Month: August 2024

Cyber Awareness Training Data Breaches and their consequences General Security Issues Identity and Access Management Ransomware, Phishing and other Malware Risk Analysis and Security Strategy Security Tools Supply Chain Security

New Cyber Threats and Innovations

Cybersecurity is an ever-evolving field, with new threats and innovations emerging regularly. Not all these threats will apply to everyone, the trick is, and has always been, identifying the threats that apply to you, working out how vulnerable you are too those threats, and applying controls to bring those down to an acceptable level.  That acceptable level will change, not just from company to company, but also asset to asset.  Don’t waste valuable time and energy trying to achieve a zero-threat level.  It doesn’t exist.  You need to understand clearly what your appetite for risk is, ie what is an acceptable level of risk for you, and then go for it. 

But what emerging threats are there that you just might have to combat in your daily business life.  These trends highlight the ongoing innovation in both cyber threats and defences, driven by the growing reliance on digital infrastructure and the rapid evolution of technology.

Here are some suggestions and trends in cybersecurity as of late 2024:

1. AI-Powered Cyber Attacks and Defences

Threats:  Cybercriminals are increasingly using AI to launch more sophisticated attacks, such as AI-driven phishing campaigns, automated hacking attempts, and machine learning-based malware that adapts to security measures.  We’re seeing AI powered social engineering, phone calls mimicking voices of managers, and similar.  Like with just about all AI usage, what it does it make things much easier by reducing human effort.  So, attacks can be set up using AI and become almost fire and forget, just letting it get on with it in the background.

Defense: Organisations are countering this with AI-based threat detection systems, anomaly detection, and predictive analytics to identify potential breaches before they occur.  What about your defences?  Are they keeping up with these types of threat.  What about mobile workforces, are your staff covered once they leave the office; do you have a hybrid or even fully remote workforce?  If so, are your defences up to the job? Check out https://hah2.co.uk/

2. Ransomware Evolution

Ransomware continues to be a major threat, but it’s evolving with more advanced encryption techniques, and multi-stage attacks where attackers exfiltrate data before encrypting it. They then threaten to publish the stolen data unless a ransom is paid.  I recently heard of a company that had been infiltrated through its website which was transactional, ie it sold stuff via the website and the website was connected to their database of products and sales order processing system.  The web developer didn’t have sufficiently robust security in place.  A good example of an SME being exploited via their supply chain.

Double extortion and Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) have become more common, where hackers sell ransomware kits to other criminals.

3. Zero Trust Architecture

Zero Trust has moved from a buzzword to a mainstream security model. Organisations are adopting a “never trust, always verify” approach, assuming that every user and device, both inside and outside the network, could be compromised.

Implementing least privilege access, micro-segmentation, and continuous authentication are key features of this approach.  And no, this doesn’t have to be cost prohibitive.

4. Supply Chain Attacks

Attacks targeting third-party vendors and software providers have increased. By compromising trusted suppliers, attackers can infiltrate many organisations through a single breach.

Notable Examples: The SolarWinds and Kaseya attacks were significant instances that highlighted the dangers of such supply chain vulnerabilities.  The attack on the NHS via a contracted service provider, is also a good example but it doesn’t just affect the big organisations.  See above for an example of how an SME was attacked via a third-party web designer.

5. Post-Quantum Cryptography

With quantum computing on the horizon, there’s increasing focus on developing encryption algorithms that can resist quantum attacks. Post-quantum cryptography is becoming a hot topic as organisations prepare for the future of computing.

Even without quantum computing, many organisations do not use encryption, even for their critical data.  If you are subject to a data breach, but that data is encrypted, you could save yourself a lot of money and reputational damage.

6. Cloud Security and Misconfiguration

As cloud adoption accelerates, the security of cloud environments remains a top concern. Misconfigured cloud settings continue to expose sensitive data, while cloud-native security solutions (e.g., CSPM, CWPP) are becoming more prevalent.

Securing multi-cloud environments and addressing shared responsibility models are critical challenges.

7. Cybersecurity for IoT and OT

The Internet of Things (IoT) and Operational Technology (OT) are becoming frequent attack targets. Securing connected devices, industrial systems, and critical infrastructure from cyber threats is a growing concern, especially as they are often lacking in adequate security protocols.

This is becoming more critical as home working becomes more and more popular.  Employees connecting to your company cloud and systems using home broadband and WIFI, are also de fact connecting to any IOT devices that they are using in the home, potentially opening up back doors into your system.

8. Data Privacy Regulations and Compliance

Data privacy is a key focus as more countries introduce stricter regulations like the Data Protection Act 2018, now becoming known as UK GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). There are other compliances such as FSA regulations and other industry bodies, that many need adherence to.  Data breaches can produce fines from regulatory bodies, law suites from those affected, and quite severe reputational damage.

9. Cybersecurity Automation and SOAR

Automation is becoming critical in cybersecurity due to the sheer volume of threats. Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) tools help streamline incident detection and response, freeing up analysts to focus on complex tasks.

Do you have anything in place to automate your defences?  Do you monitor your systems for threats?

10. Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Identity theft and credential stuffing attacks are rising, making IAM solutions more important than ever. Multi-factor authentication (MFA), password less authentication, and biometrics are seeing widespread adoption to prevent unauthorised access.

Data Breaches and their consequences General Security Issues Risk Analysis and Security Strategy

Farewell to Bob – A data protection swan song

Today is somewhat of a sad day for me as tomorrow I will attend Bob Hays funeral.  Bob and I started this business when we both returned from Dubai where we worked for HPE in their cyber security business, across the Middle East.  We came a long way since starting up in 2017 even though COVID happened in the middle, changing the way that business was conducted by many companies and therefore how we had to adapt and change in order to compete and provide the services needed by the new normal.  I think we did a pretty good job all told.

In honour of Bob, I thought I’d focus my blog this week on data protection, his pet subject.  He always went to great lengths to point out that we weren’t lawyers but were providing the how to, rather than the legal requirements of data protection legislation.  He always said that lawyers were great at telling us what we need to do to meet our legal obligations but were lousy at telling us how to do it.

Data Protection, a somewhat dry subject that many companies, particularly SMEs, think they can get away from by simply paying a bit of lip service.  The Data Protection Act 2018, or as it has become known, UK GDPR, is far from a toothless beast and can cause businesses to find themselves in all sorts of problems if they’re not careful.

Businesses that you might not think about, like Estate Agents, hold large amounts of personally identifiable information or PII, that is information that can identify a living individual.  Not so long ago a London estate agent was fined £80,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), after leaving the personal data of more than 18,000 customers exposed for almost two years.

The incident occurred when the estate agent passed the details from its own servers onto a partner company. An “Anonymous Authentication” function was not switched off, which meant there were no access restrictions to the data.

It’s surprising just how much PII estate agents hold.  Just think about what they ask for when you’re buying a house.  In this case the exposed details included bank statements, salary details, copies of passports, dates of birth and addresses of both tenants and landlords.

But in some cases that might not be the end of it.  Individuals can sue companies that release data into the wild.  In fact, there are now law firms advertising no win no fee when representing these cases.  Remember that data breaches almost always involve multiple people, sometimes hundreds if not thousands of records.

One thing that many misunderstand is the link between cyber security and data protection.  The Act requires personal data to be secured by ‘default and design’.  This means that cyber security requirements must be designed into your data protection processes which could considerably increase the number of policies and processes you require to stay safe and within the law.

Data Protection is a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare I have to admit.  Here at H2 we have a raft of templates we use, originally drafted up by Bob, that have been successfully introduced into a variety of organisations, often integrated with their company handbooks.  These include:

Data Protection – Overarching PolicyData Protection Training
Data Protection – ConsentConsent Withdrawal
Subject Access RequestData Protection Complaints
Retention of RecordsData Breach Notification (note there is an electronic version of this on the ICO website)
Data Protection Impact Assessment Procedure  Security & Control of data protection documentation  
Policy Management Review ProcedureInternal Data Protection Breach Register
Retention & Disposal of Records RegisterData Protection Officer (DPO) Responsibilities  
Required records to be maintained 

Of course these aren’t necessarily the only things needed, there are a whole list of cyber security policies required to complement these.  Nearly all are available online, but the problem is knowing what you need and what you don’t and not just downloading, topping and tailing, and hoping for the best.  That happens all too often.

Our approach to this has been refined over the years as not just the legislation evolves, both here and in Europe, but as working practices evolve alongside it.  We have spent many hours researching solutions and crafting them into services that meet the requirements, which in turn have evolved into a system which works, is both affordable and appropriate for all types of business, and is accreditable to standards such as cyber essentials, if that is required.  Flexibility is another key attribute that the new working practices demand.  Long gone is the old bastion security system whereby everyone works within a secure boundary, protected by firewalls and other similar technologies.  These days we need a system of protection that works regardless of where you are working, office, home, on the move, and can switch seamlessly between them.

When we are first approached by a prospective client and we begin our offer of a free trial to examine their requirements, one of the first things we find is that they don’t know what data they are holding, or where it all is.  Oh, they have a general idea; it’s on the cloud server(s), it’s not on laptops or desktops, it’s just the stuff we need to process our clients’ requirements and yes, we’ve only got one copy.  And then we install our software that first carries out a discovery exercise and we find that their laptops/desktops are holding lots of copies of the data that is on the cloud server(s).  How does that happen?  Over time, especially with many now employing the hybrid system of working, ie between the office and remote (home) locations, employees log on to the cloud, find they have a bit of shaky internet link and download the data they need, work on it and then upload it again, forgetting to delete it from their machine.  Or they need to share it and attach it to an email and send it out, forgetting, or perhaps not realising, that the data is now stored, attached to an email, on their email server.

Then comes the issue with audit trails.  If the ICO ever wanted to carry out an investigation, then having an audit trail of who created/copied/deleted/forwarded what to who, is essential.  And let’s not forget the member of the public who is fully entitled to submit a Data Subject Access Request or DSAR, which demands that you reveal what data you are holding on that person.  The law insists on it, and you can’t refuse it.  I know of a financial firm that took nearly 3 weeks to satisfy a DSAR, taking an employee off billing, for that time.

Our solution meets the requirements needed today and not only that, has a built-in encryption system, all within the same monthly cost.  It’ll cost you nothing to trial it and we’d be very surprised if once you’ve seen it and seen the ridiculously low monthly charge for the managed service, you don’t want to keep it.

So a final farewell to Bob, with thanks for all his work in the data protection arena, and for the friendship forged in 3 different company’s before we took the bull by the horns and went out on our own.

Data Breaches and their consequences General Security Issues Risk Analysis and Security Strategy Supply Chain Security

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity         

I’ve made quite a bit recently about cyber resilience and the focus being placed on computer outages caused by third party suppliers, highlighted by not just the CloudStrike issue but also the ransomware attack on the UK NHS, made possible by infiltrating a key supplier.  All of this of course highlights the importance of supply chain security, but my focus today will be all about disaster recovery and business continuity.

Disaster recovery and business continuity are very much connected but are different.  The former is basically a plan for when things go sideways—like when a natural disaster hits, a cyberattack happens, or even if there’s a major tech failure. It’s all about making sure that businesses can bounce back and keep things running as smoothly as possible. Imagine your favourite coffee shop gets flooded. Disaster recovery is like their game plan for getting back on their feet: they might have backup equipment stored somewhere, a way to communicate with customers, and a strategy for cleaning up and reopening. In the tech world, it often involves regular backups of data, having alternate servers ready to go, and making sure everyone knows what to do in case of an emergency. The goal? To minimize downtime and get everything back to normal without too much hassle. It’s like having an insurance policy but for your operations—very important for keeping the lights on when the unexpected hits!

However, we need to understand that when it comes to the type of outages caused by supply chain cyber failures as we saw with CloudStrike, there isn’t much a customer can do to recover from that, without fixes from the suppliers.  So, in this instance disaster recovery planning becomes a little difficult to say the least.

Business continuity on the other hand, is all about making sure that a company can keep running smoothly when it is deprived of their IT systems, in whole or in part.  So, it’s about keeping business running whilst the disaster recovery plan kicks in and gets stuff back online.  The idea is to have a plan in place that helps the business bounce back quickly. This includes figuring out which critical functions need to keep going, having some way of operating manually if necessary.  Can you place an order, process an order, raise an invoice, pay a bill etc. It’s like having an emergency kit for your business—batteries included! Companies should create a business continuity plan (BCP) that outlines the steps they’ll take during a crisis. This way, they don’t just react on the fly; they can hit the ground running. It’s all about minimising downtime and keeping customers happy. In short, it’s like being prepared for a rainy day—just with more spreadsheets and meetings!

The first thing to decide is what the priorities are regarding business processes.  What is essential, what is a nice to have and what you can live without in the short to medium term.  Don’t leave it to managers and staff to guess, have it documented.  This priority order is determined based on what is known as a business impact analysis (BIA).  This determines the impact of an outage on the business and its customers.  Don’t ever forget that your reputation is on the line, and you need to keep your customers serviced and happy.  Each business process should have recovery time attached to it, ie how long you can do without it before it becomes truly disastrous.

It all sounds terribly complicated and therefore expensive, but in fact, it isn’t.  All the information you need to work this out is already in your hands.  You know your business best and you know what’s important and what isn’t quite so important.  You just have probably never written it down. And that’s the crux of the matter.

Disaster recovery planning addresses the processes, technical requirements and infrastructure an organisation needs to implement to recover data and operations as required by the business in the event of a disaster. The planning process will involve identification of critical business processes, business impact analysis and thus determination of the overall requirements for a cost-effective plan.

Following the disaster recovery plan, business recovery planning is the process that organisations must use to assess appropriate timeframes for business resumption, also allowable data losses and risk tolerances for business disruptions.  As stated earlier, it also needs a plan to carry on manually whilst the disaster recovery plan is implemented.  Budgetary requirements for infrastructure and processes, to meet the disaster recovery plan, will also be determined by the business recovery planning process.

There are also 2 other key parts to this.  Firstly, companies must ensure that their plans are tested, that everyone in the company is aware of them, where they can find them, and what their responsibilities are in this regard.  Testing is critical to ensure that processes, systems and business restoration can meet the requirements laid down for them.  Where the plans rely on third party service providers and/or indicate the need to support key customers, these should be involved in the testing process. This will give re-assurance that support will be received and/or given as expected.

And then we have key stakeholders.  Who in your organisation is responsible for what, regarding disaster recovery and business continuity planning?  Do they know their respective responsibilities, have they accepted this?  Have you placed this in their job descriptions?  Can they be held to this responsibility?  Are they part of the planning and testing process?  All seems a bit obvious when you say it, but you’ll probably not be surprised to know that it’s often totally overlooked.

Key StakeholdersRoles and Responsibilities
CEO/Board of DirectorsAware of business continuity processes, inputs as required Approval of business continuity processes and integration with other technical functions – Note 1 Ownership of business continuity processes together with relevant business units – Note 1
Infrastructure (IT operations)Input into business continuity processes.  Consideration of any infrastructure changes which may impact security architecture. Provide inputs and coordination for systems’ resiliency testing and remediation.  Provide costs/budgets for systems requirements
Business unitsCreation of BIA and corresponding recovery requirements.  Budgetary approval.

Note 1 – these two functions would be carried out by a CIO and/or and CISO in a larger organisation, but as most, even top end, SMBs are unlikely to have anyone in that role, then it must be owned by other board members. I hope this is helpful, but it can only be a guide and there is no one size fits all solution. 

Cyber Awareness Training Data Breaches and their consequences General Security Issues Ransomware, Phishing and other Malware Risk Analysis and Security Strategy

Still on the subject of Cyber Resilience………

Last week I talked about whether our ability to demonstrate resilience in the cyber field, is impacted by an over reliance on the companies who supply our IT products and services, and whether over time, that reliance has grown to the point where we are ignoring our own responsibilities in this area.  I have used the phrase that you can outsource your IT, but you can’t outsource your responsibility.  At the end of the day, there is only you and your employees who have the best interests of you company at heart.  You wouldn’t tolerate a single point of failure in your business, you would try and ensure that there is resilience built into your business processes.  Why then do we not apply that to IT?

It’s a fact, which often goes unrecognised or ignored, that cyber security is not a technical issue but a business issue, and as such much of it is reliant on policy and process.  It is also a fact that your employees are both your first line of defence and potentially, your weakest link.  Technology comes in in third place.  The cyber mantra is People, Process, Technology.  If your people don’t have at least a basic understanding of the issues involved, and you do not have the right policies and processes, rolled out to, and understood by all who need them, then all the technology in the world is likely to be a waste of money.

People

Let’s take a closer look, starting with People.  Many businesses out there don’t have inhouse IT support but outsource that to an IT provider.  That’s fine, you can ensure that your contract with them spells out their responsibilities regarding your security, your data.  It then becomes their responsibility to ensure they protect to the standard stated in the contract, and that their people understand their responsibility.  However, you still have your own staff who interact with suppliers, customers and possibly members of the public, on your behalf.  I’ve discussed in my blogs before that most businesses are more likely to suffer from scams, than they are from technical hacks.  Even ransomware can be considered a scam, as can most phishing attacks.  The cyber-criminal is relying on someone on your staff to click a malicious link, or access something they shouldn’t, in order to facilitate the scam.  Staff often make the mistake of opening malware because they didn’t know they shouldn’t, not because they are themselves malicious or lack common sense.  If they fail, it’s often because they haven’t had any training.  Likewise, staff can make mistakes, such as copying and releasing data to unauthorised persons, because they didn’t know they shouldn’t.  So, whose failures are those, staff or managers?

Cyber Awareness Training (https://hah2.co.uk/cyber-awareness-training-smes/)

It is critical to the success of the cyber-security resilience that the organisation develops a mature culture of understanding and awareness about cyber risks. Above all this is an issue that must be driven from the top of the organisation – unless cyber-security has the full support of the Board it will be impossible to generate the level of commitment necessary to develop the culture of awareness.

Awareness and understanding of cyber risks are so important because these are the essential elements of the “human firewall” that is all that stands between the organisation’s critical IT systems and the clever social engineering tactics of sophisticated cyber-criminals. Such tactics are even more ubiquitous in our “always on” culture that is driven by the social media and applications accessed through smartphones and other mobile devices.  Employees need to be aware of the cyber risks inherent in the devices that are part of their everyday lives; and of the damage to their occupation and livelihoods that can be done as a result of ignorance, carelessness or inattention in their use (and abuse) of such devices.

For the security function in an organisation, the development of a mature culture of awareness and understanding is also critical. In order to achieve the shift in thinking needed to develop the culture of awareness, four things are required:

  • Board and CEO Level involvement and support
  • Training that is relevant to the job function.  Giving technical awareness training to a shop floor worker will have no impact.  If lessons from the training can be taken home and used there as well, big dividends will accrue from the reinforcement provide.
  • Training must be fun.  A little humour lightens the load and will brighten the day of employees and mean that they are more likely to remember what was taught.
  • Training must be continual.  It is more effective to do a little training each month than to have a single long session. 

Policy and Process

Moving onto to processes now.  First and foremost, all companies should have a cyber security policy.  It doesn’t need to be more than a page and should lay down what other polices are needed and who is responsible for producing them and keeping them in date.  Any of you who have achieved an ISO certification, in whatever subject you needed to, will have had a similar process to go through and if you ever wanted to achieve ISO27001, then you would need to fully understand and comply with this.

The development and documentation of an agreed set of clear and coherent policies and supporting standards, processes and baselines are essential to the success of a cyber-security program. These must be signed off at board level and preferably set within the context of the organisations cyber-security strategy. However, the nature of the policies and supporting elements themselves will, to some extent, also be governed by the risk management controls that are needed in order to manage risk to a level that is consistent with the organisation’s assessed risk, overall risk appetite and budgetary and cost constraints.  I talked about risk management last week and that can be found at https://hah2.co.uk/are-we-failing-in-our-cyber-resilience/.

The are 3 elements to this that are essential:

  • Policy.
  • Standards and processes.
  • Minimum baselines.

This may seem onerous and a step too far for many businesses but they are essential to ensure that you are self-reliant and resilient.  The whole process need not be that difficult or expensive and it is a lot cheaper than many of the technical solutions managers jump to, without first ensuring that such technologies are actually what is required.  We can offer advice and guidance in this area (https://hah2.co.uk/why-use-an-independent-board-advisor/).

Policy is the highest element in the hierarchy – representing “why” the governance controls must be used. Below this, the standards and processes represent “what” needs to be implemented, in order to deliver compliance with the policy. Thirdly, minimum baselines constitute the element that shows “how” the standards and processes should be delivered. Each of the elements is discussed in more detail below.

Technology

Finally, we come to technology.  In last weeks blog (https://hah2.co.uk/are-we-failing-in-our-cyber-resilience/ ) I went into more detail about risk management and how we go about putting the right controls in the right place, to reduce our liability to the lowest level we can, without impacting operational resilience.  But let’s just reiterate that many of these controls will be procedural and not necessarily technical, or they might be a mix of the two.  The message is don’t get hung up on technology, approach it from a risk management point of view, treat IT and cyber security in the same way you would treat any other business process.  Don’t get swamped with technical jargon, it’s not that difficult.

Next Week

Another vital piece in our resilience matrix is disaster recovery and business continuity.  Not the same thing and I have already touched on this in recent articles (https://hah2.co.uk/you-can-outsource-your-it-but-you-cant-outsource-your-responsibility/), relevant to the current issues around CloudStrike.  Disaster recovery is how you plan to recover from a disaster whilst business continuity is all about how you keep the business running whilst you recover your IT assets and data.  It’s quite an involved subject and demands an article on its own.

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