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Eliminating Language Barriers Between Information Security and the C-Suite

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Whether or not security operations pose a core focus to a company or are an afterthought, the largest obstacle now affecting business and security outcomes is the language barrier that exists between security teams and the C-Suite.

In general, security groups’ budgets have increased over the years, with organizations adding more vendors to the mix, “layering” security with the latest new tool to address the latest threat. One of the newest such tools is “threat intelligence” which organizations are using to form an “intelligence-led security” program, a security operations center, or incident response capabilities. While threat intelligence and other solutions hold the answers to many of the important questions executives ask about cyberattacks, this terminology means nothing to C-level executives, nor does the output from these systems and programs. What does it mean that you have stopped one billion attacks this past month? What impact have the 30 incident responses you’ve run over that same period of time had on the business? What’s the significance to reducing response time from one month to one day?

Executives running and overseeing a company have two primary concerns: increasing revenue and shareholder value. There is a big disconnect between security and the C-suite because they speak two different languages. One is a very technical language that needs a translation layer to explain it to the executives. The other is a very strategic language that needs to be conveyed in a way that makes security part of the team and company, and ensures alignment and participation with the business units and executive suite.

What’s the fix? Communication. Each group has to understand the other at least enough to relay the core concepts as they apply to the other and in a language the other understands. As a first step, some companies are adding a technical expert—a “designated geek,” if you will—to their board of directors so they can work on improving communication and understanding. While that can help, it takes a lot more to make sure priorities, efforts and results don’t get lost in translation.

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A Two-Way Street

Executives need to include the chief information security officer or chief technical officer as part of their strategic discussions and make sure that security leadership has the ability to push that communication down to their teams in a way everyone understands. To that end, CISOs and executives need to train their security operations personnel to ensure they understand the business. This starts by asking some critical questions:

  • Does every member of the security team understand what is it that you sell/produce/provide?
  • What are the things your security teams need to watch out for to protect revenue?
  • Many organizations operate large industrial control systems. If your organization has such a system, is your security team aware of this?
  • If your company is moving into the cloud or is about to launch a mobile app, does your security team know about this and have you enabled them to get the right monitoring in place to protect it?
  • Have you involved the security team as you were designing that new revenue stream, or evolving your business model in some other way, to be sure that security isn’t an afterthought?
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These are just a few examples of how executives need to think about the enterprise to ensure that security is strategically aligned. It is incumbent on the business to train the security personnel on its priorities so that security teams can look for attacks that are important to the business and take action.

Likewise, security teams need to change how they communicate to the C-suite. Every security team should conduct a stakeholder analysis to identify who needs to be informed of what and when. It all comes down to content, format and frequency. Make sure you have regular communications with not only your peers in security and network operations, but with the business units, risk management, C-level executives, the board of directors, and anyone else in the company that is involved in the day-to-day objectives and operations of the company. The CISO should be the link to make this connection happen, working with executives to establish regular communication.

There is no “right way” to communicate.

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Some executives and boards are more technical than others. Security teams need to take the time to learn what type of communication will be most effective or forever struggle to align security with the business. Sticking with the generated metrics of number of events, alerts and incidents per month has far less impact than an update that contains the “who, what, when, where and why” of a thwarted attack. For example: “We identified and stopped one attack this month from a cyber espionage group targeting our Western European manufacturing facility, which is responsible for $20 million per year in revenue to the company.”

For those in security who feel they can’t deliver such a statement because their security infrastructure doesn’t provide that kind of information about threat actors and campaigns, there is a path forward. Look into creating a program that uses adversary-focused, contextual cyber threat intelligence and make sure you understand enough about your business to know the impact of threats against the various business units. With the communication gap closed, and security and business goals aligned, organizations can become more secure, and profitable.

Aon Introduces Single-Parent Captive Cyber Insurance Program

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With cyberattack listed as one of their top risks, organizations are looking for ways to mitigate their risk in a market where cyber insurance rates are quickly rising. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the annual cost of cyber crime and economic espionage to the world economy runs as high as 5 billion, or about 1% of global income.

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This does not include intangible damage to an organization, however. Companies are purchasing more insurance to cover the risk. In 2014, the report said, the insurance industry took in $2.5 billion in premiums on policies to protect companies from losses resulting from hacks.

As a result, captive insurers are being used more and more for coverage.

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Aon said it is addressing shortcomings in traditional cyber coverage with a cyber captive program with capacity of up to $400 million. Companies looking to form a captive would undergo a review to quantify their cyber exposures.

According to Peter Mullen, CEO of Aon Captive and Insurance Management, the program is designed to help clients understand their risk profile. “Once this is understood, they are is in a better position to make decisions about how much risk to retain in their captive and how much risk to transfer to the program,” Mullen said.
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 “The program allows captives to purchase coverage up to $400 million on a reinsurance or excess insurance basis.”

The cyber captive program will be domiciled in Bermuda and is available to single-parent captives. The basis for coverage will be “a very broad form which includes coverage for property damage and business interruption following a cyber event,” he added.

“Building a large tower of limits can be hampered by differing policy terms and conditions and dislocation of rates at different layers in a program,” Mullen said. “Additionally, many organizations facing cyber risks that can result in physical impacts, such as property damage and business interruption, agree that a more comprehensive approach to cyber risk is needed.

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Organizational Complexity Poses Critical Cyberrisk

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According to a recent survey on IT security infrastructure, 83% of businesses around the world believe they are most at risk because of organizational complexity.

“Employees are not following corporate security requirements because they are too difficult to be productive, plus policies hinder their ability to work in their preferred manner,” noted the Ponemon Institute’s “The Need for a New IT Security Architecture: Global Study,” sponsored by Citrix. “It is no surprise that shadow IT is on the rise because employees want easier ways to get their work done.”

Shadow IT, the information technology systems built and used by an organization without explicit approval, has largely cropped up because employees feel official tools are too complex or otherwise difficult and inefficient. As a result, company data is being put on personal devices and official business is conducted on platforms that enterprise security teams can not monitor or secure.

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Nearly three-quarters of respondents said their business needs a new IT security infrastructure to reduce risk.

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With increasing amounts of sensitive data stored, new technology like the internet of things adopted, and new cyberrisk threats constantly emerging, addressing individual security challenges may be impossible, Citrix Chief Security Officer Stan Black told eWEEK. Rather, companies should focus on larger issues like controlling complexity, developing and maintaining strong incident response plans, and rigorously vetting vendors with access to systems or responsibility for storing data.

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Check out more of the report’s findings in the infographic below:

organizational complexity cyberrisk

Retail Data Security: Preparing for the Top Threat for Holiday Breaches

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holiday shopping retail risk

Here’s the question of the season: What is the true cause of the retail breaches we read about year after year? While malware or ransomware may get most of the scary security press, they aren’t in fact the main culprit. The primary cause of most retail breaches is, by far, stolen credentials. These are the usernames and passwords of employees, contractors or partners of a retail firm. Victim firms such as Target Corp., Home Depot, eBay and others have fallen prey to similar attacks in recent years: a trusted insider’s credentials were stolen and hackers used those to access the network. In some cases, the credentialed access led to the installation of malware on card reader systems, while in others, hackers took different paths.

The point is clear, however: the access credentials of trusted insiders are in fact the biggest risk factor for a breach in the retail sector. Verizon’s annual data breach survey, released earlier this year, confirms this, with credential attacks identified as the top source of data breaches as 63% occurred via weak or stolen credentials.

This isn’t a particularly new insight. The Target and Home Depot breaches, both via stolen vendor credentials, happened more than two years ago.

And yet, as the Verizon report indicates, large firms are still quite vulnerable to credential attacks. Why is a credential-based attack so hard to detect? The point of the attack is to impersonate a valid user (an employee, contractor or some other insider) going about his or her daily job. When a financial analyst logs into a financial system using her regular ID and password, for example, we do not expect an alarm to sound.

The retail environment has some unique factors that make detection more difficult.

For example, retailers employ large numbers of seasonal workers, so knowing whether a particular person should be allowed near a secure server in the back room of a store may be difficult. The general buzz and chaos in retail stores may weaken security checks, and sheer volume of transactions, returns, special orders, and the like can distract employees and open up security gaps.

There are, however, concrete steps that can be taken.

The first is simple: most if not all retailers have two networks, one corporate and one retail (in-store). Human resources, research and development, accounting, and other corporate functions operate on the corporate network. Point of sale systems, cashiers, and store managers operate on the retail network. In theory, these networks are completely walled off from each other, using two-factor authentication and other security systems. A temporary sales clerk should not be able to access the payroll system at corporate headquarters and download employee social security numbers, just as an HR specialist at headquarters should not be able to access the credit card database within a store point-of-sale (POS) server. This is especially sensitive since many retailers haven’t yet rolled out chip-and-pin readers. If a card number is stolen from a POS system, it’s usable in many places.

A basic check would be to ensure that the two-factor authentication system between the corporate and retail networks is working correctly, is updated with patches, and is applied as broadly as possible. However, this is not always the case, and there have been instances where hackers have been able to steal a corporate user’s credentials (using a keylogger or other type of malware) and then bypass the authentication system to connect to hundreds of in-store POS systems. Perhaps the system configuration has “drifted” over time and needs re-certification. This is an easy check on network security risk.

Another step relates to context—in other words, understanding what is normal. As mentioned above, a retailer during the holiday season manages chaos on a daily basis. It is too easy for attacks to slip by without notice during the noise and commotion. Recall the advice given to New Yorkers after 9/11: “If you see something, say something.” While relying on employees to notice unusual behavior is fine, a better approach is to augment humans with smart technology that understands normal behavior and can raise an alarm when behavior is suddenly not normal.

For example, a specialist in IT is accessing hundreds of POS systems in multiple stores via the corporate network. Is that okay? It is hard to say. Perhaps he is doing it as part of a backup process or maybe he is helping restore systems after a failure. Without knowing what is normal for this person, as well as for his peers, it is very difficult to judge the riskiness of his actions. Behavioral analytics systems are built for this problem. They analyze past behavior and build baselines, just as VISA and MasterCard do for every credit card owner. When an employee suddenly starts logging into store POS systems but has never done so before, behavioral baselines can provide the context needed to alert that this user might in fact be a hacker.

Retailers are getting better about security every year, improving risk management processes and rolling out new security technologies. Credential attacks remain the top threat for retail breaches, however, and retail firms must both verify their processes and also look to new solutions, such as behavioral analytics, to close the risk gap.