“And the winner is… Compliance!”

1 Comment October 26, 2015 Thom Langford

Disclaimer: My comments below are based upon quotes from both Twitter and The Times of London on the UK’s TalkTalk breach; as a result the subsequent investigation and analysis may find that some of the assertions are in fact incorrect. I will post clarifying statements should this happen to be the case.

I am not normally one to pick over the bones of company A or company B’s breach as there are many people more morbid and qualified than me to do so, and I also hate the feeling of tempting fate. All over the world i would guarantee there are CISOs breathing a sigh of relief and muttering to themselves/psychoanalyst/spouses “thank god it wasn’t us”. Bad things happen to good people, and an industry like ours that tends to measure success on the absence of bad things happening is not a great place to be when those bad things appear to happen far more frequently than ever before.

So it took me a while to decide if I should write up my feelings on TalkTalk’s breach, although I had Tweeted a few comments which were followed up on.

that original quote I Tweeted from the Times dated 25th October 2015

Initially I was shocked that people are still using the same password across so many crucial accounts. After a ten minute rant in the car about it with my wife, she calmly (one of the many reasons I married her) explained that not everyone thinks like me as a security professional, and that I should remember my own quote of “convenience eats security for breakfast”. Having calmed down a little, I was then shocked by something else. That something else was when the TalkTalk CEO, Dido Harding was on national television looking clearly exhausted (I can only imagine how much sleep she had been getting the last few days) giving out unequivocally bad advice such as “check the from address on your emails, if it has our address it is from us”. Graham Cluley’s short analysis was spot on here:

As if TalkTalk’s customers hadn’t gone through enough, they are then being given shoddy advice from someone in a supposed position of trust that is going to put them at even more risk. The scammers and phishers must have been rubbing their hands with invisible soap and glee as they prepared their emails and phone calls.

Now, the attack it seems did not disclose as much information as was first though, which is good news. So credit card numbers were tokenised and therefore unusable, so no direct fraud could be carried out there (again dependent upon the form of that tokenisation which I am sure there will be more details on in the coming months). Bank details were however disclosed, but again, there is a limited amount of damage that can be done there (there is some I acknowledge, but it takes time and is more noticeable… another time for that discussion). Here is the Problem Number One though; with Harding’s poor advice, many people subsequently (and allegedly) fell for phishing attacks through either phone calls or emails, and lost hundreds of thousands of pounds. TalkTalk’s response? Credit monitoring.

And then we move to Problem Number Two; Why weren’t the bank details stored safely? Why were they not encrypted? Armed with the knowledge of customers bank account details scammers can make a much more convincing case that they are actually from TalkTalk, especially if other account information was also lost (time will tell). TalkTalk’s response?

Dido Harding talking to The Times, 24th October 2015

So TalkTalk was technically compliant? Shouldn’t this kind of thinking be consigned to the same mouldering scrapheap where “we’ve always done it this way” and “we’re here to secure the business, not help it” lay? I sincerely hope that this episode will at the very least highlight that “compliance” and “security” are two very different things and that the former most certainly doesn’t automatically result in the latter. What has transpired is the perfect storm of a breach, unforgivably poor advice, and complacency based upon compliance and resulted in the pain of a lot of people involving large amounts of money.

If an example like this does not spur you into doing more as regards your own security awareness activities, then please go back to the beginning and start again. Why? I have been accused of “victim blaming” somewhat (see the above Tweets), but if individuals had an ounce of sense or training they wouldn’t have fallen for the subsequent scams and been more careful when responding to email supposedly from TalkTalk. I will leave the last word to Quentin Taylor, and as you carry on with your internet residencies, don’t forget you need to wear protective clothing at all times.

Your InfoSec premiums have increased by 20% this year. Are we worth it?

Leave a comment June 22, 2015 Thom Langford

My annual home insurance quote came through this morning, with the usual 10-20% uplift that I know I can remove again through simply phoning the provider and threatening to leave. It is a pretty standard technique in the industry that has been going on for years, and that preys upon the lazy people in the world who can’t be bothered to look for a better deal.

Rewind a few months when I spoke with a very senior executive who admitted that he saw information security as a form of insurance.

“I don’t want to have to pay for it, but I do because I know that when I need it you guys come and fix the problems we are in”

This is a somewhat common and fair attitude to information security given our background as an industry and how we often interact with the business (a particularly large topic that this entire blog is really about). yet what was so interesting was his follow on comment:

“the things is, I am sure there is so much more information security can do for us, I just don’t know what it is”

When I first took out home insurance, I was most concerned about getting the cheapest quote. I was young, free and almost single, but all of the extras that the larger insurance companies were offering (and charging for) did not concern me. If my house burnt down I would find somewhere else to live while the insurance company sorted everything out, what do I need a hotel for? Lost my house keys? I will change the crappy lock on the front door myself when I get round to it, I don’t need a locksmith from the insurance company to do it for me.

Fast forward to today, and I live a far more complex busy life, cash rich (relatively speaking), time poor, with responsibilities to my children and wife, and a lifetime of memories in my house that are virtually irreplaceable. if things go wrong, I need it fixed quickly and easily and with the minimum of impact to me and my family. I even have proactive services, such as boiler cover and servicing to reduce the likelihood of things going wrong in the first place. Therefore I am leveraging every aspect of what the insurance company can give me even before something goes wrong, and the peace of mind that I get knowing they are looking out for me even prior to disaster striking is worth (almost!) every penny.

An information security programme must be able to sell every aspect of its services to the business, and not just be seen as a reactionary force. if it does that, every time something goes wrong, both the financial and emotional premiums of paying for your services will increase time over time until the point the programme is seen as imply an overhead like paying the rent and keeping the plant watered, i.e. when the time comes, costs to be reduced.

Look at how you provide service before the fact; risk assessments, security testing, awareness and education can all be seen as services that prevent and/or add value to the business. What about the day to day? Consultancy to the business to do things securely without them even thinking about it; it doesn’t have to have “security” written on it to be a win for you and the business. And of course don’t forget after the event; incident management, business continuity, or even helping in the quality acceptance environments after something has been developed.

The key is to be involved in the full lifecycle of your business, whatever they are. They will be different from business to business and industry to industry, so it may not always be easy to identify, but it is extremely valuable.

And the prices we quote every year? Unlike insurance premiums, we are worth every penny.

Note: I don’t actually like the analogy of infosec and insurance, but it is one I regularly hear, so I decided to try and embrace it in this blog. I still don’t like it, but I can see how it could be useful for a simple elevator pitch or short conversation. There are plenty of analogies out there, and the best place for them in my humble opinion is at The Analogies Project. Check them out, and use them wherever possible. Even better, think about becoming a contributor.

The Consistency of Plastique

Leave a comment June 17, 2015 Thom Langford

As I said in my last post I have been travelling quite extensively recently, but this weekend I was able to take a long weekend in Oslo with my wife just before the Nordic CSA Summit where I was invited to speak on “the CISO Perspective”. As a gift for speaking, each of us was given a block of Norwgian cheese, in a roughly square shape, that really did seem to have the consistancy, weight and look of a lump of plastique (I imagine…). It did occur to me that in the spirit of all good 44CON prizes, it was intended to get you stopped at the airport.

On my return home yesterday, I was pret sure my bag would be picked up for secondary screening given the presence of this lump of cheesy explosive in my bag (although apparently @digininja tells me a malt loaf has the same effect as well). Sure enough, my bag was selected, I presented to the good natured security folks the block of cheese, and with a wry smile they let my bag through. The same could not be said of my carry on bag though.

I was asked quite curtly if I had a penknife or similar in this bag; now I am getting more forgetful, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t. The security guy really did not look like he believed me, so we started to empty my bag. Then I remembered, I had a pick lock set that I had put into zipped pocket in my bag about nine months ago, intending to give it to my good friend Akash in Boston who had expressed an interest in that particular art. Remember I just said I am getting forgetful? That’s why it has been in my bag for so long having seen Akash many times this last nine months. Oh well.

But it also occurred to me that I had been through about ten different airports in that time, and this was the first time it had been picked up, let alone even identified as a possible penknife (understandable as the picks fold into the main body).

This underscores to me the inconsistency of the security scanning at virtually every airport. Shoes on or off? Belts on or off? IPads as well as laptops taken out? Kindles, in the bag or out? My bag of cables that you tell me to keep in my bag at one airport, and then getting admonished for not pulling it out of the bag at the next? As an end user of these services (and I am fully supportive of them despite this I must say) it is extremely frustrating. There seem to be too many exceptions in place without clear reason, and without tying back to a singular way of doing things. The shoe bomber, Richard Reid, saw to it we have to take our shoes off going through security… except of course when you don’t.

Consistency in an information security programme is obviously key. But sometimes the pendulum swings too far the other way. Any policy that ends with “There are no exceptions to this policy” is asinine at best, and crippling to the business at worst. There will always be a need for an exception in order to ensure business can be carried out effectively. As long as the risks are understood and communicated effectively, then move on and do it.

It certainly doesn’t mean that the exception can be used as an excuse to carry on working like that. There is no concept of precedence in this case. If there was the natural end state would be complete mayhem as every exception is used to the point where there is no policy left. An exception is just what it says on the tin, a one off easing off the rules for business to to operate effectively and efficiently. It should be time based, must be reviewed regularly, and where possible repealed if alternative approaches have come to light.

Consistency is important when applying policies, especially across a large organisation, but for goodness sake, don’t forget that change is an important part of business and needs to be embraced. But please do a better job of managing that change, and the subsequent exceptions, than airport security does.

Conferences and Presentations

What with InfoSec Europe, BSides, RSA Unplugged and the just attended Nordic CSA Summer conference it has been busy on the presentation front again. I have a few more presentation to upload to this site as well as some footage. I am hoping to make it to Blackhat in Vegas for the first time this year, and speak on behalf of friendly vendor who I have always enjoyed working with.

Diligently preparing for the conference

As I also mentioned in my last post, my employer became a sponsor of the European Security Blogger Awards, something I hope we will be for future events as well. Unfortunately I lost my best personal blogger award crown this year to Lee Munson of Security faq’s. I can’t help but feel that if I have to lose to someone, Lee would be top of my list as he consistently outshines me in both quality and volume of blogging. As a community we are lucky to have someone like Lee and if you haven’t already done so please do reach out to him and congratulate him.

Direct Hit, Near Miss or Remote Miss? Why you are more confident than you should be.

20 Comments May 27, 2015 Thom Langford

In the years running up to the beginning of the second world war the British government was extremely concerned that in the event of hostilities breaking out, the german Luftwaffe would launch significant attacks against Britain and especially London. With an estimated 250,000 casualties in the first week alone, the consensus was that millions of Londoners would flee, leaving the industrial war engine to grind to a halt. Several psychiatric hospitals were even set up on the outskirts of London to handle the huge numbers of casualties psychologically affected by the bombing.

History tells us this was not the case, despite horrific numbers of casualties and extensive damage to homes, property and businesses throughout London.

A Canadian psychiatrist, J. T. MacCurdy, in his book The Structure of Morale postulated this was because the effect of a bomb falling on a population splits them into three groups:

1. The people killed by the bomb. As MacCurdy puts it

the morale of the community depends on the reaction of the survivors, so from that point of view, the killed do not matter. Put this way the fact is obvious, corpses do not run about spreading panic.

Harsh, but true in this model.

2. The Near Misses, the ones that

feel the blast, … see the destruction… but they survive, deeply impressed. It may result in ‘shock’…and a preoccupation with he horrors that have been witnessed.

3. The Remote Misses. These are the people who hear the sirens, the bombs explode, watch the aircraft overhead, but the bombs explode down the street. For them the experience of the bombing is that they survived easily, unlike the Near Miss group. The emotion as a result of the attack…

is a feeling of excitement with a flavor of invulnerability.

Near miss = trauma, remote miss = invulnerability.

Diaries and recollections of the period certainly support these theories. For instance, when a laborer was asked if he wanted to be evacuated to the countryside (after being bombed out of his house twice) he replied;

What, and miss all this? Not for all the tea in China!

The reason for this attitude, the sense of invulnerability, is that they have been through the very worst of time… and survived. They had faced their fears, and realized they were not as bad as they thought they were going to be, and in fact the result of surviving had given them a sense of elation that made them feel even more alive than before.

This is a very long way of saying that we may very easily view security incidents and breaches like this. Sony (perhaps) are the ones right at the centre of the blast. they are affected directly, and don’t even run around spreading panic because they are too busy dealing with the incident itself.

The near misses, Sony’s vendors, suppliers and partners are probably reeling from the near miss and are probably doing all they can to ensure it doesn’t happen to them. in short why are traumatized.

Finally, there is the rest of us. Yeah baby! Another breach, and it wasn’t us! We are invincible! We don’t need to do anything different at all, because we are survivors!

I think I see an issue here. Every time we are not breached, we become more confidant that we will not be breached, and become over confident and convinced we are having the time of our lives doing great stuff in the infosec world and not being breached. let’s hope that bomb doesn’t drop too close to home to burst that bubble, otherwise Careers is So over ceases to be a funny industry joke and very much a reality. Take the precautions now, take the threat seriously, and do what you can now, before it is too late.

I would strongly recommend reading the Book David & Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell if you would like to read more about this concept as well as others along the same lines.

A personal note…

I am now under new employment as a result of an acquisition of my previous employer, and I have been fortunate enough to be elevated to Group CISO of the acquiring company. Unsurprisingly this has resulted in a massive new workload, travel schedule and responsibilities, and hence my distinct lack of posts this last few months. Despite this I have still been nominated for European Personal Security Blog 2015 in this years Blogger Awards; thank you!

Additionally, I am so proud to say that not only is my new employer keen to promote this blog internally in the new company, but also thrilled to say we have become the newest sponsor of the European Security Blogger Network.

Finally, I have been on the road a huge amount the last few weeks, including at RSA USA where I was very happy with my presentation at the RSA Studio; I spoke about how we have changed our approach to security awareness, and the use of the Restricted Intelligence product to catalyse it.

There were also talks at Munich Identity Management Conference, although the talks are not public yet.

Next week, Bsides London, InfoSec Europe, European Blogger Awards and RSA Unplugged. I am mentoring a rookie at Bsides, Speaking at infoSec, as well as at the Tripwire booth, sponsoring (and nominated!) at the Blogger Awards, and just watching at RSA Unplugged.

It’s has been a busy few months!

Are you the most thrilling ride at the theme park?

1 Comment March 30, 2015 Thom Langford

I recently spent the day in Thorpe Park (a bit like a down market DisneyLand for anyone not from the UK), and we were all looking forward to a day of roller coasters, silly ride photographs, bad overpriced food and generally some good fun. We had never been before, and my kids are now old enough to be able to go on almost all of the rides now. Much excitement was expected.

Yes, we had a good day overall, but not as good as it should have been. The first two rides we tried to get on as soon as the gates swung open were closed because of technical faults; both these rides were at opposite corners of the park, so after 30 minutes not only had we not even had one ride, we hadn’t even got in the queue for one. This somewhat set the tone for the day. At the fourth closed ride my wife gave some unfortunate teenaged park assistant an earful (he was rescued by a senior colleague). At the fifth we could only laugh and accept our fate. And so it went on; the photo booth to collect photos from one ride was closed after we had staged the perfect family shot on the ride, the hand dryers in the toilets all blew cold, cold air on a cold day, vending machines were out of order, and so on. The more we looked the more we found fault.

We still had a good day, but we won’t be going back any time soon, and conceded that in the theme park area at least, the Americans have by far the best theme parks compared to Britain.

The whole experience reminded me of some security groups I have experienced. We very often promise a world of smiling, excited faces, a world made better by our presence and an experience that will surpass your expectations. The reality is often a little more drab than that.

We often see security functions that allegedly “enable your teams to work more effectively”, or “allow you to leverage your creativity while we drive your competitiveness” and so forth. In our drive to be seen to be a benefit to the business (good), we often set ourselves up for failure as we establish these grandiose statements (bad). “Leveraging security to be a differentiator in the marketplace” is great, but only if you can deliver on it. An ISO27001 certification may help your business get more work initially, but if the basic principles of good security practice in your delivery teams is not there, that work will soon be lost. Your company workforce working securely and in harmony is the best way of supporting your business, not having a “security strategy that differentiates us to our clients”.

Let’s focus on getting the rides running properly in your security programme before marketing ourselves in a way that ultimately shows even our hand dryers don’t work.