A fun filled week, moderating, presenting, acting.

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leader-summit-headerLast week was a very busy week for me in the information security arena, which given not that long ago I said I was winding down for the end of the year into Christmas was a little surprising.

On Tuesday I was asked, somewhat last minute, to moderate a panel on Threat Intelligence at the InfoSecurity Leadership Summit. This is not a primary area of interest for me, but given I was moderating the panel and not on the panel itself I felt I had nothing to lose. With about 10 days notice, one short conference call and a rapidly drawn up set of notes the session went very well, although we had a very limited amount of time resulting in no questions from the audience which was disappointing. I do think I achieved my three key objectives for the session though:

  1. Start and finish on time
  2. Keep the panel from drifting off topic
  3. Make the panel look good

Moderating a panel is somewhat less glamorous (if that is the right word) than presenting or being on a panel, but I like the good folks at InfoSecurity so was happy to help out. The experience was useful for me as well, as moderating is very different to being a talking head. The conference itself was also very good, especially given it was the first one the folks at InfoSecurity have done in this space. I look forward to next years.

The day after, on the 4th December I flew to Frankfurt to attend the World Class Mobile Collaboration conference, where I was asked to present an old favourite of mine, An Anatomy of a Risk Assessment. Due to some technical difficulties I had to present an hour before I was scheduled to which somewhat put me on the spot, but actually worked out rather well. I had some great conversations with people in the break afterwards and swapped contact details with a number of them too. It was a very enjoyable but exhausting day though as I had to return that evening to get back to my day job. They kindly recorded the presentation, below:

http://vimeo.com/81118214

And finally, on Friday 6th a Christmas Message video was released that I was involved with in collaboration with Host Unknown and Twist & Shout. I blogged about it on the day but I wanted to mention it again as I do think it is a good example of putting points across in bite sized chunks that are memorable and effective (Twist & Shout are very good at this). There will be some behind the scenes footage being released next week, so look out for it on Twitter and the Host Unknown blog.

Back to work for a rest for the next two weeks I think!

Travelling with your security blanket (cross post)

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security-blanket-schroeder(Originally posted on the Iron Mountain Information Advantage Blog on October 16th 2013)

Mobile devices are great. I’m sat here in the back of a car in India travelling to a meeting. I’m connected to the internet via my iPhone and using the time to write a blog post on my laptop about the inherent dangers of using mobile devices while travelling. The irony isn’t lost on me.

Much has already been said on the various things that can be done to protect yourself while working on the move. Indeed, just the other day I wrote a piece on exactly how not to do it, and I am sure it is a regular topic of internal security articles at many companies.

The key issue I see is that the security measures are not always seen as ways to protect information. Rather, they are often seen as hoops that people need to jump through to get to the information they need to do their work. When, as is sometimes the case, security measures are poorly designed and/or poorly implemented, then the view of information security as an obstacle should come as no surprise.

Therefore, rather than trying to foist technology or procedures onto people, would we not be better focussing on behaviours that can be reinforced with easy to remember concepts? Here are a few to consider:

Location
Think about where you are sitting with your laptop/mobile phone. Can it be stolen easily (as in this example) or can your screen be viewed easily by people sat nearby? Your data can be both physically stolen as well as “visually” appropriated.

Connection
All internet-based connections should go through a VPN. This might be overkill for some, but it ensures that there is no internal dialogue about the security of a Starbuck’s Wi-Fi versus a BT hotspot or even a hotel Wi-Fi. Always use a corporate VPN to encrypt and tunnel your traffic through any potentially unsafe network. Even when using a personal laptop to do your own work in a cafe, like a bit of banking or shopping, your credentials and details can be stolen, so use one of the many commercial (and sometimes free) VPN products that are available

Observation
Be aware of your surroundings. Is this a high-traffic area such as a cafe or airport lounge, with people moving in and out frequently? Be aware of what is on your screen – is it confidential? Should you really be working on it in a public space? This doesn’t mean you need to be paranoid, but travellers, especially when abroad, can often be spotted easily and are often viewed as vulnerable. Knowing your surroundings and behaving accordingly is an important part of not only keeping your data secure, but of keeping yourself safe also.

Let’s face it, technology is never going to solve everything. I wrote recently about an example which had all the right technology in place, only to be let down completely by a visit to the bathroom. If in doubt, your mobile devices should be your “bathroom buddies” and not left exposed in public!

 

Do as I say, not as I do (and other things our parents told us)

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clip-image0026This may be quite a challenging post as I potentially expose myself as a willing victim of an Orwellian world, if not a supporter of it. Nothing could be further from the truth, but I do think certain aspects of the forthcoming argument need to be aired.

I am amazed that people are surprised and angered to hear that the US and UK governments are “spying” on their citizens. I recall as a schoolboy in Dover in the eighties seeing a large installation on the cliffs of Dover, and it was common knowledge that it was used to intercept telephone and radio signals for the government. The thought was, and still is, a comforting one that various powers-that-be are intercepting communications in a morally correct albeit secretive manner.

While the scale of the interceptions highlighted through the Snowden leaks did somewhat surprise me, the fact that it was happening did not, in fact I expected it. My surprise was  perhaps a factor of the rapid growth of the internet and the related technologies, but I was able to rationalise that with the many different methods of communications available to so many people on the planet.

I don’t agree with government back doors inside industry systems, and I don’t agree with the wholesale handing over of encryption keys to them either, but I do agree with the discrete and specific targeting of certain communications of “interest” and the decryption and handing over of those communications by the relevant company to the government in response to a valid and legal request. But it has to start with the interception, analysis, trending and prediction of traffic in the first place.

There, I said it.

We then move to the current advice being given to parents about monitoring and controlling their internet access and social media use. This type of advice is warmly embraced by most people, as one would expect, because children cannot possible be expected to know and understand the types of threats they might be exposed to on the internet, and too naïve to be able to deal with them. They do not have the experience or understanding of what could happen if they use the internet without some kind of supervision and monitoring, and as responsible parents we are there to protect, educate and support.

I think there is a parallel here, namely that the general population simply does not understand the kind of threats that are out there, and how monitoring communications and the internet is a fundamental way of ensuring that we don’t find out the hard way. There has to be a certain level of trust in the various government bodies that the monitoring is done for specific purposes, in the same way a child will have a level of trust that a parent monitoring contacts and online activity is doing so not to harm the child but to protect them from needless abuse and worse.

This parallel is not a clear one I understand; there have been abuses of power, and the politics of government is a dirty business at the best of times, but I pay taxes and participate in my community for the benefit of the greater good and therefore expect a certain level of protection from the powers that be. I chose to live in a somewhat paternalistic society because it benefits me and I get to enjoy a largely violence free lifestyle as a result.

Were you surprised by these revelations? Angered or resigned to them? I will continue to encrypt my most personal of data and practise good information security next time i do my banking in a Starbucks; not to protect myself from the government but from the criminals. I will leave the criminals to the government.

Announcements, Presentations and Work!

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Banyan tree, Bangalore, India

Banyan tree, Bangalore, India

It has been an incredibly busy five weeks since 44CON, with a lot of travel, projects coming to fruition, conference talks and preparation as well as more writing than is reflected in this blog.

I have spent three weeks (over two trips) in India carrying out five security risk assessments and hosting one three day client visit, and all I can say is that my India based colleagues continue to impress and amaze me with their knowledge, analytical skills and above all friendliness. I had the good fortune to spend some time with them at a team outing, discovered a mutual friend in London and also hit the dancefloor with them (if you have never danced in an Indian nightclub, you haven’t really danced!).

I was also able to spend an evening with the lovely folks of the Delhi chapter of NULL in Noida, and had a great couple of presentations (WAF and compliance) as well as an engaging conversation on interviewing in the infosec world. I had struggled for the last couple of years to find good conferences and forums in India, but apparently I missed an incredibly vibrant and widespread community. I’m glad to ay that is no more the case and I look forward to attending more in the future (along with my India based colleagues). On my return I attended the IT Security Forum and spoke on “Throwing Shapes for Better Security Risk Management” covering three ways to manage your security programmes more effectively.

A project I have been working on with my good friends and colleagues @sirjester and @j4vv4d finally came to fruition with the help of @jimshout, called Host Unknown. I am extremely proud of this project and we have spent many hours agonising over the details, honing the performances and getting website, YouTube and social media coordinated; in fact it was a lot more work than we expected! There is so much more in the pipeline, and if you would like more information please contact us, I promise you will only be mildly disappointed! (I am also legally obliged to point out that it was all my idea, despite what some of you may have heard.)

My other piece of news is that I have been asked to be a guest blogger for Iron Mountain, something I am absolutely thrilled by! I have already posted my first article, and I am looking forward to writing many more. As someone who can often struggles to  get down to the process of actually writing int he first place, (once I am started I seem to be OK!) I see this another incentive to flex that particular creative muscle more frequently, as well as getting used to writing on specific subjects, somewhat to order. I will of course be cross posting back to this blog, but I would encourage you all to head over and see what they have to say. My particular favourite is @christiantoon who is certainly one of the more prolific writer on the site (and a great guy to boot!).

It’s the RSA Europe conference next week, and I have been busy preparing my presentation “Playing the Game of Thrones: ensuring the CISO role at the King’s Table”. While there is an element of content that I have covered in other presentations before, this is nonetheless a new presentation with plenty of new content, somewhat more research based (although by no means academic) and very much pushing me out of my comfort zone. That said I think it is going to be a strong presentation which should generate some good discussion; here’s a podcast where I explain what I am going to be talking about, and I will of course be covering the conference in my next blog.

With all of this going on I haven’t been able to post as regularly as I would have liked, but I am building up a great stash of content that should see us through the winter months. Winter is coming after all!

 

Sailing the High Seas at 44CON

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logo-1I have just returned from 44CON, a technical infosec conference that is held in London and in its third year. As with any multi day conference you come back tired but educated, and happy but deflated that it is over. A speaker party, a conference after party, two gin’o clocks, a conference bar and some fabulous presentations makes for an exhausting two days.

Organisationally it is extremely well run; the crew are are friendly, knowledgable AND efficient (it’s rare to have all three), the venue is of a high quality, the sponsors are low key but available, SpeakerOps is excellent, and with the exception of myself and two others the attendees are amazingly smart and technical. I was able to chat to a number of the speakers at a reception on Wednesday night, and the level of detail they went into for their research was simply mind-blowing; one person even decided to write his own 3D presentation language instead of using PowerPoint or Keynote, just for this one presentation!

I spent the first day mostly at the InfoSec track rather than the technical track, learning about “Security lessons from dictators in history” and “Surviving the 0-day – reducing the window of exposure”, both very good. I did attend a technical talk in the afternoon along with two friends (the two mentioned above!), and to be honest he could have been speaking a different language with what he was talking about; to make it worse he apologised at the end for not making it technical enough! It was a fabulous talk though, wonderfully presented, and let down only by my lack of technical knowledge of the subject.

As a backup speaker for the infosec track I thought I was off the hook at this point as nobody had dropped out, but it was announced at this point that there would be a “hidden track” of talks, of which I was one of them. This hidden track would take place at an undisclosed location and you had to talk to vendors and other con goers to find out where it was. It was at this point I excused from the after party to add a little more content to my slides.

Sailing the Cs of Disaster Planning 44Con.001

Sailing the High C’s of Disaster Planning – Click for PDF

The following morning, after the opening presentation I was second in the hidden track. My talk was entitled “Sailing the C’s of Disaster Planning”, and the main drive of it was of a simple “framework” that allows you to be be able to not only test the effectiveness of your disaster/business continuity planning, but also help to communicate the key elements of the plan upwards to the board and down through the key players in the organisation. This was the first time I had given this talk, and to be honest some of the ideas have not quite been fleshed out, although the concept is sound. It was well received by about 20 people (not bad given it was a hidden track) and there were some good questions and conversations afterwards. Feedback received later in the day was both encouraging but also useful in highlighting areas that need to be improved.

A copy of the slides are above; if you take a look at them please provide feedback as always (caution, 12.5Mb PDF).

I will be using this blog to flesh out those ideas and gather feedback over the next couple of months, firstly by looking at the high level concepts of this approach, and then subsequently break down the five elements of the approach into further blog posts.

The remainder of the second day at 44CON was taken up with more talks, as well as a bit of filming with my two colleagues, the two unknown hosts you could say, for something we hope to release in the next few weeks.

I would like to thank Steve and Adrian and the entire crew of 44CON for an excellent event, and I am certainly coming back for next year, at a new, larger yet undisclosed location.