDR solutions, read about how Cisco Secure Managed Detection and Response (MDR) rapidly detects and contains threats with an elite team of security experts. For more information on XDR solutions, learn how the Cisco XDR offering finds and remediates threats faster with increased visibility and critical context to automate threat response.
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Welcome back! In our last article, you cleared out your extraneous digital footprints by removing unnecessary accounts and opting-out of data broker services, and have finished a dedicated review of your online history. In this final section, we will answer the natural question encountered at the end of any journey: What’s next?
Before becoming the series you’ve just read, I presented a version of this many times as a live talk at conferences and training sessions. After the first few talks, I noticed a consistent trend in the feedback when I was approached afterwards: people who said they felt anxious about how their online activity going forward might share more than they want. So I went back and added a final section to the talk, one that we’re going to cover together now: risk acceptance and the value of routine in good security.
Some people think that the goal of good security is to eliminate risk. One of the first lessons you learn in this industry, though, is that eradicating every possible risk is very rarely practical, whether we’re talking about the individual or organizational level. This is because there are few choices one can make with zero possibility of a negative outcome, and because human beings are… human, and even with excellent discipline and good intent the best of us can mess up.
The goal of good security strategy is instead to assess risk and find a healthy balance: to decide what is more or less important and valuable, to determine how damaging the worst-case scenario might be and weigh that against the potential benefits, and figuring out how much you can reasonably do to tip the balance and increase your odds of success.
That’s fairly abstract, so let’s use a couple quick practical examples at both levels:
I don’t know about you, but I grew up as a child of the internet, and the thought of never going online again isn’t one I’m likely to seriously consider. So rather than logging off forever, let’s focus on how we can both stay safe and stay connected. We’ve completed the “3 R’s” of the self-dox process: Review, Restrict, and Remove. But now, a surprise more shocking than the Spanish Inquisition itself: we’re going to add two final steps-Repeat and Refine.
Every good security plan includes a plan for routine follow-up. We know that staying offline forever isn’t practical, so the next best thing is to set up a reminder to go through an easier version of this checklist on a regular schedule. Why is it easier? In this review, you had to look back on your entire life up to the present, and next time you’ll just need to look back from then to… well… now! Depending on how active you are online and how likely you are to be doxxed, this might make sense to do on an annual basis, or split into abbreviated and more frequent quarterly reviews.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to this review, but here are some typical checks you may want to consider:
Before we move on to our final (final, I promise!) step, let’s talk one more kind of repeating. A wifi repeater is a gadget that can connect to and boost the signal from a wireless network, helping to expand the network’s reach and keep a strong connection. In the same way, by sharing the lessons you’ve learned with your family and friends you will expand the reach of that security knowledge. Not only does that help keep the people you care about safer… but since we’ve seen how information shared about us by others can also be discovered by doxxers, it helps to increase your own safety as well!
My goal in writing this series was to give a straightforward introduction and broadly-useful walkthrough of how to figure out what’s out there about you online. In the beginning of this series, I talked about how the level of risk for doxxing is not the same for everyone. You may want to go significantly further than we’ve covered in this guide if you are:
This can cover a wide range of additional steps like placing a freeze on your credit report, requesting a privacy removal from search engines, or even setting up dedicated secure devices/apps for communication online. The full scope of these additional protections is beyond what we can cover here, but I will again recommend the Self-Doxxing Guide from AccessNow and the Gender and Tech Safety Resource guide linked in the first post of this series as an excellent reference for where else you might want to check.
Thank you for following along with me on this journey, and I hope that you found this guide and the resources shared have been helpful for you. Still have questions, or have you discovered any of the links/tools here are no longer available? Please let me know! Life comes at you fast on the web, and I want to make sure this guide continues to be relevant and helpful for a long time to come. You can drop me a line at zoe@duo.com, or find me on Twitter. Until then, happy trails and stay safe out there!
If you can’t get enough security content and care deeply about making the web safer for everyone, we’d also love to hear from you. Please check out our open positions and how your passion can contribute to keeping people safe online.
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Organizations embrace the public cloud for the agility, scalability, and reliability it offers when running applications. But just as organizations need these capabilities to ensure their applications operate where needed and as needed, they also require their security does the same. Organizations may introduce multiple individual firewalls into their AWS infrastructure to produce this outcome. In theory, this may be a good decision, but in practice—this could lead to asymmetric routing issues. Complex SNAT configuration can mitigate asymmetric routing issues, but this isn’t practical for sustaining public cloud operations. Organizations are looking out for their long-term cloud strategies by ruling out SNAT and are calling for a more reliable and scalable solution for connecting their applications and security for always-on protection.
To solve these challenges, Cisco created stateful firewall clustering with Secure Firewall in AWS.
Firewall clustering for Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual provides a highly resilient and reliable architecture for securing your AWS cloud environment. This capability lets you group multiple Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual appliances together as a single logical device, known as a “cluster.”
A cluster provides all the conveniences of a single device (management and integration into a network) while taking advantage of the increased throughput and redundancy you would expect from deploying multiple devices individually. Cisco uses Cluster Control Link (CCL) for forwarding asymmetric traffic across devices in the cluster. Clusters can go up to 16 members, and we use VxLAN for CCL.
In this case, clustering has the following roles:
The above diagram explains traffic flow between the client and the server with the insertion of the firewall cluster in the network. Below defines the roles of clustering and how packet flow interacts at each step.
Owner: The Owner is the node in the cluster that initially receives the connection.
Backup Owner: The node that stores TCP/UDP state information received from the Owner so that the connection can be seamlessly transferred to a new owner in case of failure.
Director: The Director is the node in the cluster that handles owner lookup requests from the Forwarder(s).
Forwarder: The Forwarder is a node in the cluster that redirects packets to the Owner.
Fragment Owner: For fragmented packets, cluster nodes that receive a fragment determine a Fragment Owner using a hash of the fragment source IP address, destination IP address, and the packet ID. All fragments are then redirected to the Fragment Owner over Cluster Control Link.
Cisco brought support for AWS Gateway Load Balancer (Figure 2). This feature enables organizations to scale their firewall presence as needed to meet demand (see details here).
Building off the previous figure, organizations can take advantage of the AWS Gateway Load Balancer with Secure Firewall’s clustering capability to evenly distribute traffic at the Secure Firewall cluster. This enables organizations to maximize the benefits of clustering capabilities including increased throughput and redundancy. Figure 3 shows how positioning a Secure Firewall cluster behind the AWS Gateway Load Balancer creates a resilient architecture. Let’s take a closer look at what is going on in the diagram.
Figure 3 shows an Internet user looking to access a workload. Before the user can access the workload, the user’s traffic is routed to Firewall Node 2 for inspection. The traffic flow for this example includes:
User -> IGW -> GWLBe -> GWLB -> Secure Firewall (2) -> GLWB -> GWLBe -> Workload
In the event of failure, the AWS Gateway Load Balancer cuts off existing connections to the failed node, making the above solution non-stateful.
Recently, AWS announced a new feature for their load balancers known as Target Failover for Existing Flows. This feature enables forwarding of existing connections to another target in the event of failure.
Cisco is an early adaptor of this feature and has combined Target Failover for Existing Flows with Secure Firewall clustering capabilities to create the industry’s first stateful cluster in AWS.
Figure 4 shows a firewall failure event and how the AWS Gateway Load Balancer uses the Target Failover for Existing Flows feature to switch the traffic flow from Firewall Node 2 to Firewall Node 3. The traffic flow for this example includes:
User -> IGW -> GWLBe -> GWLB -> Secure Firewall (3) -> GLWB -> GWLBe -> Workload
Organizations need reliable and scalable security to protect always-on applications in their AWS cloud environment. With stateful firewall clustering capabilities from Cisco, organizations can protect their applications while maintaining cloud benefits such as agility, scalability, and reliability.
Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual is available in the AWS marketplace, providing features like firewalling, application visibility & control, IPS, URL filtering, and malware defense. Cisco offers flexible options for firewall licensing, such as pay-as-you-go (PAYG) and bring-your-own-license (BYOL). To learn more about how Cisco Secure Firewall clustering capabilities can help protect your AWS applications, see our additional resources, check out our 30-day free trial, or speak to your Cisco sales representative.
Cisco Secure Firewall Clustering in the Cloud
Introducing AWS Gateway Load Balancer Target Failover for Existing Flows
Secure Firewall for Public Cloud webpage
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Lots of exciting things happening at Cisco, and for our customers, all to help them better prepare for what’s next. Case in point, we just returned from a very successful Cisco Partner Summit where the spotlight shined on cyber security. When our executives were on stage talking about solutions, the attendees heard a very catchy phrase; “if it’s connected, it’s protected.” A cool phrase, but there is more to that phrase and much more behind it.
To tie both connected and protected together, it’s good to note that Cisco is uniquely positioned as a security vendor with 80% of the worldwide internet traffic running through our network hardware and secured by our open platform, with hundreds of thousands of customers benefitting from automation, and from enriched and prioritized threat intel via our Extended Detection and Response (XDR) capabilities. That means a vast amount of unique insights for our customers to become more resilient, stay ahead of threats, be more confident, and benefit from less risk.
As examples of these questions above:
(1) what about proof points on the above?
(2) and do Cisco’s capabilities align with what customers want and need?
Let’s find out on the first by bringing the XDR aspect of security into the discussion, and the second by observing responses from a Forrester Total Economic Impact
(TEI) study commissioned by Cisco, both points utilizing our Secure Endpoint solution.
First off, in simple terms, XDR provides the benefit of integrating threat intel from all control points of the security platform and combines that into actionable insights for better, faster, and where appropriate, prioritized remediation of the most critical threats, i.e. XDR helps security teams to identify the threats that can do the most damage and enables the workflows to neutralize those threats first.
And here is where the proof point comes in. One of the most critical components of XDR is endpoint security. And in the case of Cisco, it’s our Secure Endpoint solution. Cisco recently participated in the AV-Comparatives’ Endpoint Prevention and Response (EPR) Test. The AV-C test is described by that independent test organization as “… the most comprehensive test of EPR products ever performed.” Secure Endpoint was one of the 10 endpoint security products in the test that were subjected to 50 separate targeted attack scenarios, which used a variety of different techniques.
Here are the highlights of the AV-C EPR report where Cisco Secure Endpoint:
Stunning results and confidence building for our customers that Cisco is effective in endpoint security. Read the complete AV-C EPR Test Report here.
And then, what about the second proof point – is Cisco providing what customers want & need?
Cisco commissioned Forrester Consulting to perform an unbiased cost-benefit analysis of our Cisco Secure Endpoint product. The report yielded the highlights below, based upon a composite organization, and also includes 20+ outstanding customer quotes.
Here’s the Forrester TEI Study bottom line for the composite organization:
Very good results and again, confidence building for our customers that Cisco is effective in endpoint security. Read the Forrester “The Total Economic Impact Of Cisco Secure Endpoint” Study here.
One last thing, what about those customer quotes? Here are a couple of examples:
Director of IT security, logistics
Director of IT security, logistics
To find out more, read Forrester’s “The Total Economic Impact Of Cisco Secure Endpoint” Study here. And if you are not familiar with Secure Endpoint, or would like to sign up for a free trial, check it out here.
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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.
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Welcome back! Previously in our Go Dox Yourself series, we walked through reviewing what information is available about you online, prioritizing those accounts that are most important or still active, and then restricting how much we share through those accounts and who gets to see it. That’s two out of our three steps — maybe good enough for Meatloaf, but not for us! You’re in the home stretch now, and this is the most straightforward-if-slow portion of the process — so let’s dive right in.
In the review step , along with the top accounts that you wrote out in your initial brain dump, we used some email search tricks and the free services NameCheckup.com and NameChk.com to dig up any unused, forgotten, or now obsolete accounts you might have previously registered under your email address or favorite username (or, as us ʼ80s kids used to say, your “handle.”)
We set those old accounts to the side to focus on your active and sensitive data first, but now it’s time to make Marie Kondo proud and clean out the junk drawers of our online life – if it doesn’t still serve you or spark joy, let’s kiss it goodbye!
In a perfect world, this would be as simple as logging in, going to your account settings and clicking a big ol’ “Cancel My Account” button. However, many sites opt to bury the cancelation settings behind a series of smokescreen menus, sometimes even including a half dozen unskippable “are you SURE you want to leave?” and “but we’ll give you a super good deal to stay!” surveys to click through first.
If you find yourself thwarted and your first search of “[Unwanted Service] cancel” doesn’t take you where you need to go, try checking out AccountKiller. This collaborative resource takes submissions of step-by-step deletion instructions and direct links to cancel for a tremendous number of sites, and even includes phone tree options and direct support numbers for canceling offline accounts as well.
The first pass of your delete list might well be longer than a CVS receipt, because these days the average person has 100 password-protected accounts to manage, but don’t worry! You don’t have to sprint to the finish line, and slow progress checking off a few accounts in short sessions over a few weeks will serve you better than a several-hour slog of trying to clear them all at once and burning out.
An important lesson in security is that operating at max capacity isn’t sustainable all the time, and planning for rest and overflow in our personal security planning is no different. Remember that the work you’re doing is cumulative, each small step is one more forward, and every account you clear now is one less that you’ll need to revisit later.
You might notice that we’ve checked off most of the information from our initial brainstorm: emails, usernames, phone numbers, profile pictures… but so far, we haven’t done much with your location history: the cities you lived in and live now, the cities where you worked or went to school, and the city of your birth. Now that we’re going to see how much information on you is available through data brokers and public record sites, these details will be important to have handy.
For the unfamiliar, data brokers are companies which collect and bundle personal information for everything from ad customization to individual investigation. Brokers collect their data through a wide variety of methods, including:
These metrics and details are bundled and sold, either directly through lookup sites like we’ll review in just a moment, or in demographic bundles (for example, “Resilient Renters” or “Living on Loans: Young Urban Single Parents”). If you’ve ever walked through a car dealership window-shopping and suddenly found sponsored content for that car company in your feed, data brokers are the most likely reason.
For this step you should reference the previously-mentioned Personal Data Removal Workbook provided by Michael Bazzell through his company, IntelTechniques. Bazzell has maintained and updated this workbook for many years now, and it is by far the most comprehensive resource for keeping a handle on who is buying and selling your data.
One of the first things you’ll notice on opening the workbook is the sheer volume of businesses out there buying and selling your data: at time of writing, the current edition includes 220 separate brokers. But much like your initial account inventory likely included a select set of important accounts and a longer list of less-relevant ones, there are less than a dozen brokers who dominate most of the market and should be at the top of your list – and fortunately, they’re also at the top of the workbook! These sites are:
Aside from covering most of the market for data and analytics intelligence, these primary sites often act as “feeders” for smaller providers that are either directly affiliated or collect information for their own databases from the largest providers. Which means that as you remove your data from these sites, you’ll not only check off another box on your list, but you may also reduce the number of hits you find for your information on smaller sites as you work your way down.
Congratulations: if you’ve been following along, you’ve just made it through your self-doxxing! Hopefully you’re feeling much better informed and aware of what tracks you’ve left online, and addressed who you do and do not want to have your… addresses. Join us soon for our wrap-up post where we’ll recap with takeaway lessons, as well as good habits and check-ins to keep you safe going forward.
Care about keeping people and their data safe online? Check out our open roles.
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As we wrapped up October, we also put the final touches on a flurry of activities to celebrate Cyber Security Awareness Month. The tradition of October as National Cybersecurity Awareness Month goes back to 2004 when Congress and the White House tasked the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) to join forces to help individuals protect themselves online as threats to technology and confidential data became more commonplace. There is no question that the scale and severity of threats have only increased exponentially in the nearly two decades we have been actively participating in cybersecurity awareness.
This year’s theme was “See Yourself in Cyber” to reinforce the fact that that while cybersecurity is technology-driven, ultimately, it’s really all about people that makes it real. So, this month is all about sharing information across the cybersecurity industry with individuals and companies around the world so we can all be more effective together. That gives me a great opportunity to discuss a related issue that profoundly impacts professionals who work in cybersecurity every single day: mental health.
Working in cybersecurity can be a stressful endeavor, which is why I’m so proud to be part of this global network of professionals who have dedicated our work lives to this important mission. We must be ever vigilant and on guard against threats and bad actors, both known and unknown. It is this ever-changing world of cybersecurity work that only compounds the stress level. The possibilities of work-related depression and burnout are real and becoming more common. According to this Forbes column, more than half of cybersecurity professionals in the US and Europe are on medication to help improve work-related mental health.
I wrote extensively about ways we can help our colleagues and employees work through mental health issues in this blog last May commemorating the official Mental Health Awareness Month. The key takeaways I closed with are worth repeating.
From a technology point of view, we at Cisco Secure are committed to the goal of helping organizations become more security resilient. We know that unpredictability is the nature of working in cybersecurity. But by being more resilient I firmly believe that we can help organizations to be able to withstand the ever-changing threat landscape and ultimately emerge stronger.
Naturally, our goal is to extend the benefits of resilience downstream to the cybersecurity pros who are on the frontlines of battling threats and bad actors. To that end, there are a couple of resources I’d like to point to. One, the American Psychological Association offers a few very helpful ways people can develop more resilience with regards to mental health. Two, Cisco offers great resources to help you either enter the cybersecurity field or enhance your career through advanced training education. Additionally, Cisco has made a commitment to the White House as part of the Cyber Workforce and Education Summit to train more than 200,000 students to join the cybersecurity field over the next three years.
November 16 happens to be the UN International Day for Tolerance. Like the word resilience, tolerance can take on several different meanings. But I want to take the opportunity to apply it to another critical issue impacting the cybersecurity industry: the need for a more diverse and inclusive workforce. I covered some of these themes in one of the earliest blogs I posted after joining Cisco. I look forward to providing additional perspectives with some of the latest trends and stats we are seeing within Cisco Secure.
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!
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Cisconians delight in contributing to their communities in a variety of ways including at the local theatre, farm and library. Cisco’s paid Time2Give benefit encourages team members to volunteer at the places where their passions thrive.
How should you decide where to get involved? Customer Success Program Manager Kate Pydyn advises: “Find something that speaks to your passion while giving back. There are so many opportunities that involve being outdoors, crafting, teaching skills you’ve developed, telling stories or providing comfort.”
With ten paid days a year to give, these Cisconians demonstrate that building relationships with people, the arts and the earth can increase fulfillment, connection and community.
Urban farming is an issue very close to the heart of Petra Hammerl, a senior enterprise customer success manager who works on Duo Security. Hammerl frequently volunteers at Farm City Detroit, part of Detroit Blight Busters. Using Time2Give, Hammerl has shared the experience by “bringing a crew of awesome co-workers which has been amazing and a lot of fun,” she said.
“It felt great to take action! There are so many problems in the world, and I often feel powerless to make a difference. What I did was small, but with all of the volunteers together, the work that was done makes a real difference in the lives of my neighbors.” – Kate Pydyn
Pydyn and Emily Gennrich, a manager of operations for security customer success at Cisco Secure, joined in on the fun by contributing to multiple facets of gardening from weeding to harvesting food. “It felt great to take action! There are so many problems in the world, and I often feel powerless to make a difference. What I did was small, but with all of the volunteers together, the work that was done makes a real difference in the lives of my neighbors,” Pydyn said.
Senior Communications Manager, Brand Strategy & Design at Cisco Secure Chrysta Cherrie spent her Time2Give as a sighted assistant at the VISIONS vendor fair, hosted at the Ann Arbor District Library Downtown. “I was really happy to take some time to volunteer at the VISIONS vendor fair for people who are blind, visually impaired or physically disabled,” Cherrie said.
Learning how to be a sighted assistant was “a reminder that we can do more when we can rely on each other. Taking the time to better understand how someone makes their way through life gives you a chance to build empathy,” Cherrie said. She escorted attendees around the event where exhibitors offered products and services like electronic readers, leader dogs and transportation. There were also talks throughout the day and Cherrie helped attendees navigate between the presentation and vendor areas.
Meeting attendees of the VISIONS vendor fair and experiencing how meaningful the event is also moved Cherrie. The fair “brings out folks throughout southeast Michigan, so there’s a good chance that the person you’re assisting will run into some friends, and getting to see people connect like that can’t help but make you feel good,” Cherrie said.
Jenny Callans, a senior design researcher who works on Duo Security, serves as the chair of the Friends of the Detroit Film Theatre’s Auxiliary, a part of the Detroit Institute of Arts. “We support the mission of the Friends of the Detroit Film Theatre to make great niche films accessible to audiences,” she said. To do that, the organization is responsible for building a community of film fans and overseeing how donations are spent.
For Callans, the most meaningful part of using Time2Give to support the FDFT and the DIA is sharing her love of film with others. Time2Give supports her duties as FDFT chair, and gives her a sense of connection when she’s visiting the DFT to take in a movie. “Sitting in a theatre next to my young adult son, but surrounded by strangers watching a film that is unusual or unexpected but which moves me and challenges me to think is the best part hands-down,” Callans said.
From supporting youth to volunteering at community hubs, Time2Give “is a fantastic opportunity to have a long-lasting, meaningful relationship with your community by volunteering as a board or committee member! Having a long-term presence with an org is amazingly impactful, for you and for the organization,” Callans said.
Time2Give is one of Cherrie’s favorite things about working at Cisco. She says, “Take advantage of the opportunity! Time2Give is a great way to give back to your community and the people and causes that you care about.”
Stay tuned for more posts celebrating the community engagement Time2Give fosters and check out our open roles to join in on giving back.
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Going beyond the hype, passwordless authentication is now a reality. Cisco Duo’s passwordless authentication is now generally available across all Duo Editions.
“Cisco Duo simplifies the passwordless journey for organizations that want to implement phishing-resistant authentication and adopt a zero trust security strategy.”
—Jack Poller, Senior Analyst, ESG
We received tremendous participation and feedback during our public preview, and we are now excited to bring this capability to our customers and prospects.
“Over the last few years, we have increased our password complexities and required 2FA wherever possible. With this approach, employees had more password lock outs, password fatigue, and forgetting their longer passwords due to password rotations. With Duo Passwordless, we are excited to introduce this feature to our employees to keep our password complexities in place and leverage different Biometric options whether that is using their mobile device, Windows Hello, or a provided FIDO security key.
The Duo Push for passwordless authentication feature is simple and easy and introduces a more pleasant experience overall. Using Duo’s device insight and application policies, we are able to leverage and verify the security of the mobile devices before the device is allowed to be used. To top it off, Duo is connected to our SIEM and our InfoSec team is able to review detailed logs and setup alerts to be able to keep everything secure.”
—Vice President of IT, Banking and Financial Services Customer
As with any new technology, getting to a completely passwordless state will be a journey for many organizations. We see customers typically starting their passwordless journey with web-based applications that support modern authentication. To that effect, Duo’s passwordless authentication is enabled through Duo Single Sign-On (SSO) for federated applications. Customers can choose to integrate their existing SAML Identity provider such as Microsoft (ADFS, Azure), Okta or Ping Identity; or choose to use Duo SSO (Available across all Duo editions).
“Password management is a challenging proposition for many enterprises, especially in light of BYOD and ever increasing sophistication of phishing schemes. Cisco aims to simplify the process with its Duo passwordless authentication that offers out-of-box integrations with popular single sign-on solutions.”
—Will Townsend, Vice President & Principal Analyst, Networking & Security, Moor Insights & Strategy
Duo offers a flexible choice of passwordless authentication options to meet the needs of businesses and their use cases. This includes:
No matter which authentication option you choose, it is secure and inherently multi-factor authentication. We are eliminating the need for the weak knowledge factor (something you know – passwords) which are shared during authentication and can be easily compromised. Instead, we are relying on stronger factors, which are the inherence factor (something you are – biometrics) and possession factor (something you have – a registered device). A user completes this authentication in a single gesture without having to remember a complex string of characters. This significantly improves the user experience and mitigates the risk of stolen credentials and man-in-the-middle (MiTM) attacks.
FIDO2 authentication is regarded as phishing-resistant authentication because it:
Using Duo with FIDO2 authenticators enables organizations to enforce phishing-resistant MFA in their environment. It also complies with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance issued earlier this year in a memo titled “Moving the U.S. Government Towards Zero Trust Cybersecurity Principles”. The memo specifically requires agencies to use phishing-resistant authentication method.
We understand that getting the IT infrastructure ready to support FIDO2 can be expensive and is typically a long-term project for organizations. In addition, deploying and managing 3rd party security keys creates IT overhead that some organizations are not able to undertake immediately.
Alternatively, using Duo Push for passwordless authentication is an easy, cost effective to get started on a passwordless journey for many organizations, without compromising on security.
We have incorporated security into the login workflow to bind the browser session and the device being used. So, organizations get the same benefits of eliminating use of stolen credentials and mitigation of phishing attacks. To learn more about passwordless authentication with Duo Push, check out our post: Available Now! Passwordless Authentication Is Just a Tap Away.
In addition to going passwordless, many organizations are looking to implement zero trust access in their IT environment. This environment typically is a mix of modern and legacy applications, meaning passwordless cannot be universally adopted. At least not until all applications can support modern authentication.
Additionally, organizations need to support a broad range of use cases to allow access from both managed and unmanaged (personal or 3rd party contractor) devices. And IT security teams need visibility into these devices and the ability to enforce compliance to meet the organization’s security policies such as ensuring that the operating system (OS) and web browser versions are up to date. The importance of verifying device posture at the time of authentication is emphasized in the guidance provided by OMB’s zero trust memorandum – “authorization systems should work to incorporate at least one device-level signal alongside identity information about the authenticated user.”
Duo can help organizations adopt a zero trust security model by enforcing strong user authentication across the board either through passwordless authentication where applicable or thought password + MFA where necessary, while providing a consistent user experience. Further, with capabilities such as device trust and granular adaptive policies, and with our vision for Continuous Trusted Access, organizations get a trusted security partner they can rely on for implementing zero trust access in their environment.
To learn more, check out the eBook – Passwordless: The Future of Authentication, which outlines a 5-step path to get started. And watch the passwordless product demo in this on-demand webinar .
Many of our customers have already begun their passwordless journey. If you are looking to get started as well, sign-up for a free trial and reach out to our amazing representatives.
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It’s Partner Summit week and, for me, it’s an important reminder that no one company, not even Cisco, can do it alone. Our partners provide diverse perspectives, expertise, and solutions offerings. Each partner plays a key part in delivering the outcomes and experiences our customers need, want, and expect. So, when we say, “Let’s Own It”, it’s a rally cry for Cisco and our partners alike to do our parts to seize the massive opportunity that we have in front of us and turn it into mutual success.
Together, I know we can achieve amazing things. Foremost on my mind right now is both the opportunity and necessity to empower customers with security resilience. Resilience means customers can protect the integrity of every aspect of their business so that they can withstand unpredictable threats or changes and emerge stronger. It’s about providing controlled, trusted access to applications and services, at any time, from any place.
Resilience can also help customers deal with issues the moment they arise. If changes are needed, they will have the visibility to determine priorities, thanks to actionable intelligence and insight in the face of some major security realities that they are dealing with every day.
One, businesses are more interconnected, meaning that a breach on anyone in the value chain has dramatic ripple effects on the others.
Two, security attacks are becoming more personalized. Individuals remain one of the easiest targets for cybercriminals and their attacks are becoming more sophisticated and customized for the individual.
Three, hybrid work is here to stay. People around the world will continue to work from anywhere, on managed and unmanaged devices, over secured and unsecured networks, to applications spread across multiple clouds and data centers.
Our vision for enabling a more resilient organization is the Cisco Security Cloud. It’s an open, integrated security platform that will protect the integrity of entire IT ecosystems by safeguarding users, devices and applications across public clouds and private data centers, without public cloud lock-in. Delivering on the Security Cloud is part of our long-term product strategy; but the innovations we are announcing at Partner Summit this week are foundational elements that execute on this vision.
Specifically, we are announcing new solutions and technologies across our portfolio in Secure Connectivity, Network Security, and Zero Trust. I encourage all partners to drill down on each announcement in the accompanying blogs and news announcements. But here are the highlights of the announcements.
Helping increase resistance to phishing attacks and improve user experience through frictionless access using Duo Passwordless, which is now generally available with support for Duo Mobile as a passwordless authenticator.
Expanding the Cisco Secure Firewall 3100 series, the first firewall purpose-built for hybrid work, with the Secure Firewall 3105, ideal for branch office and similar use cases focused on performance at a competitive price point.
Strengthening Umbrella’s data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities by adding API-based enforcement and unified reporting to protect sensitive data, e.g., intellectual property and financial and healthcare information. This complements Umbrella’s current inline-DLP functionality and collectively forms multi-mode DLP.
New Secure Workload capabilities delivering policy-as-code workload security for cloud-native and public-cloud application development. Common use cases for policy-as-code include access control to infrastructure and simplifying enterprise compliance and controls.
Our strategy and our innovation roadmap are all designed to set you up, our partners, for long-term success. In addition, we are committed to several partner enablement programs to help you deliver more value to customers and to help you become more profitable. Examples include:
Partner Summit is for you. So, my call-to-action is for you to maximize the value you get out of this week by attending as many of the informative, high-impact security sessions many teams worked hard to create. I am really looking forward to meeting as many of you as possible – on the expo floor, at the sessions, or in our 1-on-1 meetings.
Security has never been more critical and the need for resiliency is a requirement for virtually every business. The time for us to own it and innovate to win this future together has never been better.
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When people think of cybersecurity, they think it is all about constant, in-the-moment, reactive execution. That is true in many regards, however, there is more to cybersecurity than that. There is also a strategic side; that progressive, long-term vision to anticipate the unknown, convert fear into motivation, and prepare for future threats.
As the Chief Operations Officer of Sara Assicurazioni, Luigi Vassallo has a philosophy that he lives by to keep his motivation strong. “The most important thing is not being the best one in a race, but the best version of yourself.” To put that into sharper perspective, Sara Assicurazioni is the largest insurance company in Italy with agency offices spread over 1500 points of sale.
Part of Luigi’s credo is realized through his training as a kickboxer. The challenges of getting into a boxing ring, and not knowing where the opponent may direct the next combination of blows is very similar to the uncertainties of cybersecurity. You have a choice, either to cower in fear, or to take a proactive stance, preventing the opponent from ever gaining the opportunity to attack. This requires confidence and control.
Sara Assicurazioni partnered with Cisco Secure to transform their entire security infrastructure. Luigi states, “Thanks to Cisco, when I explain where we are to our stakeholders and board members, I can reassure them that we are in control.” However, like any good athlete, he doesn’t boast too broadly, adding “you need to be extremely safe and modest.” Some of the benefits that have been realized through adopting the Cisco Secure portfolio include:
One important aspect of a good strategy, whether you are an elite athlete or not, is to see the long-term effects of each maneuver. The vision Luigi had for Sara Assicurazioni was to become a “cloud first” organization. This required careful planning, and most importantly, a firm foundation of trust that this direction was the right one for the organization and its stakeholders. “We are now a full digital company completely based on cloud infrastructure, and we have a lot of new digital services applications, and artificial intelligence.”
Another part of any good strategy is understanding the importance of having a good team working with you. An audience may see the lone boxer in the ring, but there are so many others involved with that person’s success. Luigi credits his colleagues – from the IT and SecOps teams, all the way up to senior management – with the achievements of making Sara Assicurazioni as secure as possible. Luigi also adds more power to his punch by being a Cisco Insider Advocate, which enables him to channel his energy to inspire others. He is also candidly self-aware of his part in the full security strategy. “I am not an elite athlete, but I like to win, and I like having Cisco on my team.”
To find out more about Luigi’s journey, his challenges, and triumphs, tune into his customer story here.
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The last few years have proved to be a catalyst for digital transformation for many of our enterprise customers. Application modernization and adopting multicloud are the foundational building blocks for digitizing business. Customers employ CI/CD (continuous integration, continuous delivery) to modernize their applications, building them on a cloud infrastructure. This evolution has given rise to new application security challenges in terms of speed, scale, as well as new and unfamiliar control points – not to mention siloed organizations and tools.
To address these security challenges, Cisco Secure Workload delivers zero trust microsegmentation in an infrastructure, location, and form factor agnostic way. It safeguards application workloads, wherever they live across the hybrid and multicloud environment. The recent release of Secure Workload 3.7 introduces “policy as code” support – delivering security at the speed of DevOps. It enables Secure Workload to be integrated with the customer’s choice of CI/CD toolchains, such as Jenkins or GitLab, and ingest the application security policy during the build phase of the application. Secure Workload then renders the policies onto the relevant workloads when the application goes live.
As the graphic below illustrates, Secure Workload ingests policies using Terraform or Ansible, which are widely adopted tools used by the DevOps team to automate infrastructure related tasks. Secure Workload integrates with the CI/CD toolchains using a YAML (.yml) manifest to ingest the policy. It then programs the same policies to the relevant enforcement point to achieve least privilege access for the newly built or upgraded application.
Policy as code helps customers automate policy deployment at the speed and scale of modern applications. It also simplifies collaboration between DevOps/DevSecOps and NetSec teams. The policies are written in the application language and give appropriate controls to developers to write their requirements into the application while the NetSec team ensures full compliance to the infosec policies dictated by the CISO organization.
In summary, Secure Workload removes the barriers to achieving automated application deployment across highly distributed multicloud environments, without compromising security, compliance, or user experience. The result – stronger security, faster application deployment, and more efficient collaboration.
For more information on policy as code, contact your Cisco Account Team or Partner Account Manager.
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With passwords and MFA out of the way, let’s next look at connected apps or services that are tied to our priority accounts. When you log into other sites on the web through Facebook, Google, or another social account, as well as when you install social media apps or games, you are sharing information about those accounts with those services. This may be as limited as the email address and username on file, or may include much more information like your friends list, contacts, likes/subscriptions, or more.
A well-known example of this data-harvesting method is the Cambridge Analytica story, where installing a social media app opened up access to much more information than users realized. (Note: as mentioned in the linked article, Facebook added protective measures to limit the amount of data available to app developers, but connected accounts can still present a liability if misused.)
With this in mind, look under the Security or Privacy section of each of your account’s settings, and review where you have either used this account to log into a third-party website or allowed access when installing an app. Here are some handy links to some of the most common services to check:
If you aren’t going to use the app again or don’t want to share any details, remove them. Once you’ve checked your accounts, repeat this process with all the apps installed on your phone.
Just like connecting a social account to a third-party game can share information like your contact info and friend’s list, installing an app on your mobile device can share information including your contacts, camera roll and more. Fortunately, mobile OSes have gotten much better at notifying users before installation on what information is shared, so you should be able to see which apps might be nosier than you’re comfortable with.
Finally — and this is really for the nerds and techies out there — check if you have any API (short for “application programming interface”) keys or browser extensions connected to your accounts. API keys are commonly used to let different apps or services “talk” between one another. They let you use services like Zapier or IFTTT to do things like have your Spotify favorites automatically saved to a Google Sheet, or check Weather Underground to send a daily email with the forecast.
Browser extensions let you customize a web browser and integrate services, like quickly clicking to save an article for review on a “read it later” service like Instapaper. Even if you trust the developer when installing these apps, they may pose a risk later on if they are recovered or taken over by an attacker. These “zombie extensions” rely on a broad install base from a legitimate service which can later be misused to gather information or launch attacks by a malicious developer.
We’ve made great progress already, and taken steps to help defend your accounts from prying eyes going forward – now it’s time to lock down your previous activities on social media. Rather than enumerate every option on every service, I’ll highlight some common tools and privacy settings you’ll want to check:
Before moving on to email, I’ll add another plug for the NYT Social Media Security and Privacy Checklists if you, like me, would rather have a series of boxes to mark off while going through each step above.
Security experts know that you can’t erase the possibility of risk, and it can be counterproductive to build a plan to that expectation. What is realistic and achievable is identifying risk so you know what you’re up against, mitigating risk by following security best practices, and isolating risk where possible so that in the event of an incident, one failure doesn’t have a domino effect affecting other resources. If that seems a bit abstract, let’s take a look at a practical example.
Tech journalist Mat Honan was the unlucky victim of a targeted hack, which resulted in a near-complete lockout from his digital life requiring a Herculean effort to recover. Fortunately for us, Mat documented his experience in the Wired story, “How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking,” which offers an excellent summary of exactly the type of domino effect I described. I encourage you to read the full article, but for a CliffsNotes version sufficient for our needs here:
Honan’s article goes into much more detail, including some of the changes made by the services exploited to prevent similar incidents in the future. The key takeaway is that having a couple of emails without strong authentication tied to all his most important accounts, including the recovery of these email accounts themselves, meant that the compromise of his Amazon account quickly snowballed into something much bigger.
We’re going to learn from that painful lesson, and do some segmentation on our email channels based on the priority and how public we want that account to be. (“Segmentation” is an industry term that can be mostly boiled down to “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”, and keep critical or vulnerable resources separate from each other.) I would suggest setting up a few different emails, listed here from least- to most-public:
For all of the above, of course, we’ll create strong passwords and set up 2FA. And speaking of 2FA, you can use the same split-channel approach we followed for email to set up a dedicated verification number (using a VOIP service or something like Google Voice) when sending a passcode by SMS is the only option supported. Keeping these recovery numbers separate from your main phone number reduces the risk of them being leaked, sold, or captured in an unrelated breach.
Good news: We’re almost done with doxxing ourselves! In the next section, we’ll sweep out those unused accounts to avoid leaving data-filled loose ends and take a look at how data brokers profit off of your personal information and what you can do to opt-out.
You’ve made it this far so maybe you’re passionate like we are about developing innovative ways to make security accessible. We’d love for you to join our mission.
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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.
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Today we’re examining some of the revelations in the Q3 Cisco Talos Incident Response Trends Report. This document is an anonymized look at of all the engagements that the Cisco Talos Incident Response team have been involved in over the previous three months. It also features threat intelligence from our team of researchers and analysts.
To start, take a watch of this episode of ThreatWise TV which explores how these trends have evolved since the previous quarter. Our guests also talk about incidents and cyber-attacks that they themselves have consulted on recently, including a particularly interesting insider threat case.
Ransomware returned as the top threat this quarter, after commodity trojans narrowly surpassed ransomware last quarter. Ransomware made up nearly 18 percent of all threats observed, up from 15 percent last quarter. Cisco Talos Incident Response (CTIR) observed high-profile families, such as Vice Society and Hive, as well as the newer family Blast Basta, which first emerged in April of this year.
Also noteworthy is the fact that CTIR saw an equal number in ransomware and pre- ransomware engagements this quarter, totalling nearly 40 percent of threats observed. Pre-ransomware is when we have observed a ransomware attack is about to happen, but the encryption of files has not yet taken place.
Pre-ransomware comprised 18 percent of threats this quarter, up from less than 5 percent previously. While it’s difficult to determine an adversary’s motivations if encryption does not take place, several behavioral characteristics bolster Talos’ confidence that ransomware may likely be the final objective. In these engagements adversaries were observed deploying frameworks such as Cobalt Strike and Mimikatz, alongside numerous enumeration and discovery techniques.
Commodity malware, such as the Qakbot banking trojan, was observed in multiple engagements this quarter. In one engagement, several compromised endpoints were seen communicating with IP addresses associated with Qakbot C2 traffic. This activity coincides with a general resurgence of Qakbot and its delivery of emerging ransomware families and offensive security frameworks that we have not previously observed Qakbot deploy. This comes at a time where competing email-based botnets like Emotet and Trickbot have suffered continued setbacks from law enforcement and tech companies.
Other threats this quarter include infostealers like Redline Stealer and Raccoon Stealer. Redline Stealer was observed across three engagements this quarter, two of which involved ransomware. The malware operators behind Raccoon introduced new functionality to the malware at the end of June, which likely contributed to its increased presence in engagements this quarter.
As infostealers have continued to rank highly in CTIR engagements, let’s explore them in a bit more detail.
Throughout the incidents discussed over the last few quarters, and CTIR engagements in general, information stealing plays a big part of the attackers’ TTPs.
From a high level, infostealers can be used to gain access a variety of sensitive information, such as contact information, financial details, and even intellectual property. The adversaries involved often proceed to exfiltrate this information and may then attempt to sell it in dark web forums, threaten to release it if a ransom isn’t paid, among other things.
While these instances can and do crop up in CTIR engagements, many of the infostealers seen in this space are used for accessing and collecting user credentials. Once an attacker has gained an initial foothold on a system, there are many places within an operating system that they can look for and collect credentials through the practice of credential dumping.
These stolen credentials may be offered up for sale on the dark web, alongside the stolen information mentioned above, but they can also prove to be a key weapon in an attacker’s arsenal. Their usefulness lies in one simple concept—why force your way into a system when you can just log in?
There are several advantages for bad actors that use this approach. Probably the most oblivious of these is that using pre-existing credentials is far more likely to go unnoticed than other more flagrant tactics an attacker can use. If part of the goal of an attack is to remain under the radar, activities carried out by “known users” are less likely to trigger security alerts when compared to tactics such as exploiting vulnerabilities or downloading malware binaries.
Adversaries tend to seek credentials with higher privileges, allowing them further control over the systems they compromise, with those including administrative access being the crown jewels.
User credentials can not only provide an attacker with means to elevate privileges and establish persistence on a system, but also to move laterally through a network. Some credentials, especially those with administrative privileges, can offer access to multiple systems throughout a network. By obtaining them, many more options become available to further an attack.
There are several threats involved in information stealing that appear repeatedly in CTIR engagements over the last few quarters.
Perhaps the most notorious is Mimikatz—a tool used to pull credentials from operating systems. Mimikatz is not malware per-se and can be useful for penetration testing and red team activities. But bad actors leverage it as well, and over the last few quarters CTIR has observed it being used in ransomware-as-a-service attacks, as well as pre-ransomware incidents.
CTIR has also observed Redline Stealer being utilized by adversaries in CTIR engagements across quarters. This infostealer has grown in popularity as a supplementary tool used alongside other malware. On more than one occasion, CTIR has identified stolen credentials on the dark web that claimed to have been obtained via Redline Stealer.
Other information stealers seen across the last few quarters include the Vidar information stealer, Raccoon Stealer, and SolarMaker, all of which have been used to further an adversary’s attacks.
Over the last several months, Talos has seen an increasing number of engagements involving insider threats. In one engagement this quarter, passwords were reset through a management console of a perimeter firewall that a disgruntled employee had access to.
The organization’s team changed all associated passwords but overlooked one administrative account. On the following day, someone logged in using that account, deleted all other accounts and firewall rules, and created one local account, likely to provide persistence.
You’ll hear Alexis Merritt, Incident Response Consultant for Cisco Talos, talk about this more in the ThreatWise TV episode.
To help protect against this threat when an individual leaves an organization, steps like disabling accounts and ensuring that connections to the enterprise remotely through VPN has been removed can be very valuable. Implementing a mechanism to wipe systems, especially for remote employees, is important as well.
For more on this topic, Cisco Secure recently put together a white paper on the Insider Threat Maturity FrameWork.
In several incidents over the last few quarters that involved information stealers, multi-factor authentication (MFA) was not properly implemented by the organizations impacted, providing adversaries an opportunity to infiltrate the networks. MFA tools like Cisco Secure Access by Duo can prevent attackers from successfully gaining access.
And finally, Cisco Advisory CISO Wolfgang Goerlich has created this storytelling video, to help people think about incident response in a new way:
Join the Cisco Talos Incident Response team for a live debrief of the Q3 report on 27th October.
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Last week, I was privileged to participate in an important national summit on IoT Security convened by Anne Neuberger, Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technologies.
Representatives from across the US government, industry, and academia were invited to the White House to discuss a National Consumer IoT Security Labeling program.
In short, we were all there to solve the same problem: how do we raise awareness of the IoT security challenge among all consumers? Cisco appreciates the Biden administration’s efforts to drive better security into the consumer space given how interconnected our world is. We also underscored the importance of intelligent, intuitive networks in securely connecting the “things” being brought online daily—and in managing the billions of smart devices already in our homes and offices.
Consumer devices—from televisions and cameras to drones and baby monitors—have become attack targets as we have embraced connectivity without necessarily following proper security measures. This has been demonstrated by attacks that access cameras within these smart devices. But this issue extends beyond attacks and includes breaches of privacy too. If improperly secured, capabilities intended to enable smart features and accessibility, or improve user experience, can be abused by hackers to steal identities, generate data breaches, facilitate device failure, or even serve as stepping-stones to broader attacks on critical infrastructure.
A prominent example of how security flaws in consumer devices can lead to broader disruption was demonstrated by the Mirai botnet in 2016. What appeared initially as a targeted attack, quickly spread and caused global havoc. Fueled by compromised connected consumer devices—like cameras, DVRs and home routers—a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) impacted its customers’ sites such as Twitter, Netflix, and CNN to name a few. Mirai highlighted how consumer devices connecting to the network can go beyond the walls of a consumer’s home to breach larger institutions and services—all the while being unknown to the consumer and without impact the devices’ functions.
So how do we raise consumer awareness about these breaches? And how do we protect users and prevent these breaches in the future? The discussion at the White House focused on now best to effectuate the national program for IoT security labeling, which was required by President Biden’s executive order last May. Key stakeholders presented potentially promising new ideas for device certification, labels for secure devices, and ways to incentivize adoption of these standards.
Though the focus was on consumer IoT devices, we also discussed the broader implications of the need to raise awareness among consumers about the devices they use at home and in the office. This is where the importance of visibility and network security becomes a strong protector: once these devices can be identified, the network can provide the right access controls (e.g., segmenting the network so that such devices do not infiltrate the main network).
As the IoT market continues to evolve and mature, we look forward to working with the US government, policymakers, industry forums, and partners to drive open, standardized holistic IoT security and privacy practices. Accomplishing this will help more power a more secure, connected future for all.
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Scott Heider is a manager within the Cisco Security Visibility and Incident Command team that reports to the company’s Security & Trust Organization. Primarily tasked with helping to keep the integration of an acquired company’s solutions as efficient as possible, Heider and his team are typically brought into the process after a public announcement of the acquisition has already been made. This blog is the final in a series focused on M&A cybersecurity, following Dan Burke’s post on Making Merger and Acquisition Cybersecurity More Manageable.
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are complicated. Many factors are involved, ensuring cybersecurity across the entire ecosystem as an organization integrates a newly acquired company’s products and solutions—and personnel—into its workstreams.
Through decades of acquisitions, Cisco has gained expertise and experience to make its M&A efforts seamless and successful. This success is in large part to a variety of internal teams that keep cybersecurity top of mind throughout the implementation and integration process.
“Priority one for the team,” says Heider, “is to balance the enablement of business innovation with the protection of Cisco’s information and systems. Because Cisco is now the ultimate responsible party of that acquisition, we make sure that the acquisition adheres to a minimum level of security policy standards and guidelines.”
The team looks at the acquired company’s security posture and then partners with the company to educate and influence them to take necessary actions to achieve Cisco’s security baseline.
That process starts with assessing the acquired company’s infrastructure to identify and rate attack surfaces and threats. Heider asks questions that help identify issues around what he calls the four pillars of security, monitoring, and incident response:
The infrastructure that Heider’s team evaluates isn’t just the company’s servers and data center infrastructure. It can also include the systems the acquisition rents data center space to or public cloud infrastructure. Those considerations further complicate security and must be assessed for threats and vulnerabilities.
Once Heider’s team is activated, they partner with the acquired company and meet with them regularly to suggest areas where that acquisition can improve its security posture and reduce the overall risk to Cisco.
Identifying and addressing risk is critical for both sides of the table, however, not just for Cisco. “A lot of acquisitions don’t realize that when Cisco acquires a company, that organization suddenly has a bigger target on its back,” says Heider. “Threat actors will often look at who Cisco is acquiring, and they might know that that company’s security posture isn’t adequate—because a lot of times these acquisitions are just focused on their go-to-market strategy.”
Those security vulnerabilities can become easy entry points for threat actors to gain access to Cisco’s systems and data. That’s why Heider works so closely with acquisitions to gain visibility into the company’s environment to reduce those security threats. Some companies are more focused on security than others, and it’s up to Heider’s team to figure out what each acquisition needs.
“The acquisition might not have an established forensics program, for instance, and that’s where Cisco can come in and help out,” Heider says. “They might not have tools like Stealthwatch or NetFlow monitoring, or Firepower for IDS/IPS operations.”
When Heider’s team can bring in their established toolset and experienced personnel, “that’s where the relationship between my team and that acquisition grows because they see we can provide things that they just never thought about, or that they don’t have at their disposal,” he says.
One of the most important factors in a successful acquisition, according to Heider, is to develop a true partnership with the acquired company and work with the new personnel to reduce risk as efficiently as possible—but without major disruption.
Cisco acquires companies to expand its solution offerings to customers, so disrupting an acquisition’s infrastructure or workflow would only slow down its integration. “We don’t want to disrupt that acquisition’s processes. We don’t want to disrupt their people. We don’t want to disrupt the technology,” says Heider. “What we want to do is be a complement to that acquisition, – that approach is an evolution, not a revolution.”
The focus on evolution can sometimes result in a long process, but along the way, the teams come to trust each other and work together. “They know their environment better than we do. They often know what works—so we try to learn from them. And that’s where constant discussion, constant partnership with them helps them know that we are not a threat, we’re an ally,” says Heider. “My team can’t be everywhere. And that’s where we need these acquisitions to be the eyes and ears of specific areas of Cisco’s infrastructure.”
Training is another way Heider, and his team help acquisitions get up to speed on Cisco’s security standards. “Training is one of the top priorities within our commitments to both Cisco and the industry,” Heider says. “That includes training in Cisco technologies, but also making sure that these individuals are able to connect with other security professionals at conferences and other industry events.”
When asked what advice he has for enterprises that want to maintain security while acquiring other companies, Heider has a few recommendations.
Having the right security agents and clear visibility into endpoints is critical. As is inputting the data logs of those endpoints into a security event and incident management (SEIM) system. That way, explains Heider, you have visibility into your endpoints and can run plays against those logs to identify security threats. “We’ll reach out to the asset owner and say they might have malware on their system—which is something nobody wants to hear,” says Heider. “But that’s what the job entails.”
Often, end users don’t know that they’re clicking on something that could have malware on it. Heider says user education is almost as important as visibility into endpoints. “Cisco really believes in training our users to be custodians of security, because they’re safeguarding our assets and our customers’ data as well.”
End users should be educated about practices such as creating strong passwords and not reusing passwords across different applications. Multi-factor authentication is a good practice, and end users should become familiar with the guidelines around it.
Updating software and systems is a never-ending job, but it’s crucial for keeping infrastructure operating. Sometimes, updating a system can weaken security and create vulnerabilities. Enterprises must maintain a balance between enabling business innovation and keeping systems and data secure. Patching systems can be challenging but neglecting the task can also allow threat actors into a vulnerable system.
Heider says public cloud operations can be beneficial because you’re transferring ownership liability operations to a third party, like Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud platform. “The only caveat,” he says, “is to make sure you understand that environment before you go and put your customer’s data on it. You might make one false click and expose your certificates to the Internet.”
Heider says that while a big part of his job is helping acquisitions uplevel their security domain to meet baseline security requirements, there’s always the goal to do even better. “We don’t want to be just that baseline,” he says. His team has learned from acquisitions in the past and taken some of those functionalities and technologies back to the product groups to make improvements across Cisco’s solutions portfolio.
“We’re customer zero – Cisco is Cisco’s premier customer,” says Heider, “because we will take a product or technology into our environment, identify any gaps, and then circle back to product engineering to improve upon it for us and our customers.”
Managing Cybersecurity Risk in M&A
Demonstrating Trust and Transparency in Mergers and Acquisitions
When It Comes to M&A, Security Is a Journey
Making Merger and Acquisition Cybersecurity More Manageable
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Cisco Secure Social Channels
I’m sure you’ve seen them — emails or messages that sound alarming and ask you to act quickly. We live in a digital world that produces hundreds of messages and alerts every day. It’s often hard to determine the validity of a suspicious message or phishing email. Whether you are an administrator, or an end-user, it can be overwhelming to accurately identify a malicious message. When in doubt, here are some questions you should ask yourself:
Is the message from a legitimate sender?
Do I normally receive messages from this person?
If there’s a link, can I tell where it’s sending me?
Attackers continue to evolve their methods, and they’re highly educated on the defenses they come up against in the wild. They’ll craft messages that do not involve any traditional indicators of compromise, such as domains, IP address, or URL links. They’ll also start their attacks by sending messages as an initial lure to establish trust, before sending an email with altered invoice or one claiming to be a helpless employee attempting to get their payroll fixed.
Phishing is a socially-based attack type, one where the threat actors focus on human behavior. When these attacks target organizations, there are multiple levels of attack at play. One that focuses on behavioral patterns and workflow, and the other centers on the victim’s emotional boundaries, such as targeting their desire to help others. You see this pattern frequently in Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks.
Below, we’ve placed an example of a lure, which will test the victim to see if there is a means to quickly establish trust. Here, the threat actor is pretending to be the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the victim’s organization. If the lure is successful, then the threat actor will progress the attack, and often request sensitive records or wire transfers. Notice that in the email headers, the person pretending to be the CFO is using a Gmail account, one that was likely created just for this attack. The message is brief, stresses importance and urgency, and requests assistance, playing on the victim’s workflow and desire to help an executive or someone with authority.
The example below is a simplified one, to be sure, but the elements are legitimate. Daily, emails like this hit the inboxes of organizations globally, and the attackers only need to locate a single victim to make their efforts payout.
In the FBI / IC3 2021 Internet Crime Report, there were nearly 20,000 Business Email Compromise complaints filed, with an adjusted loss of nearly 2.4 billion dollars. While spoofing the identity of an executive is certainly one way to conduct a BEC attack, the FBI says that threat actors have started leveraging the normality of hybrid-work to target meeting platforms to establish trust and conduct their crimes. When successful, the funds from the fraudulent wire transfers are moved to crypto wallets and the funds dispersed, making recovery harder.
So as an end user what can you do to protect your organization? Be mindful anytime you receive an urgent call to action, especially when the subject involves money. If your workflow means that you regularly receive these types of requests from the specific individual, verify their identity and the validity of the request using another channel of communication, such as in person or via phone. If you do validate their identity via the phone, take care to avoid calling any numbers listed in the email.
Cisco Secure Email helps stop these types of attacks by tracking user relationships and threat techniques. These techniques often include account takeover, spoofing and many more. Using an intent-based approach allows Secure Email to detect and classify business email compromises and other attacks, so administrators are empowered to take a risk-based approach to stopping these threats.
Find out more about how Cisco Secure Email can help keep your organization safe from phishing.
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Cisco Secure Social Channels
The concept of zero trust is not a new one, and some may even argue that the term is overused. In reality, however, its criticality is growing with each passing day. Why? Because many of today’s attacks begin with the user. According to Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report, 82% of breaches involve the human element — whether it’s stolen credentials, phishing, misuse or error.
Additionally, today’s businesses are hyper-connected, meaning that — in addition to your employees — customers, partners and suppliers are all part of your ecosystem. Couple that with hybrid work, IoT, the move to the cloud, and more emboldened attackers, and organizational risk increases exponentially.
Adopting a zero trust model can dramatically reduce this risk by eliminating implicit trust. It has become so crucial, in fact, that several governments including the U.S., UK and Australia have released mandates and guidance for how organizations should deploy zero trust to improve national security.
However, because zero trust is more of a concept than a technology, and so many vendors use the term, organizations struggle with the best way to implement it. At Cisco, we believe you should take a holistic approach to zero trust, starting with what you have and adding on as you identify gaps in your defenses. And while layers of protection are necessary for powerful security, so is ease of use.
Zero trust plays a major role in building security resilience, or the ability to withstand unpredictable threats or changes and emerge stronger. Through zero trust, the identity and security posture of users, devices and applications are continuously checked and verified to prevent network intrusions — and to also limit impact if an unauthorized entity does gain access.
Organizations with high zero trust maturity are twice as likely to achieve business resilience.
– Cisco’s Guide to Zero Trust Maturity
Eliminating trust, however, doesn’t really conjure up images of user-friendly technology. No matter how necessary they are for the business, employees are unlikely to embrace security measures that make their jobs more cumbersome and time-consuming. Instead, they want fast, consistent access to any application no matter where they are or which device they are using.
That’s why Cisco is taking a different approach to zero trust — one that removes friction for the user. For example, with Cisco Secure Access by Duo, organizations can provide those connecting to their network with several quick, easy authentication options. This way, they can put in place multi-factor authentication (MFA) that frustrates attackers, not users.
Cisco Secure Access by Duo is a key pillar of zero trust security, providing industry-leading features for secure access, authentication and device monitoring. Duo is customizable, straightforward to use, and simple to set up. It enables the use of modern authentication methods including biometrics, passwordless and single sign-on (SSO) to help organizations advance zero trust without sacrificing user experience. Duo also provides the flexibility organizations need to enable secure remote access with or without a VPN connection.
During Cisco’s own roll-out of Duo to over 100,000 people, less than 1% of users contacted the help desk for assistance. On an annual basis, Duo is saving Cisco $3.4 million in employee productivity and $500,000 in IT help desk support costs. Furthermore, 86,000 potential compromises are averted by Duo each month.
La-Z-Boy, one of the world’s leading residential furniture producers, also wanted to defend its employees against cybersecurity breaches through MFA and zero trust. It needed a data security solution that worked agnostically, could grow with the company, and that was easy to roll out and implement.
“When COVID first hit and people were sent home to work remotely, we started seeing more hacking activity…” said Craig Vincent, director of IT infrastructure and operations at La-Z-Boy. “We were looking for opportunities to secure our environment with a second factor…. We knew that even post-pandemic we would need a hybrid solution.”
“It was very quick and easy to see where Duo fit into our environment quite well, and worked with any application or legacy app, while deploying quickly.” – Craig Vincent, Director of IT Infrastructure and Operations, La-Z-Boy
Today, Duo helps La-Z-Boy maintain a zero trust framework, stay compliant, and get clear visibility into what is connecting to its network and VPN. Zero trust helps La-Z-Boy secure its organization against threats such as phishing, stolen credentials and out-of-date devices that may be vulnerable to known exploits and malware.
As mentioned, zero trust is a framework, not a single product or technology. For zero trust to be truly effective, it must do four things:
Many technology companies may offer a single component of zero trust, or one aspect of protection, but Cisco’s robust networking and security expertise enables us to provide a holistic zero trust solution. Not only can we support all the steps above, but we can do so across your whole IT ecosystem.
Modern organizations are operating multi-environment ecosystems that include a mix of on-premises and cloud technologies from various vendors. Zero trust solutions should be able to protect across all this infrastructure, no matter which providers are in use. Protections should also extend from the network and cloud to users, devices, applications and data. With Cisco’s extensive security portfolio, operating on multiple clouds and platforms, zero trust controls can be embedded at every layer.
Depending on where you are in your security journey, embedding zero trust at every layer of your infrastructure may sound like a lofty endeavor. That’s why we meet customers where they are on their path to zero trust. Whether your first priority is to meet regulatory requirements, secure hybrid work, protect the cloud, or something else, we have the expertise to help you get started. We provide clear guidance and technologies for zero trust security mapped to established frameworks from organizations like CISA and NIST.
Much of our Cisco Secure portfolio can be used to build a successful zero trust framework, but some examples of what we offer include:
All of our technologies and services are backed by the unparalleled intelligence of Cisco Talos — so you always have up-to-date protection as you build your zero trust architecture. Additionally, our open, integrated security platform — Cisco SecureX — makes it simple to expand and scale your security controls, knowing they will work with your other technologies for more unified defenses.
As Italy’s leading insurance company, Sara Assicurazioni requires complete visibility into its extended network, including a multi-cloud architecture and hybrid workforce. The company has adopted a comprehensive zero trust strategy through Cisco Secure.
“Our decentralized users, endpoints, and cloud-based servers and workloads contribute to a large attack surface,” says Paolo Perrucci, director of information and communications technology architectures and operations at Sara Assicurazioni. “With Cisco, we have the right level of visibility on this surface.”
“The main reason we chose Cisco is that only Cisco can offer a global security solution rather than covering one specific point…. Thanks to Cisco Secure, I’m quite confident that our security posture is now many times better because we are leveraging more scalable, state-of-the-art security solutions.” – Luigi Vassallo, COO & CTO, Sara Assicurazioni
To learn more, explore our zero trust page and sign up for one of our free zero trust workshops.
Watch video: How Cisco implemented zero trust in just five months
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Cisco Secure Social Channels
In the first step of our doxxing research, we collected a list of our online footprint, digging out the most important accounts that you want to protect and obsolete or forgotten accounts you no longer use. Because the most recent and relevant data is likely to live in the accounts you use regularly, our next step will be to review the full scope of what’s visible from these accounts and to set more intentional boundaries on what is shared.
It’s important to note here that the goal isn’t to eliminate every trace of yourself from the internet and never go online again. That’s not realistic for the vast majority of people in our connected world (and I don’t know about you, but even if it was I wouldn’t want to!) And whether it’s planning for an individual or a giant organization, security built to an impossible standard is destined to fail. Instead, we are shifting you from default to intentional sharing, and improving visibility and control over what you do want to share.
Before making changes to the settings and permissions for each of these accounts, we’re going to make sure that access to the account itself is secure. You can start with your email accounts (especially any that you use as a recovery email for forgotten passwords, or use for financial, medical, or other sensitive communications). This shouldn’t take very long for each site, and involves a few straightforward steps:
The best way to prevent a breached password from exposing another account to attack is to use a unique password for for every website you visit. And while you may have heard previous advice on strong passwords (along the lines of “eight or more characters, with a mix of upper/lower case letters, numbers, and special characters”), more recent standards emphasize the importance of longer passwords. For a great explanation of why longer passwords work better than shorter, multi-character type passwords, check out this excellent XKCD strip:
A password manager will make this process much easier, as most have the ability to generate unique passwords and allow you to tailor their length and complexity. While we’re on the topic of what makes a good password, make sure that the password to access your password manager is both long and memorable.
You don’t want to save or auto-fill that password because it acts as the “keys to the kingdom” for everything else, so I recommend following a process like the one outlined in the comic above, or another mnemonic device, to help you remember that password. Once you’ve reset the password, check for a “log out of active devices” option to make sure the new password is used.
MFA uses two or more “factors” verifying something you know, something you have, or something you are. A password is an example of “something you know”, and here are a few of the most common methods used for an additional layer of security:
If you want to know more about the different ways you can log in with strong authentication and how they vary in effectiveness, check out the Google Security Team blog post “Understanding the Root Cause of Account Takeover.”
Before we move on from passwords and 2FA, I want to highlight a second step to log in that doesn’t meet the standard of strong authentication: password questions. These are usually either a secondary prompt after entering username and password, or used to verify your identity before sending a password reset link. The problem is that many of the most commonly-used questions rely on semi-public information and, like passcodes, are entered on the same device used to log in.
Another common practice is leveraging common social media quizzes/questionnaires that people post on their social media account. If you’ve seen your friends post their “stage name” by taking the name of their first pet and the street they grew up on, you may notice that’s a combination of two pretty common password questions! While not a very targeted or precise method of attack, the casual sharing of these surveys can have consequences beyond their momentary diversion.
One of the first widely-publicized doxxings happened when Paris Hilton’s contact list, notes, and photos were accessed by resetting her password using the password question, “what is your favorite pet’s name?”. Because Hilton had previously discussed her beloved chihuahua, Tinkerbell, the attacker was able to use this information to access the account.
Sometimes, though, you’ll be required to use these password questions, and in those cases I’ve got a simple rule to keep you safe: lie! That’s right, you won’t be punished if you fib when entering the answers to your password questions so that the answers can’t be researched, and most password managers also include a secure note field that will let you save your questions and answers in case you need to recall them later.
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Dan Burke is the director of strategy, risk, and compliance for AppDynamics, a company acquired by Cisco in 2017. Burke and his team are a vital part of the Cisco acquisition process in helping acquired companies adhere to a higher level of cybersecurity. This blog is the fourth in a series focused on M&A cybersecurity, following Shiva Persaud’s post on When It Comes to M&A, Security Is a Journey.
Part of the secret to Cisco’s success is its ability to acquire companies that strengthen its technology portfolio and securely integrate them into the larger organization. From the outside, that process might appear seamless—consider Webex or Duo Security, for instance—but a fruitful acquisition takes tremendous work by multiple cross-functional teams, mainly to ensure the acquired company’s solutions and products meet Cisco’s rigorous security requirements.
“My team is responsible for aligning new acquisitions to Cisco controls to maintain our compliance with SOC2 and FedRAMP, as well as other required certifications,” says Burke.
When Cisco acquires a new company, it conducts an assessment and produces a security readiness plan (SRP) document. The SRP details the identified weaknesses and risks within that company and what they need to fix to meet Cisco standards.
“In the past, my team wouldn’t find out about an acquisition until they received a completed SRP. The downside of this approach was that the assessments and negotiations had been done without input from our group of experts, and target dates for resolution had already been decided on,” shares Burke.
“We needed to be involved in the process before the SRP was created to understand all risks and compliance issues in advance. Now we have a partnership with the Cisco Security and Trust M&A team and know about an acquisition months before we can start working to address risks and other issues—before the SRP is completed and the due dates have been assigned,” Burke adds.
“Another issue resolved in this process change is that Cisco can gain earlier access to the people in the acquired company who know the security risks of their solutions. During acquisitions, people will often leave the company, taking with them their institutional knowledge, resulting in Cisco having to start from scratch to identify and assess the risks and determine how best to resolve them as quickly as possible,” says Burke. “It could be vulnerabilities in physical infrastructure or software code or both. It could be that the company isn’t scanning often enough, or they don’t have SOC 2 or FedRAMP certification yet—or they’re not using Cisco’s tools.”
“Third-party vendors and suppliers can also present an issue,” he adds. “One of the biggest risk areas of any company is outside vendors who have access to a company’s data. It’s vital to identify who these vendors are and understand the level of access they have to data and applications. The earlier we know all these things, the more time we must devise solutions to solve them.”
“Now that I’m in the process earlier, I can build a relationship with the people who have the security knowledge—before they leave. If I can understand their mindset and how all these issues came about, I can help them assimilate more easily into the bigger Cisco family,” says Burke.
The additional benefits of bringing teams in earlier are reduced risk and compliance requirements can be met earlier. It also provides a smoother transition for the company being acquired and ensures they meet the security requirements that customers expect when using their technology solutions.
“Without that early involvement, we might treat a low-risk issue as high risk, or vice versa. The misclassification of risk is extremely dangerous. If you’re treating something as high risk, that’s low risk, and you’re wasting people’s time and money. But if something’s high risk and you’re treating it as low risk, then you’re in danger of harming your company,” Burke shares.
“The key is to involve their risk, compliance, and security professionals from the beginning. I think other companies keep the M&A process so closely guarded, to their detriment. I understand the need for privacy and to make sure deals are confidential but bringing us in earlier was an advantage for the M&A team and us,” Burke adds.
When asked what he thinks makes Cisco successful in M&A, Burke says, “Cisco does an excellent job of assimilating everyone into the larger organization. I have worked at other companies where they kept their acquisitions separate, which means you have people operating separately with different controls for different companies. That’s not only a financial burden but also a compliance headache.”
“That’s why Cisco tries to drive all its acquisitions through our main programs and controls. It makes life easier for everyone in terms of compliance. With Cisco, you have that security confidence knowing that all these companies are brought up to their already very high standards, and you can rely on the fact that they don’t treat them separately. And when an acquisition has vulnerabilities, we identify them, set out a remediation path, and manage the process until those risks are resolved,” Burke concludes.
Managing Cybersecurity Risk in M&A
Demonstrating Trust and Transparency in Mergers and Acquisitions
When It Comes to M&A, Security Is a Journey
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
Technology has typically had a reputation for being exciting and inventive. Unfortunately, this hasn’t always been the case for security. But times have changed. We are now recognizing the crucial role security plays in any groundbreaking technology. Without strong defenses, even the most visionary app is likely to crash and burn. So it’s imperative that big security players like Cisco stay on top of what’s next.
I am thrilled to announce that in November, we will be launching our new video series, “NEXT” by Cisco Secure. In the series, my esteemed co-host TK Keanini and I will interview some of the brightest new minds in tech to find out more about the future of the industry and how we can best secure it. Watch the series preview below!
As the CTO of Cisco Secure, TK has over 25 years of networking and security expertise, as well as a penchant for driving technical innovation. As for me, I’m a cybersecurity specialist of 10 years with an obsession for communication and empathy. Together, TK and I will bring new cyber pioneers to the forefront and highlight the criticality of digital protection and privacy for everyone.
Whether we’re discussing Web3, the metaverse, or next-generation healthcare, we’ll learn and laugh a lot. Through simple conversations about complex topics, we’re building a bridge between leading-edge tech and how Cisco is helping to safeguard what’s on the horizon.
And what better time to preview this series than during Cybersecurity Awareness Month? A time when we focus on the reality that security belongs to everyone — not just the threat hunter, or the product engineer, or the incident responder — but everyone.
We all have a responsibility to protect the world’s data and infrastructure, and should all have a seat at the table for important security conversations. We hope you’ll join us as we dive into what’s making waves out there, and how we can keep it safe.
Follow our Cisco Secure social channels to catch our first episode in November, when we will speak with Michael Ebel, CEO of Atmosfy. Atmosfy is revolutionizing restaurant reviews by incorporating engaging live video that inspires others and supports local businesses. TK and I will chat with Michael about the origin of Atmosfy, and how the company keeps its content authentic and organization resilient.
In the meantime, explore our other Cybersecurity Awareness Month resources.
Who do you want to hear from next? Tell us your ideas for future guests in the comments.
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Sharing is caring… but on the internet, sharing can also be tricky! When we post something, we have to look at the forest and not just the trees. Doxxers usually start with one or two pieces of relatively innocent or public information, but by connecting the dots between those pieces they can build a frighteningly detailed picture of an individual.
Seemingly innocuous details can be pieced together into a much more personal profile when collected and leveraged to learn more. As one example, your wish list/wedding registry makes it easy for friends and family to get you gifts that you actually want, but could also be used to find out products/services you’re interested in as pretext (setting the scene) of a conversation or phishing email trying to gather more. You may have Google Alerts set up for your name (a great idea!), but this may not flag text in scanned documents such as school yearbooks, newspapers and other digitized paper records available online.
If the above sounds scary – don’t panic! Your first step in this auto-dox is going to be brainstorming as much personally identifying information (PII) shared online as possible. I suggest doing this either in a secure note or longhand. The goal is to write down all of the accounts/addresses/phone numbers that come to mind, as these are some of the top things that attackers will try to gather in their search. Start your list here:
Email addresses are an especially juicy target for someone trying to locate you, because most people only use one personal and maaaybe a second school or work email account. Those accounts are tied to all our other online identities and often double as our username for logging in.
When you finish this process, you will likely have dozens or even hundreds of “breadcrumbs” between your account list and search results. Read through your list again, and we’re going to sort it into three categories:
Great job! You’ve already got a much better idea of what people can learn about you than most folks ever do, and are well on your way to cleaning up your online footprint. In our next step, we’ll start locking down everything that you want to keep!
P.S. If you’re enjoying this process and value keeping people safe online, please check out our open roles at Cisco Secure.
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How do organizations earn and build trust when it comes to the personal data that customers share with them? Customers certainly expect these organizations to comply with all privacy laws that are now in place in more than 130 countries. Customers also expect them not to sell personal data without consent and to try to avoid data breaches that could expose personal data. While these actions are necessary, organizations still need to do more when it comes to customer trust. According to our latest research, consumers’ top priority is, in fact, for organizations to be more transparent about how they use personal data.
The Cisco 2022 Consumer Privacy Survey, released today, explores what organizations can do to earn and build trust with customers, the actions individuals are taking to protect their data, the impact of privacy laws around the world, and some of the benefits and costs of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data localization requirements. The report, our fourth annual look at consumer privacy issues, draws on anonymous responses from 2600 adults in 12 countries.
Here are some highlights from the survey:
Check out the associated infographic that provides visual and easily consumable descriptions of the key data.
At Cisco, we believe that privacy is a fundamental human right. Privacy continues to be a high priority for consumers, and organizations need to do their part to protect personal data and build consumer confidence in how this data is being used. Some recommendations for organizations include:
Privacy remains a critical element of trust. Consumers want more transparency and control of their personal data, especially as we continue to see innovations in technology. As we are now in the midst of Cybersecurity Awareness Month in the US and other countries around the world, it’s a great time to learn more and join in activities and discussions that advance cybersecurity.
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It is never too late to start a career in cybersecurity — this may sound cliché, but it holds a lot of truth. If you are passionate about the topic and are ready to put in the work to acquire the skills and knowledge needed, anyone, regardless of educational background, can break into cybersecurity.
At the age of 26, I started a four-year bachelor’s degree in digital forensics. I got introduced to the field by chance after working in data analytics for a few years and taking a college class on criminology. The program that I signed up for was mostly remote, with 80% independent preparation and bi-monthly on-site weekends at the university. I quickly realized that this model of education works great for me — I could read the materials provided by the program at my own pace and use as much external materials to supplement my understanding as needed. While the program was designed for working professionals and classes were spread out over four years, instead of the usual three years for a bachelor’s degree in Germany, it required a lot of discipline to complete the coursework while having a full-time job. Along the way, I learned several things about combining the responsibilities of adult life and achieving the study goals I had set for myself.
Below, I will outline a few recommendations to follow if you would like to break into the security field as an adult learner.
Use visual support to communicate your goals and timeline to others. This makes it easy for them to understand where you stand and why you might pass on the dinner invitation for next weekend.
Small reminders like the one above can help you stay motivated and focused.
One of the first events that I attended as a student was an information day by the German research institute Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT). Public institutions like this one tend to offer more affordable events and discount rates for students.
Appreciate the small steps forward and be gentle to your mental health.
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Shiva Persaud is the director of security engineering for Cisco. His team is responsible for the Cisco Secure Development Lifecycle (CSDL), a set of practices based on a “secure-by-design” philosophy developed to ensure that security and compliance are top-of-mind in every step of a solution’s lifecycle. This blog is the third in a series focused on M&A cybersecurity, following Jason Button’s post on Demonstrating Trust and Transparency in Mergers and Acquisitions.
One of the most important considerations when Cisco acquires a company, is ensuring that the security posture of the acquisition’s solutions and infrastructure meets the enterprise’s security standards. That can be a tricky proposition and certainly doesn’t happen overnight. In fact, at Cisco, it only comes about thanks to the efforts of a multitude of people working hard behind the scenes.
“The consistent message is that no matter where a product is in its security journey, from inception to end-of-life activities, there’s still a lot of work that can happen to lead to a better security outcome,” says Persaud.
While Persaud and his team work within Cisco on all the company’s products and solutions, they also play a critical role in maintaining security standards in Cisco’s mergers and acquisitions (M&A) work.
Simply put, Persaud’s team is tasked with identifying the security risks posed by an acquisition’s technology and helping teams mitigate those risks.
“It starts with a risk assessment where we ask ourselves what an attacker would do to compromise this specific technology,” says Persaud. “What are the industry best practices for securing this type of technology? What do our customers expect this technology to provide from a security perspective? And once we have those risks enumerated, we prioritize them to decide which is the most important to take care of first.”
To anticipate where a hacker might find vulnerabilities and the actions they might take, the CSDL team must put themselves in that attack mindset. Fortunately for Persaud, his interest in computer security started as early as middle school. “It just kind of grew from there,” he says. “For many folks I’ve worked with and hired over the years, it’s a similar situation.”
That lifelong interest and experience work to the team’s advantage. They take a risk-based approach to security, in which they identify all the issues that need to be fixed and then rate them based on the likelihood of occurrence and seriousness of the results of an attack. Those ratings inform their decisions on which issues to fix first.
“We come up with ways to go mitigate those risks and co-author a plan called the Security Readiness Plan, or SRP,” Persaud says. “Then we partner with teams to take that plan and execute it over time.”
In alignment with CSDL’s continuous approach to security throughout a solution’s lifecycle, Persaud says that “security is a journey, so the workflow to finish the secure development lifecycle never ends.”
While initial onboarding of an acquired company—including completion of the initial risk assessment and the SRP—typically ends within several months of the acquisition. Persaud adds, “The work continues as the technology is integrated into a larger tech stack or as it’s modified and sold as a standalone offering to our customers.” As the solution or technology evolves and begins to include new features and functionalities, the CSDL work continues to make sure those features are secure as well.
That work can have its obstacles. Persaud says that one of the primary challenges his team deals with is cutting through the flurry of activity and bids for the acquisition’s attention that come pouring in from all sides. It’s a crazy time for both Cisco and the acquisition, with many important tasks at the top of everyone’s to-do lists. “Not just in the security realm,” says Persaud,” but in many other areas, too. So being able to get the acquisition to focus on security in a meaningful way in the context of everything else that’s happening is a major challenge.”
Another challenge is dealing with acquisitions that might not have much security expertise on their original team. That means they’re not able to give Persaud’s team much help in determining where security risks lie and how serious they are—so Cisco’s engineers have a lot more investigative work to do.
When asked what advice he would give to organizations that want to maintain a good security posture when acquiring another company, Persaud names three key factors.
To succeed in M&A security, it’s critical that the organization’s board of directors, CEO, and all subsequent levels of management support and be committed to meeting a high level of security standards and outcomes. The remaining management of the acquisition also needs to be on board with the security commitment, and both organizations should make sure that all employees recognize that commitment and support. If management support is not there, the work ultimately won’t get done. It can be difficult and time-consuming and without companywide recognition of its key importance, it won’t get prioritized, and it will get lost in the myriad of other things that all the teams have to do.
The issue of security can get really complicated, very quickly. Persaud says it’s smart to find industry standards and best practices that already exist and are available to everyone, “so you’re not reinventing the wheel—or more concerning, reinventing the wheel poorly.”
Where to look for those industry standards will vary, depending on the technology stack that needs to be secured. “If you are interested in securing a web application,” says Persaud, “then starting with the OWASP Top Ten list is a good place to start. If you are selling a cloud offer or cloud service, then look at the Cloud Security Alliance’s Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM) or the Cisco Cloud Controls Framework.”
One way to think of it, Persaud says, is that there are a variety of security frameworks certain customers will need a company to adhere to before they can use their solutions. Think frameworks like FedRAMP, SOC-2, Common Criteria, or FIPS.
“You can align your product security work to those frameworks as a baseline and then build on top of them to make technology more resilient.” It’s a great place to start.
It’s essential that an organization be very clear on what it wants to accomplish when it comes to ensuring security of an acquisition’s solutions and infrastructure. This will help it avoid “trying to boil the whole ocean,” says Persaud.
Persaud and his team talk about working up to security fitness the way a runner would start with a 5K and work up to an Ironman competition. “You take progressive steps towards improving,” he says. “You’re very explicit about what milestones of improvement you’ll encounter on your journey of good security.”
Persaud says Cisco is uniquely positioned to help organizations maintain security standards when acquiring other companies. He points to three critical differentiators.
“The level of visibility and support that we have for security at Cisco, starts with our board of directors and our CEO, and then throughout the organization,” says Persaud. “This is a very special and unique situation that allows us to do a lot of impactful work from a security perspective,”
Cisco has long been adamant about security that’s built in from the ground up and not bolted on as an afterthought. It’s the reason the CSDL exists, as well as the Cisco Security & Trust Organization and the many, many teams that work every day to infuse security and privacy awareness into every product, service, and solution—including the technology and infrastructure of newly acquired companies.
Once Persaud’s team has identified and assessed the security risks of an acquisition, his and other teams go about helping the acquisition address and mitigate those risks. Cisco provides a set of common building blocks or tools that teams can use to improve the security posture of an acquisition.
“We have secure libraries that teams can integrate into their code base to help them do certain things securely, so that the individual teams don’t have to implement that security functionality from scratch,” says Persaud. “And Cisco produces certain pieces of hardware that can be leveraged across our product lines, such as secure boot and secure storage.”
“Cisco’s operations stack also has various services acquisitions can use,” says Persaud. “An example of this comes from our Security Vulnerability and Incident Command team (SVIC). They provide logging capabilities that cloud offers at Cisco can leverage to do centralized logging, and then monitor those logs. SVIC also offers a security vulnerability scanning service so individual teams don’t have to do it independently.”
Another critical building block is Persaud’s team and their expertise. They act as a valuable resource that teams can consult when they want to build a new feature securely or improve the security of an existing feature.
Persaud concludes, “Cisco has an extremely strong and active security community where teams can ask questions, gain insights, give guidance, troubleshoot issues, share ideas and technology, and discuss emerging security topics. The community is committed to helping others instead of competing against each other. Members have the mindset of enriching the overall approach to security at Cisco and learning from any source they can to make things continually better.
Managing Cybersecurity Risk in M&A
Demonstrating Trust and Transparency in Mergers and Acquisitions
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Whether or not you’ve heard the term “doxxing” before, you’re probably familiar with the problem it names: collecting personal information about someone online to track down and reveal their real-life identity. The motivations for doxxing are many, and mostly malicious: for some doxxers, the goal in tracking someone is identity theft. For others, it’s part of a pattern of stalking or online harassment to intimidate, silence or punish their victim – and overwhelmingly, victims are youth and young adults, women, and LGBTQ+ people. The truth is, most of us have information online that we don’t realize can put us at risk, and that’s why I’ve written this series: to inform readers about how doxxing happens, and how you can protect yourself from this very real and growing problem by doxxing yourself.
In computer security, we talk about the idea of a “security mindset”: understanding how someone with bad intentions would cause harm, and being able to think like they would to find weak spots. In this series, you will learn by doing. By understanding the tools and methods used by those with ill intent, you’ll be better prepared to keep yourself safe and your information secure.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to follow along and find out everything the internet knows about… you!
This series will provide simple steps for you to follow as you begin your investigation. Along the way, as you get familiar with the tools and tactics of internet sleuths, you’ll get a better idea of your current internet footprint as well as know what tracks you leave in the future. Our process will be split into three main sections:
Information is power. And in the case of doxxing, most people don’t realize how much of their power they’re giving up! My goal in this series is to demystify the methods used for doxxing, so in the spirit of “showing my work,” here are some of the best resources and collected checklists I referenced when planning these exercises, along with how to best use each:
If this looks like a whole lot of homework… don’t worry! We’ll cover most of the core tools and tips mentioned in these resources through the course of this series, and we’ll revisit these links at the end of the series when you’ve gotten more context on what they cover. In the next article, we’ll take on the review step of our process, getting a holistic inventory of what personal information is currently available online so you can prioritize the most important fixes. See you soon!
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Giving back is part of the ethos at Cisco. Part of how that happens is through employees volunteering as part of Cisco’s Time2Give benefit in which employees can use paid time to contribute to their communities and support the causes they’re passionate about. During the pandemic, Cisco increased this benefit from five paid volunteering days to 10 and encourages virtual volunteering, too.
Elizabeth Chang, a software engineer on the Duo Security platform services team, considers Time2Give a great opportunity to “invest in people around you. It is amazing that Cisco supports what we are passionate about and that we can use this time to grow ourselves in other areas of life,” she said.
Cisconians care deeply about many causes, and this post celebrates how teammates spend their time supporting children, youth and teens in and out of school and those preparing for college. Stay tuned for future posts highlighting how other employees give their time. You may even be inspired to find out how you can develop your skills while contributing to organizations that matter to you!
Pierpaolo Panarotto, an account executive on Duo’s EMEAR continental team, volunteers at Sport senza frontiere onlus, a summer sports camp in Italy for refugee children. This summer Panarotto tutored and taught badminton. The program also welcomed children from Ukraine this year.
For Panarotto, the best part, hands down, was seeing the children’s smiles. He advised, “Give back to your community. Sometimes we forget how lucky we are.”
Chang also volunteered at a summer camp, supporting middle and high school students in Boston. The program she supported, Area Youth Ministry Leadership Camp and Summer Boost, fosters leadership skills and college readiness while promoting mentorship.
By helping lead a coding workshop, Chang was able to share what she does professionally. “I was glad that I got to help inspire youth to pursue computer science,” she said. The camp was such a hit that many participants “didn’t want to go home because they had such a fun time,” Chang shared.
“Take the time! You’ll never get the opportunity to go back and take it later. Your community and your heart will thank you!” – Sarah Moon-Musser
Now that school has started, Engineering Program Manager in Platform Engineering Sarah Moon-Musser helps teach the Belleville High School Marching Band’s color guard choreography for their halftime show. She loves spending time with the students. To those considering utilizing Time2Give Moon-Musser says, “Take the time! You’ll never get the opportunity to go back and take it later. Your community and your heart will thank you!”
College readiness is also a passion for Justin Fan and Seema Kathuria who both volunteer with Code2College. They’re able to volunteer virtually by reviewing resumes and college entrance essays and providing constructive feedback through shared documents.
Senior Product Marketing Manager, Kathuria appreciates “learning about the experiences of high school students and how they approach writing about their accomplishments,” she said.
For Fan, a senior customer success manager in security customer success, “the best part is supporting younger generations as they move into college and career. They’re so much more focused and mature than I was at their age,” he said. Fan also participates in virtual career workshops with high school and college students with Students Rising Above.
For others wanting to use Time2Give, Fan suggests finding opportunities you’re passionate about and utilizing light meeting days to volunteer. Kathuria says, “Take advantage of the 10 Time2Give days per year that Cisco gives us. It is very generous, and it feels so good to give back to the community in whatever way makes you happy and fulfilled.”
If you’re looking to feel fulfilled by your work and the impact you can make, please check out our open roles.
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In November 2020, the Telecommunications (Security) Bill was formally introduced to the UK’s House of Commons by the department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. Now, after several readings, debates, committee hearings, and periods of consultation, the Telecommunications (Security) Act is quickly becoming reality for providers of public telecoms networks and services in the UK, going live on 1 October 2022. Here, we outline what exactly the requirements mean for these firms, and what they can do to prepare.
The Act outlines new legal duties on telecoms firms to increase the security of the entire UK network and introduces new regulatory powers to the UK Telecoms regulator OFCOM to regulate Public Telecommunications Providers in the area of cyber security. It place obligations on operators to put in place more measures around the security of their supply chains, which includes the security of the products they procure. The Act grants powers to the Secretary of State to introduce a so-called Code of Practice. It is this Code of Practice which contains the bulk of the technical requirements that operators must comply with. Those not in compliance face large fines (up to 10% of company turnover for one year).
Following the UK Telecoms Supply Chain review in 2018, the government identified three areas of concern that needed addressing:
Following the review, little did we know a major resilience test for the telecoms industry was about to face significant challenges brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. Data released by Openreach – the UK’s largest broadband network, used by customers of BT, Plusnet, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Zen – showed that broadband usage more than doubled in 2020 with 50,000 Petabytes (PB) of data being consumed across the country, compared to around 22,000 in 2019.
There is no question the security resilience of the UK telecoms sector is becoming ever more crucial — especially as the government intends to bring gigabit capable broadband to every home and business across the UK by 2025. As outlined in the National Cyber Security Centre’s Security analysis for the UK telecoms sector, ‘As technologies grow and evolve, we must have a security framework that is fit for purpose and ensures the UK’s Critical National Telecoms Infrastructure remains online and secure both now and in the future’.
The legislation will apply to public telecoms providers (including large companies such as BT and Vodafone and smaller companies that offer telecoms networks or services to the public). More specifically to quote the Act itself:
As the requirements are long and varied and so the timelines to comply have been broken down to help organisations comply. The current Code of Practice expects Tier 1 providers to implement ‘the most straightforward and least resource intensive measures’ by 31 March 2024, and the more complex and resource intensive measures by 31 March 2025.
Tier 2 firms have been given an extra two years on top of the dates outlined above to reflect the relative sizes of providers. Tier 3 providers aren’t in scope of the regulatory changes currently but are strongly encouraged to use the Code of Practice as best practice. The Code of Practice also expects that these firms ‘must continue to take appropriate and proportionate measures to comply with their new duties under the Act and the regulations’.
The TSA introduces a range of new requirements for those in the telecoms industry to understand and follow. These will require a multi-year programme for affected organisations. An area of high focus for example will be on Third Party controls and managing the relationship with them.
However there are more common security requirements as well. From our work with many companies across many different industries, we know that establishing that users accessing corporate systems, data and applications are who they say they are is a key aspect of reducing risk by limiting the possibility of attacks coming in through the front door. This is a very real risk highlighted in Verizon’s 2022 Data Breaches Investigations Report, which states that around 82% of data breaches involved a human element, including incidents in which employees expose information directly or making a mistake that enables cyber criminals to access the organisation’s systems.
Therefore, one area to start to try and protect the organisation and take a step on the way to compliance is to build up authentication and secure access to systems, data and applications. However even this can take time to implement over large complex environments. It means gaining an understanding of all devices and ensuring there is a solid profile around them, so they can be reported on, attacks can be blocked and prevented, and access to applications can be controlled as needed.
We will be creating more information around the Act as we move closer to the deadlines, including part two of this blog where we will take a deeper dive into themes introduced by the bill, how it compare with other industries’ and jurisdictions’ cyber security initiatives, and explore what else the telecoms industry can do to improve its security posture.
We are also running an event in London on 13 October: ‘Are you ready for TSA?’ which will include peer discussions where participation is welcome on the TSA. If you are interested in attending, please register here.
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Jason Button is a director at Cisco and leads the company’s Security and Trust Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) team. He was formerly the director of IT at Duo Security, a company Cisco acquired in 2018, making him uniquely positioned to lend his expertise to the M&A process. This blog is the second in a series focused on M&A cybersecurity, following Jacob Bolotin’s post on Managing Cybersecurity Risk in M&A.
All good relationships are built on trust. Add in transparency, and the union becomes even more substantial. “Trust and transparency underpin everything we do,” says Button, “Cisco takes security, trust, and transparency very seriously, and it’s part of our team’s fabric.”
When Cisco acquires a company, the Security and Trust M&A team looks at not only what they can offer in the way of security but also what unique qualities the acquired company brings to Cisco. These qualities might be related to security, but they’re also found in the acquired company’s culture, technical knowledge, and processes.
In all acquisitions, the M&A team needs to move fast. In fact, the Cisco team is committed to pushing even faster as long as they never compromise on security. Around 2020, Button and his team began taking stock of how it does things. They evaluated everything from the ground up, willing to tease out what is working and toss out what isn’t.
The team is also on a trajectory of identifying how it can digitize and automate security.
“If we were going to do things differently, we needed to be bold about it,” says Mohammad Iqbal, information security architect in the Security and Trust M&A team. One of the changes Iqbal proposed to his colleagues is to ensure that an acquired company is integrated into Cisco’s critical security controls within three months after the acquisition deal closes.
To successfully meet the three-month target, the M&A team works closely with the acquired company to identify and address all non-integrated risks (NIRs) that Cisco inherits from an acquisition and encompass:
NIRs are a subset of eight security domains, or operating norms, that align with Cisco’s security and trust objectives and top priorities of the larger security community (Figure 1). The M&A team’s focus on NIRs steers the due diligence conversation away from identifying the acquisition’s security deficiencies and towards understanding the inherent risks associated with the acquisition and measuring the security liability.
“Acquisitions are coming in with these risks, and so we must address NIRs early when we’re signing non-disclosure agreements. In doing so, we help put these companies in a position to integrate successfully with all the security domains. And this integration should be done in the shortest time possible within a year of close,” Iqbal says.
Building trust and being transparent early on is critical so the acquired company knows what’s expected of them and is ready to accomplish its three-month and first-year goals.
“I wish this type of conversation was offered to me when Cisco acquired Duo,” Button says. “Being on the Duo side of that deal, I would’ve been able to say with confidence, ‘OK, I get it. I know what’s expected of me. I know where to go. I know what I need to do with my team.’”
“We have a limited time window to make sure an acquisition company is heading down the right route. We want to get in there early and quickly and make it easy,” adds Button.
Reducing the manual intervention required by the acquired company is integral to helping the acquisition meet the three-month goal. Here’s where automation can play a significant role and the M&A team is looking toward innovation.
“We’re working on bringing in automated processes to lessen the burden on the acquired company,” says Iqbal. The M&A team realizes that much of the automation can be applied in instrumenting the security controls and associated APIs to help the team move beyond what they have already assessed at acquisition day 0 and gain the visibility they need to get the acquired company to its three-month goal. For example, they can automate getting the acquired company on Cisco’s vulnerability scans, using internal tools, or attaining administrative access privileges.
So, Iqbal, Button, and the rest of the team are working on automating processes—developing the appropriate architecture pipeline and workflows—that help acquired companies integrate critical security controls. While the ability to automate integration with security controls is not novel, the innovation that the M&A team brings to the table is the ability to position an acquired target to integrate with security controls in the most expedited way possible.
As with due diligence, the M&A team strives to complete the discovery phase before the acquisition deal close. Here’s another step where digitization and automation can simplify and shorten processes. Take the acquisition company questionnaire, for instance.
“Instead of asking dozens of questions, we could give the company an audit script to run in their environment,” Iqbal says. “Then, all they have to do is give us the results.”
Also, the questionnaire can be dynamically rendered through a dashboard, improving the user experience, and shortening completion time. For example, the number of questions about containers could automatically retract if the acquired company uses Azure Kubernetes Service.
Many teams within Cisco compete for an acquired company’s time before and after an acquisition deal closes. The acquired company is pulled in several different directions. That’s why the Security and Trust M&A team doesn’t stop looking for ways to digitize and automate security processes after the close—to continue to help make the acquired company’s transition more manageable.
“If we can make processes simple, people will use them and see the value in them within days, not weeks or quarters,” says Button.
“The majority of companies we acquire are smaller,” Button says. “They don’t have large security teams. We want them to tap our plethora of security experts. We want to enable an acquired company to apply Cisco’s ability to scale security at their company. Again, we want things to be simple for them.”
The M&A team helps facilitate simplicity by telling a consistent story (maintaining consistent messaging unique to the acquired company) to all the groups at Cisco involved in the acquisition, including M&A’s extended Security and Trust partners such as corporate security, IT, and supply chain. Because each group deals with different security aspects of the integration plan, it’s essential that everyone is on the same page and understands the changes, improvements, and benefits of the acquisition that are relevant to them. Maintaining a consistent message can go a long way toward reducing complexity.
The human element can easily get overlooked throughout an acquisition’s myriad business, technical, and administrative facets. Balancing the human aspect with business goals and priorities is essential to Button and the entire Security and Trust M&A team. They want to bring the human connection to the table. In this way, trust and transparency are on their side.
“Emotions can run the gamut in an acquisition. Some people will be happy. Others will be scared. If you don’t make a human connection, you’ll lose so much value in the acquisition,” Button says. “You can lose people, skillsets, efforts. If we don’t make that human connection, then we lose that balance, and we won’t be off to a great start.”
One way the M&A team helps maintain that balance is by embracing the things that make the acquired company unique. “It’s vital to identify those things early on so we can protect and nurture them,” says Button.
He also wants to remind companies that they don’t have to be experts at everything asked of them during acquisition. “Cisco has been here for a while. We have entire teams within M&A that are dedicated to doing one thing. We can help acquired companies find out where they’re struggling. We can handle the things they don’t want to deal with.”
“M&A is complex, but complexity is off the chart when you talk about M&A and security. Our team won’t be successful if we can’t find a way to make things easier for the acquired company. They need to understand where they’re headed and why,” Button says. “It’s up to us to motivate them towards a successful outcome.”
Managing Cybersecurity Risk in M&A
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Ransomware is one of the most dangerous threats organizations face today, so it’s no wonder that Cisco Talos Incident Response named it the top threat of the year in 2021. These attacks continue to grow and become more advanced, with ransomware attacks growing by 13% over 2021 and a whopping 79% over 2020 so far this year (see Figure 1 below).1 Stopping ransomware attacks isn’t easy either, as adversaries continue to change their techniques and attacks become increasingly sophisticated.
Fortunately, Cisco Secure Endpoint defends your organization from ransomware by delivering security outcomes that enable you to radically simplify your security, maximize your security operations, and achieve peace of mind. Let’s dive deeper into each of these areas to better understand how Secure Endpoint can help your organization defend against ransomware attacks.
Cybersecurity has become increasingly complex due to the numerous security solutions deployed by organizations today. These disparate point-products increase complexity while creating security gaps because they require additional management overhead and typically don’t communicate with each other. This increases the burden on security operations teams since they must spend time managing these different solutions and filling in the gaps between tools rather than using their time to investigate and respond to threats
Cisco takes a very different approach to cybersecurity by looking at ransomware endpoint protection holistically, as part of an integrated security solution. For instance, Secure Endpoint includes built-in extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities from the Cisco SecureX platform that centralizes visibility in a single console, creates high-fidelity detections by correlating threats, and coordinates threat response across your entire security environment. In addition, Secure Endpoint unifies your security stack, simplifies management, and reduces agent fatigue because we’ve consolidated endpoint protection, cloud security, and remote access agents into a single agent.
Learn more about how Secure Endpoint helps you simplify your security while defending your organization from ransomware attacks by watching this video:
One of the common themes we’ve heard from our customers is that their security operations teams are frequently overstretched. The ongoing cybersecurity skills shortage means that security teams have to do more with less and a vast number of security tools to manage along with inefficient security operations processes, often leading to burned-out security teams.
Cisco addresses these challenges by allowing you to get the most out of your security operations. For example, you can accelerate investigation and incident response with valuable vulnerability context since we’ve integrated risk-based vulnerability management from Kenna Security into Secure Endpoint. Moreover, Secure Endpoint includes advanced endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities via Orbital Advanced Search and built-in XDR from SecureX that enable you to rapidly detect, respond to, and contain ransomware attacks. Lastly, you can get the security expertise you need with proactive threat hunting from SecureX Threat Hunting, which uses an analyst-centric process to quickly spot hidden ransomware.
Check out how Secure Endpoint helps you maximize your security operations while defending your organization from ransomware attacks by watching this video:
Keeping up with the latest ransomware attacks can seem like an impossible challenge due to Ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) kits which make it simple and lucrative to target organizations with ransomware and the evolving threat landscape, where attackers are continuously changing their methods to evade detection.
Cisco helps you stay ahead of the newest ransomware attacks and gives you the peace of mind you deserve by taking a comprehensive approach to ransomware endpoint protection. This means ensuring that you never have to go it alone with always-on security operations from Cisco Secure Endpoint Pro, a managed service that uses a team of Cisco security experts to perform the heavy lifting of securing your endpoints. It also includes offering advanced EDR and integrated XDR capabilities such as Orbital and SecureX to speed detection and response, simplify investigations, and quickly contain ransomware attacks before it’s too late. Finally, Secure Endpoint prevents initial ransomware infections with multifaceted prevention techniques such as machine learning, exploit prevention, and behavioral protection as well as actionable threat intelligence from the Cisco Talos research team.
Learn more about how Secure Endpoint helps you achieve peace of mind while defending your organization from ransomware attacks by watching this video:
All these capabilities in Cisco Secure Endpoint enable you to defend against ransomware attacks from compromising your endpoints while ensuring you stay resilient against threats. For more information on how Secure Endpoint can defend your organization from ransomware attacks, please watch the Cisco Secure Endpoint Ransomware Series.
1 BlackFog The State of Ransomware in 2022: https://www.blackfog.com/the-state-of-ransomware-in-2022
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Written by Martin Lee and Richard Archdeacon.
Lloyds of London have recently published a Market Bulletin1 addressing the wording of cyber insurance policies to exclude losses arising from:
“state backed cyber-attacks that (a) significantly impair the ability of a state to function or (b) that significantly impair the security capabilities of a state.”
The concern raised is that this sort of attack will produce losses that the market cannot absorb. Most insurance policies already include provisions that exclude the consequences of armed conflict. Applying these to potential cyber warfare is a logical step.
The bulletin includes the tenet to:
“set out a robust basis by which the parties agree on how any state backed cyber- attack will be attributed to one or more states.”
What should the CISO be thinking of when reviewing such an exclusion clause, how can we clearly define this key term and what issues may arise?
Attribution is the science of identifying the perpetrator of a crime. In cyber attacks, this is arrived at by comparing the evidence gathered from an attack with evidence gathered from previous attacks that have been attributed to known perpetrators to identify similarities.
In practice, statements of attributions are carefully phrased. Rarely is evidence clear-cut. Frequently attribution is labelled as being ‘consistent with’ a threat actor, or wrapped in words of estimative probability such as ‘highly likely’, ‘probably’, ‘possibly’ etc.
The malicious actors who conduct cyber attacks are referred to as threat actors. The cyber research community identifies and keeps track of the actions of these threat actors, publishing compendia of known actors such as those made available by MITRE2 or Malpedia3.
Rarely do threat actors identify their true identities, they may actively try to confuse or frustrate attribution. Many of the named groups may be synonyms of other groups, equally many of the chains of evidence used to attribute groups may be incorrect. The compendia of threat actors should not be considered as reaching the evidence threshold of “beyond reasonable doubt”.
Some identified threat actor groups are assumed to be criminal gangs due to the nature of their activity. Others appear to be conducting attacks solely to further the geopolitical aims of a nation state and are assumed as being state sponsored or state backed. Some of these groups have been able to be associated with specific national intelligence agencies or state apparatus.
The following are four practical factors to consider when setting out a robust basis for attribution of attacks in a contractual basis.
Step 1 – Collect forensic evidence.
No attribution of an attack can be made without forensic evidence. CISOs should ensure that they are able to gather forensic evidence from attacks to identify as much information as possible regarding how an attack was carried out, and the infrastructure used by the attacker. This requires a basic level of security telemetry gathering with the ability to secure and query this data.
This forensic capability, how evidence will be gathered and preserved, should be agreed with the insurer. However, both parties must bear in mind that attackers may destroy or tamper with evidence, and in the urgency of halting an attack, forensic evidence may be compromised or omitted.
The CISO should be prepared to discuss internally with senior executives the possibly competing priorities of stopping an attack versus collecting good forensic evidence.
Step 2 – Define how attribution will be made.
The attribution of a specific attack must be made by comparing evidence gathered from the attack with that of previous attacks. CISOs should agree the process by which forensic artifacts are used to attribute attacks and the degree of certitude necessary to declare an attack as having been carried out by a specific group.
The set of organisations trusted to assert attribution should be agreed. Attribution made by national bodies such as NCSC, CISA or ENISA may be assumed to be reliable, as may those made by major security vendors (such as Cisco) with expertise and resources that a CISO will never have inhouse. However, anyone can suggest attribution. CISOs should be certain to insist on the exclusion of assertions that have not been confirmed by a trusted entity.
This raises the question as to whether a trusted organisation would be prepared to support their attribution in a scenario where they would have to expose their intelligence sources and methodologies to examination. Attribution may be based on classified intelligence, or made according to ‘fair efforts’ that fall below the legal threshold of “on the balance of probabilities.”
Step 3 – Consider the volatility of attribution.
The gathering of evidence and intelligence is a continuing process. Information previously assumed to be fact may be subsequently identified as incorrect or a purposeful red herring. New evidence may be identified months or years after an attack that changes the estimated attribution of prior attacks.
CISOs must determine a period after which the attribution of attack (if made) will not be changed even if subsequent evidence is uncovered.
Step 4 – Define the nature of state backing.
CISOs should agree what constitutes state backing. Ideally CISOs should agree with their insurers the set of threat actor groups (and their synonyms) which are considered to be ‘state backed’.
State involvement in cyber attacks is a spectrum of activity. Criminal threat actors may be under various degrees of state tolerance or encouragement without being fully backed by a nation state. Some criminal groups may be under partial state direction, acting in a manner akin to privateers. Some state backed actors may indulge in criminal style attacks to boost their coffers.
In any case, criminal and state sponsored actors can easily be confused. They may choose to use the same tools or apply the same techniques to conduct their activities. Non-state threat actors may come into possession of state developed tools which may have been stolen or traded without permission.
Some threat actors may actively resort to influence attribution, either through choice of tooling, or through sock puppet accounts attesting attribution, to increase pressure on CISOs to pay ransoms by influencing if insurance is paid out or not.
The decision line where an attack can be referred to a ‘state backed’ is a fine one that requires consideration and agreement.
Changes bring opportunities, the need for this robust process may cause complications for CISOs. But it is an opportunity for CISOs to review the details of cyber insurance contracts and to hammer out the details of how issues of attribution will be determined.
Lloyd’s Market Association provide sample clauses for insurers4, we intend to consider these in a subsequent blog.
One thing is certain, there will be many opportunities for the legal profession.
The information provided here does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. When negotiating a specific matter, readers should confer with their own legal adviser to obtain advice appropriate for a specific insurance contract issue.
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Explore the nature of vulnerabilities in this episode of ThreatWise TV.
It’s shaping up to be another big year for vulnerability disclosure. Already the number of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) disclosed has crossed 18,000 and it’s on track to make this another record-breaking year.
With new CVEs being disclosed daily, it has become increasingly difficult for security teams to stay abreast of the latest risks, let alone quickly determine which ones apply to their network environment. From those, prioritizing which CVEs to patch first adds an additional wrinkle to the process.
If this wasn’t challenging enough, a curve ball that’s often lobbed at security teams are the “breaking news” vulnerabilities— vulnerabilities picked up by the security media, often with much fanfare. The stories surrounding these high-profile vulnerabilities generally carry an implied threat that the CVE in question will throw the doors wide open to attackers if not addressed immediately. What security team hasn’t had someone from the C-suite share an article they’ve read, asking “are we protected from this?”
On the surface, CVEs that appear severe enough to garner media attention do seem like a good place to start when addressing vulnerabilities in your environment. But vulnerabilities are complicated, and what a security researcher manages to do within a controlled environment doesn’t always translate into real-world attacks. In fact, most disclosed vulnerabilities never see active exploitation. And of those that do, not every vulnerability ends up becoming a tool in an attacker’s arsenal. Bad actors generally follow the path of least resistance when they compromise a network, relying on tested exploits long before trying something new and unproven.
This begs the question: how much overlap is there between the most talked about vulnerabilities and those that are widely used in attacks? Moreover, if media attention isn’t a reliable indicator, what else might predict if a vulnerability will be used in an attack?
To answer these questions, we used intelligence tools available from Cisco’s Kenna Security risk-based vulnerability management (RBVM) software. In particular, Kenna.VI+ consolidates a variety of vulnerability intelligence, where a CVE ID lookup can pull back a wealth of information. In addition to this, Kenna.VI+ includes an API that brings in an additional layer of external threat intelligence, enabling further analysis.
We started with a direct comparison of Successful Exploitations and Chatter Count from within Kenna.VI+. The former is a full count of confirmed exploits within the dataset, while the latter is a count of mentions in the news, social media, various forums, and the dark web.
Our first pass at the data included a comparison of the top 50 CVEs in both Successful Exploitations and Chatter Count. However, there were only two CVEs that overlapped. The data showed that many of the top exploited CVEs were old and predated the data in Chatter Count. We quickly decided that this wasn’t a fair comparison.
To get a better look at more relevant CVEs, we limited the dataset to a range of 10 years. Unfortunately, this did not do much to improve things—only three CVEs showed up in both lists.
A more effective approach was to look at CVEs that we know are actively being exploited. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) happens to maintain such a list. The Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog is considered an authoritative compilation of vulnerabilities identified as being actively exploited in the wild.
Running the KEV catalog though Kenna.VI+ resulted in six CVEs that appeared in the top 50 for both lists, with a single overlap in the top 10. This leads us to conclude that the vulnerabilities with the most discussion are not the same as those being actively exploited in the majority of cases.
| CVE | Brief description | |
| 1 | CVE-2017-9841 | PHPUnit vulnerability (used to target popular CMSes) |
| 2 | CVE-2021-44228 | Log4j vulnerability |
| 3 | CVE-2019-0703 | Windows SMB information disclosure vulnerability |
| 4 | CVE-2014-0160 | Heartbleed vulnerability |
| 5 | CVE-2017-9805 | REST plugin in Apache Struts vulnerability |
| 6 | CVE-2017-11882 | Microsoft Office memory corruption vulnerability |
| 7 | CVE-2017-5638 | Apache Struts vulnerability (used in Equifax breach) |
| 8 | CVE-2012-1823 | 10-year-old PHP vulnerability |
| 9 | CVE-2017-0144 | EternalBlue vulnerability |
| 10 | CVE-2018-11776 | Apache Struts RCE vulnerability |
| CVE | Brief description | |
| 1 | CVE-2021-26855 | Microsoft Exchange vulnerability (used in Hafnium attacks) |
| 2 | CVE-2021-40444 | Microsoft MSHTML RCE vulnerability |
| 3 | CVE-2021-26084 | Confluence Server and Data Center vulnerability |
| 4 | CVE-2021-27065 | Microsoft Exchange vulnerability (used in Hafnium attacks) |
| 5 | CVE-2021-34473 | Microsoft Exchange vulnerability (used in Hafnium attacks) |
| 6 | CVE-2021-26858 | Microsoft Exchange vulnerability (used in Hafnium attacks) |
| 7 | CVE-2021-44228 | Log4j vulnerability |
| 8 | CVE-2021-34527 | One of the PrintNightmare vulnerabilities |
| 9 | CVE-2021-41773 | Apache HTTP Server vulnerability |
| 10 | CVE-2021-31207 | One of the ProxyShell vulnerabilities |
Despite the lack of overlap, there are many well-known vulnerabilities at the top of both lists. Heartbleed and EternalBlue appear on the top 10 exploited list, while Hafnium, PrintNightmare, and ProxyShell make the top 10 most talked about CVEs.
The Log4j vulnerability is the only CVE that appears in both lists. This isn’t surprising considering the ubiquity of Log4j in modern software. It’s the second-most exploited vulnerability—far outpacing the CVEs directly below it. This, coupled with its appearance in the chatter list, puts it in a class of its own. In a brief period, it’s managed to outpace older CVEs that are arguably just as well known.
The CVE that recorded the most successful exploitations is a five-year-old vulnerability in PHPUnit. This is a popular unit-testing framework that’s used by many CMSes, such as Drupal, WordPress, MediaWiki, and Moodle.
Since many websites are built with these tools, this exploit can be a handy vector for gaining initial access to unpatched webservers. This also lines up with research we conducted last year, where this vulnerability was one of the most common Snort detections seen by Cisco Secure Firewall.
All four of the Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities used in the Hafnium attacks appear in the most talked about list of CVEs. However, even when you add all four of these CVEs together, they still don’t come anywhere close to the counts seen in the top exploited CVEs.
If media attention is not a good predictor of use for exploitation, then what are the alternatives?
The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) is a well-known framework for gauging the severity of vulnerabilities. We looked for CVEs from the KEV catalog that were ranked as “critical”—9.0 and above in the CVSSv3 specification. Examining the entire KEV catalog, 28% of the CVEs have a score of 9.0 or higher. Of the top 50 successfully exploited, 38% had such scores.
This is an improvement, but the CVSSv3 specification was released in 2015. Many CVEs in the KEV catalog predate this—19% of the entire catalog and 28% of the top 50—and have no score.
Using the previous CVSS specification does fill this gap—36% overall and 52% of the top 50 score 9.0 or higher. However, the older CVSS specification comes with its share of issues as well.
Another indicator worth exploring is remote control execution (RCE). A vulnerability with RCE grants an attacker the ability to access and control a vulnerable system from anywhere. It turns out that 45% of the CVEs in our dataset allow for RCE, and 66% of the top 50, making it the most worthwhile indicator analyzed.
Let’s summarize how we’ve honed our approach to determine if media attention and exploitation line up:
| Data set | Exploitation and Chatter lists | Number of CVEs |
| All CVEs | Appears in both top 50 | 2 |
| Appears in both top 50 (last 10 years) | 3 | |
| KEV Catalog | Appears in both top 50 | 6 |
| Appears in both top 10 | 1 |
And here’s a summary of our look at other indicators:
| KEV Catalog | Top 50 exploited | |
| CVSSv3 (9.0+) | 28% | 38% |
| CVSS (9.0+) | 36% | 52% |
| Allows for RCE | 45% | 66% |
All of this analysis provides a clear answer to our original question—the most regularly exploited CVEs aren’t the most talked about. Additional work highlights that monitoring variables like RCE can help with prioritization.
For illustrative purposes we’ve only looked at a few indicators that could be used to prioritize CVEs. While some did better than others, we don’t recommend relying on a single variable in making decisions about vulnerability management. Creating an approach that folds in multiple indicators is a far better strategy when it comes to real-world application of this data. And while our findings here speak to the larger picture, every network is different.
Regardless of which list they appear on, be it Successful Exploitations or Chatter Count, it’s important to point out that all these vulnerabilities are serious. Just because Hafnium has more talk than Heartbleed doesn’t make it any less dangerous if you have assets that are vulnerable to it. The fact is that while CVEs with more talk didn’t make the top of the exploitation list, they still managed to rack up tens of thousands of successful exploitations.
It’s important to know how to prioritize security updates, fixing those that expose you to the most risk as soon as possible. From our perspective, here are some basic elements in the Cisco Secure portfolio that can help.
Kenna Security, a pioneer in risk-based vulnerability management, relies on threat intel and prioritization to keep security and IT teams focused on risks. Using data science, Kenna processes and analyzes 18+ threat and exploit intelligence feeds, and 12.7+ billion managed vulnerabilities to give you an accurate view of your company’s risk. With our risk scoring and remediation intelligence, you get the info you need to make truly data-driven remediation decisions.
To responsibly protect a network, it’s important to monitor all assets that connect to it and ensure they’re kept up to date. Duo Device Trust can check the patch level of devices for you before they’re granted access to connect to corporate applications or sensitive data. You can even block access and enable self-remediation for devices that are found to be non-compliant.
How about remote workers? By leveraging the Network Visibility Module in Cisco Secure Client as a telemetry source, Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics can capture endpoint-specific user and device context to supply visibility into remote worker endpoint status. This can bolster an organization’s security posture by providing visibility on remote employees that are running software versions with vulnerabilities that need patching.
Lastly, for some “lateral thinking” about vulnerability management, take a look at this short video of one of our Advisory CISOs, Wolfgang Goerlich. Especially if you’re a fan of the music of the 1920s…
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As Technology Audit Director at Cisco, Jacob Bolotin focuses on assessing Cisco’s technology, business, and strategic risk. Providing assurance that residual risk posture falls within business risk tolerance is critical to Cisco’s Audit Committee and executive leadership team, especially during the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) process.
Bolotin champions the continued advancement of the technology audit profession and received a master’s degree in cybersecurity from the University of California Berkeley. After completing the program in 2020, he spearheaded a grant from Cisco to fund research conducted by the university’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, which included identifying best practices around cybersecurity risk and risk management in the M&A process, captured in this co-authored report.
When asked about his approach to evaluating risk management, Bolotin likens the corporate dynamics to a Formula One racing team, whose success depends on the effective collaboration of experts to meet the challenges of the most demanding racecourses. In Bolotin’s analogy, a corporation (say, Cisco) is the Formula One vehicle, and the business (i.e., executive and functional leaders) races the car on the track. In the pit, you have IT and technology support, which maintains operations and optimizes efficiencies to ensure the vehicle’s peak performance. Meanwhile, InfoSec is the designer and implementor of risk management capabilities (for instance, ensuring the latest technology is deployed and within expected specifications). These groups converge to help keep the business running and help ensure the vehicle is race-day-worthy.
An M&A deal is a significant business opportunity and represents the transition to a new Formula One race car. In this scenario, the business cannot physically get behind the wheel and test drive it. Frequently, the car cannot be inspected, and critical data is not available for review before the deal. The competitive balance and sensitive nature of M&A deals require the business to trust that the car will perform as expected. “Laser-focused due diligence enables you to understand where the paved roads [the most efficient paths to data security, for example] may lie. This is where the Cisco Security and Trust M&A team plays an integral role,” says Bolotin. “They can look down those paved roads and determine, from a cybersecurity perspective, which capabilities Cisco should own, and which ones are better for the acquired business to manage. This team understands what to validate, so the audit committee and key stakeholders can be confident that the business will be able to drive the new Formula One car successfully and win the race.”
Risk management, assessment, and assurance are vital to establishing this confidence. The technology audit team conducts risk assessments across all of Cisco, including M&As, for key technology risk areas, including product build and operation. In addition to risk management oversight, Bolotin and the technology audit team are responsible for assuring the Audit Committee that the acquired entity can be operationalized within Cisco’s capabilities without undermining the asset’s valuation.
“We don’t want to run duplicate processes and systems, especially when we have bigger economies of scale to leverage,” Bolotin says. “We must operationalize the acquisition. That is table stakes. And we must do it while maintaining the integrity and security of the entity we are acquiring.”
In 2019, Bolotin resurrected a working group of technology audit director peers from companies, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, ServiceNow, and VMware, called the “Silicon Valley IT Audit Director Working Group”. The directors meet regularly to share insights and explore issues around technology risk, risk management, and business risk tolerance. “I wanted to get with my peers and understand how they do their job,” he says. “We collaborate on defining ‘what good looks like,’ as we co-develop audit and risk management programs to help move the industry forward”.
Bolotin, along with a few other members of the working group, was selected to participate in a separate research study conducted by the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, aimed at developing a generalized framework for improving cybersecurity risk management and oversight within M&A. Among the research questions, the working group members were asked to identify their key cybersecurity risks and where those risks sit in the M&A process.
“In my opinion, the biggest cybersecurity risks today are cloud security posture and third-party software inventory and bill of materials, or SBOM,” says Bolotin. “These risks impact not only product acquisitions but our ability to secure and operationalize business capabilities within Cisco. Whether we transition capabilities to run within Cisco or leave them for the acquired company to operate, we must have a thorough understanding of any third-party risks that may exist in IT, in the technologies and systems used by the acquired company, or anywhere else. Especially those that may impact the broader Cisco enterprise as the new entity is integrated.”
Cybersecurity risk is attached to talent management and moral hazards as well. “It’s not uncommon to lose talent in acquisition deals,” Bolotin says, “and these days, much of this talent is cybersecurity focused. This potential loss is a huge risk for us and can sometimes be due to cultural differences between Cisco and the acquired entity. People who would rather be on a swift and elegant sailboat do not readily choose to be a passenger on a massive cruise ship, no matter how grand or impressive.”
Moral hazards are always a concern in M&A. Red flags can include ongoing data breaches and either downplaying or providing misleading information about a security incident. The Cisco Security and Trust M&A team does a tremendous amount of due diligence around these hazards, sometimes augmented by investigative techniques from a Cisco security partner, such as trolling the dark web. Companies can protect themselves against the risk of moral hazards through clauses inserted in the acquisition contract.
Concerning contracts, Bolotin advises companies to ensure the risk management commitments they set down are realistic. “Companies need to be very sure they have received the right inputs to enable them to manage every relevant cybersecurity vulnerability, whether it is a misconfiguration on the acquisition’s security firewall, within their network, their product in the cloud, or any other significant vulnerability, based on contractual obligations. You need to be sure you can commit to privacy investigation and breach event readiness, and notification process the acquired entity needs and have a clear sense of how fast you can meet these requirements.”
Bolotin ardently reminds companies that risk management in cybersecurity is not owned by a solitary group. Managing risk is a collective effort that transcends different organizations, each of which should understand its role in helping to mitigate the risks.
“Risk management begins in the production environment, with the engineers building code and downloading software to help them create new products and capabilities,” says Bolotin. “It’s essential that everyone understands how to identify and properly manage cybersecurity risks in their everyday work, including the tools and services used to enable the business, and work to mitigate applicable risks, especially in these critical areas.”
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In the first part of this blog series on Unscrambling Cybersecurity Acronyms, we provided a high-level overview of the different threat detection and response solutions and went over how to find the right solution for your organization. In this blog, we’ll do a deeper dive on two of these solutions – Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Managed Endpoint Detection and Response (MEDR). However, first let’s take a look back at the history of endpoint security solutions and understand how we got EDR and MEDR security solutions.
The very first endpoint security solutions started out as anti-virus solutions (AV) with basic security functionality that relied heavily on signature-based detection. These solutions were effective against known threats where a signature was created, but ineffective against unknown threats such as new and emerging attacks. That meant that organizations struggled to stay ahead of attackers, who were continuously evolving their techniques to evade detection with new types of malware.
To address this problem, AV vendors added detection technologies such as heuristics, reputational analysis, behavioral protection, and even machine learning to their solutions, which became known as Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP). These unified solutions were effective against both known and unknown threats and frequently used multiple approaches to prevent malware and other attacks from infecting endpoints.
As cyberattacks grew increasingly sophisticated though, many in the cybersecurity industry recognized that protection against threats wasn’t enough. Effective endpoint security had to include detection and response capabilities to quickly investigate and remediate the inevitable security breach. This led to the creation of EDR security solutions, which focused on post-breach efforts to contain and clean up attacks on compromised endpoints.
Today, most endpoint security vendors combine EPP and EDR solutions into a single, converged solution that provides holistic defense to customers with protection, detection, and response capabilities. Many vendors are also offering EDR as a managed service (also known as MEDR) to customers who need help in securing their endpoints or who don’t have the resources to configure and manage their own EDR solution. Now that we’ve gone over how endpoint security evolved into EDR and MEDR security solutions, let’s cover EDR and MEDR in more depth.
EDR solutions continuously monitor your endpoints for threats, alert you in case suspicious activity is detected, and allow you to investigate, respond to and contain potential attacks. Moreover, many EDR security solutions provide threat hunting functionality to help you proactively spot threats in your environment. They’re often coupled with or part of a broader endpoint security solution that also includes prevention capabilities via an EPP solution to protect against the initial incursion.
As a result, EDR security solutions enable you to protect your organization from sophisticated attacks by rapidly detecting, containing, and remediating threats on your endpoints before they gain a foothold in your environment. They give you deep visibility into your endpoints while effectively identifying both known and unknown threats. Furthermore, you can quickly contain attacks that get through your defenses with automated response capabilities and hunt for hidden threats that are difficult to detect.
While EDR provides several benefits to customers, it has some drawbacks. Chief among them is that EDR security solutions are focused on monitoring endpoints only versus monitoring a broader environment. This means that EDR solutions don’t detect threats targeting other parts of your environment such as your network, email, or cloud infrastructure. In addition, not every organization has the security staff, budget, and/or skills to deploy and run an EDR solution. This is where MEDR solutions come into play.
Managed EDR or MEDR solutions are EDR capabilities delivered as a managed service to customers by third-parties such as cybersecurity vendors or Managed Service Providers (MSPs). This includes key EDR functionality such as monitoring endpoints, detecting advanced threats, rapidly containing threats, and responding to attacks. These third-parties usually have a team of Security Operations Center (SOC) specialists who monitor, detect, and respond to threats across your endpoints around the clock via a ‘follow the sun’ approach to monitoring.
MEDR security solutions allow you to offload the work of securing your endpoints to a team of security professionals. Many organizations need to defend their endpoints from advanced threats but don’t necessarily have the desire, resources, or expertise to manage an EDR solution. In addition, a team of dedicated SOC experts with advanced security tools can typically detect and respond to threats faster than in-house security teams, all while investigating every incident and prioritizing the most critical threats. This enables you to focus on your core business while getting always-on security operations.
Similar to EDR though, one downside to MEDR security solutions is that they defend only your endpoints from advanced threats and don’t monitor other parts of your infrastructure. Moreover, while many organizations want to deploy EDR as a managed service, not everyone desires this. For example, larger and/or more risk-averse organizations who are looking to invest heavily in cybersecurity are typically satisfied with running their own EDR solution. Now, let’s discuss how to choose the right endpoint security solution when trying to defend your endpoints from threats.
As I mentioned in my previous blog, there isn’t a single correct solution for every organization. This logic applies to EDR and MEDR security solutions as well since each solution works well for different types of organizations, depending on their needs, resources, motivations, and more. Nevertheless, one major factor to consider is if you have or are willing to build out a SOC for your organization. This is important because organizations that don’t have or aren’t willing to develop a SOC usually gravitate towards MEDR solutions, which don’t require significant investments in cybersecurity.
Another factor to keep in mind is your security expertise. Even if you’re have or are willing to build a SOC, you may not have the right cybersecurity talent and skills within your organization. While you can always build out your security team, you may want to evaluate an MEDR solution because a lack of expertise makes it difficult to effectively manage an EDR solution. Finally, a common misconception is that you must choose between an EDR and a MEDR solution and that you cannot run both solutions. In reality, many organizations end up using both EDR and MEDR since MEDR solutions often complement EDR deployments.
I hope this information and key factors help you better understand EDR and MEDR solutions while acting as a guide to selecting the best endpoint security solution for your organization. For more details on the different cybersecurity acronyms and how to identify the right solution for your needs, stay tuned for the next blog in this series – Unscrambling Cybersecurity Acronyms: The ABCs of MDR and XDR Security. In the meantime, learn how Cisco Secure Endpoint stops threats with a comprehensive endpoint security solution that includes both advanced EDR and MEDR capabilities powered by an integrated security platform!
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We’ve been talking a lot about security resilience recently, and for good reason. It’s clear the only way businesses can operate in today’s hybrid world is by taking bold steps to increase visibility, awareness, and integration across their systems. All while maintaining a singular goal of becoming more resilient in the face of evolving threats. But that doesn’t just mean expanding the scope of your security stack. It also means examining the resilience of other pillars of your business, like operations, organizational structure, financial processes, and supply chain functions.
If threats do compromise your business, time is of the essence when it comes to detection, response, and recovery. The longer an organization is unable to operate normally, the more at risk it becomes for damaging financial losses. As Diana Kelley, CSO and CISO at Cybrize notes, “it’s not about giving up, it’s about being better prepared.” Financial and security resilience go together, you can’t have one without the other and both are incredibly important for businesses of all sizes.
While recovering from an attack is important for maintaining resilience, a key feature of strong operational resilience is a business’s ability to operate through adverse conditions, not just recover well after the fact. Trina Ford, SVP and CISO at AEG, notes the importance of “preparedness so that your business can continue to thrive” while your security team addresses threats.
It also relies heavily upon strong staffing models because people are a critical part of any business’s day-to-day operations. What happens when someone is out sick, or is unable to access the necessary tools to do their job? Operational resilience means having a plan in place to be prepared for these situations.
In this video, CISOs and other security professionals explain what operational resilience means to them and why it’s a necessary component of overall security resilience:
If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that supply chains are fragile. But there are ways to prepare for disruption, such as minimizing negative outcomes like production delays, infrastructure weaknesses, and increasingly complex logistics. When it comes to security resilience, supply chains are important because they expand the attack surface to any third party in your network. Oftentimes, this is where businesses have the lowest visibility, making it hard to detect and respond to threats. Supply chain resilience means preparing for these challenges before they cause real damage and having contingency plans in place.
According to Helen Patton, CISO of the SBG, “security is a risk business”. We couldn’t agree more. In the context of organizational resilience, this means dedicating resources to the areas of the business that are creating the most value and protecting those to minimize the risk of damage from potential threats.
With hybrid work here to stay, the threat landscape is expanding quickly, and security teams are working constantly to stay up to date on the latest attacks. But defending against everything all the time is impossible, so it’s necessary to make informed decisions about how to dedicate resources efficiently. The goal is to maximize flexibility and agility to enable security teams to act confidently when, not if, a threat lands.
Avoiding cyberattacks 100% of the time is impossible, but by ensuring the integrity of each part of your business, you can address threats confidently and emerge stronger. Investing in security resilience will strengthen your business in each of these areas, and help you better prepare for the challenges ahead.
Learn more about how Cisco Secure can help you at any step of the journey.
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The hybrid work environment has been around for years, albeit not common but it existed. I can recall my first job where I was able to split my time working in an office and working from my makeshift home office. This was many moons ago as I will call it… pre-COVID-19.
Job seekers are certainly looking to have the flexibility of working from anywhere at any time – preferably in an environment of their choosing. Even though a hybrid workforce will provide people with the option to work from anywhere, those remote locations are sometimes in unsecured locations. Organizations must now reimagine a workforce that will need access to your internal collaboration tools along with access to your network from both on- and off-premises.
Cisco, a leader in equipping organizations with the right products for a hybrid workforce, provides the tools & services to protect your organization from bad threat actors.
With pervasive ransomware attacks, malware attacks, and email attacks, you must be ready and have not only a security solution but also a security analyst team ready to respond when an attack happens.
Securing access to your endpoint must be a top priority and your security analysts must be agile and have the right telemetry to provide around-the-clock monitoring and the ability to quickly respond to threats.
Cisco Secure Endpoint provides you with the visibility and ability to respond to threats by blocking them before they compromise your network. Combined with global, proactive threat hunting, leading-edge forensic/analytic capabilities, and reduced leading Mean Time To Detection (MTTD)/Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR) across the supply chain that no other vendor can parallel; why would you partner with any other company to secure and scale your unique hybrid workforce or workplace clients?
Click here to listen to my fireside chat on how we at Cisco would define 5 Best Practices Security Analysts Can Use to Secure Their Hybrid Workforce:
I am joined by Cisco Talos global Senior Threat Defense and Response Analyst, William (Bill) Largent who has over 20 plus years of infosec experience, specifically in network intrusion detection, traffic analysis, and signature/rule writing.
I will also be speaking with Eric Howard, Cisco Secure Technical Marketing Engineer Leader for the Security Platform and Response Group. Eric is a seasoned team leader in both Information Security Sales, and Product Management. He has built and led teams that apply deep technical understanding to business needs, initiatives, and strategies in both start-ups and established companies.
This is a conversation you do not want to skip! There were a lot of gems shared by these gentlemen that will get you where you need to be as a Security Analyst.
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The release of Microsoft Azure Gateway Load Balancer is great news for customers, empowering them to simply and easily add Cisco Secure Firewall capabilities to their Azure cloud infrastructure. By combining Azure Gateway Load Balancer with Cisco Secure Firewall, organizations can quickly scale their firewall presence across their Azure cloud environment, providing protection for infrastructure and applications exactly where and when they need it.
With applications and resources hyper-distributed across hybrid-multicloud environments, organizations require agile security to protect their environment at each control point. This integration empowers organizations to dynamically insert Cisco’s security controls and threat defense capabilities in their Azure environment, removing the clunkiness of provisioning and deploying firewalls, as well as the need to rearchitect the network. Organizations can now enjoy highly available threat defense on the fly, protecting their infrastructure and applications from known and unknown threats.
Combining Secure Firewall with Azure Gateway Load Balancer offers a significant reduction in operational complexity when securing cloud infrastructure. Azure Gateway Load Balancer provides bump-in-the-wire functionality ensuring Internet traffic to and from an Azure VM, such as an application server, is inspected by Secure Firewall without requiring any routing changes. It also offers a single entry and exit point at the firewall and allows organizations to maintain visibility of the source IP address. Complementing these features, organizations can take advantage of our new Cloud-delivered Firewall Management Center. It enables organizations to manage their firewall presence 100% through the cloud with the same look and feel as they’ve grown accustomed to with Firewall Management Center. With Cloud-delivered Firewall Management Center, organizations will achieve faster time-to-value with simplified firewall deployment and management.
Azure Gateway Load Balancer support for Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual is available now. To learn more about how Cisco Secure Firewall drives security resilience across your hybrid-multicloud environment, see the additional resources below and reach out to your Cisco sales representative.
Microsoft Blog: Gateway Load Balancer now generally available in all regions
Azure Marketplace listing: Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual
Cisco Secure Firewall At-a-Glance
Cisco Secure Firewall for Public Cloud
Cloud-delivered Firewall Management Center
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Cisco Secure Social Channels
Self-awareness goes a long way in determining your next professional steps. While job searching, it’s critical to identify how to leverage your transferable skills and network, while also evaluating what environmental factors of work and work culture matter to you most. Learn what it’s like to work at Cisco and the top 10 ways to suss out a workplace that suits your needs from leaders at Cisco Secure, Cisco Talos and Duo Security.
First things first. Emily Reid, the newly appointed director of employee experience at Cisco Secure who came from Duo Security, advises, “Do your own research to see how the company and their employees describe the culture publicly — on the company’s website and through other sites, articles and resources. For tech companies specifically I always think, “What else do you have beyond the ping-pong table?”’
The interview process is the next key opportunity to find out what culture is like beyond amenities. To gain multiple perspectives, Reid recommends asking about company culture in every interview you have.
The question at the top of Reid’s list: Do you have programs and resources to support the development and success of your employees? “I want to know how a company will be investing in my career growth and if I will feel welcome and included as part of the team. Seeing what a company chooses to center and highlight when describing their culture is usually very telling,” she said.
Interning at a company is another way to get firsthand knowledge and can lead to full-time employment. “several former interns are now people leaders managing their own teams — and their own interns — coming full circle,” Reid said.
Knowing that there is safety and support in bringing your whole self to work is vital. What policies, programs and initiatives are in place that demonstrate an organization’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging?
Cisco’s ongoing commitments to social justice and pay parity include twelve action steps as part of Cisco’s Social Justice Blueprint. Cultivating a conscious culture includes on-going dialogue, programs and events meant to increase equality. Employee Resource Organizations and mentorship programs provide more opportunities to build community and share knowledge, resources and advocacy.
What environment allows you to do your best work? Also consider what perks and processes an employer offers to enhance flexibility and adaptability. During the pandemic, Duo and Cisco transitioned all global events, training and professional development workshops to fully virtual. As in person options resumed following the pandemic, all events are designed to ensure an inclusive experience no matter where you’re joining from.
“We don’t want to go back to a world where people not based in an office feel like they are getting a lesser experience,” Reid said.
Considering how to make programs and information accessible to employees regardless of where they work is also important to Sammi Seaman, team lead of employee experience at Cisco Talos. She’s currently spearheading a new hire program that is “more inclusive of folks whether they’re office based, remote or somewhere across the world.”
It’s essential to consider how you want your life and work to intersect, particularly as hybrid work becomes more popular. How important is paid time off, flexible work options or a consistent structure?
Cisco Secure offers “Days for Me,” days off for employees to decompress and do something to fill their cups. Monthly “Focus Days” are days without meetings, so employees can prioritize the projects that need attention.
Curran recalls one candidate who, despite multiple offers from competitors, chose Cisco Secure because of the flexible work environment: “This person has a young child and felt that the “Days for Me” and flexibility to work from home in a hybrid situation would work best for his career long-term.”
As Reid’s team helps lead the transition to hybrid work, the book Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working From Home by Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen has been inspiring. The book “does an amazing job of sharing a vision for an inclusive future that empowers employees to be successful and have a ‘work/life balance’ that truly works,” Reid said.
Currently Cisco Secure offers a hybrid model while many employees still work remotely. In terms of maintaining accessibility through this transition, Marketing Specialist Julie Kramer advocated for more accessibility and saw changes at Cisco as a result.
“Webex pre-COVID didn’t have any closed captioning. So, another deaf person and I reached out and closed captioning and the transcript option got added,” Kramer shared.
Kramer prefers to have high-quality and frequently the same interpreters who “know the terminology for my job, marketing and technology. In business, the security and marketing industry can really talk fast, so you need a high-quality interpreter that can keep up and one that is qualified and certified,” she said.
Consider what pace of your specific role and within an industry is needed for you to feel engaged without overwhelmed. While different roles within the same organization and industry may run at different paces, it’s important to tune into what might be expected on your potential new team.
Seaman finds that the fast pace of cybersecurity can be “delightful and challenging. There’s a lot of fast-paced pivoting that happens, which makes for an interesting workplace because two days are never the same,” she said.
Do you prefer a hierarchical structure, or one that is more flat? Are you most effective and fulfilled riding solo, or while consistently connecting with coworkers? Does contributing your ideas make you feel empowered?
At Cisco Secure, there is space to join conversations. “No matter where you sit in the company, you have a voice and can speak up and collaborate and self-organize on a project. It feels like a bunch of really hard working, humble, smart people who are trying to solve problems together,” said Manager of Duo’s Global Knowledge and Communities Team Kelly Davenport.
To enhance communication and knowledge among distributed teams, Seaman started a dialogue series called “The More You Know.” Questions include: What do you do? How do you do it? How can that help other parts of Cisco Talos? The conversations lead to future collaboration and resource sharing.
Do you want to grow professionally and increase your skills and knowledge? A culture of teaching and learning within an organization can help hone and expand your skills and connections.
Lead of Strategic Business Intelligence Ashlee Benge finds the security world “very dynamic. You really can never stop learning. Within Cisco Talos, the people around me are such smart, dedicated people that there’s really a lot that you can gain from just being involved in the group as a whole.”
For Seaman, who didn’t come from a technical background, Cisco Talos offered opportunities to expand her technical knowledge, including from colleagues. “Coming into Cisco Talos, people are like, “Here, let me teach you. You can totally do this. Just because you didn’t know how to do it doesn’t mean you can’t learn. Let’s go,” Seaman shared. Seaman’s colleagues have also learned from her expertise in information and knowledge management given her background as a librarian.
More formally, the Learning and Development team recently launched a comprehensive talent development program with enablement resources and support for people leaders. Aspects include: “really thoughtful templates for employees to use with their manager to talk through career goals, development areas, and to define an actionable investment plan. These resources are fueling great career conversations, strong alignment, and thoughtful development plans,” Reid said.
Do you want to refine your skills within your wheelhouse? Or are you driven to try new tasks and potentially change roles within your next organization?
Benge, whose background is in computational astrophysics, has found her interests shift from technical security research to business strategy and data science. At Cisco Talos, she’s been involved in everything from detection research and threat hunting, to community outreach, conference talks and traveling to support sales engagements. Currently, she’s helping to lead threat hunting in Ukraine.
“My leaders have always made it very clear that if there’s an interest, it’s okay to pursue it and it doesn’t have to necessarily be within the scope of my role. Having that freedom to pursue interests within the industry has been really engaging,” Benge said.
In addition to company values and mission statements, leaders and employees contribute to an organization’s culture every day. If you want to enhance your company’s culture, participate.
“Feedback on what employees want to see is crucial,” Reid said. “The easiest way to contribute to developing culture and a positive employee experience in your workplace is to add to what’s already happening! Culture takes participation and ownership from all employees.”
Reid shared that in performance reviews at Cisco, “‘Team Impact” is equally as important as “Results.” Contributing positively to company culture should contribute to performance reviews and promotion justification,” she said.
To learn more about Cisco’s company culture and how you can contribute to it, check out our open roles.
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
In part one of this issue of our Black Hat USA NOC (Network Operations Center) blog, you will find:
Adapt and Overcome, by Jessica Bair Oppenheimer
In technology, we plan as best as we can, execute tactically with the resources and knowledge we have at the time, focus on the strategic mission, adjust as the circumstances require, collaborate, and improve; with transparency and humility. In short, we adapt and we overcome. This is the only way a community can have trust and grow, together. Every deployment comes with its challenges and Black Hat USA 2022 was no exception. Looking at the three Ps (people, process, platform), flexibility, communication, and an awesome Cisco platform allowed us to build and roll with the changes and challenges in the network. I am proud of the Cisco Meraki and Secure team members and our NOC partners.
The Buck Stops Here. Full stop. I heard a comment that the Wi-Fi service in the Expo Hall was “the worst I’ve ever experienced at a conference.” There were a lot of complaints about the Black Hat USA 2022 Wi-Fi network in the Expo Hall on 10 August. I also heard a lot of compliments about the network. Despite that the Wi-Fi and wired network was generally very good the most of the conference, and before my awesome colleagues share the many successes of designing, building, securing, managing, automating and tearing down one of the most hostile networks on Earth; I want to address where and how we adapted and what we did to fix the issues that arose, as we built an evolving, enterprise class network in a week.
First, a little history of how Cisco came to be the Official Network Provider of Black Hat USA 2022, after we were already successfully serving as the Official Mobile Device Management, Malware Analysis and Domain Name Service Provider. An Official Provider, as a Premium Partner, is not a sponsorship and no company can buy their way into the NOC for any amount of money. From the beginning of Black Hat 25 years ago, volunteers built the network for the conference rather than using the hotel network. This continues today, with the staff of Black Hat hand selecting trusted partners to build and secure the network.
After stepping up to help Black Hat with the network at Black Hat Asia, we had only two and a half months until Black Hat USA, in Las Vegas, 6-11 August 2022. Cisco was invited to build and secure the network for the much larger Black Hat USA flagship conference, affectionally known as ‘Hacker Summer Camp’, as the Official Network Equipment Provider. There were few other options, given the short timeframe to plan, supply chain difficulties in procuring the networking gear and assembling a team of network engineers, to join the Cisco Secure engineers and threat hunters. All the work, effort and loaned equipment were a gift from Cisco Meraki and Cisco Secure to the community.
We were proud to collaborate with NOC partners Gigamon, IronNet, Lumen, NetWitness and Palo Alto Networks; and work with Neil ‘Grifter’ Wyler, Bart Stump, Steve Fink and James Pope of Black Hat. We built strong bonds of familial ties over the years of challenges and joint successes. I encourage you to watch the replay of the Black Hat session An Inside Look at Defending the Black Hat Network with Bart and Grifter.
In June 2022, adjacent to Cisco Live Americas, the NOC partners met with Black Hat to plan the network. Cisco Meraki already donated 45 access points (APs), seven MS switches, and two Meraki MX security and SD-WAN appliances to Black Hat, for regional conferences.
I looked at the equipment list from 2019, that was documented in the Bart and Grifter presentation, and estimated we needed to source an additional 150 Cisco Meraki MR AP (with brackets and tripods) and 70+ Cisco Meraki MS switches to build the Black Hat USA network in just a few weeks. I wanted to be prepared for any changes or new requirements on-site. We turned to JW McIntire, who leads the network operations for Cisco Live and Cisco Impact. JW was enthusiastically supportive in helping identify the equipment within the Cisco Global Events inventory and giving his approval to utilize the equipment. A full thanks to those who made this possible is in the Acknowledgements below.
Over the week-long conference, we used all but three of the switches and all the APs.
We worked off the draft floor plans from 13 June 2022, for the training rooms, briefing rooms, support rooms, keynote rooms, conference public areas, registration, and of course the Expo Hall: over two million square feet of venue. We received updated plans for the training rooms, Expo Hall and support needs 12 days before we arrived on site. There were about 60 training rooms planned, each requiring their own SSID and Virtual Local Area Network, without host isolation. The ‘most access possible’ was the requirement, to use real world malware and attacks, without attacking other classrooms, attendees, sponsors or the rest of the world. Many of the training rooms changed again nine days before the start of the network build, as the number confirmed students rose or fell, we adjusted the AP assignments.
For switching allocation, we could not plan until we arrived onsite, to assess the conference needs and the placement of the cables in the walls of the conference center. The Black Hat USA network requires that every switch be replaced, so we always have full control of the network. Every network drop to place an AP and put the other end of a cable into the new switches in the closets costs Black Hat a lot of money. It also requires the time of ‘Doc’ – the lead network engineer at the Mandalay Bay, to whom we are all deeply grateful.
The most important mission of the NOC is Access, then Security, Visibility, Automation, etc. People pay thousands of dollars to attend the trainings and the briefings; and sponsors pay tens of thousands for their booth space. They need Access to have a successful conference experience.
With that background, let’s discuss the Wi-Fi in the Expo Hall. Cisco has a service to help customers do a methodical predictive survey of their space for the best allocation of their resources. We had 74 of the modern MR57 APs for the conference and prioritized their assignment in the Expo Hall and Registration. Specifications for MR57s include a 6 GHz 4×4:4, 5 GHz 4×4:4 and 2.4 GHz 4×4:4 radio to offer a combined tri–radio aggregate frame rate of 8.35 Gbps, with up to 4,804 Mbps in 6GHz band, 2,402 Mbps 5 GHz band and, 1,147 Mbps / 574 Mbps in the 2.4 GHz band based on 40MHz / 20MHz configuration. Technologies like transmit beamforming and enhanced receive sensitivity allow the MR57 to support a higher client density than typical enterprise-class access points, resulting in better performance for more clients, from each AP.
We donated top of the line gear for use at Black Hat USA. So, what went wrong on the first day in the Expo Hall? The survey came back with the following map and suggestions of 34 MR57s in the locations below. Many assumptions were made in pre-planning, since we did not know the shapes, sizes and materials of the booths that would be present inside the allocated spaces. We added an AP in the Arsenal Lab on the far-left side, after discussing the needs with Black Hat NOC leadership.
In the Entrance area (Bayside Foyer) of the Expo Hall (bottom of the map), you can see that coverage drops. There were four MR57s placed in the Bayside Foyer for iPad Registration and attendee Wi-Fi, so they could access their emails and obtain their QR code for scanning and badge printing.
I believed that would be sufficient and we allocated other APs to the rest of the conference areas. We had positive reports on coverage in most areas of the rest of the conference. When there were reported issues, we quickly deployed Cisco Meraki engineers or NOC technical associates. to confirm and were able to make changes in radio strength, broadcasting bands, SSIDs, etc. to fine tune the network. All while managing a large amount of new or changing network requirements, as the show expanded due to its success and was fully hybrid, with the increased streaming of the sponsored sessions, briefings and keynotes and remote Registration areas in hotels.
As the attendees queued up in mass outside of the Expo Hall on the morning of 10 August, the number of attendee devices connecting to the four MR57s in the foyer grew into the thousands. This degraded the performance of the Registration network. We adjusted by making the APs closest to the registration iPads only dedicated to the Registration. This fixed Registration lag but reduced the performance of the network for the attendees, as they waited to rush into the Expo Hall. From the site survey map, it is clear that the replacement APs were now needed in the Entrance for a connected mesh network, as you entered the Expo Hall from the Bayside foyer. Here lies Lesson 1: expected people flow should be taken into account in the RF design process.
Another challenge the morning of the Expo Hall opening was that five of the 57MRs inside were not yet connected to the Internet when it opened at 10am. The APs were installed three days earlier, then placed up on tripods the afternoon prior. However, the volume of newly requested network additions, to support the expanded hybrid element required the deployment of extra cables and switches. This cascaded down and delayed the conference center team from finalizing the Expo Hall line drops until into the afternoon. Lesson 2: Layer 1 is still king; without it, no Wi-Fi or power.
A major concern for the sponsors in their booths was that as the Expo Hall filled with excited attendees, the connectivity of the 900+ iOS devices used for lead management dropped. Part of this congestion was thousands of 2.4Ghz devices connected to the Expo Hall network. We monitored this and pushed as many as possible to 5Ghz, to relieve pressure on those airwaves. Lesson 3: With Wi-Fi 6e now available in certain countries, clean spectrum awaits, but our devices need to come along as well.
We also adjusted in the Cisco Meraki Systems Manager Mobile Device Management, to allow the iPhones for scanning to connect securely to the Mandalay Bay conference network, while still protecting your personal information with Cisco SecureX, Security Connector and Umbrella DNS, to ensure access as we expanded the network capacity in the Expo Hall. Lesson 4: Extreme security by default where you can control the end point. Do not compromise when dealing with PPI.
Using the Cisco Meraki dashboard access point location heat map and the health status of the network, we identified three places in the front of the Expo Hall to deploy additional drops with the Mandalay Bay network team. Since adding network drops takes some time (and costs Black Hat extra money), we took immediate steps to deploy more MS120 switches and eight additional APs at hot spots inside the Expo Hall with the densest client traffic, at no expense to Black Hat. Lesson 5: Footfall is not only about sales analytics. It does play a role into RF planning. Thereby, allowing for a data-driven design decision.
Above is the heat map of the conference Expo Hall at noon on 11 August. You can see the extra APs at the Entrance of the Expo Hall, connected by the three drops set up by the Mandalay Bay to the Cisco Meraki switches in the closets. Also, you can see the clusters of APs connected to the extra MS120 switches. At the same time, our lead Meraki engineer, Evan Basta, did a speed test from the center left of the Expo Hall.
As I am sharing lessons learned, I want to provide visibility to another situation encountered. On the afternoon of 9 August, the last day of training, a Black Hat attendee walked the hallways outside several training rooms and deliberately attacked the network, causing students and instructors not to be able to connect to their classes. The training rooms have host isolation removed and we designed the network to provide as much safe access as possible. The attacker took advantage of this openness, spoofed the SSIDs of the many training rooms and launched malicious attacks against the network.
We must allow real malware on the network for training, demonstrations and briefing sessions; while protecting the attendees from attack within the network from their fellow attendees and prevent bad actors from using the network to attack the Internet. It is a critical balance to ensure everyone has a safe experience, while still being able to learn from real world malware, vulnerabilities and malicious websites.
The attack vector was identified by a joint investigation of the NOC teams, initiated by the Cisco Meraki Air Marshal review. Note the exact same MAC addresses of the spoofed SSIDs and malicious broadcasts. A network protection measure was suggested by the Cisco Meraki engineering team to the NOC leadership. Permission was granted to test on one classroom, to confirm it stopped the attack, while not also disrupting the training. Lesson 6: The network-as-a-sensor will help mitigate issues but will not fix the human element.
Once confirmed, the measure was implemented network wide to return resiliency and access. The NOC team continued the investigation on the spoofed MAC addresses, using syslogs, firewall logs, etc. and identified the likely app and device used. An automated security alerting workflow was put in place to quickly identify if the attacker resumed/returned, so physical security could also intervene to revoke the badge and eject the attacker from the conference for violation of the Black Hat code of conduct.
I am grateful to the 20+ Cisco engineers, plus Talos Threat Hunters, deployed to the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, from the United States, Canada, Qatar and United Kingdom who made the Cisco contributions to the Black Hat USA 2022 NOC possible. I hope you will read on, to learn more lessons learned about the network and the part two blog about Cisco Secure in the NOC
Building the Hacker Summer Camp Network, by Evan Basta
It was the challenge of my career to take on the role of the lead network engineer for Black Hat USA. The lead engineer, who I replaced, was unable to travel from Singapore, just notifying us two weeks before we were scheduled to deploy to Las Vegas.
We prepared as much as possible before arrival, using the floor plans and the inventory of equipment that was ordered and on its way from the warehouse. We met with the Black Hat NOC leadership, partners and Mandalay Bay network engineers weekly on conference calls, adjusted what we could and then went to Black Hat, ready for a rapidly changing environment.
Our team was able to remain flexible and meet all the Black Hat requests that came in, thanks to the ability of the Cisco Meraki dashboard to manage the APs and switches from the cloud. Often, we were configuring the AP or switch as it was being transported to the location of the new network segment, laptop in hand.
For the construction of the Black Hat network, let’s start with availability. Registration and training rooms had priority for connectivity. iPads and iPhones needed secure connectivity to scan QR codes of registering attendees. Badge printers needed hardline access to the registration system. Training rooms all needed their separate wireless networks, for a safe sandbox for network defense and attack. Thousands of attendees attended, ready to download and upload terabytes of data through the main conference wireless network. All the keynotes, briefings and sponsored sessions needed to be recorded and streamed. Below are all the APs stacked up for assignment, including those assigned to the Expo Hall in the foreground.
All this connectivity was provided by Cisco Meraki access points and switches along with integrations into SecureX, Umbrella, and other Cisco platforms. We fielded a literal army of engineers to stand up the network in six days.
Let’s talk security and visibility. For a few days, the Black Hat network is one of the most hostile in the world. Attendees learn new exploits, download new tools, and are encouraged to test them out. Being able to drill down on attendee connection details and traffic was instrumental in ensuring attendees followed the Black Hat code of conduct.
On the wireless front, we made extensive use of our Radio Profiles to reduce interference by tuning power and channel settings. We enabled band steering to get more clients on the 5GHz bands versus 2.4GHz and watched the Location Heatmap like a hawk looking for hotspots and dead areas. Handling the barrage of wireless change requests – enable or disabling this SSID, moving VLANs (Virtual Local Area Networks), enabling tunneling for host isolation on the general conference Wi-Fi, mitigating attacks – was a snap with the Cisco Meraki Dashboard.
Floor Plan and Location Heatmap
On the first day of NOC setup, the Cisco team worked with the Mandalay Bay networking engineers to deploy core switches and map out the switches for the closets, according to the number of cables coming in from the training and briefing rooms. The floor plans in PDF were uploaded into the Meraki Dashboard; and with a little fine tuning, aligned perfectly with the Google Map.
Cisco Meraki APs were then placed physically in the venue meeting and training rooms. Having the APs named, as mentioned above, made this an easy task. This enabled accurate heatmap capability.
The Location Heatmap provided the capability to drill into the four levels of the conference, including the Expo Hall, lower level (North Conference Center), 2nd Floor and 3rd Floor. Below is the view of the entire conference.
Network Visibility
We were able to monitor the number of connected clients, network usage, the people passing by the network and location analytics, throughout the conference days. We provided visibility access to the Black Hat NOC management and the technology partners, along with full API (Application Programming Interface) access, so they could integrate with the network platform.
Alerts
Cisco Meraki alerts provide notification when something happens in the Dashboard. Default behavior is to be emailed when something happens. Obviously, emails got lost in the noise, at Black Hat Asia 2022, we made a web hook in Cisco SecureX orchestration to be able to consume Cisco Meraki alerts and send it to Slack (the messaging platform within the Black Hat NOC), using the native template in the Cisco Meraki Dashboard.
The alert kicked off if an AP or a switch lost connectivity. At Black Hat USA, we modified this to text alerts, as these were a priority. In the following example, we knew at the audio-visual team unplugged a switch to move it and were able to deploy technical associates from the NOC to ensure it was reconnected properly.
The Cisco Stack’s Potential in Action, by Paul Fidler
As we planned for Black Hat USA, the number of iOS devices to manage and protect rose from 300+ to over 900, and finally over 1,000.
The first amongst these was the use of the Cisco Meraki API. We were able to import the list of MAC addresses of the Cisco Meraki APs, to ensure that the APs were named appropriately and tagged, using a single source of truth document shared with the NOC management and partners, with the ability to update en masse at any time. Over three quarters of the AP configuration was able to be completed before arriving on site.
Meraki Systems Manager – Initial device enrollment and provisioning
We’ll start with the positive: When it comes to creating the design to manage X number of devices, it doesn’t matter if it’s 10 devices, or 10,000… And this was certainly true for Black Hat. The requirements were straightforward:
All this configuration was done ahead of time in the Meraki Dashboard, almost a month before the conference.
Now the negatives: Of all the events that the company who supplies the devices attends; Black Hat is the only one where devices are managed. Using mass deployment techniques like Apple’s Automated Device Enrollment, therefore, is not used. The company pre-stages the devices using Apple Configurator, which allows for both Supervision and Enrollment.
It became more difficult: Whilst the pre-staged devices were fine (other than having to handle all 1,000+ devices to turn Wi-Fi to Autojoin and opening the Meraki Systems Manager app [to give us Jailbreak and Location visibility]), an extra 100 devices were supplied that were not enrolled. As these devices were enrolled elsewhere from the prior Black Hat conferences, a team of around 10 people pitched in to restore each device, adding the Wi-Fi profile and then enrollment.
Fortunately, Apple Configurator can create Blueprints:
A Blueprint is essential a list of actions, in a particular order, that Apple Configurator can run through autonomously
But why did it need a team of ten? There were several limitations:
However, the task was completed in around three hours, given the limitations! If there’s one lesson to learn from this: Use Apple’s Automated Device Enrollment.
Command vs Profile
One of the slight nuances of Apple Mobile Device Manager is the difference between a ‘command’ and ‘profile’. Within the Meraki Systems Manager dashboard, we don’t highlight the difference between the two. But it’s important to know. A ‘profile’ is something that remains on the device: If there’s a state change on the device, or the user attempts something, the profile is always on there. However, a ‘command’ is exactly that: It’s sent once, and if something changes in the future, then the command won’t have any effect.
So, why is this highlighted here? Well, in some instances, some apps weren’t pushed successfully: You’d see them on the device, but with a cloud icon next to them. The only way to resolve this would be to remove the app, and then repost it. But we were also using a Homepage Layout, which put various apps on various pages. Pushing the app would result in it appearing on the wrong page. To ensure a consistent user experience, we would push the homepage profile again to devices to take effect.
Meraki BSSID Geolocation
We’ve mentioned this before in past Black Hat events, but, given the scale of The Mandalay Bay, it’s important to circle back to this. GPS is notoriously unreliable in conference centers like this, but it was still important to know where devices are. Because we’d ensured the correct placement of the Access Points on the floor plan, and because Systems Manager was in the same organisation, it ensured that the devices reported their location accurately! If one were to ‘walk’ we could wipe it remotely to protect your personal details.
Protection of PPI (Protected Private Information)
When the conference Registration closed on the last day and the Business Hall Sponsors all returned their iPhones, we were able to remotely wipe all the devices, removing all attendee data, prior to returning to the device contractor.
APIs
As mentioned elsewhere in this blog, this was a conference of APIs. Just the sheer scale of the conference resulted in the use of APIs. Various API projects included:
From a Systems Manager perspective, there were:
Port Security, by Ryan MacLennan, Ian Redden and Paul Fidler
During the Cisco Meraki deployment, we had a requirement to shutdown ports as they went inactive to prevent malicious actors from removing an official device and plugging in theirs. This ability is not directly built into the Cisco Meraki dashboard, so we built a workflow for the Black Hat customer, using the Cisco Meraki API. To achieve this, we created a small python script that was hosted as an AWS (Amazon Web Services) Lambda function and listened for webhooks from the Cisco Meraki Dashboard when a port went down. Initially this did solve our issue, but it was not fast enough, about five minutes from the time the port went down/a cable was unplugged. This proof of concept laid the groundwork to make the system better. We migrated from using a webhook in the Cisco Meraki Dashboard to using syslogs. We also moved the script from Lambda to a local server. Now, a python script was scanning for syslogs from the switches and when it saw a port down log, it will immediately call out to the locally hosted python script that calls out to the Cisco Meraki API and disabled the port.
This challenge had many setbacks and iterations while it was being built. Before we settled on listening for syslogs, we tried using SNMP polling. After figuring out the information we needed to use, we found that trying to poll SNMP would not work because SNMP would not report the port being down if the switch to another device was fast enough. This led us to believe we might not be able to do what we needed in a timely manner. After some deliberation with fellow NOC members, we started working on a script to listen for the port down syslogs. This became the best solution and provided immediate results. The ports would be disabled within milliseconds of going downThe diagram below shows an example of what will happen: If the Workshop Trainer’s device is un-plugged and a Threat Actor tries to plug into their port, a syslog is sent from the Cisco Meraki switch to our internal server hosting the python listener. Once the python script gets the request, it sends an API call to the Cisco Meraki API gateway and the Cisco Meraki cloud then tells the switch to disable the port that went down very briefly.
However, what was apparent was that the script was working TOO well! As discussed, several times already in this blog, the needs of the conference were very dynamic, changing on a minute-by-minute basis. This was certainly true in Registration and with the Audio-Visual teams. We discovered quickly that legitimate devices were being unplugged and plugged in to various ports, even if just temporarily. Of course, the script was so quick that it disabled ports before the users in registration knew what was happening. This resulted in NOC staff having to re-enable ports. So, more development was done. The task? For a given network tag, show the status of all the ports of all the switches. Given the number of switches at the conference, tags were used to reduce the amount of data being brought back, so it was easier to read and manage.
Mapping Meraki Location Data with Python, by Christian Clausen
In the blog post we published after Black Hat Asia 2022, we provided details on how to collect Bluetooth and Wi-Fi scanning data from a Meraki organization, for long-term storage and analysis. This augmented the location data provided by the Meraki dashboard, which is limited to 24-hours. Of course, the Meraki dashboard does more than just provide location data based on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth scanning from the access points. It also provides a neat heatmap generated from this data. We decided to take our long-term data project a step further and see if we could generate our own heatmap based on the data collected from the Meraki Scanning API.
The Folium Python library “builds on the data wrangling strengths of the Python ecosystem and the mapping strengths of the leaflet.js library” to provide all kinds of useful mapping functions. We can take location data (longitude and latitude) and plot them on lots of built-in map tiles from the likes of OpenStreetMap, MapBox, Stamen, and more. Among the available Folium plugins is a class called “HeatMapWithTime.” We can use this to plot our Meraki location data and have the resulting map animate the client’s movements.
Step 1: Collect the data
During the previous conference, we used a Docker container containing a couple Flask endpoints connected via ngrok to collect the large amount of data coming from Meraki. We re-used the same application stack this time around, but moved it out from behind ngrok into our own DMZ with a public domain and TLS (Transport Layer Security) certificate, to avoid any bandwidth limitations. We ended up with over 40GB of JSON data for the conference week to give to Black Hat!
Step 2: Format the data
Folium’s HeatMapWithTime plugin requires a “list of lists of points of time.” What we wanted to do is generate an ordered dictionary in Python that is indexed by the timestamp. The data we received from the Meraki API was formatted into “apFloor” labels provided by the admin when the access points are placed. Within each “apFloor” is a list of “observations” that contain information about individual clients spotted by the AP scanners, during the scanning interval.
Here’s what the data looked like straight from the Meraki API, with some dummy values:
The “observations” list is what we wanted to parse. It contains lots of useful information, but what we wanted is MAC address, latitude and longitude numbers, and timestamp:
We used Python to iterate through the observations and to eliminate the data we did not use. After a lot of data wrangling, de-duplicating MAC addresses, and bucketizing the observations into 15-minute increments, the resulting data structure looks like this:
Now that the data is in a usable format, we can feed it into Folium and see what kind of map we get back!
Step 3: Creating the map
Folium is designed to project points onto a map tile. Map tiles can show satellite images, streets, or terrain, and are projected onto a globe. In our case, however, we want to use the blueprint of the conference center. Folium’s allows for an image’s overlay to be added, and the bounds of the image to be set by specifying the coordinates for the top-left and bottom-right corners of image. Luckily, we can get this from the Meraki dashboard.
This enabled us to overlay the floorplan image on the map. Unfortunately, the map tiles themselves limit the amount of zoom available to the map visualization. Lucky for us, we did not care about the map tile now that we have the floorplan image. We passed “None” as the map tile source and finally received our data visualization and saved the map as an HTML file for Black Hat leadership.
We opened the HTML file, and we had an auto-playing heatmap that lets us zoom at far in as we want:
Detail at 1:30pm PT, on 10 August 2022 below.
To improve this going forward, the logical next steps would be to insert the data into a database for the Black Hat conference organizers, for quick retrieval and map generation. We can then start looking at advanced use-cases in the NOC, such as tracking individual a MAC address that may be producing suspicious traffic, by cross-referencing data from other sources (Umbrella, NetWitness, etc.).
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Network Recovery, by Jessica Bair Oppenheimer
Once the final session ended, the Expo Hall closed and the steaming switched off, dozens of conference associates, technical associates, Mandalay Bay engineers and Cisco staff spread out through two million square feet and numerous switching closets to recover the equipment for inventory and packing. It took less than four hours to tear down a network that was built and evolved 11 days prior. Matt Vander Horst made a custom app to scan in each item, separating equipment donated to Black Hat from that which needed to be returned to the warehouse for the next global Cisco event.
Adapt and overcome! Check out part two of this blog, Black Hat USA 2022 Continued: Innovation in the NOC.
Until then, thanks again to our Cisco Meraki engineers, pictured below with a MR57 access point.
Acknowledgements: Special thanks to the Cisco Meraki and Cisco Secure Black Hat NOC team.
Meraki Systems Manager: Paul Fidler (team leader), Paul Hasstedt and Kevin Carter
Meraki Network Engineering: Evan Basta (team leader), Gregory Michel, Richard Fung and CJ Ramsey
Network Design and Wireless Site Survey: Jeffry Handal, Humphrey Cheung, JW McIntire and Romulo Ferreira
Network Build/Tear Down: Dinkar Sharma, Ryan Maclennan, Ron Taylor and Leo Cruz
Critical support in sourcing and delivering the Meraki APs and switches: Lauren Frederick, Eric Goodwin, Isaac Flemate, Scott Pope and Morgan Mann
SecureX threat response, orchestration, device insights, custom integrations, and Malware Analytics: Ian Redden, Aditya Sankar, Ben Greenbaum, Matt Vander Horst and Robert Taylor
Umbrella DNS: Christian Clasen and Alejo Calaoagan
Talos Incident Response Threat Hunters: Jerzy ‘Yuri’ Kramarz and Michael Kelley
Also, to our NOC partners NetWitness (especially David Glover), Palo Alto Networks (especially Jason Reverri), Lumen, Gigamon, IronNet, and the entire Black Hat / Informa Tech staff (especially Grifter ‘Neil Wyler’, Bart Stump, Steve Fink, James Pope, Jess Stafford and Steve Oldenbourg).
Read Part 2:
Black Hat USA 2022 Continued: Innovation in the NOC
About Black Hat
For 25 years, Black Hat has provided attendees with the very latest in information security research, development, and trends. These high-profile global events and trainings are driven by the needs of the security community, striving to bring together the best minds in the industry. Black Hat inspires professionals at all career levels, encouraging growth and collaboration among academia, world-class researchers, and leaders in the public and private sectors. Black Hat Briefings and Trainings are held annually in the United States, Europe and USA. More information is available at: blackhat.com. Black Hat is brought to you by Informa Tech.
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
In part one of our Black Hat USA 2022 NOC blog, we discussed building the network with Meraki:
In this part two, we will discuss:
Cisco is a Premium Partner of the Black Hat NOC, and is the Official Wired & Wireless Network Equipment, Mobile Device Management, DNS (Domain Name Service) and Malware Analysis Provider of Black Hat.
Black Hat USA is my favorite part of my professional life each year. We had an incredible staff of 20 Cisco engineers to build and secure the network. Also, for the first time, we had two Talos Threat Hunters from the Talos Incident Response (TIR) team, providing unique perspectives and skills to the attacks on the network. I really appreciated the close collaboration with the Palo Alto Networks and NetWitness team members. We created new integrations and the NOC continued to serve as an incubator for innovation.
We must allow real malware on the network for training, demonstrations, and briefing sessions; while protecting the attendees from attack within the network from their fellow attendees and prevent bad actors using the network to attack the Internet. It is a critical balance to ensure everyone has a safe experience, while still being able to learn from real world malware, vulnerabilities, and malicious websites. So, context is what really matters when investigating a potential attack and bringing so many technologies together in SecureX really accelerated investigation and response (when needed).
All the Black Hat network traffic was supported by Meraki switches and wireless access points, using the latest Meraki gear donated by Cisco. Our Meraki team was able to block people from the Black Hat network, when an investigation showed they did something in violation of the attendee Code of Conduct, upon review and approval by the Black Hat NOC leadership.
Cisco Secure provided all the domain name service (DNS) requests on the Black Hat network through Umbrella, whenever attendees wanted to connect to a website. If there is a specific DNS attack that threatened the conference, we supported Black Hat in blocking it to protect the network. However, by default, we allow and monitor DNS requests to malware, command and control, phishing, crypto mining, and other dangerous domains, which would be blocked in a production environment. That balance of allowing cybersecurity training and demos to occur, but ready to block when needed.
In addition to the Meraki networking gear, Cisco Secure also shipped an Umbrella DNS virtual appliance to Black Hat USA, for internal network visibility with redundancy. The Intel NUC containing the virtual appliance also contained the bridge to the NetWitness on-premises SIEM, custom developed by Ian Redden.
We also deployed the following cloud-based security software:
We analyzed files that were downloaded on the network, checking them for malicious behavior. When malware is downloaded, we confirm it is for a training, briefing or demonstration, and not the start of an attack on attendees.
During an investigation, we used SecureX to visualize the threat intelligence and related artifacts, correlating data. In the example below, an attacker was attempting remote code execution on the Registration Servers, alerted by the Palo Alto team, investigated by the NOC threat hunters, and blocked by order of the NOC leadership upon the results of the investigation.
Cisco Secure Threat Intelligence (correlated through SecureX)
Donated Partner Threat Intelligence (correlated through SecureX)
Open-Source Threat Intelligence (correlated through SecureX)
Continued Integrations from past Black Hat events
New Integrations Created at Black Hat USA 2022
The NOC partners, especially NetWitness and Palo Alto Networks, were so collaborative and we left Vegas with more ideas for future integration development
Creating Custom Meraki Dashboard Tiles for SecureX, by Matt Vander Horst
One of the biggest benefits of Cisco SecureX is its open architecture. Anyone can build integrations for SecureX if they can develop an API with the right endpoints that speak the right language. In the case of SecureX, the language is the Cisco Threat Intelligence Model (CTIM). As mentioned above, Cisco Meraki powered Black Hat USA 2022 by providing wired and wireless networking for the entire conference. This meant a lot of equipment and users to keep track of. To avoid having to switch between two different dashboards in the NOC, we decided to build a SecureX integration that would provide Meraki dashboard tiles directly into our single pane of glass: SecureX.
Building an integration for SecureX is simple: decide what functionality you want your integration to offer, build an internet-accessible API that offers those functions, and then add the integration to SecureX. At Black Hat, our Meraki integration supported two capabilities: health and dashboard. Here’s a summary of those capabilities and the API endpoints they expect:
| Capability | Description | API Endpoints |
| Health | Enables SecureX to make sure the module is reachable and working properly. | /health |
| Dashboard | Provides a list of available dashboard tiles and, after a tile is added to a dashboard, the tile data itself. | /tiles
/tile-data |
With our capabilities decided, we moved on to building the API for SecureX to talk to. SecureX doesn’t care how you build this API if it has the expected endpoints and speaks the right language. You could build a SecureX-compatible API directly into your product, as a serverless Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda, as a Python script with Django, and so on. To enable rapid development at Black Hat, we chose to build our integration API on an existing Ubuntu server in AWS running Apache and PHP.
After building the API framework on our AWS server, we had to decide which dashboard tiles to offer. Here’s what we ended up supporting:
| Tile Name | Description |
| Top Applications | Shows the top 10 applications by flow count |
| Client Statistics | Shows a summary of clients |
| Top SSIDs by Usage in GB | Shows the top 10 SSIDs by data usage in GB |
| Access Point Status | Shows a summary of access points |
Finally, once the API was up and running, we could add the integration to SecureX. To do this, you need to create a module definition and then push it to SecureX using its IROH-INT API. After the module is created, it appears in the Available Integration Modules section of SecureX and can be added. Here’s what our module looked like after being added to the Black Hat SecureX instance:
After adding our new tiles to the SecureX dashboard, SecureX would ask our API for data. The API we built would fetch the data from Meraki’s APIs, format the data from Meraki for SecureX, and then return the formatted data. Here’s the result:
These dashboard tiles gave us useful insights into what was going on in the Meraki network environment alongside our existing dashboard tiles for other products such as Cisco Secure Endpoint, Cisco Umbrella, Cisco Secure Malware Analytics, and so on.
If you want to learn more about building integrations with SecureX, check out these resources:
Talos Threat Hunting, by Jerzy ‘Yuri’ Kramarz and Michael Kelly
Black Hat USA 2022 was our first fully supported event, where we deployed an onsite threat hunting team from Talos Incident Response (TIR). Our colleagues and friends from various business units, connected by SecureX integration, granted us access to all the underlying consoles and API points to support the threat hunting efforts enhanced by Talos Intelligence.
The threat hunting team focused on answering three key hypothesis-driven questions and matched that with data modelling across all of the different technology stacks deployed in Black Hat NOC:
To answer the above hypothesis, our analysis started with understanding of how the network architecture is laid out and what kind of data access is granted to NOC. We quickly realized that our critical partners are key to extending visibility beyond Cisco deployed technologies. Great many thanks go to our friends from NetWitness and Palo Alto Networks for sharing full access to their technologies, to ensure that hunting did not stop on just Cisco kit and contextual intelligence could be gathered across different security products.
Daily threat hunt started with gathering data from Meraki API to identify IP and DNS level requests leaving the devices connected to wireless access points across entire conference. Although Meraki does not directly filter the traffic, we wanted to find signs of malicious activity such as DNS exfiltration attempts or connections to known and malicious domains which were not part of the class teaching. Given the level of access, we were then able to investigate network traffic capture associated with suspicious connections and check for suspected Command and Control (C2) points (there were a few from different threat actors!) or attempts to connect back to malicious DNS or Fast Flux domains which indicated that some of the attendee devices were indeed compromised with malware.
That said, this is to be expected given hostility of the network we were researching and the fact that classroom environments have users who can bring their own devices for hands-on labs. SecureX allowed us to quickly plot this internally to find specific hosts which were connecting and talking with malicious endpoints while also showing a number of additional datapoints which were useful for the investigation and hunting. Below is one such investigation, using SecureX threat response.
While looking at internal traffic, we have also found and plotted quite a few different port-scans running across the internal network. While not stopping these, it was interesting to see different tries and attempts by students to find ports and devices across networks. Good thing that network isolation was in place to prevent that! We blurred out the IP and MAC addresses in the image below.
Here is another example of really nice port scan clusters that were running across both internal and external networks we have found. This time it was the case of multiple hosts scanning each other and looking to discovery ports locally and across many of the Internet-based systems. All of that was part of the class but we had to verify that as it looked quite suspicious from the outset. Again, blurred picture for anonymity.
In a few instances, we also identified remarkably interesting clear-text LDAP traffic leaving the environment and giving a clear indicator of which organization the specific device belonged to simply because of the domain name which was requested in the cleartext. It was quite interesting to see that in 2022, we still have a lot of devices talking clear text protocols such as POP3, LDAP, HTTP or FTP, which are easy to subvert via Man-In-The-Middle type of attacks and can easily disclose the content of important messages such as email or server credentials. Below is an example of the plain text email attachments, visible in NetWitness and Cisco Secure Malware Analytics.
In terms of the external attacks, Log4J exploitation attempts were pretty much a daily occurrence on the infrastructure and applications used for attendee registration along with other typical web-based attacks such as SQL injections or path traversals. Overall, we saw a good number of port scans, floods, probes and all kind of web application exploitation attempts showing up daily, at various peak hours. Fortunately, all of them were successfully identified for context (is this part of a training class or demonstration) and contained (if appropriate) before causing any harm to external systems. Given the fact that we could intercept boundary traffic and investigate specific PCAP dumps, we used all these attacks to identify various command-and-control servers for which we also hunted internally to ensure that no internal system is compromised.
The final piece of the puzzle we looked to address, while threat hunting during Black Hat 2022, was automation to discover interesting investigation avenues. Both of us investigated a possibility of threat hunting using Jupyter playbooks to find outliers that warrant a closer look. We have created and developed a set of scripts which would gather the data from API endpoints and create a data frames which could be modeled for further analysis. This allowed us to quickly gather and filter out systems and connections which were not that interesting. Then, focus on specific hosts we should be checking across different technology stacks such as NetWitness and Palo Alto.
Unmistaken Identity, by Ben Greenbaum
An unusual aspect of the Black Hat NOC and associated security operations activities is that this is an intentionally hostile network. People come to learn new tricks and to conduct what would in any other circumstance be viewed rightfully as malicious, unwanted behavior. So, determining whether this is “acceptable” or “unacceptable” malicious behavior is an added step. Additionally, this is a heavily BYOD environment and while we do not want attendees attacking each other, or our infrastructure, there is a certain amount of suspicious or indicative behavior we may need to overlook to focus on higher priority alerts.
In short, there are broadly speaking 3 levels of security event at Black Hat:
When Umbrella alerted us (via a SecureX orchestration Webex workflow) of DNS requests for a domain involved in “Illegal Activity” it was reminiscent of an event at a previous conference where an attendee was caught using the conference network to download forged vaccination documents.
Using the Cisco Secure Malware Analytics platform’s phishing investigation tools, I loaded and explored the subject domain and found it to be a tool that generates and provides pseudo-randomized fake identities, customizable in various ways to match on demographics. Certainly, something that could be used for nefarious purposes, but is not illegal in and of itself. Physical security and access control is, however, also important at Black Hat, and if this activity was part of an effort to undermine that, then this was still a concern.
This is, however, also the kind of thing that gets taught at Black Hat…
Using the reported internal host IP from Umbrella, Meraki’s connection records, and the Meraki access point map, we were able to narrow the activity down to a specific classroom. Looking up what was being taught in that room, we were able to confirm that the activity was related to the course’s subject matter
Network owners and administrators, especially businesses, typically don’t want their network to be used for crimes. However, here at Black Hat what some would consider “crimes” is just “the curriculum”. This adds a layer of complexity to securing and protecting not just Black Hat, but also Black Hat attendees. In security operations, not every investigation leads to a smoking gun. At Black Hat, even when it does, you may find that the smoking gun was fired in a safe manner at an approved target range. Having the right tools on hand can help you make these determinations quickly and free you up to investigate the next potential threat.
25 Years of Black Hat – Musings from the show (and some DNS stats), by Alejo Calaoagan
Back in Singapore, I wrote about cloud app usage and the potential threat landscape surrounding them. My original plan at Black Hat USA was to dig deeper into this vector to see what interesting tidbits I could find on our attendee network. However, given that this was the 25th anniversary of Black Hat (and my 14th in total between Vegas, Singapore, and London), I’ve decided to pivot to talk about the show itself.
I think it’s safe to say, after two difficult pandemic years, Black Hat is back. Maybe it’s the fact that almost everyone has caught COVID by now (or that a lot of people just stopped caring). I caught it myself at RSA this year back in June, the first of consecutive summer super spread events (Cisco Live Vegas was the following week). Both of those shows were in the 15-18k attendee range, well below their pre-pandemic numbers. Black Hat USA 2022 was estimated at 27,000 attendees.
If I remember correctly, 2019 was in the 25-30K range. Last year in Vegas, there were ~3,000 people at the event, tops. 2021 in London, was even lower…it felt like there were less than 1,000 attendees. Things certainly picked up in Singapore (2-3k attendees), though that event doesn’t typically see attendee numbers as high as the other locations. All in all, while the pandemic certainly isn’t over, Las Vegas gave glimpses of what things were like before the “Rona” took over our lives.
The show floor was certainly back to the norm, with swag flying off the countertops and lines for Nike sneaker and Lego giveaways wrapping around different booths. The smiles on people’s faces as they pitched, sold, hustled, and educated the masses reminded me how much I missed this level of engagement. RSA gave me this feeling as well, before COVID sidelined me midway through the show anyway.
Not everything was quite the same. The Black Hat party scene certainly is not what it used to be. There was no Rapid 7 rager this year or last, or a happy hour event thrown by a security company you’ve never heard of at every bar you walk by on the strip. There were still some good networking events here and there, and there were some awesomely random Vanilla Ice, Sugar Ray, and Smashmouth shows. For those of you familiar with Jeremiah Grossman’s annual Black Hat BJJ throwdown, that’s still, thankfully, a thing. Hopefully, in the coming years, some of that old awesomeness returns….
Enough reminiscing, here are our DNS numbers from the show:
From a sheer traffic perspective, this was the busiest Black Hat ever, with over 50 million DNS requests made…
Digging into these numbers, Umbrella observed over 1.3 million security events, including various types of malware across the attendee network. Our threat hunting team was busy all week!
We’ve also seen an increase in app usage at Black Hat:
In a real-world production environment, Umbrella can block unapproved or high-risk apps via DNS.
The increases in DNS traffic volume and Cloud App usage obviously mirrors Black Hat’s return to the center stage of security conferences, following two years of pandemic uncertainty. I’m hopeful that things will continue to trend in a positive direction leading up to London and, hopefully, we’ll see you all there.
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Hats off to the entire NOC team. Check out Black Hat Europe in London, 5-8 December 2022!
Acknowledgements: Special thanks to the Cisco Meraki and Cisco Secure Black Hat NOC team.
SecureX threat response, orchestration, device insights, custom integrations and Malware Analytics: Ian Redden, Aditya Sankar, Ben Greenbaum, Matt Vander Horst and Robert Taylor
Umbrella DNS: Christian Clasen and Alejo Calaoagan
Talos Incident Response Threat Hunters: Jerzy ‘Yuri’ Kramarz and Michael Kelley
Meraki Systems Manager: Paul Fidler (team leader), Paul Hasstedt and Kevin Carter
Meraki Network Engineering: Evan Basta (team leader), Gregory Michel, Richard Fung and CJ Ramsey
Network Design and Wireless Site Survey: Jeffry Handal, Humphrey Cheung, JW McIntire and Romulo Ferreira
Network Build/Tear Down: Dinkar Sharma, Ryan Maclennan, Ron Taylor and Leo Cruz
Critical support in sourcing and delivering the Meraki APs and switches: Lauren Frederick, Eric Goodwin, Isaac Flemate, Scott Pope and Morgan Mann
Also, to our NOC partners NetWitness (especially David Glover), Palo Alto Networks (especially Jason Reverri), Lumen, Gigamon, IronNet, and the entire Black Hat / Informa Tech staff (especially Grifter ‘Neil Wyler’, Bart Stump, Steve Fink, James Pope, Jess Stafford and Steve Oldenbourg).
Read Part 1:
Black Hat USA 2022: Creating Hacker Summer Camp
About Black Hat
For 25 years, Black Hat has provided attendees with the very latest in information security research, development, and trends. These high-profile global events and trainings are driven by the needs of the security community, striving to bring together the best minds in the industry. Black Hat inspires professionals at all career levels, encouraging growth and collaboration among academia, world-class researchers, and leaders in the public and private sectors. Black Hat Briefings and Trainings are held annually in the United States, Europe and USA. More information is available at: blackhat.com. Black Hat is brought to you by Informa Tech.
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 like the myriad expanding galaxies seen in the latest images from the James Webb space telescope, the cybersecurity landscape consists of a growing number of security technology vendors, each with the goal of addressing the continually evolving threats faced by customers today. In order to be effective, cybersecurity tools have to be collaborative—be it sharing relevant threat intelligence, device & user insights, acting on detection and remediation workflows, and more.
We at Cisco Secure have embraced this concept for a while now with our continually growing ecosystem of multi-vendor technology integrations. At the RSA Conference 2022 earlier this year, Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s Executive Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration, spoke of how the ‘cybersecurity poverty line’ is widening and how malicious actors are taking advantage of this gaping hole to unleash persistent attacks. It is imperative that cybersecurity vendors interact with and collaborate with each other to lower this gap. To do this, security vendors must adopt open ecosystems of APIs to easily integrate with each other to provide effective ways for mutual customers to defend and react to cybersecurity attacks.
Like in prior years, this fiscal year 2022 saw us growing to include new ecosystem partners and integrations. With 22 new partners and 51 new integrations in our ecosystem, Cisco Secure Technical Alliance (CSTA) now boasts over 450 integrations, including technical integrations with Cisco Duo and Cisco Kenna. This allows our mutual customers the freedom to implement the cybersecurity tools of their choice with the knowledge that these tools can integrate with each other if they need to, thus realizing a better return on investment in their cybersecurity spending and improving cybersecurity posture.
In this annual round-up of our ecosystem, we congratulate our new partners in CSTA and existing partners as well, who have either created new integrations across our portfolio or augmented existing ones. For more details on each partner integration in this announcement, please read through the individual partner highlights below.
Happy integrating!
The AlienApp for Cisco Secure Endpoint enables you to automate threat detection and response activities between USM Anywhere and Cisco Secure Endpoint. It also enhances the threat response capabilities of USM Anywhere by providing orchestration and response actions to isolate or un-isolate hosts based on risks identified in USM Anywhere. In addition, it allows you to collect hourly events from Cisco Secure Endpoint through the USM Anywhere Job Scheduler. Read more here.
AttackIQ automates the evaluation of Cisco Secure Endpoint against the tactic categories as outlined by MITRE ATT&CK. The AttackIQ and Cisco partnership and technical integration enables organizations to validate that the Cisco Secure Endpoint is deployed correctly and configured optimally, ensuring protection for your endpoints against the latest threats. Read more here.
With Certego Tactical Response for Cisco Secure Endpoint, monitored endpoints are monitored by the Certego PanOptikon SOAR platform. When Certego IRT detects malicious activities on a specific host in the customer’s network, it can isolate compromised hosts to block the attack, even without requiring the user to access the Cisco Secure Endpoint Console. Read more about the Certego here.
Cisco Secure Endpoint is now certified for the ServiceNow ITSM San Diego release. The Cisco Secure Endpoint App on ServiceNow provides users with the ability to integrate event data from the Cisco Secure Endpoint into ServiceNow by creating ITSM incidents. The app automates the collection of events from Cisco Secure Endpoint and groups them into single incidents. Read more here.
FAMOC manage from Techstep, a Gartner-recognized MMS provider, is an MDM designed to give IT a complete view and absolute control over mobile devices used by the workforce, so that people can work more effectively and securely. With the Cisco Security Connector for iOS integration, FAMOC MDM extends its enterprise mobility management with an extra layer of network security and traffic analysis tool, giving IT admins tools to make actionable decisions and design access control policies. Read more here.
Elastic Security now supports event ingestion from Cisco Umbrella, providing visibility into user activity and attempts to access potentially malicious domains. This new integration supports Umbrella proxy, cloud firewall, IP, and DNS logs. This integration enables security analysts to detect threats and visualize Cisco Umbrella data, and also correlate Umbrella events with other data sources including endpoint, cloud, and network. This integration expands on Elastic’s on-going expansion of Cisco integrations including ASA, Nexus, Meraki, Duo and Secure Firewall Threat Defense. Read more here.
FortiSIEM brings together visibility, correlation, automated response, and remediation in a single, scalable solution. It reduces the complexity of managing network and security operations to effectively free resources, improve breach detection, and even prevent breaches. Read more here.
Hunters ingests Cisco Umbrella log and alert information into our SOC Platform; the Platform then correlates that information with all of the other (vendor agnostic) customer security telemetry, including EDR, Identity and Cloud/Network log data, in the customer’s infrastructure to synthesize and detect incidents with a higher fidelity than any single tool alone can produce. Read more here.
LearnSafe equips school leaders (K-12) with evidence-based information to better understand which students are exhibiting behavioral issues and in need of help based on what they are using, saying, and doing on the school-owned computer. With Cisco Umbrella, LearnSafe administrators are able to block access to domains their students should not be accessing. Read more here.
The Cisco Umbrella solution for Microsoft Azure Sentinel is now live! This integration enables your customers to ingest Cisco Umbrella events stored in Amazon S3 into Microsoft Sentinel using the Amazon S3 REST API. Read more here.
Sumo Logic’s cloud-native collector supports automatic ingestion of logs from Cisco Umbrella’s hosted AWS S3 buckets. Data collected from Umbrella can then be routed to Sumo’s Cloud SIEM, where it is then automatically normalized and applied to our rule’s engine. Several built-in rules for Umbrella have been created that, when triggered, will generate security signals in the platform. These and other security signals are then clustered together based on related entities (IP, email, domain name, URL, etc.) to create insights for review by the SOC. Read more here.
The Secure Firewall team and Alkira have validated Secure Firewall (Virtual) Version 7.1 to run on Alkira’s cloud network as-a-service (CNaaS) platform. The solution offers on-demand hybrid and multi-cloud connectivity, integrated network and security services, end-to-end visibility, controls and governance. Read more here.
The Secure Firewall team has validated Cyware’s STIX 1.2 threat intelligence feed for interoperability with Secure Firewall’s Threat Intelligence Director. Customers can quickly operationalize the inbound data to protect the network from the latest threats. Read more here.
Dragos protects critical infrastructure and has joined the CSTA program. Dragos inventories assets, determines risk and vulnerabilities and generates firewall policy objects that administrators can apply to their Cisco Secure Firewall deployment through its REST API. Read more here.
The Secure Firewall team and Equinix have validated Secure Firewall (Virtual) to run on Equinix’s Network Edge as a Service platform. Equinix Fabric allows you to connect digital infrastructure and services on demand via secure, software-defined interconnection (Ecosystem). Read more here.
Fastvue has joined the CSTA program. The Fastvue Site Clean engine intelligently interprets Cisco Secure Firewall log data so that non-technical employees can easily see what people are actually doing online. The data use to keep companies compliant with workplace and school policies. Read more here.
Alef Nula has developed a new integration with ISE. The Alef Nula Identity Bridge consumes identity updates published by pxGrid and serves them to ASA firewalls using the CDA/Radius protocol. Using pxGrid v2.0, it replaces unsupported Cisco CDA and allows ASA firewalls to become an identity consumer of ISE context. It can read the full identity database and can update registered ASA firewalls in Full Download mode. Read more here.
Forescout’s pxGrid Plugin integrates with existing Cisco ISE deployments so that you can benefit from Forescout visibility and assessment for policy decisions, while continuing to use ISE as an enforcement point. The pxGrid Plugin enables Forescout platform policies to detect ISE-related properties on endpoints, and to apply Cisco ISE ANC policies, including policies that assign Security Groups to devices. Read more here.
FortiManager provides automation-driven centralized management of Fortinet devices from a single console, enabling full administration and visibility of your network devices through streamlined provisioning and innovative automation tools. FortiManager dynamically collects updates from Cisco ISE with pxGrid and forwards them to FortiGate using the Fortinet Single Sign On (FSSO) protocol. This enables the use of session information collected by Cisco ISE to be leveraged in FortiOS security policies. Read more here.
Radiflow provides OT ICS policy creation and enforcement with the Radiflow iSID IDS. They recently completed a new integration with ISE leveraging pxGrid. With this integration Cisco ISE receives enriched data of OT devices from Radiflow iSID and will process it according to the profiles and policies which have been configured. Enriching ISE with OT specific insights available with iSID’s DPI engine enables better decision making within ISE by providing additional context to categorize devices by their type/function within the OT environment. Read more here.
XTENDISE is a simple web application connected to Cisco ISE. It is designed for administrators, helpdesk, operators or anyone who needs to work with ISE and helps them with everyday routine tasks related to 802.1X without the need to train them in Cisco ISE. XTENDISE saves administrators’ time, prevents errors and increases network security. Read more here.
The Cisco Secure Malware Analytics Add-On for Splunk leverages the Threat Grid API to enrich events within Splunk. The add-on is now updated for Splunk 8 and is available on Splunkbase. Read more here.
Censys now has an integration with SecureX threat response, which returns Sightings of IP and IPv6 Observables (IOCs) in an investigation. Read more about the Censys relay module here.
The new Exabeam integration empowers users to investigate an observable and determine if it is contained in a log message stored in Exabeam Fusion SIEM Data Lake. It provides users with the date and time the observable was seen in the log, the forwarder that sent the log, and the raw log messages. When you pivot into Exabeam and search for an observable in all the log messages, the results of the search are displayed in the Exabeam UI. This integration allows you to query IPv4, IPv6, SHA-1, SHA-256, MD5, domain, URL, file path, user and email data types and it returns sightings of an observable from each log message. Read more here.
The LogRhythm integration empowers users to investigate an observable and determine if it is contained in an event stored in LogRhythm. It provides users with the date and time the observable was seen in the event and the raw event data. This integration allows you to query IPv4 and IPv6 data types and it returns sightings of an observable from each event. Read more here.
A proof-of-concept integration with RSA NetWitness SIEM was built for the RSAC SOC and Black Hat NOCs. The SecureX Concrete Relay implementation using NetWitness as a third-party Cyber Threat Intelligence service provider. The Relay itself is just a simple application written in Python that can be easily packaged and deployed. Read more here.
Cisco SecureX threat response integration with SecOps is now certified for the ServiceNow San Diego release. The module allows ServiceNow SecOps to leverage the Verdicts, Refer and Response capabilities provided by SecureX threat response to assist the security analyst in their investigation workflow. Read more here.
The Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM integration provides security analysts with enhanced visibility across the enterprise to thoroughly understand the impact and context of an attack. Streamlined workflows automatically triage alerts to maximize security analyst efficiency and focus. This integration indicates to users that the observable in an investigation is contained in an insight and/or signal within Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM. It allows you to query IPv4, IPv6, SHA-1, SHA-256, MD5, domain, and URL data types. It also returns sightings and indicators of an observable from each insight and signal retrieved from Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM. Read more here.
APIVoid provides JSON APIs useful for cyber threat analysis, threat detection and threat prevention. The following APIVoid atomic actions for SecureX Orchestration Workflows are now available: Get Domain Reputation, Get IP Reputation, Get URL Reputation, Get URL Status. Access the workflows here.
Censys is a company that allows users to discover the devices, networks, and infrastructure on the Internet and monitor how it changes over time. SecureX orchestration atomic actions for Censys is now available and includes: Basic Search. Access the workflows here.
This integration radically reduces the time and resources enterprises spend to detect, investigate, and remediate ransomware threats to data. It empowers SecOps, ITOps and NetOps with visibility and automation to collaborate in countering ransomware — regardless of whether data resides on-premises or in the cloud — delivering enterprise-wide confidence in deterring, detecting, and recovering fast from cyberattacks. Cohesity’s next-gen data management enhances Cisco SecureX by adding visibility and context to data, complementing Cisco’s existing capabilities for networks, endpoints, clouds, and apps. Read more here.
SecureX orchestration atomic actions for workflows are now available for Farsight Security DNSDB. They include various items like DKIM key inspections, DNS Resource Records and more. Access the workflows here.
SecureX orchestration workflows for Fortinet FortiGate are now available: Block URL, IP and Domain Threat Containment. Access the workflows here.
SecureX orchestration workflows for Jamf Pro include: Lock Computer, Lock Mobile Device. Access the workflows here.
SecureX orchestration workflows for Palo Alto Networks Panorama are now available: Block URL, IP, Domain Threat Containment. Access the workflows here.
A new Orchestration action provides top MacOS IR Indicators to ServiceNow This workflow runs multiple Orbital queries on the endpoint provided to look for top incident response indicators of compromise. The results are then posted to a ServiceNow incident. Supported observables: ip, mac_address, amp_computer_guid, hostname. Access the workflow here.
Shodan is a database of billions of publicly available IP addresses, and it’s used by security experts to analyze network security. SecureX orchestration atomic actions for Shodan include: Basic Search. Access the workflows here.
Earlier this year we announced SecureX Device Insights which provides comprehensive endpoint inventory in a single unified view. Endpoint searching and reporting allows you to assess device security configuration on employee-owned, contractor-owned, company owned, and IoT/OT devices—without risking business disruption. With Device Insights you can
Device insights supports the following third-party sources in its initial release: Jamf Pro, Microsoft Intune, Ivanti MobileIron and VMware Workspace ONE (formerly AirWatch).
Bitglass’ Next-Gen CASB provides data protection, threat protection, access management, and visibility, while Duo offers identity verification options like SSO and MFA. The Duo and Bitglass integration provide a synergistic solution that funnels traffic through Duo’s SSO and verifies users via its MFA so Bitglass can deliver real-time data loss prevention and granular adaptive access control. Because of Bitglass’ agentless architecture, the joint solution can secure any app, any device, anywhere. Read more about the integration here. A joint solution brief is also available here.
Cmd helps companies authenticate and manage user security in Linux production environments without slowing down teams — you don’t need to individually configure identities and devices. Cmd integrates with Duo to put 2FA checkpoints into Linux-based data centers and cloud infrastructure. The combination of Cmd and Duo enables development teams to run at the modern, agile pace they are accustomed to without any security-induced slowdowns. Read more here.
Darktrace is an AI-native platform that delivers self-learning cyber defense and AI investigations and seamlessly integrates with other tools via an open and extensible architecture. Darktrace’s Security Module for Duo provides coverage over access, user sessions and platform administration within the Duo platform. Read more here.
Dashlane is a password manager that now supports Duo using Duo SSO. The integration lets IT Administrators easily deploy Duo + Dashlane and set up access policies. End users can easily access Dashlane and their passwords with SSO from Duo. Read more here.
HashiCorp Vault is an identity-based secrets and encryption management system. A secret is anything that you want to tightly control access to, such as API encryption keys, passwords, and certificates. Add another layer of protection and protect access to secrets within HashiCorp Vault with Duo Security MFA. Read more here. A recording of the Cisco Duo + HashiCorp webinar is available to view here.
Oort discovers vulnerabilities across an entire user population (or a segment of it). Trigger notifications related to behavioral anomalies or best practices, or policies not being followed. Oort integrates with Duo for identity analytics and threat detection to provide a complete picture of the user behavior and highlight any anomalous activity or identify risks. Read more here.
Perimeter 81 simplifies cyber and network security for the hybrid workforce, ensuring secure access to local networks, applications, and cloud infrastructure. Their integration with Duo provides protection for administrators and end-users who need to log in to Perimeter 81. Read more here.
Specops Software, a leading provider of password management and authentication solutions, protects businesses by securing user authentication across high-risk tasks including account unlocks and password recovery via self-service or the IT service desk. Organizations can extend Duo authentication to secure user verification across these use cases. Read about the integration here. A blog on the integration is also available here.
Sectona is a Privileged Access Management company that delivers integrated privilege management components for securing dynamic remote workforce access across on-premises or cloud workloads, endpoints, and machine-to-machine communication. Duo’s secure access multi-factor authentication can be used to ensure that each user authenticates using multiple methods (factors) while accessing Sectona Privileged Access Management. Read more here.
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Security tools are only as good as the intelligence and expertise that feeds them. We’re very fortunate to have our security technologies powered by Cisco Talos, one of the largest and most trusted threat intelligence groups in the world. Talos is comprised of highly skilled researchers, analysts, and engineers who provide industry-leading visibility, actionable intelligence, and vulnerability research to protect both our customers and the internet at large.
The Talos team serves as a crucial pillar of our innovation — alerting customers and the public to new threats and mitigation tactics, enabling us to quickly incorporate protection into our products, and stepping in to help organizations with incident response, threat hunting, compromise assessments and more. Talos can also be found securing large-scale events such as the Super Bowl, and working with government and law enforcement organizations across the globe to share intelligence.
With Cisco’s vast customer base and broad portfolio — from routers and switches to email and endpoints — Talos has visibility into worldwide telemetry. Once a threat is seen, whether it’s a phishing URL or an IP address hosting malware, detections are created and indicators of compromise are categorized and blocked across our Cisco Secure portfolio.
Talos also leverages its unique insights to help society as a whole better understand and combat the cyberattacks facing us daily. During the war in Ukraine, the group has taken on the additional task of defending over 30 critical infrastructure providers in the country by directly managing and monitoring their endpoint security.
The reality of security today is that organizations must be constantly ready to detect and contain both known and unknown threats, minimize impact, and keep business going no matter what happens in the cyber realm. In light of hybrid work, evolving network architectures, and increasingly insidious attacks, all organizations must also be prepared to rapidly recover if disaster strikes, and then emerge stronger. We refer to this as security resilience, and Talos plays a critical role in helping our customers achieve it.
For several years, our integrated, cloud-native Cisco SecureX platform has been delivering extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities and more. SecureX allows customers to aggregate, analyze, and act on intelligence from disparate sources for a coordinated response to cyber threats.
Through the SecureX platform, intelligence from Talos is combined with telemetry from our customers’ environments — including many third-party tools — to provide a more complete picture of what’s going on in the network. Additionally, built-in, automated response functionality helps to speed up and streamline mitigation. This way, potential attacks can be identified, prioritized, and remediated before they lead to major impact.
For XDR to be successful, it must not only aggregate data, but also make sense of it. Through combined insights from various resources, SecureX customers obtain the unified visibility and context needed to rapidly prioritize the right threats at the right time. With SecureX, security analysts spend up to 90 percent less time per incident.
One of Australia’s largest universities, Deakin University, needed to improve its outdated security posture and transition from ad hoc processes to a mature program. Its small security team sought an integrated solution to simplify and strengthen threat defense.
With a suite of Cisco security products integrated through SecureX, Deakin University was able to reduce the typical investigation and response time for a major threat down from over a week to just an hour. The university was also able to decrease its response time for malicious emails from an hour to as little as five minutes.
“The most important outcome that we have achieved so far is that security is now a trusted function.”
– Fadi Aljafari, Information Security and Risk Manager, Deakin University
Also in the education space, AzEduNet provides connectivity and online services to 1.5 million students and 150,000 teachers at 4,300 educational institutions in Azerbaijan. “We don’t have enough staff to monitor every entry point into our network and correlate all the information from our security solutions,” says Bahruz Ibrahimov, senior information security engineer at AzEduNet.
The organization therefore implemented Cisco SecureX to accelerate investigations and incident management, maximize operational efficiency with automated workflows, and decrease threat response time. With SecureX, AzEduNet has reduced its security incidents by 80 percent.
“The integration with all our Cisco Secure solutions and with other vendors saves us response and investigation time, as well as saving time for our engineers.”
– Bahruz Ibrahimov, Senior Information Security Engineer, AzEduNet
The sophistication of attackers and sheer number of threats out there today make it extremely challenging for most cybersecurity teams to effectively stay on top of alerts and recognize when something requires their immediate attention. According to a survey by ESG, 81 percent of organizations say their security operations have been affected by the cybersecurity skills shortage.
That’s why Talos employs hundreds of researchers around the globe — and around the clock — to collect and analyze massive amounts of threat data. The group uses the latest in machine learning logic and custom algorithms to distill the data into manageable, actionable intelligence.
“Make no mistake, this is a battle,” said Nick Biasini, head of outreach for Cisco Talos, who oversees a team of global threat hunters. “In order to keep up with the adversaries, you really need a deep technical understanding of how these threats are constructed and how the malware operates to quickly identify how it’s changing and evolving. Offense is easy, defense is hard.”
Earlier this year, we unveiled our strategic vision for the Cisco Security Cloud to deliver end-to-end security across hybrid, multicloud environments. Talos will continue to play a pivotal role in our technology as we execute on this vision. In addition to driving protection in our products, Talos also offers more customized and hands-on expertise to customers when needed.
Cisco Talos Incident Response provides a full suite of proactive and emergency services to help organizations prepare for, respond to, and recover from a breach — 24 hours a day. Additionally, the recently released Talos Intel on Demand service delivers custom research unique to your organization, as well as direct access to Talos security analysts for increased awareness and confidence.
Visit our dedicated Cisco Talos web page to learn more about the group and the resources it offers to help keep global organizations cyber resilient. Then, discover how XDR helps Security Operations Center (SOC) teams hunt for, investigate, and remediate threats.
Watch video: What it means to be a threat hunter
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With a rising number of cyberattacks targeting organizations, protecting sensitive customer information has never been more critical. The stakes are high due to the financial losses, reputational damage, legal & compliance fines, and more that often stem from mishandled data. At Cisco Secure, we recognize this and are continuously looking for ways to improve our information security practices.
As a result, we are excited to announce that we have achieved SOC 2 compliance for the Cisco Secure Endpoint solution, Cisco Malware Analytics, and the Cisco SecureX platform! SOC 2 is a compliance framework developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) that helps ensure organizations responsibly handle customer data. This is done via strong information security practices that adhere to trust service criteria for security, availability, and confidentiality.
Achieving SOC 2 compliance means that we have adhered to these trust principles and gone through a rigorous audit by an independent, third-party firm to validate our information security practices. This shows that we are committed to safeguarding your sensitive data with robust controls in place and gives you the peace of mind that your data is in good hands. We have achieved SOC 2 Type 2 compliance for the following Cisco Secure products:
To learn more about SOC 2 compliance for these solutions, please speak to your Cisco representative, or visit the Cisco Trust Portal, where you can access the SOC 2 reports.
Chief Information Officers and other technology decision makers continuously seek new and better ways to evaluate and manage their investments in innovation – especially the technologies that may create consequential decisions that impact human rights. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more prominent in vendor offerings, there is an increasing need to identify, manage, and mitigate the unique risks that AI-based technologies may bring.
Cisco is committed to maintaining a responsible, fair, and reflective approach to the governance, implementation, and use of AI technologies in our solutions. The Cisco Responsible AI initiative maximizes the potential benefits of AI while mitigating bias or inappropriate use of these technologies.
Gartner® Research recently published “Innovation Insight for Bias Detection/Mitigation, Explainable AI and Interpretable AI,” offering guidance on the best ways to incorporate AI-based solutions that facilitates “understanding, trust and performance accountability required by stakeholders.” This newsletter describes Cisco’s approach to Responsible AI governance and features this Gartner report.
At Cisco, we are committed to managing AI development in a way that augments our focus on security, privacy, and human rights. The Cisco Responsible AI initiative and framework governs the application of responsible AI controls in our product development lifecycle, how we manage incidents that arise, engage externally, and its use across Cisco’s solutions, services, and enterprise operations.
Our Responsible AI framework comprises:
We base our Responsible AI initiative on principles consistent with Cisco’s operating practices and directly applicable to the governance of AI innovation. These principles—Transparency, Fairness, Accountability, Privacy, Security, and Reliability—are used to upskill our development teams to map to controls in the Cisco Secure Development Lifecycle and embed Security by Design, Privacy by Design, and Human Rights by Design in our solutions. And our principle-based approach empowers customers to take part in a continuous feedback cycle that informs our development process.
We strive to meet the highest standards of these principles when developing, deploying, and operating AI-based solutions to respect human rights, encourage innovation, and serve Cisco’s purpose to power an inclusive future for all.
Check out Gartner recommendations for integrating AI into an organization’s data systems in this Newsletter and learn more about Cisco’s approach to Responsible Innovation by reading our introduction “Transparency Is Key: Introducing Cisco Responsible AI.”
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During our threat hunting exercises in recent months, we’ve started to observe a distinguishing pattern of msiexec.exe usage across different endpoints. As we drilled down to individual assets, we found traces of a recently discovered malware called Raspberry Robin. The RedCanary Research Team first coined the name for this malware in their blog post, and Sekoia published a Flash Report about the activity under the name of QNAP Worm. Both articles offer great analysis of the malware’s behavior. Our findings support and enrich prior research on the topic.
Raspberry Robin is a worm that spreads over an external drive. After initial infection, it downloads its payload through msiexec.exe from QNAP cloud accounts, executes its code through rundll32.exe, and establishes a command and control (C2) channel through TOR connections.
Let’s walkthrough the steps of the kill-chain to see how this malware functions.
Raspberry Robin is delivered through infected external disks. Once attached, cmd.exe tries to execute commands from a file within that disk. This file is either a .lnk file or a file with a specific naming pattern. Files with this pattern exhibit a 2 to 5 character name with an usually obscure extension, including .swy, .chk, .ico, .usb, .xml, and .cfg. Also, the attacker uses an excessive amount of whitespace/non printable characters and changing letter case to avoid string matching detection techniques. Example command lines include:
File sample for delivery can be found in this URL:
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/04c13e8b168b6f313745be4034db92bf725d47091a6985de9682b21588b8bcae/relations
Next, we observe explorer.exe running with an obscure command line argument, spawned by a previous instance of cmd.exe. This obscure argument seems to take the name of an infected external drive or .lnk file that was previously executed. Some of the samples had values including USB, USB DISK, or USB Drive, while some other samples had more specific names. On every instance of explorer.exe we see that the adversary is changing the letter case to avoid detection:
After delivery and initial execution, cmd.exe spawns msiexec.exe to download the Raspberry Robin payload. It uses -q or /q together with standard installation parameter to operate quietly. Once again, mixed case letters are used to bypass detection:
As you can see above, URLs used for payload download have a specific pattern. Domains use 2 to 4 character names with obscure TLDs including .xyz, .hk, .info, .pw, .cx, .me, and more. URL paths have a single directory with a random string 11 characters long, followed by hostname and the username of the victim. On network telemetry, we also observed the Windows Installer user agent due to the usage of msiexec.exe. To detect Raspberry Robin through its URL pattern, use this regex:
^http[s]{0,1}\:\/\/[a-zA-Z0-9]{2,4}\.[a-zA-Z0-9]{2,6}\:8080\/[a-zA-Z0-9]+\/.*?(?:-|\=|\?).*?$
If we look up the WHOIS information for given domains, we see domain registration dates going as far back as February 2015. We also see an increase on registered domains starting from September 2021, which aligns with initial observations of Raspberry Robin by our peers.
| WHOIS Creation Date | Count |
| 12/9/2015 | 1 |
| … | … |
| 10/8/2020 | 1 |
| 11/14/2020 | 1 |
| 7/3/2021 | 1 |
| 7/26/2021 | 2 |
| 9/11/2021 | 2 |
| 9/23/2021 | 9 |
| 9/24/2021 | 6 |
| 9/26/2021 | 4 |
| 9/27/2021 | 2 |
| 11/9/2021 | 3 |
| 11/10/2021 | 1 |
| 11/18/2021 | 2 |
| 11/21/2021 | 3 |
| 12/11/2021 | 7 |
| 12/31/2021 | 7 |
| 1/17/2022 | 6 |
| 1/30/2022 | 11 |
| 1/31/2022 | 3 |
| 4/17/2022 | 5 |
Table 1: Distribution of domain creation dates over time
Associated domains have SSL certificates with the subject alternative name of q74243532.myqnapcloud.com, which points out the underlying QNAP cloud infra. Also, their URL scan results return login pages to QTS service of QNAP:
Once the payload is downloaded, it is executed through various system binaries. First, rundll32.exe uses the ShellExec_RunDLL function from shell32.dll to leverage system binaries such as msiexec.exe, odbcconf.exe, or control.exe. These binaries are used to execute the payload stored in C:\ProgramData\[3 chars]\
It is followed by the execution of fodhelper.exe, which has the auto elevated bit set to true. It is often leveraged by adversaries in order to bypass User Account Control and execute additional commands with escalated privileges [3]. To monitor suspicious executions of fodhelper.exe, we suggest monitoring its instances without any command line arguments.
Raspberry Robin sets up its C2 channel through the additional execution of system binaries without any command line argument, which is quite unusual. That likely points to process injection given elevated privileges in previous steps of execution. It uses dllhost.exe, rundll32.exe, and regsvr32.exe to set up a TOR connection.
In Cisco Global Threat Alerts available through Cisco Secure Network Analytics and Cisco Secure Endpoint, we track this activity under the Raspberry Robin threat object. Image 3 shows a detection sample of Raspberry Robin:
Raspberry Robin tries to remain undetected through its use of system binaries, mixed letter case, TOR-based C2, and abuse of compromised QNAP accounts. Although we have similar intelligence gaps (how it infects external disks, what are its actions on objective) like our peers, we are continuously observing its activities.
| Type | Stage | IOC |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | k6j[.]pw |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | kjaj[.]top |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | v0[.]cx |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | zk4[.]me |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | zk5[.]co |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | 0dz[.]me |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | 0e[.]si |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | 5qw[.]pw |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | 6w[.]re |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | 6xj[.]xyz |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | aij[.]hk |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | b9[.]pm |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | glnj[.]nl |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | j4r[.]xyz |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | j68[.]info |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | j8[.]si |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | jjl[.]one |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | jzm[.]pw |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | k6c[.]org |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | kj1[.]xyz |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | kr4[.]xyz |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | l9b[.]org |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | lwip[.]re |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | mzjc[.]is |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | nt3[.]xyz |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | qmpo[.]art |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | tiua[.]uk |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | vn6[.]co |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | z7s[.]org |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | k5x[.]xyz |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | 6Y[.]rE |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | doem[.]Re |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | bpyo[.]IN |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | l5k[.]xYZ |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | uQW[.]fUTbOL |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | t7[.]Nz |
| Domain | Payload Delivery | 0t[.]yT |
Ransomware and other advanced attacks continue to evolve and threaten organizations around the world. Effectively defending your endpoints from these attacks can be a complex undertaking, and a seemingly endless number of security acronyms only compounds that complexity. There are so many acronyms – EPP, EDR, MEDR, MDR, XDR, and more – for various cybersecurity products and services that it becomes difficult to understand the differences between them and choose the right solution for your organization. Deciphering all these acronyms is a task on its own and deciding which solution works best for you is even more challenging.
We here at Cisco believe that understanding these acronyms and determining which security products or services are the best fit for your organization’s needs doesn’t have to be so hard. That’s why we developed this blog – the first in a series – to give you an overview of the different types of threat detection and response solutions.
This series will help you understand the benefits and disadvantages of each solution, the similarities and differences between these solutions, and how to identify the right solution for your organization. Now let’s go over the different types of security solutions.
There are several types of threat detection and response solutions, including:
These solutions are similar in that they all enable you to detect and respond to threats, but they differ by the environment(s) being monitored for threats, who conducts the monitoring, as well as how alerts are consolidated and correlated. For instance, certain solutions will only monitor your endpoints (EDR, MEDR) while others will monitor a broader environment (XDR, MDR). In addition, some of these solutions are actually managed services where a third-party monitors your environment (MEDR, MDR) versus solutions that you monitor and manage yourself (EDR, XDR).
When evaluating these solutions, keep in mind that there isn’t a single correct solution for every organization. This is because each organization has different needs, security maturities, resource levels, and goals. For example, deploying an EDR makes sense for an organization that currently has only a basic anti-virus solution, but this seems like table stakes to a company that already has a Security Operations Center (SOC).
That being said, there are a few questions you can ask yourself to find the cybersecurity solution that best fits your needs, including:
Of these questions, the most critical are about your security goals and current cybersecurity posture. For instance, organizations at the beginning of their security journey may want to look at an EDR or MEDR solution, while companies that are further along their journey are more likely to be interested in an XDR. Asking whether you already have or are willing to build out a SOC is another essential question. This will help you understand whether you should run your security yourself (EDR, XDR) or find a third-party to manage it for you (MEDR, MDR).
Asking whether you have or are willing to hire the right security talent is another critical question to pose. This will also help determine whether to manage your cybersecurity solution yourself or have a third-party run it for you. Finally, questions about visibility and context, alert, and security tool fatigue, as well as detection and response times will help you to decide if your current security stack is sufficient or if you need to deploy a next-generation solution such as an XDR.
These questions will help guide your decision-making process and give you the information you need to make an informed decision on your cybersecurity solution. For more details on the different endpoint security acronyms and how to determine the right solution for your organization, keep an eye out for the next blog in this series – Unscrambling Cybersecurity Acronyms: The ABCs of EDR and MEDR. Stay tuned!
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Over her 25-year-plus career, Saleema Syed has seen the information security industry from a variety of vantage points, all while championing women in technology. Syed worked as director of business systems and data management for Duo Security before rising to vice president of information technology. Later, after Duo was acquired by Cisco, she transitioned to new roles within the larger organization and now heads up operations for Webex Marketing. In this position Syed brings structure across different functions of marketing including brand, events and technology while also serving as chief operating officer for Chief Marketing Officer Aruna Ravichandran.
“I fell in love with the culture, the kindness, the heart of this company,” Syed said.
Recently, she shared her passion for problem solving and inclusion with the Duo Blog, along with the advice she gives mentees navigating their own career paths.
Saleema Syed: I like chaos and I love putting a method to the madness. With marketing we have to react to the market, react to the business, react internally. What energizes me is there’s never a dull day and there is always this ability to bring some overall end to end process.
I love running towards a burning car and figuring out how to put it out. I love change. I know change is the only constant and rather than running away from it, I thrive in it. I like to look at it and ask, “What can we do to break it down and figure out what we need to do?”
My brain works in terms of boxes and flows and charts and spreadsheets so when I look at something I’m like, “Okay, what is a box? What is a process? How do I untangle it?” I like sitting in the discomfort and understanding what to do to get out of it.
Saleema Syed: There are three things I always keep in mind when I look at what I’m doing and where I want to be. One is, at the core of it, does it fill my cup of empathy and allow me to be true to who I am in how I treat people or how I build a team?
The second thing is, will I have the opportunity to influence and impact the people on the team or my family? How do I show myself to my daughter who is growing and seeing how to become who she is as a career person?
The third thing is, is it something new and am I learning something? Continuous learning is a huge part of who I am, so that drives me to get out of my comfort zone constantly.
When I’m changing jobs people usually say, “You’ve set up this team, you’re so comfortable. Now all you have to do is sit back and execute.” And my answer is, “That’s exactly why I am moving.”
If I am comfortable I’m not learning, and I don’t know if I’m adding any more value than I’ve set up. That means it’s time for me to move on and elevate somebody. What I’m doing is sending the elevator down to somebody on the team to grow.
That’s why I’ve had people who work for me for many years follow me through multiple organizations, which as a leader has been my pinnacle of what I call my success. Success is not my role; it is how many people I have impacted and influenced.
Saleema Syed: I keep going back to Duo because working at that organization and meeting those people defined me as a human being. One of the strategic pillars of that organization is to be kinder than necessary.
However complicated the work challenges are, those around me must be aligned with what my integral values are and who I am. They have to have empathy and kindness in their heart. If that is not there, no matter how much I love solving challenges and know I can solve them, I’m not going to go for it. I’ve been extremely lucky at Duo, Cisco and Webex that I’ve been around those kinds of people.
If you look at Webex, I love the core of what we are, the journey we are on, the inclusivity. We are not just selling Webex messaging or other products. At the heart of it we are looking at how we are influencing people and things around us by making sure that there is inclusivity in the collaboration tools that we are launching.
Saleema Syed: My leadership style is pretty simple: nobody works for me; people work with me. I lead with making sure that people know this is the problem you’re trying to solve, here is the context of what we are trying to do. Now, let’s figure out how we solve it. That is something that has helped my team be part of the problem solving that I love to do.
When I interview people my first questions are, “What does the job bring to you? How would this job fill your cup?” That throws people off every time. You can teach any technology, you can teach any skill set, but if you don’t have the basic passion, the attitude to be able to do this job, then everything else can just go out the door.
Saleema Syed: I have a very diverse background. I am an Indian by birth and grew up in the Middle East. When I went into engineering, finished my education and started my career, one of the things I realized was that as a woman of color, I always wanted to apply for positions that I was fully qualified for. I wanted to make sure I knew everything about the job because a very big fear was being asked a question in the interview I didn’t know. LinkedIn’s Gender Insights Report found that women apply for 20% fewer jobs than men despite similar job search behaviors. That has been a very challenging mental barrier for me to break.
Trey Boynton, who was at Duo and now she’s leading Cisco in a beautiful journey of diversity as the senior director of inclusion and collaboration strategy always said, “We have to have that bicycle lane on the road, whether it is for females, whether it is for people of color or any LGBTQIA+ community members. That is how we get people to bring that confidence in to learn, grow and then they can merge easily.”
“Passion is a part of who I am and is contributing to my growth.” – Saleema Syed
Whatever I faced as I was growing up, whether it was my dark skin, whether it was my accent, whether it was, “Oh, you’re way too passionate” has been some of the feedback that I’ve gotten. In my career if I’m told I’m way too passionate I turn that around and say, “Passion is a part of who I am and is contributing to my growth.”
Saleema Syed: Within Webex, within Cisco, I try to be part of anything that I can do in terms of giving back to the community. I’m definitely a big proponent of women in technology. In the local Dallas area I run a program by myself and go into schools and advocate for girls in STEM. Cisco is amazing in how it gives us time to volunteer. I love that educating kids is part of my journey of giving back. That’s the generation you can influence.
How do we enable children and women to be more open to technology and being part of the technology field? Let’s look at the percentage of diversity in the technology field and be aware of it. It’s not only about the diversity numbers, but are we bringing in candidates at the leadership level and giving them not just a seat at the table but a voice at the table, too?
You also have to talk about what you do and with passion and energy because if you don’t, people get intimidated. If you can influence one person who comes from an underrepresented community, imagine what you are doing, not just for that person, but for his household, for his family, for his extended community. I have a lot more to do, but as I get into the next decade of my life and my career, that is something that is a huge focus for me.
Saleema Syed: First and foremost it’s very important to spend time and understand the business and the products in whatever industry you’re going into. It is key to your growth. Especially if it’s a security industry, take time to understand the products, the technology or the function that you’re trying to get into. Contextual understanding and product understanding are extremely important.
The second piece is to keep learning. Cisco is amazing in trying to help you learn and support you financially to be able to do it. I went back and got my executive MBA four years ago. Give yourself a goal of learning a new something, whether it is a new function, new technology or new leadership skill.
The third piece is to create a spreadsheet of where you want to be in two years. Put that out there and then work back just like you would do a project plan. Work back month by month, quarter by quarter. What are the skill sets you need to learn to get there?
The last part is: Do the job you want versus the job you are in. Of course, you have to do the job you are in, but do the job you want to get to. Don’t wait for a title, don’t wait for a promotion to act. No. What do you want to be? Show that to your leaders and yourself. The title will come, money will come, everything will come, but am I doing the job that I want and enjoy and I want to get to?
To learn more about Webex, Cisco and Duo Security and how you can apply your passion, advocacy and problem solving to make a difference in cybersecurity, browse our open roles.
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We’re excited to announce Cisco Secure Client, formerly AnyConnect, as the new version of one of the most widely deployed security agents. As the unified security agent for Cisco Secure, it addresses common operational use cases applicable to Cisco Secure endpoint agents. Those who install Secure Client’s next-generation software will benefit from a shared user interface for tighter and simplified management of Cisco agents for endpoint security.
Now, with Secure Client, you gain improved secure remote access, a suite of modular security services, and a path for enabling Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) across the distributed network. The newest capability is in Secure Endpoint as a new module within the unified endpoint agent framework. Now you can harness Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) from within Secure Client. You no longer need to deploy and manage Secure Client and Secure Endpoint as separate agents, making management more effortless on the backend.
Within Device Insights, Secure Client lets you deploy, update, and manage your agents from a new cloud management system inside SecureX. If you choose to use cloud management, Secure Client policy and deployment configuration are done in the Insights section of Cisco SecureX. Powerful visibility capabilities in SecureX Device Insights show which endpoints have Secure Client installed in addition to what module versions and profiles they are using.
The emphasis on interoperability of endpoint security agents helps provide the much-needed visibility and simplification across multiple Cisco security solutions while simultaneously reducing the complexity of managing multiple endpoints and agents. Application and data visibility is one of the top ways Secure Client can be an important part of an effective security resilience strategy.
Visit our homepage to see how Secure Client can help your organization today.
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Cisco and AWS demonstrate shared responsibility that identifies Security “of” the Cloud versus Security “in” the Cloud.
Shared responsibility remains central to every cloud initiative and defines how cloud providers and customers work together to achieve maximum security across all aspects of the cloud. While shared responsibility is a common term, surprisingly few people understand the model and fewer still have implemented it correctly. The lack of consistent security controls across cloud services does not go unnoticed by attackers, as they probe for vulnerabilities and slip undetected through unsecured cracks.
Security teams should start by understanding the security controls provided by their cloud service providers to help them highlight areas that are susceptible to threats and attacks. Matrices, such as the following from Amazon Web Services (AWS), give a clear view of the shared responsibility model to guide an organization’s approach:
Once Security teams understand the areas they’re responsible for securing, they can begin to construct a security model that includes the right set solutions to serve their needs.
The most effective security model is built around centralized policy and distributed enforcement, allowing security policy to be applied consistently across operating systems, applications and data using multiple security solutions. Security teams should look for ideal solutions that seamlessly integrate into their unified policy. A good first step is to ask the cloud provider for their recommendations and visit cloud marketplaces, such as the AWS Marketplace, to find and try solutions. Customers can also utilize relationships with their security vendors to obtain best practices.
As Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” There are fundamental differences between on-premise and cloud security practices and controls. However, the way in which security teams discover best practices has not changed. New playbooks from trusted vendors and cloud providers are available to help security teams implement layered approaches to securing their organizations. Security teams should examine these concepts and build on them to protect their specific cloud services without needing to reinvent new models on their own. A good place to start is Cisco’s Cloud Security page.
Watch the recent AWS and Cisco webinar to hear industry analysts, head CISO advisors, and AWS experts discuss shared responsibility, industry challenges and the ways in which other security teams are addressing the problem, and then visit the AWS Marketplace to see the latest Cisco Secure offerings. Purchasing Cisco Secure on AWS Marketplace has the additional benefit of meeting the AWS Enterprise Discount Program commitments.
What is your experience with shared responsibility? We invite you to share your thoughts.
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