Risky Business

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<updated with missing risk matrix image>

Risk is a topic that I like to talk about a lot, mainly because I managed to get it ‘wrong’ for a very long time, and when I finally did realise what I was missing, everything else I struggled with fell into place around it. For me, therefore, Risk is the tiny cog in the big machine that, if it is not understood, greased and maintained, will snarl up everything else.

In the early days of my career, risk was something to be avoided, whatever the cost. Or rather, it needed to be Managed, Avoided, Transferred or Accepted down to the lowest possible levels across the board. Of course, I wasn’t so naive as to think all risks could be reduced to nothing, but they had to be reduced, and “accepting” a risk was what you did once it had been reduced. Imagine my surprise that you could “accept” a risk before you had even treated it!

There are many areas of risk that everyone should know before they start their risk management programme in whatever capacity they are in, but here are my top three:

Accepting the risk

If you want to know how not to accept a risk, look no further than this short music video  (which I have no affiliation with, honestly). Just accepting something because it is easy and you get to blame your predecessor or team is no way to deal with risks. Crucially, there is no reason why high-level risks cannot be accepted, as long as whoever does it is qualified to do so, cognizant of the potential fallout, and senior enough to have the authority to do so. Certain activities and technologies are inherently high risk; think of AI, IoT or oil and politics in Russia, but that doesn’t mean you should not be doing those activities. 

A company that doesn’t take risks is a company that doesn’t grow, and security risks are not the only ones that are being managed daily by the company leadership. Financial, geographic, market, people, and legal risks are just some things that need to be reviewed.

Your role as the security risk expert in your organisation is to deliver the measurement of the risks clearly as possible. That includes ensuring everyone understands how the score is derived, the logic behind it and the implications of that score. This brings us neatly to the second “Top Tip”:

Measuring the risk

Much has been written about how risks should be measured, quantitatively or qualitatively, for instance, financially or reputationally. Should you use a red/amber/green approach to scoring it, a percentage, or figure out of five? What is the best way to present it? In Word, Powerpoint or Excel? (Other popular office software is available.)

The reality is that, surprisingly, it doesn’t matter. What matters is choosing an approach and giving it a go; see if it works for you and your organisation. If it doesn’t, then look at different ways and methods. Throughout it all, however, it is vital that everyone involved in creating, owning and using the approach knows precisely how it works, what the assumptions are, and the implications of decisions being made from the information presented.

Nothing exemplifies this more than the NASA approach to risk. Now NASA, having the tough job of putting people into space via some of the most complicated machines in the world, would have a very rigorous, detailed and even complex approach to risk; after all, people’s lives are at stake here. And yet, their risk matrix comprises a five-by-five grid with probability on one axis and consequence on the other. The grid is then scored Low-Medium or High:

Seriously. That’s it. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. However, a 30-page supporting document explains precisely how the scores are derived, how probability and consequence should be measured, how the results can be verified, and so on. The actual simple measurement is different from what is important. It is what is behind it that is.

Incidents and risk

Just because you understand risk now, you may still need to be able to predict everything that might happen to you. For example, “Black Swan” events (from Nicholas Nasim Taleb’s book of the same name) cannot be predicted until they are apparent they will happen.

By this very fact, creating a risk register to predict unpredictable, potentially catastrophic events seems pointless. However, that differs from how an excellent approach to risk works. Your register allows you to update the organisational viewpoint on risk continuously. This provides supporting evidence of your security function’s work in addressing said risks and will enable you to help define a consensual view of the business’s risk appetite.

When a Black Swan event subsequently occurs (and it will), the incident response function will step up and address it as it would any incident. Learning points and advisories would be produced as part of the documented procedures they follow (You have these, right?), including future areas to look out for. This output must be reviewed and included in the risk register as appropriate. The risk register is then reviewed annually (or more frequently as required), and controls are updated, added or removed to reflect the current risk environment and appetite. Finally, the incident response team will review the risk register, safe in the knowledge it contains fresh and relevant data, and ensure their procedures and documentation are updated to reflect the most current risk environment.

Only by having an interconnected and symbiotic relationship between the risk function and the incident response function will you benefit most from understanding and communicating risks to the business.

So there you have it, three things to remember about risk that will help you not only be more effective when dealing with the inevitable incident but also help you communicate business benefits and support the demands of any modern business.

Risk is not a dirty word.

Links to other interesting stuff (affiliate links)

Building a Modern Exposure Management Program

Access Controls that Move – The Power of Data Security Posture Management

Vulnerabilities and Insights: A Look at Cybersecurity Challenges

The New Etiquette of Webinars (insert post-Covid statement here)

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Hands up if you have been to an in-person conference or summit since the middle of March this year. Yeah, me neither.

And so we saw the rapid build-up of the online webinar, starting from the first tentative steps made by the BBC’s Have I Got News For You, through to LinkedIn Live, Zoom based cabinet briefings being “hacked”, and the advent of the vanity backdrop. And there was much celebration amongst members of ISACA and (isc)2 as we could now still get CPE’s for sitting around drinking coffee and chatting with our infosec mates.

Some fo the first ones were, frankly, a little bit crap. Poor sound and video, and events organisers more used to managing people in person rather than at the end of a dodgy video link. But these were pioneering days, and let’s face it, we needed those CPEs. It didn’t take long for features to start pouring into platforms like Zoom, Teams, Discord, even Webex (used only by employees of Cisco and people trapped in a Cisco building), and other platforms like BrightTALK. Events people got better at putting them on and using the tools, and the quality went up. New tools (or tools that found a new audience) such as StreamYard and Livestorm have truly democratised the ability to produce slick online conferences with a big budget feel at pocket-friendly pricing.

But.

The rot is starting to seep in, and quickly too. It’s only been a few months as well.

For context since the beginning of this month (October) to the end of next month, I will have hosted over 30 hours of online events, mostly as a full-on Host but also as a panel moderator, and some poor behaviours are starting to seep in already.

So I present to you my Top Ten Webinar Peeves, from both sides of the screen

  • Start on time. Even if some of your speakers are suffering from technical difficulties, start on time. You should always have a plan B anyway, or a host that can think on their feet quickly enough to engage the audience for the few extra minutes needed. Unlike a physical conference, you don’t have a captive audience. They will leave to do something else or assume it was cancelled last minute. Be on screen straight away and engage immediately.
  • Finish on time. Or slightly earlier. Never overrun. Your attendees are busy people and have meetings and places to be. Again, they are not a captive audience with the promise of a free drink or six at the end of the show and will leave the session at the published time. This means any closing remarks, thanks to sponsors or calls to action will be lost, and the benefit of the session in the first place significantly reduced.
  • Test the platform upfront. There are so many different platforms out there now, all with their own quirks and foibles. Each one has a different workflow to share your screen to give a presentation or require an upload prior to the session. Others require a certain browser to work properly, and they all seem to handle audio devices in different ways. Get it sorted upfront.
  • Position your camera properly. Everybody’s home setup is different, but there are basics that need to be observed. Don’t sit with a window or other light source right behind you as it will darken your image such that you can’t be seen. Can’t move? Then close the curtains. Try out different lights in different locations to get the best picture of you (you want to be recognised at a real conference, later on, don’t you?), and get the camera at the same hight as your eyes. Nobody wants to look into your nostrils. This might mean putting your laptop on a stack of books or similar, but the change is very noticeable.
  • Use a wired microphone and headphones. Having audio coming out of your speakers is suboptimal and can result in feedback. Wired is best because of latency and sound quality. There are some Bluetooth headsets and buds available that do a good job here, but they are the exception, not the rule.
The steps you go to ensuring you look good on screen. I need all the help I can get.
  • Present to the schedule. As a speaker, if you have been given a 15-minute slot, speak for 15 minutes (give or take a couple of minutes I am not a heartless monster). the organisers will have some buffer built-in and can work on the fly for genuine accidental overruns, but if your 15-minute slot goes on for 40 minutes, that is rude and disrespectful to the organisers, the speakers following you, and the audience who may not have even joined to watch you but rather subsequent speakers.
  • Have a timer. Conversely, more organisers should have a visible countdown clock on-screen that will allow everyone to see how much time they have remaining. Additionally, confirming on a regular basis that the speaker knows they will be interrupted and shut down if they exceed their slot by too much is a good way of reinforcing the message to the speaker.
  • Have a discussion area available. Not all questions are going to be answered in the session, so having a Slack, Discord or other platforms available will help immensely and ensure your speakers have an opportunity to connect to the audience after the session if need be.
  • Let everyone speak. A good host will ensure that everyone on a panel or discussion gets the opportunity to put their point across. Most of the time everyone is happy for this to happen, but sometimes people like the sound of their own voice over everyone else’s. Short of removing that person from the session, it is very difficult to manage that without causing embarrassment. Don’t be that person. Let the moderator/host guide you through the whole session as they have a much better idea of what is supposed to happen and when.
  • For goodness’ sake, have fun! As if this year hasn’t been tough enough already, having an opportunity to get together and listen to good talks should be embraced and be enjoyable.

So, speakers, presenters and organisers alike, some tips to make these new (obligatory post-COVID statement here) webinars and sessions more effective for everyone. There are plenty of other tips (don’t use a virtual background if you don’t have a green screen for instance), but these will certainly improve any even you are involved in, and in whatever capacity.

The best thing about virtual events though is that I can get my tea and snacks whenever I want, and not when the venue staff decide. Win-win.

Strategic Defense

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Most people who know me will understand when I say I am not technical in my field. Indeed, I have often spoken about how a CISO should not be technical; that doesn’t mean a CISO should not understand technology, but rather that is not the focus of the daily job. So what should a CISO focus on? I often talk about “Powerpoint and politics” and have even heard that expanded to …” and people” which makes sense really. Interestingly though, I used to say it as a joke, and then it came true. Huh.

This weeks video from The Lost CISO series talks about how to build a strategy. Or rather, it talks about how to build the platform upon which to build your strategy. One of the biggest mistakes I see organisations and CISO’s make is thinking that a security strategy comes from the roadmap of projects they will be rolling out over the next 1-3-5 years. Sure, they may feed into a strategy, but they play a small part of it.

Building a strategy requires knowing where you want to go, and what you are supporting. Essentially, it is a vision of the future, so no surprises for guessing that you start with a Vision statement. If, like me from 10 years ago, thought a Vision Statement was a way for expensive pony-tailed consultants to charge thousands a day to simply tell you to “strive to support our customers in a meaningful manner”, you may baulk at this starting point. Fully understandable, but also cynical, and let’s not allow past bad experiences taint our new approach.

The reason I say this is not because I have a ponytail, expensive or otherwise, but rather because a vision is effectively a rallying point around which your security team can focus on. If they do not know what they are working towards, you and your team will be in a perpetual state of fire fighting and reactive work. It doesn’t matter how many projects you have in place, or roadmaps printed nicely on A0 on the design teams plotter; if you don’t know what you are working towards how do you know if you are succeeding?

Make sure you know what the company vision is as well, otherwise you might create one that is pulling in the opposite direction, which helps no-one. Thom’s Top Tip: If you can create a security vision without the word “security” in it, you will definitely be on the right track (although this is by no means mandatory). Your vision, therefore, may look a little like this:

Delivering competitive advantage through trust and transparency.

It’s pretty high-level, doesn’t mention security, and gives people on the team some key pointers on how to consciously modify their behaviour towards a common goal.

But a Vision by itself isn’t enough, you also need some business outcomes to be achieved in order to achieve this Vision. Think of 3-5 or so outcomes that you want to achieve in order to fulfil your Vision, then add a metric (how you know it is being achieved) and an outcome (what benefit does it bring?). You then have one element of your 3-5 business outcomes that allow you to plan work, focus resources and (you will be glad to hear) add to your roadmap. So, for example, here is a business outcome, metric and value in support of the above Vision:

Business Outcome: Frictionless and scalable business processes.

Metric: Higher quality and faster outcomes.

Value: Standardisation resulting in increased efficiencies including easier decision making and better use of time, effort and money.

Add some more like this, and you have a robust vision upon which to build your strategy. Now you can think about how you are going to be doing that because you now have a better idea of what you need to do to achieve the company goals, what resources you need (including skills), and more importantly how you want to shape the future of your security team, and more importantly, your organisation. The whole point of a strategy is to ensure that your future is not an inevitability you have no control over, but rather you can invent it to be what you want and need it to be.

Looking to take your security team to the next level of productivity and business engagement? (TL)2 Security can help you define, establish and operationalise your strategy and vision ensuring you go beyond just keeping the lights on, and actually providing competitive advantage to your business. Contact us to find out more.

Busy Doing Nothing?

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When you are faced with managing third-party risks, it can feel like a Sisyphean task at best. Even a small organisation is going to have  20+ third parties and vendors to deal with, and by the nature of a small business, absolutely not a full-time person to carry them out. As an organisation grows, at the other end of the extreme there will be many thousands of vendors and third parties in different countries and jurisdictions; even a large team is going to struggle to deal with that volume of work.

In The Lost CISO this week I talk about how to manage a third-party risk management programme from the perspective its sheer volume of work.

The key to dealing with this volume is, of course, to take a risk-based approach, and consciously decide to do nothing about a large proportion of them. It sounds counter-intuitive, but then a risk-based approach to anything can seem counter-intuitive. (Why would you “accept” a high-level risk for goodness sake?!) In this case, you would quite literally be putting some effort into deciding what not to do:

We’re busy doing nothing.

Working the whole day through.

Trying to find lots of things not to do.

Busy Doing Nothing, written by Jimmy Heausen-Van & Johnny Burke

This means your best approach is to filter who you absolutely must assess, who you should assess, and who can be reasonably ignored. In theory, the last group will be the majority of your third parties. How you filter is of course down to what is important to your organisation, industry, clients, the data you hold, the physical location of your environment (office or hosted) and any other criteria you can consider. Ultimately, it is what is important to your organisation, not what is important to you as a security person. Why? Because if security has the final say, there is a potential for a conflict of interest and the limiting of the organisation to operate effectively and efficiently. Here is a sample list of criteria you can sort your third parties by:

  1. Do they have access to our client’s (or our client’s customers) confidential/sensitive data?
  2. Do they have access to our confidential/sensitive data?
  3. Do they have data access to our IT infrastructure?
  4. Do they have physical access to our premises?
  5. Is our organisation reliant on their services being available at all times?

Inside each of these selected criteria, you may wish to refine further; in answer to the question, think “yes, but…” and you may find a particular vendor does not make your list as a result.

Congratulations! You have now hopefully reduced your third-parties needing to be assessed by hopefully about 80%. If that is not the case, go back to the beginning and validate your criteria, perhaps with business leadership themselves, or (ironically) a trusted third-party.

This may well still leave a formidable list to get through, so there are some more tricks you can use.

When assessing some of the larger third-parties (think Apple, Google, Microsoft etc.), you may wish to accept their certifications on face value. The chances of getting a face to face meeting and tour of the facility, whilst not impossible, are remote, and very much dependent upon how much you spend with them. The more reputable vendors will be transparent with their certifications, findings and general security programmes anyway.

You can then use this filter again with the slightly less well-known vendors but include a handful of questions (no more than fifteen) that you would like answered outside of certifications.

The smallest vendors with the least formal certification and publicly available can be presented with a more detailed set of “traditional” third-party risk questions. Make sure they are relevant, and certainly no more than 100 in total. You are better off getting a good idea of most of the vendor environments from a returned questionnaire than you are a perfect idea of a handful of environments from a barely returned questionnaire. The idea here is to get a consistent, medium level view across the board in order to spot trends and allocate your resources effectively.

Still overwhelmed with sheer volume? If this is the case, look to a three-year cycle rather than an annual cycle. You can reduce the workload by up to two-thirds this way, but you may wish to consider that some vendors are simply too crucial to have on this kind of cycle.

So all that is left is to ensure all of this is carefully monitored, tracked and managed. For instance, what are you going to do with a vendor that doesn’t meet your standards?

And that, my friends, is for another blog.

(You can download a sample third-party security questionnaire from the (TL)2 security Downloads area. There will be more templates arriving soon that you can download and use for yourself, or you may wish to contact (TL)2 if you would like some help and support in creating a third-party risk programme.)

 

 

The Runners and Riders of Lockdown

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After over six weeks of some kind of lockdown here in the UK, and similar amounts of time elsewhere in the world, it has become very obvious to me that many companies out there are simply ill-equipped to deal with the change in lifestyle the lockdown demands.

By ill-equipped, I don’t just mean from a technology perspective, although we see some of that as companies reduce security requirements to get users online from home. What I mean is that culturally they are not equipped to deal not only with a workforce that needs to work remotely but also a market that is doing the same. Put simply; companies are struggling to re-gear their sales and marketing departments to this brave new world we find ourselves.

I say this because as an industry we are used to a plethora of in-person events happening where vendors can either have stalls displaying their latest products, or stages where carefully polished presentations and panels are put on for us to watch, learn and hopefully decide to buy their product from. Webinars and online events were there but were the distant, impoverished, uglier cousin of something live, in-person and your face. Indeed, just a few weeks before the lockdown I was at RSA Conference in San Francisco, where the very epitome of what I describe was played out for the world to see.*

Then suddenly, it all stopped. Conferences and shows were cancelled, events postponed indefinitely, and in many cases, the security product landscape just stopped. I understand why, in many cases, cash flow needed to be conserved in these unprecedented times. However, it very quickly became apparent that this was the new normal, and that the companies that didn’t embrace it would quickly become irrelevant. after all, if you can’t adapt to a few weeks of disruption, what kind of company are you, delivering products to an industry that needs to plan for disruption?

I watched “Have I Got News For you” in those first few weeks on the BBC, a topical panel show comprised of 5 people, and they did it by having the guests record from their homes.

Have I Got News For You, March 2020

It was different, the dynamic was… a little off… but the show went ahead, the jokes landed, and each subsequent show got better. In other words, the BBC just got on with it, embraced the change, and made it work.

The same needs to happen to many of the security vendors, as unfortunately, it is a case of remaining relevant throughout the lockdown, in the front of people’s minds, and showing that they can overcome adversity by delivering knowledge and information. Those that don’t do it, retract into their proverbial shells and wait for “normality” to return will suffer.

Also, let us assume that normality does return, whatever form that might take. Those that have embraced these alternative Zoom/Skype/Teams/Hangouts/whatever approaches may find they are just as valuable as in-person events and can operate both, side by side, now unconstrained by the lockdown and able to use film and audio in even more creative ways. Which company would you choose to work with in the future, the one who sat tight, and did little market outreach during the lockdown, or the company that continued to communicate with their clients and potential clients through different mediums, sometimes getting it wrong but continually innovating and improving. Which company has the better culture?

It isn’t even a matter of cost. The LinkedIn Live, Zoom, Webinar etc. technologies already existed and were invested in, just woefully underutilised.

The same argument also applies to work from home, as many organisations now realise that productivity isn’t hours sat at the office desk, but rather results.  Which organisation/manager would you want to work for? The one that never changes or the culturally adaptive one that is based on results and trust?

These are challenging times, but these are the times that are going to show many companies in their true light, and you can use this time to differentiate between them.

 

*I do love a good conference, and the benefits they bring to my peers and me are fabulous, in case you think I am biased against them.