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Should Companies Ban USBs?

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Earlier this month, a Chinese woman was arrested after attempting to enter President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort while in possession of a number of suspicious electronic devices, including a USB flash drive. Apparently, the drive contained code that allows malicious software to run immediately after being plugged in, though it is still unclear what kind of malware it was. According to news reports, law enforcement also found nine other USB drives in the woman’s hotel room. If someone was able to connect a USB device to a computer on the resort’s network, attackers might be able to access all sorts of sensitive information and potentially gain control of machines on the network.

Historically, USB use has also aided insider threats, whether in the form of employees inadvertently infecting a corporate device or network with a found USB drive, or purposefully causing an infection or removing sensitive information via USB. In perhaps one the most high-profile of such cases, Edward Snowden reportedly removed NSA documents from a Hawaii facility on a flash drive before fleeing the country and providing those documents to members of the media.

Beyond the headlines, these devices continue to pose everyday risks. People mindlessly plug in flash drives, or carry their business’s most important documents on them that could accidentally be left in a hotel room or at a conference packed with corporate rivals. As companies evaluate their security policies and how to best secure their data, many are moving away from using USB or even banning them outright.

In May 2018, IBM did just that. The company’s global chief information security officer Shamla Naidoo said that IBM “is expanding the practice of prohibiting data transfer to all removable portable storage devices (eg: USB, SD card, flash drive),” and that the prohibition would apply to IBM operations worldwide, who will now rely entirely on the company’s cloud-based storage. Naidoo cited the danger of missing storage devices leading to “financial and reputational damage” as the motivation for the prohibition going forward, and acknowledged that the move may be disruptive for some departments and employees.

A 2016 University of Illinois study also showed that the now-proverbial nightmare scenario of an employee inserting a USB they found in a parking lot is actually realistic. After dropping 297 flash drives on a university campus, researchers found that people opened one or more files on 45% of the drives without taking any precautions, and that people moved 98% of the drives from the drop locations. The study’s authors noted that their results suggested that people may have picked up the drives and opened files motivated by altruism (finding the owner) and curiosity. But regardless of intent, simply plugging a flash drive into company computer can unleash any number of viruses, malware, or other cyber maladies on the company’s network.

Of course, doing away with USBs is also not a security panacea. As always, the user is the weakest part of any IT security plan, and even if a business does decide to ban USB storage devices and move their data storage to cloud-based options, employees should still be trained on password protection strategies and other security hygiene best practices. To make employee cyber-awareness training more effective, check out these tips from Risk Management.

NCSA and NASDAQ Advise Risk Managers to Look ‘Beyond IT’ Following a Breach

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NEW YORK — “Incident Response and Recovery” was the theme of the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and Nasdaq Cybersecurity Summit on April 17. Security and risk professionals from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and various companies and organizations convened at the Nasdaq Marketsite to discuss methods that focus on resilience and recovery following a cyber attack or data breach.

NCSA Executive Director Kelvin Coleman led the fireside chat with Matthew Travis, deputy director for the DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The timing of Travis’ appearance was unique, considering that Kirstjen Nielsen–formerly the secretary of Homeland Security and Travis’ director–recently resigned from her post on April 7. While that announcement grabbed widespread attention due to her involvement with the humanitarian and immigration crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, it also has major impacts for the country’s efforts to counteract cyberrisk and data breaches. Last September, Nielsen announced the formation of the National Risk Management Center (NRMC), an initiative focused on defending critical infrastructure from cyberattacks and providing a single point of access to the full range of government activities to defend against cyber threats.

“There is no doubt [Nielsen] was the most cyber-savvy secretary the department’s ever had. She brought real bonafide domain expertise in cybersecurity to the department,” Travis said. He added that the creation of CISA is her legacy and that the relationship with Kevin McAleenan, the new acting secretary of homeland security, has been harmonious.   

Travis reminded attendees that its partnerships with the private sector were crucial and that CISA regularly monitors national critical functions such as elections, electrical grids and financial transactions, which he said are the “big things that drive our economy.” He also said that companies can leverage CISA resources immediately after a breach as a supplement to the FBI’s criminal investigation.

“We’re going to help you understand exactly what happened and help you recover the data and mitigate some of the impact. The private sector firms do that very well, but the difference is that…

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[CISA] is free,” he said. “That is where we would like to work with owners and operators, when there is an event, to help them get back on their feet as soon as possible.”

Additionally, Coleman and Travis discussed that though CISA is not part of the intelligence community, it does have access to the intelligence collection and monitors trends that can be used to warn private sector companies of cyberrisks. He cited the recent Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure hijacking campaign that CISA warned about in February—in which at least 40 different organizations across 13 different countries were compromised—as an example of the agency taking steps to alert both the public and private sectors.   

“When we issue technical alerts or emergency directives,” Travis said, “[we] communicate to our stakeholders what to look out for.”

How to Reduce Uncertainty After A Breach  

In the next session, panelists agreed that even when companies use new technologies to remedy security flaws and migrate data to cloud storages, new vulnerabilities occur. Dr. Michael Siegel, principal research scientist and director of cybersecurity at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said that the old adage of risks being rooted in people continue to be prophetic.

“It’s always been about people and things that sit in our systems for a long time,” he said. “You’ve heard this since the 2000s and it’s still true, and even more true today.”

Should a business find itself in a situation where ransom is being demanded for intangible assets and information, Siegel advised that then is not the time when stakeholders should first decide whether they’d be willing to pay.

“They should know whether they’d pay ransomware because they have [presumably] done tabletop exercises…that will be absolutely essential because any time you wait and indecision will be [catastrophic],” he said. “You have to have practiced it in advance. You can build a scenario-generator and run it through a classroom.”

Companies can also learn from breaches, if tracking is implemented within their code, noted Tyler Shields, vice president of strategy for Sonatype, and open source governance platform. “The ability to track your code from creation to deployment—that entire life cycle—needs to be instrumented so that when a breach occurs you know what component was affected, where it came from, who implemented it and what protections were in place.”

Incident Response Recovery Beyond IT

The final session panelists agreed that holistic approaches were essential for successful responses and recovery periods. Internal and external communications should be well thought-out and designating a person or team to handle them sets the appropriate company precedent. Lisa Plaggemier, chief evangelist at Infosec and NCSA board member said that, for example, while a company’s lawyers are critical during these times, they might not be the best communicators.

“Lawyers, when they write for communications, tend to sound more scary than reassuring,” she said.

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“You want to have collaborations and have that communications person in the room with them.”   

Photo courtesy of the National Cyber Security Alliance

When it comes to crisis communication, Plaggemeir advocated that employees—especially those who detected the incident—should be armed with talking points for traditional and social media outlets to avoid data leakage.

“We want to make sure we equip those people so that the rumor mill doesn’t start flying and we don’t end up with communications that are out of our control,” she said.

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Dovetailing on that notion, moderator Andrew Derboben, senior director of security operations at Nasdaq was quick to mention reputation risk. He said another way to reduce data leakage and misrepresentations in the media—which can further harm a company’s reputation in the aftermath of a breach—is to arm all company employees with a brief script on what to say to anyone, even just passersby making small talk.

“Don’t even have them say ‘no comment,’” Derboben said. “Point them to the experts who have all the data. Because if we’re missing a key piece of information and it’s not communicated properly it could determine how an article will be written.”

67% of Hotel Websites Expose Guest Data, Study Finds

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According to new research from cybersecurity company Symantec, 67% of hotel websites are leaking customer reservation details and other personal information. Candid Wueest, the company’s principal threat researcher, tested more than 1,500 hotels in 54 countries, including low-cost to high-cost hotels, as well as both chain and independent hotels.

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symantec hotel data exposureWhen a customer uses a hotel’s website to book a room, the site usually creates and sends them a link so that the customer can directly access  and manage their reservation.

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According to Symantec, part of the problem is that third-party advertisers on hotels’ booking websites and web analytics companies (which track web traffic) can access customers’ bookings because they also get those links. This means that advertisers and analytic companies – including any potential malicious actors among their employees – could access and steal the information that the customer entered when booking a room, and even change or cancel the reservation.

Symantec also found that more than a quarter of the hotel websites examined do not send secure, encrypted links in their confirmation emails. Encrypted links prevent anyone trying to hijack a customer’s data from being able to see that data. If a customer received a confirmation email while using an unprotected WiFi (a public network in a café or an airport, for example), a cybercriminal could intercept that customer’s emails and use the unencrypted hotel booking link to access the customer’s booking. Some of these automatically generated links also contain details like customers’ email addresses in the web address, which makes accessing their information even easier for cybercriminals.

Additionally, many hotel websites are vulnerable to a type of cyberattack called “brute forcing,” where an attacker can use the customer’s email address and guess their booking number to gain access to the reservation and personal information. In some cases, Symantec found that hotel websites did not even require an email address to access customers’ reservation information via brute forcing. Though this method would not be useful to gain access to large amounts of customer data, attackers could use it to target individuals, like a specific CEO or conference attendee.

Wueest noted that hotels have thus far been slow to respond to these data exposure risks, and some have not responded at all. When he alerted the hotels’ data privacy officers to the problems in their sites, 75% responded, and those who did took an average of 10 days. Hotels and their information security staff should promptly assess their booking processes to ensure they are minimizing the risk of potential data leaks and breaches.

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By leaving these gaps in their websites’ security, they are endangering their customers and opening themselves up to risk, including potential liabilities and reputational damage.

Symantec recommends that hotels use encrypted links, and ensure that the automatic links generated do not include information like customers’ email addresses. It also recommends that customers use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs, services that protects users’ internet traffic) when booking or accessing their reservations using public WiFi to prevent any cyberattacker from intercepting any information that would provide a way in.

The report should also serve as a reminder that corporate employees’ personal devices and personal information are popular targets for cybercriminals and can be especially vulnerable to risks while traveling. Any time an employee exposes their devices to unprotected networks or, in this case, insufficiently protected websites, it leaves both the employee and their employer at risk. Even if an employee is using their own device to conduct business, it still endangers their employer because it may expose valuable business information. Cybercriminals have particularly used the hospitality industry as a hunting ground for such attacks, for example, targeting individuals using hotel WiFi, tricking them into downloading malicious software and stealing their information or spying on their internet activity.

How a Strong(er) SRM Program Could Have Helped Boeing

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A strategic risk management (SRM) program is designed to assist organizations in identifying, prioritizing, and planning for the strategic risks that could impair or destroy businesses and reduces the chances of these kinds of crises. And while hindsight is 20-20, an SRM program – or a more effective one – could have helped Boeing avoid some of its recent high-profile crises.

Between October 2018 and March 2019, two crashes involving the Boeing 300 737 MAX 8 models resulted in the loss of 346 lives. Since then, Boeing has:

  • had a possible criminal investigation commenced against it,
  • lost $22 billion in market value in the week following the Ethiopian Airlines’ crash in October,
  • had more than 300 737 MAX 8s grounded worldwide,
  • sustained significant reputational harm,
  • received demands from airlines seeking compensation for lost revenue,
  • been sued by crash victims’ families, and
  • had sales orders cancelled or suspended.

This is a crisis from which it may be difficult to recover.

One could trace back some of the risks to its decades-long rivalry with Airbus and an effort to remain viable.

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When American Airlines indicated it was close to finalizing an exclusive deal with Airbus for hundreds of new jets, Boeing sprung to action. The New York Times reported that Boeing employees then had to move at “roughly double the normal pace” to avoid losing “billions in lost sales and potentially thousands of jobs.”

An SRM program would have required an assessment of the business model and the associated risks, including competitors, long before the call from the CEO of American Airlines. The risks would have been prioritized and this information would have been factored into strategic plans that would have included responses to material risks.

During the scramble, Boeing mirrored Airbus’ operations and mounted larger engines in existing models.

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 The objective seemed straightforward: Make minimum changes to avoid the need for training in a simulator, decrease costs, and build the redesigned model quickly. But a risk was that mounting larger engines changed the aerodynamics in the aircraft, requiring a consequential need for new software, a Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) which was supposed to prevent stalling. Boeing’s view was that pilots did not need to be trained on the software and federal regulators agreed.

However, in an effective SRM program the C-Suite would have been advised that the strategic and life safety risks were material and that training for pilots was indeed necessary.  In addition, all such risks would have been assessed to determine whether they could be used to obtain a competitive advantage.

For example, including vital safety features in the base cost of aircraft (as opposed to charging extra for them) and requiring a focus group of pilots with no financial relationship with Boeing to test the newly designed 737 MAX 8s and the MCAS system would have been a way to solidify Boeing’s reputation for safety first.

An SRM program, which monitors progress in achieving strategic objectives with a focus on continuous improvement, would have looked at the Indonesian Lion Air and the Ethiopian Airlines crashes as an opportunity to confirm that Boeing puts safety first by grounding the aircraft. Instead, Boeing urged the U.S. to keep flying its jets until after 42 regulators in other countries had grounded them and appeared to care more about economics than life safety. Only seven months ago, Boeing was synonymous with efficient jet planes and commercial aviation – it was a reputation that took decades to build. Now, the company has a long, uphill climb to resolve its many challenges and rebuild its brand.

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An SRM program cannot succeed without full support from the C-Suite as it has to be integrated into the business model and decision-making processes in order to be effective, and in time we will learn more about what risk management protocols were followed across Boeing’s organization.

At RIMS 2019, Marian Cope will lead a panel of industry experts in discussing reasons to transform an ERM program into a SRM program or develop a SRM program in NextGen ERM:  Strategic Risk Management. The session will take place April 29th at 1:30 pm.