Login
The digital and physical worlds are on an irreversible collision course. By 2022, organizations will be plunged into crisis as ruthless attackers exploit weaknesses in immature technologies and take advantage of an unprepared workforce. At the same time, natural forces will ravage infrastructure.
Over the coming years organizations will experience growing disruption as threats from the digital world have an impact on the physical. Invasive technologies will be adopted across both industrial and consumer markets, creating an increasingly turbulent and unpredictable security environment. The requirement for a flexible approach to security and resilience will be crucial as a hybrid threat environment emerges.
The impact of threats will be felt on an unprecedented scale as ageing and neglected infrastructure is attacked, with services substantially disrupted due to vulnerabilities in the underlying technology. Mismanagement of connected assets will provide attackers with opportunities to exploit organizations.
A failure to understand the next generation of workers, the concerns of consumers and the risk posed by deceptive technology will erode the trust between organizations, consumers and investors. As a result, the need for a digital code of ethics will arise in order to protect brand reputation and profitability.
Organizations will have to adapt quickly to survive when digital and physical worlds collide. Those that don’t will find themselves exposed to threats that will outpace and overwhelm them.
At the Information Security Forum, we recently released Threat Horizon 2021, the latest in an annual series of reports that provide businesses a forward-looking view of the increasing threats in today’s always-on, interconnected world. In Threat Horizon 2021, we highlighted the top three threats to information security emerging over the next two years, as determined by our research.
Let’s take a quick look at these threats and what they mean for your organization:
THREAT #1: INVASIVE TECHNOLOGY DISRUPTS THE EVERYDAY
New technologies will further invade every element of daily life with sensors, cameras and other devices embedded in homes, offices, factories and public spaces. A constant stream of data will flow between the digital and physical worlds, with attacks on the digital world directly impacting the physical and creating dire consequences for privacy, well-being and personal safety.
Augmented Attacks Distort Reality: The development and acceptance of AR technologies will usher in new immersive opportunities for businesses and consumers alike. However, organizations leveraging this immature and poorly secured technology will provide attackers with the chance to compromise the privacy and safety of individuals when systems and devices are exploited.
Behavioral Analytics Trigger A Consumer Backlash: Organizations that have invested in a highly connected nexus of sensors, cameras and mobile apps to develop behavioral analytics will find themselves under intensifying scrutiny from consumers and regulators alike as the practice is deemed invasive and unethical. The treasure trove of information harvested and sold will become a key target for attackers aiming to steal consumer secrets, with organizations facing severe financial penalties and reputational damage for failing to secure their information and systems.
Robo-Helpers Help Themselves to Data: A range of robotic devices, developed to perform a growing number of both mundane and complex human tasks, will be deployed in organisations and homes around the world. Friendly-faced, innocently-branded, and loaded with a selection of cameras and sensors, these constantly connected devices will roam freely. Poorly secured robo-helpers will be weaponized by attackers, committing acts of corporate espionage and stealing intellectual property. Attackers will exploit robo-helpers to target the most vulnerable members of society, such as the elderly or sick at home, in care homes or hospitals, resulting in reputational damage for both manufacturers and corporate users.
THREAT #2: NEGLECTED INFRASTRUCTURE CRIPPLES OPERATIONS
The technical infrastructure upon which organizations rely will face threats from a growing number of sources: man-made, natural, accidental and malicious. In a world where constant connectivity and real-time processing is vital to doing business, even brief periods of downtime will have severe consequences. It is not just the availability of information and services that will be compromised – opportunistic attackers will find new ways to exploit vulnerable infrastructure, steal or manipulate critical data and cripple operations.
Edge Computing Pushes Security to the Brink:In a bid to deal with ever-increasing volumes of data and process information in real time, organizations will adopt edge computing – an architectural approach that reduces latency between devices and increases speed – in addition to, or in place of, cloud services. Edge computing will be an attractive choice for organizations, but will also become a key target for attackers, creating numerous points of failure. Furthermore, security benefits provided by cloud service providers, such as oversight of particular IT assets, will also be lost.
Extreme Weather Wreaks Havoc on Infrastructure:Extreme weather events will increase in frequency and severity year-on-year, with organizations suffering damage to their digital and physical estates. Floodplains will expand; coastal areas will be impacted by rising sea levels and storms; extreme heat and droughts will become more damaging; and wildfires will sweep across even greater areas. Critical infrastructure and data centers will be particularly susceptible to extreme weather conditions, with business continuity and disaster recovery plans pushed to breaking point.
The Internet of Forgotten Things Bites Back: IoT infrastructure will continue to expand, with many organizations using connected devices to support core business functions. However, with new devices being produced more frequently than ever before, the risks posed by multiple forgotten or abandoned IoT devices will emerge across all areas of the business. Unsecured and unsupported devices will be increasingly vulnerable as manufacturers go out of business, discontinue support or fail to deliver the necessary patches to devices. Opportunistic attackers will discover poorly secured, network-connected devices, exploiting organizations in the process.
THREAT #3: A CRISIS OF TRUST UNDERMINES DIGITAL BUSINESS
Bonds of trust will break down as emerging technologies and the next generation of employee’s tarnish brand reputations, compromise the integrity of information and cause financial damage. Those that lack transparency, place trust in the wrong people and controls, and use technology in unethical ways will be publicly condemned. This crisis of trust between organizations, employees, investors and customers will undermine organizations’ ability to conduct digital business.
Deepfakes Tell True Lies: Digital content that has been manipulated by AI will be used to create hyper-realistic copies of individuals in real-time – deepfakes. These highly plausible digital clones will cause organizations and customers to lose trust in many forms of communication. Credible fake news and misinformation will spread, with unwary organizations experiencing defamation and reputational damage. Social engineering attacks will be amplified using deepfakes, as attackers manipulate individuals with frightening believability.
The Digital Generation Become the Scammer’s Dream: Generation Z will start to enter the workplace, introducing new information security concerns to organizations. Attitudes, behaviors, characteristics and values exhibited by the newest generation will transcend their working lives. Reckless approaches to security, privacy and consumption of content will make them obvious targets for scammers, consequently threatening the information security of their employers.
Activists Expose Digital Ethics Abuse: Driven by huge investments in pervasive surveillance and tracking technologies, the ethical element of digital business will enter the spotlight. Activists will begin targeting organizations that they deem immoral, exposing unethical or exploitative practices surrounding the technologies they develop and who they are sold to. Employees motivated by ethical concerns will leak intellectual property, becoming whistle-blowers or withdrawing labor entirely. Brand reputations will suffer, as organizations that ignore their ethical responsibilities are placed under mounting pressure.
Preparation Must Begin Now
Information security professionals are facing increasingly complex threats—some new, others familiar but evolving. Their primary challenge remains unchanged; to help their organizations navigate mazes of uncertainty where, at any moment, they could turn a corner and encounter information security threats that inflict severe business impact.
In the face of mounting global threats, organization must make methodical and extensive commitments to ensure that practical plans are in place to adapt to major changes in the near future. Employees at all levels of the organization will need to be involved, from board members to managers in non-technical roles.
The three themes listed above could impact businesses operating in cyberspace at break-neck speeds, particularly as the use of the Internet and connected devices spreads. Many organizations will struggle to cope as the pace of change intensifies. These threats should stay on the radar of every organization, both small and large, even if they seem distant. The future arrives suddenly, especially when you aren’t prepared.
About the author: Steve Durbin is Managing Director of the Information Security Forum (ISF). His main areas of focus include strategy, information technology, cyber security and the emerging security threat landscape across both the corporate and personal environments. Previously, he was senior vice president at Gartner.
Copyright 2010 Respective Author at Infosec IslandDriving digital transformation initiatives while safeguarding the enterprise is a mammoth task. In some aspects, it might even sound counter-intuitive when it comes to opening up IT infrastructure, or converging IT and OT networks to allow external parties such as partners and customers to closely interact with the organization to embrace new business models and collaboration (think cloud applications, APIs, sensors, mobile devices, etc.).
Although new technology is being adopted quickly, especially web frontends, applications and APIs, much of the underlying IT infrastructure as well as the supporting processes and governance models are somewhat legacy, and struggle to keep up.
For its 2020 CISO Benchmark Report, Cisco surveyed some 2,800 CISOs and other IT decision-makers from 13 countries, how they cope with that, and they came up with a number of interesting findings.
Cyber-threats are a global business risk
The World Economic Forum says business leaders view cyber-attacks as the #2 global risk to business in advanced economies, taking a back seat only to financial crises. Not surprisingly,89 percent of the respondents in the Cisco study say their executives still view security as a high priority, but this number is down by 7 percent from previous years.
Nine out of ten respondents felt their company executives had solid measures for gauging the effectiveness of their security programs. This is encouraging, as clear metrics are key to a security framework, and it’s often difficult to get diverse executives and security players to agree on how to measure operational improvement and security results.
Leadership matters
The share of companies that have clarified the security roles and responsibilities on the executive team has risen and fallen in recent years, but it settled at 89 percent in 2020. Given that cyber-security is being taken more seriously and there is a major need for security leaders at top levels, the need to continue clarifying roles and responsibilities will remain critical.
The frequency with which companies are building cyber-risk assessments into their overall risk assessment strategies has shrunk by five percent from last year. Still, 91 percent of the survey respondents reported that they’re doing it. Similarly, 90 percent of executive teams are setting clear metrics to assess the effectiveness of their security programs, although this figure too is down by six percent from last year.
Cloud protection is not solid
It’s almost impossible for a company to go digital without turning to the cloud. The Cisco report found that in 2020, over 83 percent of organizations will be managing (internally or externally) more than 20 percent of their IT infrastructure in the cloud. But protecting off-premises assets remains a challenge.
A hefty 41percent of the surveyed organizations say their data centers are very or extremely difficult to defend from attacks. Thirty-nine percent report that they struggle to keep applications secure. Similarly, private cloud infrastructure is a major security issue for organizations; half of the respondents said it was very or extremely difficult to defend.
The most problematic data of all is data stored in the public cloud. Just over half (52 percent) of the respondents find it very or extremely challenging to secure.Another 41 percent of organizations find network infrastructure very or extremely challenging to defend.
Time-to-remediate scores most important
The Cisco study enquired about the after-effects of breaches using measures such as downtime, records, and finances. How much and how often are companies suffering from downtime? It turns out that organizations across the board issued similar answers. Large enterprises (10,000 or more employees) are more likely to have less downtime (between zero and four hours) because they typically have more technology, money, and people available to help respond and recover from the threats. Small to mid-sized organizations made up most of the five- to 16-hour recovery timespans. Potentially business-killing downtimes of 17-48 hours were infrequent among companies of all sizes.
After a security incident, rapid recovery is critical to keeping disruption and damages to a minimum. As a result, of all the metrics, time-to-remediate (also known as “time-to-mitigate”) scores are the ones most important when reporting to the C-suite or the company’s board of directors, the study concludes.
Automating security is not optional – it’s mandatory
The total number of daily security alerts that organizations are faced with is constantly growing. Three years ago, half of organizations had 5,000 or fewer alerts per day. Today, that number is only 36 percent. The number of companies that receive 100,000 or more alerts per day has risen to 17 percent this year, from 11 percent in 2017. Due to the greater alert volumes and the considerable resources needed to process them, investigation of alerts is at a four-year low: just under 48 percent of companies say they can keep up. That number was 56 percent in 2017, and it’s been shrinking every year since. The rate of legitimate incidents (26 percent) has remained more or less constant, which suggests that a lot of investigations are coming up with false positives.
Perhaps the biggest side-effect of this never-ending alert activity is cyber-security fatigue. Of the companies that report that it exists among their ranks, 93 percent of them receive more than 5,000 security warnings every day.
A sizeable majority (77 percent) of Cisco’s survey respondents expect to implement more automated security solutions to simplify and accelerate their threat response times. No surprise here. These days, they basically have no choice but to automate.
Vigilance pays dividends
Organizations that had 100,000 or more records affected by their worst security incident increased to 19 percent this year, up four percent from 2019. The study also found that a major breach can impact nine critical areas of a company, including operations and brand reputation, finances, intellectual property, and customer retention.
Three years ago, 26 percent of the respondents said their brand reputation had taken a hit from a security incident; this year, 33 percent said the same. This is why, to help minimize damages and recover fast, it’s key to incorporate crisis communications planning into the company’s broader incidence response strategy.
Finally, the share of survey respondents that reported that they voluntarily disclosed a breach last year (61 percent) is the highest in four years.The upshot is that overall, companies are actively reporting breaches. This may be due to new privacy legislation (GDPR and others), or because they want to maintain the trust and confidence of their customers. In all likelihood, it’s both.
In conclusion, the CISO Benchmark report shows a balance of positives and negatives. Organizations are looking to automate security processes to accelerate response times, security leadership is strengthening and setting metrics to improve overall protection, and more breaches are being identified and reported. But there’s still work to be done to embed security into everything organizations do as they evolve their business.
About the author: Marc Wilczek is Chief Operating Officer at Link11, an IT security provider specializing in DDoS protection, and has more than 20 years of experience within the information and communication technology (ICT) space.
Copyright 2010 Respective Author at Infosec IslandIn a year that was all about data and privacy, it seems only fitting that we closed out 2019 in the shadow of a jumbo data leak where more than a billion records were found exposed on a single server.
Despite this being one of the largest data exposures from a single source in history, it didn’t cause nearly the public uproar that one might expect from a leak involving personal information such as names, email addresses, phone numbers, LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. Instead, this quickly became yet another case of consumer information being mishandled, impacting many of the same consumers that have been burned several times already by companies they trusted.
What’s different about this leak – and what should have given consumers and businesses alike pause – is the way in which this case highlights a more complex problem with data that exists today.
There’s no question that data is a very valuable asset. Organizations have done a great job figuring out how to capture consumer data over the last decade and are now beginning to use and monetize it. The problem is, that data can also be used in many different ways to inflict serious pain on victims in their personal and business lives. So, when that data goes through someone’s hands (business or individual), how much responsibility do they – and those up the lifecycle chain – have for where it ends up?
Beginning at the consumer level, users can opt out of sharing data and should do so at any chance they get if they are concerned about having their information exposed. The good news is that new regulations like the GDPR and CCPA are making this easier to do retroactively than ever before. The challenge is that the system isn’t perfect. Aliases and other databases can still be difficult to opt out of because although they may have information captured, errors like misspellings can prevent consumers from getting to their own data.
With this particular incident, we also caught a glimpse of the role that data enrichment, aggregators and brokers play in security. Although it didn’t come directly from their own servers, the exposed data was likely tied to enrichment firms People Data Labs (PDL) and OxyData. While several data brokers today are taking more responsibility and offering security and privacy education to their customers, it was alarming to see that neither data broker in this case could rule out the possibility that their data was mishandled by a customer. In fact, rather than pushing for a solution, Oxydata seemed to shirk responsibility entirely when speaking with WIRED.
Data brokers need to own up to this challenge and look at better screening of their customers to ensure their use of data has valid purposes. A case study by James Pavur, DPhil student at Oxford University, underscored these failings in the system when he used GDPR Subject Access Requests to obtain his data from about 20 companies, many of which didn't ask for sufficient ID before sharing the information. He went on to try and get as much data as possible about his fiancée, finding he could access a range of sensitive data, including everything from addresses and credit card numbers to travel itineraries. None of this should be possible with proper scredaening in place.
Ultimately, whoever owns the server where the leak originated is the one that will be held legally and fiscally responsible. But should data brokers be emulating the shared responsibility model in use by cloud services like AWS? Either way, by understanding the lifecycle of data and taking additional responsibility upstream, we can begin to cut down on the negative impact when exposures like this inevitably occur.
About the author: Jason Bevis is the vice president of Awake Security Labs at Awake Security. He has extensive experience in professional services, cybersecurity MDR solutions, incident response, risk management and automation products.
Copyright 2010 Respective Author at Infosec IslandThe gap in trained, experienced cybersecurity workers is one of those perennial problems: much ink is spilled every year in assessing the scale of the problem, and what can be done about it. We have recently pointed out, for instance, the importance of stopping attacks before they happen, and the fact that you can’t hire your way out of the skills shortage.
As we move into 2020, it's apparent that despite this focus on the problem, it has not been solved. There is still a huge skills gap when it comes to cybersecurity, and in many ways, it is getting worse. According to Cyber Crime Magazine, there may be as many as 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by 2021, and recent high-profile cyber breaches provide further evidence that the problem is already becoming acute.
That said, there are some new trends emerging when it comes to managing this crisis. In this article, we'll take a look at some of the innovative ways that companies are getting around the problem.
The Widening Gap
First, some context. At the most basic level, the skills gap in cybersecurity is the product of a simple fact: there are more cybersecurity positions that need to be filled than there are qualified graduates to fill them. This is despite colleges encouraging students to study cybersecurity, and despite companies encouraging their existing employees to retrain.
Look a little deeper, however, and some other reasons for the shortage becomes apparent. One is that a worrying number of qualified professionals are leaving the cybersecurity sector. At cybersecurity conferences, it’s not uncommon to see entire tracks about managing mental health, addiction, and work stress. As these experienced professionals leave the sector, this puts more pressure on younger, less experienced colleagues.
Secondly, a major source of stress for cybersecurity professionals is that they are often assigned total (or at least partial) responsibility for the losses caused by data breaches. In many cases, this is unfair, but persists because many companies still see "security" as a discrete discipline that can be dealt with in isolation from other IT tasks, corporate processes, and reputation management.
Training and Development
Addressing these issues requires more than just increasing the number of qualified graduates. Instead, businesses need to take more innovative approaches to hire, train, and retain cybersecurity staff.
These approaches can be broken down into three types. The first is that cybersecurity training needs to change from an event into a process. Some have argued that traditional, classroom-based cybersecurity training doesn’t reflect the field and that this training needs to be delivered in a more vocational way. Instead of hiring one cybersecurity expert, companies should look to train all of their employees in the basics of cybersecurity.
In fact, even cybersecurity professionals might benefit from this type of training. Despite companies being resistant to spending more on employee training, investing in training has one of the highest ROI that investors can make. In addition, recent developments have made it clear that continuous training is needed – concerns about the security implications of 5G networks, for example, are now forcing seasoned professionals to go back to school.
Secondly, dramatic gains in cybersecurity can be achieved without employing dedicated staff. One of the major positive outcomes of the cybersecurity skills gap, in fact, has been the proliferation of free, easy to use security tools (like VPNs and secure browsers), which aim to make cybersecurity "fool-proof", even for staff with little or no technical training. These tools can be used to limit the risk of cyberattacks without the necessity of complex (and expensive) dedicated security solutions.
Third, the rise of "security as a service" suggests that the cybersecurity sector of the future is one that relies on outsourcing and subcontracting. Plenty of companies already outsource business processes that would have been done in-house just a few years ago – everything from creating a website to outsourcing pen testing – and taking this approach may provide a more efficient way to use the limited cybersecurity professionals that are available.
AI Tools: The Future?
Another striking feature of the cybersecurity skills debate, and one which is especially apparent as we move into 2020, is the level of discussion around AI tools.
Unfortunately, assessing the level of efficacy of AI tools when it comes to improving cybersecurity is difficult. That's because many cybersecurity professionals are skeptical when it comes to AI is a useful ally in this fight. In some ways, they are undoubtedly correct: in a recent study, one popular AI-powered antivirus was defeated with just a few lines of text appended to popular malware.
On the other hand, it must be recognized that cybersecurity pros have a vested interest in talking down how effective AI tools are. If AIs were able to protect networks on their own, after all, cybersecurity pros would be out of a job. Or rather they would be if there were not so many unfilled cybersecurity vacancies.
Ultimately, given the lack of qualified or trained professionals, AI tools are likely to continue to be a major focus of investment for companies from 2020 onwards. This, in turn, entails that IT professionals overcome some of their reticence about working with them, and begin to see AIs less as competitors and more as collaborators.
The Bottom Line
It's also worth pointing out that the individual trends we've mentioned can be seen as working against each other. In some cases, companies have attempted to overcome the skills gap by training large numbers of employees to perform cybersecurity roles. Others have gone in the other direction – outsourcing specific aspects of their cybersecurity to hyper-specialized companies. Others are taking a gamble that AI tools are going to eventually replace the need for (at least some of their) cybersecurity professionals.
Which of these trends is eventually going to dominate the market remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: 2020 is a critical juncture for the entire cybersecurity sector.
Copyright 2010 Respective Author at Infosec IslandWhen the news media reports on data breaches and other forms of cybercrime, the center of the story is usually a major software company, financial institution, or retailer. But in reality, these types of attacks are merely part of the damage that global hackers cause on a daily basis.
Town and city governments are becoming a more common target for online criminals. For example, a small city in Florida, Riviera Beach, had their office computers hacked and ended up paying $600,000 to try to reverse the damage. Hackers saw this as a successful breach and are now inspired to look at more public institutions that could be vulnerable.
Why are cities and towns so susceptible to hacking, how are these attacks carried out, and what steps should administrators take to protect citizen data?
How Hackers Choose Targets
While some cybercriminals seek out exploits for the sole purpose of causing destruction or frustration, the majority of hackers are looking to make money. Their aim is to locate organizations with poor security practices so that they can infiltrate their networks and online systems. Sometimes hackers will actually hide inside of a local network or database for an extended period of time without the organization realizing it.
Hackers usually cash in through one of two ways. The first way is to try to steal data, like email addresses, passwords, and credit card numbers, from an internal system and then sell that information on the dark web. The alternative is a ransomware attack, in which the hacker holds computer systems hostage and unusable until the organization pays for them to be released.
City and town governments are becoming a common target for hackers because they often rely on outdated legacy software or else have built tools internally that may not be fully secure. These organizations rarely have a dedicated cybersecurity team or extensive testing procedures.
The Basics of Ransomware
Ransomware attacks, like the one which struck the city government of Riviera Beach, can begin with one simple click of a dangerous link. Hackers will often launch targeted phishing scams at an organization's members via emails that are designed to look legitimate.
When a link within one of these emails is clicked, the hacker will attempt to hijack the user's local system. If successful, their next move will be to seek out other nodes on the network. Then they will deploy a piece of malware that will lock all internal users from accessing the systems.
At this point, the town or city employees will usually see a message posted on their screen demanding a ransom payment. Some forms of ransomware will actually encrypt all individual files on an operating system so that the users have no way of opening or copying them.
Ways to Defend Yourself
Cybersecurity threats should be taken seriously by all members of an organization. The first step to stopping hackers is promoting awareness of potential attacks. This can be done through regular training sessions. Additionally, an organization’s IT department should evaluate the following areas immediately.
Looking Ahead
Local governments need to maintain a robust risk management approach while preparing for potential attacks from hackers. Most security experts agree that the Riviera Beach group actually did the wrong thing by paying out the hacker ransomware. This is because there's no guarantee that the payment will result in the unlocking of all systems and data.
During a ransomware attack, an organization needs to act swiftly. When the first piece of malware is detected, the infected hardware should be immediately shut down and disconnected from the local network to limit the spread of the virus. Any affected machine should then have its hard drive wiped and restored to a previous backup from before the attack began.
Preparing for different forms of cyberattack is a critical activity within a disaster recovery plan. Every organization should have their plan defined with various team members assigned to roles and responsibilities. Cities and towns should also consider investing in penetration testing from outside groups and also explore the increasingly popular zero-trust security strategy as a way to harden the network. During a penetration test, experts explore potential gaps in your security approach and report the issues to you directly, allowing you to fix problems before hackers exploit them.
Final Thoughts
With ransomware attacks, a hacker looks to infiltrate an organization's network and hold their hardware and data files hostage until they receive a large payment. City and town government offices are becoming a common target for these instances of cybercrime due to their immature security systems and reliance on legacy software.
The only way to stop the trend of ransomware is for municipal organizations to build a reputation of having strong security defenses. This starts at the employee level, with people being trained to look for danger online and learning how to keep their own hardware and software safe.
About the author: A former defense contractor for the US Navy, Sam Bocetta turned to freelance journalism in retirement, focusing his writing on US diplomacy and national security, as well as technology trends in cyberwarfare, cyberdefense, and cryptography.
Copyright 2010 Respective Author at Infosec Island
FreshRSS