We Have Both Types of Teaching Here; Education AND Awareness

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It is an accepted truth (trust me, I am a professional), that security is often seen as just a technical profession; firewalls, DLP, DMARC, SFTP and TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms)are thrown around with gay abandon. Being resilient is a matter of hardening the OS, having a SOC fully staffed, and running the industry’s latest SIEM services. CISOs should be technical and know all of the TPLAs (Three Plus Letter Acronyms) having spent their formative years in their Mother’s basement while they hacked the Pentagon/GCHQ/Kremlin.

It may surprise you that I dislike this approach and viewpoint.

I found a wonderful quote on (where else?) the internet that, unfortunately, I cannot attribute to anyone. So, if you know where this comes from, please do tell me:

“People aren’t the weak link in security; they are the ONLY link.”

(Unknown)

Information security is primarily a people industry. Technology isn’t a panacea but merely an accelerant and amplifier of the existing processes and solutions. Without the people, there is no information to secure in the first place. If we, as CISOs and business leaders, don’t embrace and support our people, we make our jobs so much more problematic when securing the business and helping it do more, sell more, and create more.

So, in my usual style, here are the three things I suggest everyone who has “people” in their business and is responsible for education in one form or another should bear in mind.

Crowd Sourcing

So many of us (I know I did for the longest time) overlook the rather undeniable fact that having many people means they can all carry a small part of the security load. Crowdsourcing works because many people put a small amount of something in to help someone else build something big. You can make this approach work for you in several different ways.

Firstly, approach certain people to be “super contributors” to your infosec crowdsourced campaign. These are the folks that are your primary eyes and ears on the ground, the folks that people go to when they have an immediate problem. Think of them as the cyber first-aiders, if you will, with a few of them dotted around each floor or department.

Give them some face-to-face training if you can or at the least some detailed role briefing notes. They are doing this role because, like first-aiders, they want to help people and be a part of the solution. Reward them with a token monetary compensation, some swag, recognition or whatever fits into your organisational culture.

Secondly, the rest of the people in the organisation can also be encouraged to play a part; connect their ability to spot phishing, social engineering, reporting incidents and breaches to their role in the organisation and its successes. Finally, make it fun (see below), make it engaging and make it educational. 

Doing that is, of course, an essential subject in of itself, but the real message here is to embrace what you might see as your biggest weakness as your biggest strength. Making this leap of faith in your mind means your approach to training, problem-solving, and how you address the people in your organisation changes to positive and collaborative rather than cynical and combative.

Story Telling

 Storyteller is probably the second oldest profession in the world; we can easily imagine stories being told from one generation to the next around the campfire. But, before the written word was used, it was vital before Grandpa died that he told us the secret to successfully hunting that particular breed of rabbit/buffalo/mammoth (depending upon what part of the world you came from).

And yet we can also imagine that after hearing the same story over and over again, night after night, while Grandpa gets slowly drunk on his fermented yak’s milk becomes quite tedious. His tales of daring-do and athletic ardour, as he leapt onto the back of the killer rabbit, became very tiresome after the 954th time. And then last night, as he was getting carried away with the demonstration of his rabbit chokehold, he broke wind. Not only was that the version of the story you passed on to your children, but it was also the birth of the third oldest profession: Comedian (probably).

I am a huge fan of humour in the workplace, especially when it comes to educating people; a good joke conjures up images, feelings, experiences, and smells. But, above all, it is a story. Stories help people create worlds in their minds, relate their experiences to those worlds, and establish a visceral feeling in their bodies, an actual chemical change. Of course, there are few guarantees in this world. Still, one I pass on with a cast-iron guarantee is that no positive, memory-creating chemical changes in any brain anywhere in the world were created by putting people in a room and shouting PowerPoint at them for an hour.

The lesson here is that a good story goes a long way to helping people retain the information; build your message with a strong start, a fantastic middle and a resounding end, and you have the makings of impactful and memorable education.

Don’t Stop

“Oh no, it is that time of year again; we must do our security training”.

Don’t be this company. If you do something once a year because you have to, it becomes an obstacle, something that needs to be completed quickly and with as little effort so you can get on with the fun stuff.

If educational activities in the rest of our lives are continual activities, then why do we not apply this to our infosec training? First, of course, it is not an educational experience that people have opted into, but keeping a cadence to the activities that go beyond just one activity works. Ensuring the format changes and evolves, so it isn’t just posters all year round but lunch and learns, videos, emails, intranet, competitions, and the like means people who struggle to learn in one format can pick it up in another and keeps them on their toes, wondering what the next activity is. It piques their interest and keeps them engaged.

Try creating a 24-month schedule of activities and subjects; it’s not easy, but even having that schedule open and visible allows you to think much more long-term rather than just at a compliance, box-ticking level. Of course, you can still do quizzes (so many auditors and standards require that kind of box-ticking, unfortunately), but by avoiding the one-shot PowerPoint training and ten easy-to-guess questions, you are keeping the content new and fresh. You are also building a reputation as someone who cares about the educational process and the positive outcomes it brings, not just ticks in boxes.

Wrestling Rabbits can be fun AND educational.

Links to other interesting stuff on the web (affiliate links)

Five Key Dark Web Forums to Monitor in 2023

What is Cybersquatting? The Definitive Guide for Detection & Prevention

Seven Questions About Firmware and and Firmware Security

CISO Basics, Part 2

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In the last post, I looked at some of the less apparent activities upon becoming a new CISO, namely:

  1. Stop thinking that infosec is your business.
  2. Stop making technology purchases.
  3. Ask your vendors to explain what you have in your services inventory.

In this post, we will take this a step further and closer to actual business as usual and maintaining your security team as a functional part of the organisation.

Don’t say “NO!” to everything.

This is an obvious thing to do, but it is much harder to do in practice. The reality is that this requires a complete change in mindset from the traditional view of the everyday CISO. As a species, the CISO is a defensive creature who is often required to back up every decision and be the scapegoat of every mistake (see One CISO, Three Envelopes https://thomlangford.com/2014/12/01/three-envelopes-one-ciso/) and generally rubber-stamp choices that are out of their bailiwick and control.

The mindset shift requires a leap of faith wholly because of this perceived threat of blame and accountability when, in fact, it does just the reverse. 

It starts naturally enough with the language that is used by the CISO and the team, for instance, changing the Change Approval meeting to the Risk Review meeting and not communicating a yes/no or go/no-go response to changes but rather a level of risk associated with the request and alternative approaches as appropriate. There is a need to communicate this shift in the culture, of course, but people will see that they are accountable for decisions that affect the business, not the security team. Shifting the mindset away from being a gatekeeper to a security team that provides sensible and straightforward advice based upon clearly understood risk criteria is a fundamental step towards avoiding being known as the Business Prevention Unit. Politely correct other’s language when they mention an action that requires sign-off or approval from “Security” and help them understand their role in the business decision.

This approach does not require a snap of the fingers for 50% of the problems to go away. Still, carefully planning and educating your stakeholders alters the impact you can have on the business dramatically for the better. It also allows you to more easily draw a line between the activities of the security team and the company’s performance, all for the price of merely no longer saying “no”.

Stop Testing Your Perimeter

What? Are you serious?! 

Absolutely.

As you enter a new environment, you will be taking many critical pieces of information on trust and from people with vested interests in their careers, livelihoods and reputations. Your arrival upsets the status quo and has the potential to disrupt the equilibrium; all reasons to not always be forthcoming with every piece of information you request. It isn’t about people being dishonest or deliberately misleading you, but merely being complex, multi-faceted human beings with multiple drivers and influences.

Your perimeter is one of the fundamental pieces of your information security puzzle. Despite cries of “the perimeter is dead”, it remains a prominent place for attacks to happen and where you should feel fully confident that you know every node in that environment to the best of your ability.

Whatever your testing cycle is, suspend it for some time and conduct as complete an investigation as possible into precisely what your perimeter comprises. It can be done automatically with discovery tools, manually through interviews with those responsible, visually in data centres (where you have old school “tin” still being used, and any combination of the above. You will likely find devices that you, and probably existing team members, weren’t aware of, especially with the proliferation of the Internet of Things devices being used throughout the enterprise now. Did facilities install a new access control system or room booking system? Did they consult IT, or more to the point, you?

It sounds like the stuff of legend or the script to the Ocean’s 11 movies, but do you remember when a Las Vegas casino was broken into… through their fish tank? Knowing what devices are where on your network and perimeter is vital and must be considered table stakes in any decent security programme. An alternative is simply a form of security theatre that gives the impression of security and does nothing but create a false sense of security. A cycle of no testing is worth discovering what you don’t know because you can do something about it.

Building your plan

Now you have a grip on your environment in a relatively straightforward, simple, effective and quick way. Through this process, you will ascertain your stakeholders, advocates and even a few potential adversaries. Then, armed with this information, you can provide an accurate picture of the business to the business in a way that makes sense and displays a grasp of the fundamentals.

Building your plan will always start with your initial assessment and what needs to be done to become operational or steady-state. The trick, however, is to ensure that this baseline achievement is perceived as the end state of security but rather merely the first stepping stone to ever more impressive services, capabilities and ultimately, profit and growth for the company.

The plan itself, however? That is yours and yours alone. Although other posts in this Blog will help as you plot your course into the future, nothing will replace your understanding of the local culture, organisation and, ultimately, what you need to achieve to meet the expectations of the business leadership. Know what the rules of your organisation are, when to adhere to them, when to bend them, and most importantly, when to break them (but only when experience tells you it is the right thing to do):

“The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.” 

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Be the Old Man, be the CISO.

Links to other interesting stuff on the web (affiliate links)

5 Ways Penetration Testing Reduces Overall Security Costs

Avoiding Security Theater: When is a “Critical” Really a Critical?

Game of Life Security and Compliance Edition

When Auditors Attack!

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Although I am not a formally qualified auditor, I have had a fair amount of experience of carrying out audits and risk assessments in met various roles towards becoming a CISO. I have also been able to present on the topic and have articulated many of the unique challenges faced by auditors and audits alike.

Reading about auditors on social media, articles and LinkedIn is never a pretty affair, and there is rarely any love lost between them and those posting about them. For instance, the QSA who asked for (amongst other things) a list of usernames and plain text passwords. This auditor then doubled down when pressed, accusing the auditee of ntrying to hide a poorly maintained system.

A similar thing happened to a (barely adequate) friend of mine recently, when his auditor reported a finding that “users have read access to the Windows System32 folder” flagging it as a high risk. Even Microsoft stated that this is how their operating system works, and under “normal operation” cannot be changed. My (barely adequate) friend does not run nuclear power stations, by the way.

And attack they will.

Pushing back against these decisions in a formal manner is the only approach you can take; remove the emotion from the conversation and engage as soon as possible, even if it means potentially derailing the audit for an hour or so. If you are able to get team members to do research on the subject, or call in recognised SME’s, then all the better, but establishing the facts early is important. The longer the matter goes on though, the harder it is to resolve.

If that fails, wait until the report or draft comes in. This is an opportunity to formally respond and present evidence to the contrary. This response should be sent not just to the auditor, but also the company they work for (i.e. up the chain of command), as well as other stakeholders such as the clients that commissioned the audit. Their input is important as they are the ones both paying for the audit and with the most vested interest in its outcomes.

Finally, getting everyone involved around an actual table (difficult at the moment I know, but a videoconference will do the trick too) is the last course of action. Hopefully having line management, client/stakeholder, SME’s etc facing off will produce a more amenable result. Don’t expect it to disappear though, perhaps just be downgraded to medium or low.

Being an auditor has a complex dynamic. Third party auditors need to show value to whomever is paying the bills and can sometimes extend the scope or severity of issues to show “value for money”. They can also, ironically, be risk averse and not stand down for fear of being accused of wasting time and a subsequent law suit. An auditor is also trying to be an expert across multiple disciplines at once, as well the one of actually being an auditor, so there are always going to be knowledge gaps. Acknowledging that is a huge step to being a better auditor, and taking time to do independent research on topics you might have not understood as well as you have thought is vital.

For me, auditing/risk assessing was always an opportunity to help the people being assessed; this was a skill as well as a level of emotional intelligence that was shown to me by an ISO 27001 auditor in India, someone I remains friends with after over 12 years. That two-way engagement has been vital to establishing trust and subsequent transparency during audits, and has resulted in better quality findings and a willingness to address them.

Worst case, when it comes to an auditor that won’t back down, you can always just be Accepting the Risk and moving on with the day job.

(TL)2 Security has experience is risk assessment and audit across the security organisation. From a high level risk and gap assessment through to advisory and support services on meeting various certification audits, contact us to find out more.

Too Much of a Good Thing

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The one thing the current lockdown has taught me is that you really can eat too much chocolate… who knew?

Left to my own devices and without the distraction of a routine, regular work and people observing my unhealthy eating habits, my faulty brain tells me that more chocolate can only be a good thing and that I should continue to eat it until physical discomfort forces me to stop (in spite of my brain’s protestations.). It is an obsessive and compulsive behaviour that I recognise in myself, and do my best to contain, but it is a constant struggle arguing with myself that chocolate is not the most important thing in my life.

The same could be said to be true of many security professionals and their desire to roll out security practises to their organisations, implementing new procedures, standards, policies and ways of working that are designed to make the organisation very secure. They do this despite the protestations of the organisation itself telling them they have had enough, the new ways of working are too restrictive, difficult to follow and ultimately leave them with a security stomach ache.

This weeks Lost CISO episode talks about when too much security, like chocolate, is a bad thing.

This compulsion to think that security is the most important part of a business’ life is one that leads to users having security headaches all day and the business itself feeling slovenly, bloated and sluggish. (OK, that’s enough of the analogies.)

It is ultimately self-defeating, as users will do their best to work around draconian working practices, and the perception of a security organisation will be one of business prevention than vital service. I, and many others, have spoken about not being the department of “no”, but it goes well beyond just saying “yes”.

Agreeing to everything without thought of the consequences is potentially even more dangerous than saying no, especially in the short term. The vital distinction that needs to be made is that of a two way conversation between security and the end users and business. Finding out what is trying to be achieved is far more valuable than just focusing on what is being asked. Requests can be addressed in many different ways, not just by punching a whole in the firewall or switching off 2FA on the VPN, for instance.

In fact, this very conversation helps create even stronger relationships as it highlights two things:

  1. How seriously you take their request.
  2. How much you care about the organisation you both work for.

A great example of this in the above video is that of companies relaxing their security stance during the remote working ramp up of the lockdown. If the response was simply “no”, or even a straight “yes” with no consequences there would have been issues sooner or later. Working with the business, relaxing the standards for the initial growth and then methodically scaling and tightening the security once the initial growth is over is absolutely the right way to go.

So next time you feel yourself reaching for the chocolate wanting to say “no”, think beyond the the immediate consequences and how you can use security for the long term betterment of your organisation rather than your simple security stats.

And one bar of chocolate/security is always enough for everyone, right?

Do you need two re-align your security team to your business and don’t know where to start? (TL)2 Security has a proven track record helping security leaders and teams creat strtaegies and business plans that make real, competitive, differences to organisations. Contact (TL)2 to find out more.

Shameless Coronavirus Special Promotion – Risk Edition!

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iu-18Many, many moons ago, my good friend and learned colleague Javvad Malik and I came up with a way to explain how a risk model works by using an analogy to a pub fight. I have used it in a presentation that has been given several times, and the analogy has really helped people understand risk, and especially risk appetite more clearly (or so they tell me). I wrote a brief overview of the presentation and the included risk model in this blog some years back.

And now the Coronavirus has hit humanity AND the information security industry. Everyone is losing their minds deciding if they should self isolate, quarantine or even just generally ignore advice from the World Health Organisation (like some governments have shown a propensity to do) and carry on as usual and listen to the Twitter experts. During a conversation of this nature, Javvad and I realised that the Langford/Malik model could be re-purposed to not only help those who struggle with risk generally (most humans) but those who really struggle to know what to do about it from our own industry (most humans, again).

Disclaimer: we adopted the ISO 27005:2018 approach to measuring risk as it is comprehensive enough to cover most scenarios, yet simple enough that even the most stubborn of Board members could understand it. If you happen to have a copy you can find it in section E.2.2, page 48, Table E.1.

Click the image to view in more detail and download.

The approach is that an arbitrary, yet predefined (and globally understood) value is given to the Likelihood of Occurrence – Threat, the Ease of Exploitation, and the Asset Value of the thing being “risk measured”. This generates a number from 0-8 going from little risk to high risk. The scores can then be banded together to define if they are High, Medium or low, and can be treated in accordance with your organisation’s risk appetite and risk assessment procedures.

In our model, all one would have to do is define the importance of their role from “Advocate” (low) to “Sysadmin” (high), personality type (how outgoing you are) and the Level of human Interaction your role is defined as requiring. Once ascertained, you can read off your score and see where you sit in the risk model.

In order to make things easier for you, dear reader, we then created predefined actions in the key below the model based upon that derived risk score, so you know exactly what to do. In these troubled times, you can now rest easy in the knowledge that not only do you understand risk more but also what to do in a pandemic more.

You’re welcome.

Note: Not actual medical advice. Do I really need to state this?