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.

Video: Playing the Game of Thrones at RSA Europe 2013

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I’m no HBO, but I am pleased to say I have just posted a video of my talk at RSA onto YouTube, entitled “Playing the Game of Thrones; Ensuring the CISO’s Role at the King’s Table. Recorded by my good friend and evil twin brother Kai Roer (@kairoer) it is the session in its entirety along with pertinent slides throughout.

I was pleased with my personal performance at the time, but of course watching it I see many areas I could improve upon. (I am planting my feet better, but still by no means do I stand still for instance.) The staging of the room was very poor, but unfortunately there was not a lot that could be done about that, and many other speakers had to put up with the same issues.

The full abstract for the talk (from the initial submission) is:

Why is is the CISO constantly frsutrated with being required to report to areas of the business that either don’t understand it or conflict with so many of the core deliverables of the role? Too often it is beholden to the agenda of the technology focussed CIO or blinkered by the financial constraints of the CFO. How has the role even got to this place?

Starting with a brief historical look at where the CISO role was borne from in the first place, progression to this current state of affairs is shown to be inevitable.  What is needed is a plan to disrupt this status quo and ensure a CISO is in a position to not only understand the power of the business intelligence that is produced in a well managed environment, but how to ensure it reaches the board in a way that is understood.

Through the use of a universally understood information security model, the CIA triangle, the presentation explores three key areas to assure the success of the CISO in being asked to report to the board rather than being summoned to it.

Initially the actual source of the information, its gathering, the methods employed and the common pitfalls often seen are explored and clarified. What are the common mistakes, how are they rectified and how can you recognise when the data gathering programme is going awry?

Secondly, how is it being pulled together, and what is it saying? How to understand the audience it is being presented to and what can be done to improve its chances of being understood.

Finally, how does the CISO make the final push for the board? What are the key principles that need to be understood about supporting a successful business, what home truths about the information security industry are rarely mentioned and how can the CISO differentiate themselves from those that came before?

This presentation seeks to broaden a CISO’s skills beyond the technical and the post nominal focussed industry accepted norms and into those that actually help a business do what it does best.

The content from this and my other recent talks will start to appear on this blog as I put my ideas down more into the written word rather than a presentation format. I have just one more speaking engagement before the end of the year now, and one in the first two weeks of the new year, so I hope to find more time to write rather than created decks.

I hope you enjoy the video, and as always I would greatly appreciate your feedback both positive and negative/constructive.

What’s this security stuff for anyway?

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I am currently sitting in the BA lounge in Heathrow awaiting a flight to Delhi, and as I look around at the number of laptops lying around it reminded me of something I saw a few years ago at Delhi International Airport as I was waiting to fly back to the UK. It was so shocking I even used it as an example in a security article I wrote for my company on my return. Regular readers will know that I have a thing about unattended laptops anyway as it  has the potential of negating all of the technical measures put in place in certain circumstances. Anyway, I decided to write it up here as an example (and of course to kill the time in the lounge!).

It was about midnight, and I was in the BA lounge (sometimes shared with other airlines), and it was quite a busy evening so most of the seats were taken.

I was sat next to a gentleman who opened up his laptop and switched it on. It immediately asked for a password, I presume for the on disk encryption. He then had to log into his account, and then finally he connected his own data card (no local WiFi and inherent insecurities for him!) and subsequently connected to his corporate VPN using a username, password and an RSA two factor authentication token. All good stuff from a security perspective.

I noticed from his wallpaper logo right in the centre of his screen that he worked for an aeronautics defense contractor, so the level of security didn’t surprise me. What he did next however did…

After successfully connecting, he placed his laptop on on the table in front of him and went to the toilet… without even locking his laptop. He was away for 15 minutes.

I was so shocked I even took a photo of his laptop which is attached – this is honestly the laptop in question! If you look carefully you can see the window with his VPN connections in the middle of the screen

image

It summed up to me that even though there was all of this security on his laptop, it was rendered useless by his carelessness and utter disregard (or utter lack of awareness) of the security of the contents on his laptop. He entered the passwords that protected his data because that was what he needed to do to get his job done, not because he understood what it was for.

When we overcome scenarios, attitudes and understanding that results in this kind of thing being played out the world over, we will have addressed a huge amount of risk in our industry.

Bon voyage!

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.