Risk Analysis and Security Strategy Archives - Page 4 of 6

What are the questions business owners ask when considering cyber security?

Another good question, or perhaps it should be, do they ask any questions, other than cost, about cyber security, or do they leave everything up to their IT support, whether contracted or in house?

What is the cost of ignoring cyber security?

Perhaps this is the first question that they should be asking. The financial hit of a data breach can be crippling, especially for the smaller businesses who are perhaps running on tight margins and for whom cash flow is often critical. The average clean up for a smallish business is about £27K. this relates to system restoration, hardware replacement, and the implementation of enhanced security measures. and doesn’t include financial loss from the actual data stolen, or whatever scam was perpetrated, and any fall out from compliance failures, such as fines from the ICO. And at least a third of organisations admit to losing customers post a data breach, highlighting reputational damage and a loss of customer trust.

So, what should owners, managers and board members be asking?

I think many get bogged down in the technicalities of IT and don’t consider it in business terms. They don’t think about the business impact of cyber security, about what it is they’re trying to protect. It’s not your IT systems, it’s your data that is the crown jewels. IT systems can be replaced but once the data is stolen, then you are in very real trouble.

Risk Management

First and foremost, the board members need to ask themselves if they have a good handle on their cyber risk. Have they identified their cyber assets? What is a cyber asset? Cyber assets are not just hardware and software, in fact those are often the least of your worries. It’s the data, where it is and how it’s protected that is important. Have you assessed the risk to those assets? Have you assessed the training requirements for your staff, not just the techies but all staff? Think People, Process and then Technology.

Once you have done this, then you can consider what controls need to be put in place to reduce the risk to an acceptable level.

Below is some of the controls you will need to consider. This list is not exhaustive

1. User Access Control (Admin access is a whole other discussion)

This isn’t just about passwords. Yes, they remain important but on their own, they are no longer sufficient. Nonetheless weak passwords, password re-use and password sharing remain one of the leading root causes of a data breach. 123456 and, believe it or not, password, remains the most used passwords across the world!

It is imperative that you have a strong password policy, dictating not just the length of the password, but also its construction, ensuring that there is a good mix of upper and lower case characters, numbers and symbols, that together make things very difficult for password crackers.

On their own though passwords remain a potential weak spot. Multi factor authentication (MFA), sometimes referred to as 2FA, provides that extra layer of defence and can help to protect against brute-force attacks, phishing scams, key-logging and social engineering. MFA can be simply implemented on most email platforms and within various apps you are using. For those of you trying for Cyber Essentials or ISO 27K series, MFA is mandatory, so make sure it’s put in place.

2. Are you backing up your files?

This seems an obvious thing to do but you’d be surprised how often when trying to restore from a backup, it fails. This is often because the backup routine was set up back in the mists of time and has never been reviewed and even more dangerous, it’s never been tested to see if it works. Set up your backup regime, have it reviewed regularly and tested regularly to make sure it works. If you are backing up online, keep in mind that if a cyber-criminal gets access to your systems to, for example, carry out a ransomware attack, then they can probably get at your back up as well. So, belt and braces, consider having an offline backup as well as an online backup. The latter is more convenient but can be corrupted.

3. Do you train your staff in cyber awareness?

My favourite subject – cyber awareness training. Your first line of defence is your staff, but if not trained adequately, they can be your greatest vulnerability. It’s known in the trade as the insider threat but it is caused mainly by human error, staff members doing something they shouldn’t, not maliciously but simply because they didn’t know they shouldn’t. It actually accounts for 88% of data breaches. Providing your people with training on the threats, current scams and basic cyber awareness reduces the chance of a cyber-attack. This really is the easiest and cheapest quick win any organisation can take in reducing their risk exposure.

4. Do your employees regularly travel or work remotely?

This brings us neatly to what Microsoft coined as the New Normal. Essentially this means remote working shared with in office working, known as the hybrid working model, or for some, moving to a totally remote working system. Totally remote is not as common as hybrid working but is becoming more normal with certain size businesses in certain commercial verticals. It’ll never work for everyone, but for those who have embraced it, it saves a considerable amount of expense. It does however require us to rethink our cyber strategy.

Work-from-home employees are at much greater risk than those in offices. Since home connections are less secure, cybercriminals have an easier entry into the company network. Furthermore, the explosion of various online tools, solutions, and services for collaboration and productivity tend to have the bare minimum of security default setting, and updates from third-party vendors can change security preferences and be easily overlooked.

Phishing becomes an even greater threat to home workers, often because, in an office environment, they have access to colleagues and managers, who they can approach for advice and guidance. This is much harder to replicate with remote workers, especially those who may not be particularly tech savvy and who may not wish to become ‘burdensome’ to their co-workers.

Ransomware also enjoys an advantage in the work-from-home model. If their connection to the company is blocked, it is more difficult for workers to get assistance from the right experts and authorities. And since trust levels are lower when working from home, some workers will be concerned that they have “done something wrong” and so may be more reluctant to seek help. While this risk can be addressed by increased training, as well as messaging that vigilance and involving IT support will be rewarded, it can still be an uphill battle.

We need to break out of the old ‘bastion’ security model of a network protected by firewalls and other technologies and think about solutions that are designed to protect your assets regardless of where your employees work from. They exist and aren’t hard to find.

Data tends to proliferate, especially when working remotely. Cyber awareness training helps here, but it also helps for management to have a handle on data storage. All organisations have this problem, but it becomes more acute for those businesses that hold large amounts of what is known as Personal Identifiable Information or PII. This is information that can identify a living individual and compromise their privacy in some way. Financial advisors, estate agents, solicitors etc, all share this issue. The data protection act, becoming referred to as UK GDPR, is not a suggestion, it is law.

5. Where is all your data stored and who has access to it?

One of the biggest issues we find with organisations of all sizes, is that they think they know where all their data is but get quite a surprise when they discover multiple instances of the same data set. This has become a real issue in that the new normal tempts users when working remotely, with possibly less than robust broadband, to copy data from cloud storage to their PC or laptop to ensure they can keep working on it. Then they upload it again when they’ve finished but forget to delete their copy. That’s just one instance but it is vital to understand where all this data is. What if for instance, you get what is known as a subject access request, where a client or other member of the public wants to know exactly what personal data you have on them, and why. I spoke to a financial advisor recently who told me that it took one of their partners off the road for 3 weeks, to discover where all the data was kept on just one person. But under the law, they had no choice but to bite the bullet.

There are several systems on the market which will help with this but what most need now is a system that works regardless of the location of the user and continues providing that cover when the user moves from one location to another. This is just a suggestion, but we’d be delighted to demo it to anyone who is interested. https://hah2.co.uk/gdpr-data-protection/

6. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

Business Continuity refers to the proactive strategies and plans put in place to ensure that essential business functions can continue in the event of a disruption or disaster. This could include natural disasters, cyber-attacks, power outages, or any other event that could disrupt normal business operations. Business Continuity planning typically involves identifying critical business processes, implementing redundant systems and processes, and developing communication plans to ensure that the organisation can continue to operate smoothly in the face of adversity.

Disaster Recovery, on the other hand, is focused specifically on restoring IT infrastructure and data after a disaster has occurred. This could involve recovering lost data, restoring systems and networks, and ensuring that IT operations can resume as quickly as possible. Disaster Recovery planning typically involves creating backup systems, implementing data recovery procedures, and testing these plans regularly to ensure they are effective. Both are critical components of a comprehensive risk management strategy and should be integrated into an organization’s overall resilience planning efforts.

Just like backups, which are a crucial part of Disaster Recovery, these plans can become very quickly out of date and useless, unless reviewed periodically and tested to see if they actually work.

7. Vulnerabilities and Threats

A vulnerability is a flaw or weakness in an asset’s design, implementation, or operation and management that could be exploited by a threat. A threat is a potential for a threat agent to exploit a vulnerability. A simple way to explain this is that a vulnerability is the inability to resist a hazard or to respond when a disaster has occurred. For instance, people who live on plains are more vulnerable to floods than people who live higher up. The threat is the flood itself.

IT risks and vulnerabilities are the potential threats and weaknesses that can affect the performance, security and reliability of your business function and processes. They can have serious consequences for your business goals, customer satisfaction, and competitive advantage.

Identifying vulnerabilities to your cyber security assets and then identifying the threat to those assets in terms of the vulnerability being exploited, informs your risk and enables you to assign a value to it. Financial value can be assigned to the risk score if you so wish. You then apply controls to bring the risk down to an acceptable level, starting with the Very High risks, and then bringing them down to whatever is acceptable to you. That acceptable level, known as the risk appetite, will vary business to business, risk to risk.

8. Supply Chain Security?

In short, a supply chain attack is a cyber-attack that seeks to damage an organisation by targeting less-secure elements in the supply chain.

An example of such an attack was published by NCSC and points out that many modern businesses outsource their data to third party companies which aggregate, store, process, and broker the information, sometimes on behalf of clients in direct competition with one another.

Such sensitive data is not necessarily just about customers, but could also cover business structure, financial health, strategy, and exposure to risk. In the past, firms dealing with high profile mergers and acquisitions have been targeted. In September 2013, several networks belonging to large data aggregators were reported as having been compromised.

A small botnet was observed exfiltrating information from the internal systems of numerous data stores, through an encrypted channel, to a botnet controller on the public Internet. The highest profile victim was a data aggregator that licenses information on businesses and corporations for use in credit decisions, business-to-business marketing, and supply chain management. While the attackers may have been after consumer and business data, fraud experts suggested that information on consumer and business habits and practices was the most valuable.

The victim was a credit bureau for numerous businesses, providing “knowledge-based authentication” for financial transaction requests. This supply chain compromise enabled attackers to access valuable information stored via a third party and potentially commit large scale fraud.

NCSC also cited what is known as a watering hole attack, which works by identifying a website that’s frequented by users within a targeted organisation, or even an entire sector, such as defence, government, or healthcare. That website is then compromised to enable the distribution of malware.

The attacker identifies weaknesses in the main target’s cyber security, then manipulates the watering hole site to deliver malware that will exploit these weaknesses.

The malware may be delivered and installed without the target realising (called a ‘drive by’ attack) but given the trust the target is likely to have in the watering hole site, it can also be a file that a user will consciously download without realising what it really contains. Typically, the malware will be a Remote Access Trojan (RAT), enabling the attacker to gain remote access to the target’s system.

If you are in someones supply chain, then you need to make doubly sure that your security protects your customer as well as yourself. And conversely, if you are connected electronically to someone who supplies you, are you sure that you are protected from any vulnerability they may have.

WHAT IS MANAGEMENTS ROLE IN CYBER DEFENCE?

As I move around talking to business leaders of all sizes of company, one thing stands out. And that’s that there are many different views as to how involved management needs to be in cyber defence, and some of these views are markedly different. They range from a very hands off approach, happily leaving it to their IT support, to, and it has to be said, a minority, who see it as their responsibility.

Arguably one of the most, if not the most, important roles any CEO/MD/Chairman (call him or her whatever you like and for the purposes of this article I’ll stick with CEO) is to set the importance of cyber defence in everyones mind. The tone has to come from the top to be accepted and effective. When cyber defence is clearly prioritised by the CEO and the Board, it assumes an importance in the mind of the employees. It is crucial that everyone from the CEO down understands the impact that a cyber breach, or a scam, or a cyber based fraud, can have on the bottom line.

This also aligns cyber defence and data protection with the business goals. Cyber defence is a business issue, not an IT issue. It’s crucial that all clearly understand this and how it should be woven into the very fabric of the business. The CEO and the board have a clear perspective on the company’s strategic goals and direction. By their involvement with cyber defence, they can ensure that it is aligned with the broader business strategy to fully protect the businesses data and systems. It aids with budgets for cyber security tools, training and personnel, addressing the threats to the business.

CEOS might need advice and guidance but their involvement is essential and will help to identify some issues which may not be clear to employees, especially technical employees. One such is reputational damage. The damage to a company from a data breach may not be immediately clear. But once it hits the press, or once the company becomes subject to a fine from a regulatory body such as the Information Commissioner, the word tends to spread. If you can’t be trusted to maintain a level of confidentiality, can you be trusted with other things? Doubt spreads and can destroy vendor, customer and partner relationships.

Cyber defence begins with risk management. Managing cyber risks is no different to managing any other business risk. There is no business without risk, the trick is to manage your risks down to a level that you are prepared to accept, known as the risk appetite. This must involve the CEO and directors and business managers. Each knows what could damage, perhaps catastrophically damage, their part of the business. IT staff don’t have this knowledge, their focus is often on the technical risks, not the business risks.

Risk management itself begins with a clear cyber defence and data protection strategy. Depending upon the size of your business, some elements of the suggested strategy below, may not be relevant to you. This is offered as a guide, not an absolute.

Figure 1- Suggested Cyber Strategy Framework

To help in defining your strategy, you need to undertake a risk analysis which will inform the selection, deployment and management of Appropriate, Affordable and Accreditable (if required) controls.

Appropriate in the sense that controls need to support rather than hinder business process as well as being capable of achieving their goals. Your controls also need to be appropriate to your business. Affordable may seem self-explanatory, however in the context of cyber security controls and overall budgetary constraints, return on investment is as important as cost effectiveness. Accreditation to agreed cyber security standards – of which there are many, is crucial for all organisations. Being able to provide a trail of evidence which demonstrates on going compliance to selected standards is essential in times of crisis.

Having got this far, we need a risk treatment plan to match the identified risks. What you’re trying to achieve here is to manage the risk down to an acceptable level. Don’t get bogged down in trying to eliminate risk, you won’t succeed, but rather get the risk down as low as you can. Don’t make it too complicated, identify your risks as High, Medium and Low. Then manage the high risks down to Low, followed by the medium risks. You do this by applying controls, be they procedural or technical, to the risk and measuring the outcome.

It sounds complicated and you may need guidance, but once done and adhered to, it provides peace of mind to you, that you have done what you need to do to get your Cyber Defence in place.

H2 provides affordable and flexible one-off and ongoing data protection and cyber risk protection services.

To learn more about the services we provide please click here https://www.hah2.co.uk/

Please feel free to give us a call or email.

Alternatively book a demo on our Calendly link https://bit.ly/3yoT0qi

T: 0845 5443742

M: 07702 019060

E: kevin_hawkins@hah2.co.uk

Trust H2 – Making sure your information is secure

Cyber Security Defence

When you are an owner or director of a company, you will have to face many challenges starting from employing the right people to protecting the sensitive data regarding the company, your workers, suppliers and clients, who buy products and services from you. Nowadays, data leakage prevention is essential in every business. Last week I touched on cyber security strategy, and I’ll expand on that a little more in a week or two, but I’ll just reiterate here that cyber security and data protection are inextricably linked, both practically and legally. They apply equally to the large corporate entities and SMEs alike. It’s purely a matter of scale. So, let’s dive in and learn more about the security and data protection services that you may wish to consider, having first identified your risks and come up with what is called a risk treatment plan, ie a plan to remediate the identified risks to an appropriate level, taking account of the residual risk that your organisation finds acceptable.

Cyber Security Defence – What Are the Most Common Services?

The Insider Threat

There are a lot of actions that can be taken regarding cyber defence. You need to cover both external and insider threat detection. We need to simplify, and where possible, automate our responses and solutions. The more complicated we make it, the more chance of it becoming a liability rather than a solution. The insider threat is one that is often misunderstood and in fact, often ignored. It is one of the most fascinating and alarming aspects of cybersecurity! It refers to the potential risks posed by individuals within an organisation who have access to sensitive information and can misuse it for personal gain or to sabotage the company. These insiders could be employees, contractors, or even business partners who have intimate knowledge of the company’s processes and systems. It’s like a real-life spy thriller unfolding right within the walls of your own organisation! The challenge lies in identifying and mitigating these risks before they cause serious damage. It’s an adrenaline-pumping game of cat and mouse that keeps cybersecurity professionals on their toes! It is important to note that many insider threats come not from any intended action by an employee, but rather a mistaken action taken by an employee who didn’t know they shouldn’t do whatever it is they had done. It’s a primary reason why cyber awareness training is so important. I can’t stress enough how important a comprehensive campaign of such training is.

To protect against insider threats you need, as well as awareness training, a good mix of procedural and technical security. You need a sound access control policy that clearly lays down how to onboard an employee, what access to allow, and how to protect against employees gaining privilege they don’t need and shouldn’t have. That policy should also cover off-boarding when an employee leaves. Here at H2 we have partnered with Cyber Elements to provide solutions to provide the correct provisioning in an easy to administer way.

External Threats

These are the threats that everyone thinks of when the subject of cyber security comes up. It can be very easy, such as identifying and blocking a virus, or it can be very complex. It all depends on the size and range of the problem. For example, ransomware protection. We have partnered with Platinum-HIT (UK) to provide the HDF concept. This provides a unique approach to anti malware and provides a good level of ransomware, and indeed, phishing, protection. On any computer system, data is stored either as non-runnable information data or runnable application programs. Malware is a type of runnable program with undesirable behaviours. HDF prevents malware infection by stopping malware program files from being stored and run on a computer. Simply put, if a program can’t run, it can’t infect your system. This does require a period of examination of your system to identify what does need to run, to run the business, and that is provided within the product.

We have introduced a fully managed proactive cyber defence solution that complements our data protection solution, described below, whilst remaining able to stand alone, in the unlikely event that the data protection element is not required.

In the dynamic world of cybersecurity, staying ahead of evolving threats requires a comprehensive approach that adapts to the ever-changing landscape. At H2, we recognize that one-size-fits-all solutions often fall short, which is why we’ve developed a flexible and scalable cybersecurity solution powered by Guardz, to address the needs of our clients.

Our approach is grounded in sound risk management principles, ensuring that our solutions are aligned with your specific cybersecurity requirements. Whether you need one or more of our solutions, we can tailor an approach that meets your exact needs and budget.

I talked earlier about the symbiotic relationship between cyber security and data protection, which of course includes data leakage prevention, data privacy and compliance. Once again, we have this covered. Our data protection solution is very comprehensive and looks not just at the technical, but also at the procedural aspect of data protection, from providing a virtual data protection officer, to writing and/or reviewing your policies and processes, to identifying where your data actual is, what it’s status is ie sensitive or non-sensitive, and provides the ability to encrypt the sensitive data in order to reduce your risk. If you have a data leak and the data is encrypted, then you are significantly reducing any risk.

Summary

All cyber security defence solutions are designed and implemented in collaboration with the client, during a trial period that consists of between 14 and 30 days, depending upon the solution. All actions can be performed remotely and online and there is no requirement for us to be on site, thus reducing time and expense. Additionally, all solutions are based on SaaS and therefore there is no expensive infrastructure or hardware requirements and being cloud based, it provides the additional advantage that it can monitor and protect end points regardless of where they are, in the office, on the move, or at home.

What’s the advantage of using a cyber defence managed service?

This will differ company to company, and some will have more of an issue, certainly regarding the protection of what is known as Personally Identifiable Information or PII, as defined in the Data Protection Act 2018. Each must decide what their threshold is for residual risk, ie what risk is acceptable to them, once protections have been put in place.

Professional cyber security staff are, currently, difficult to source. There is a global shortage of experienced personnel. They are also expensive to employ. You could also argue that there isn’t a full time job for more than one or two, in many organisations. It therefore makes both operational and financial sense, to outsource at least some of your security operations.

Cyber Security Strategies for SMEs

What is a Cyber Security Strategy

A cyber security strategy is a plan that outlines an organisation’s approach to protecting its information systems and data from cyber threats. This strategy typically includes measures such as implementing security controls, conducting regular risk assessments, training employees on security best practices, monitoring network activity for suspicious behaviour, and responding to security incidents in a timely manner. The goal of a cyber security strategy is to minimise the risk of cyber-attacks and protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of an organisation’s sensitive information.

Do I really need that – I’m an SME and not really a target, am I?

Well yes, you are a target and there are a ton of statistics available which shows that SMEs globally are a very real target for cyber-attacks and can in fact, be very profitable for cyber criminals. There are a lot of reasons for that but one of the top reasons is that typically, SMEs spend very little on cyber defence and generally have very weak defences. Add to this that they don’t tend to carry out cyber awareness training for their staff, have limited resources and generally don’t have a good grasp of the issues.

Not their fault. Most are focused on their core business, trying make a quid or two and are pressed for time. They tend to rely on whatever company, usually local, that supplied their network, hardware and software, generally on a retainer. The problem is that those companies don’t really have a good grasp of the issues either, concentrating on technology, and then, not necessarily the right technology.

Secure by default and design

Now that’s an interesting title, but what does it mean? Secure by default and design means that a system or product is inherently built with security measures in place from the start. This ensures that security is a priority throughout the development process and that users can trust that their data and information will be protected. It also means that security features are enabled by default, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities or breaches. This approach helps to create a more robust and resilient system that is better equipped to withstand potential threats.

It applies as much to your network and systems as it does to software development and possibly more importantly to you, it is a legal requirement under the Data Protection Act 2018, or as it is becoming known, UK GDPR.

The first problem many people come up against is that they already have a network, probably connected to the cloud of some sort, very possibly for SMEs, MS365, but when the design was done, there wasn’t a full risk assessment undertaken which is a requirement to underpin that design. In other words what we in the cyber security industry refer to as Security Architecture Design (SAD), wasn’t a prominent consideration.

No unusual and the common technologies were probably set up, firewalls and anti-virus, but not much else. And that is where a well thought out strategy comes into play.

What should I be considering in my Cyber Security Strategy

We’ve already said you are an SME, so do you need the sort of comprehensive cyber security strategy that we would see in a major corporate? No, but it should still cover off the major points and should continue to be reviewed alongside things like your Health and Safety policy and other industry standards that are required to be reviewed for you to stay in business, usually annually.

You need to be thinking about the key components needed to effectively protect an organisation’s digital assets and data. These components may include:

1. Risk assessment: Assessing potential cybersecurity risks and vulnerabilities to identify areas of weakness and prioritise areas for improvement.

2. Security policies and procedures: Establishing clear and enforceable policies and procedures for data protection, access control, incident response, and other security-related activities.

3. Employee training: Providing ongoing training and education to employees on cyber security best practices, such as password management, phishing awareness, and safe browsing habits.

4. Security tools and technologies: Implementing robust security tools and technologies, such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, encryption software, security monitoring tools and data protection tools, and endpoint protection solutions.

5. Incident response plan: Developing a detailed incident response plan that outlines the steps to be taken in the event of a security breach or cyber-attack, including communication protocols, containment measures, and recovery strategies.

6. Regular audits and testing: Conducting regular security audits and penetration testing to assess the effectiveness of existing security measures and identify any vulnerabilities that need to be addressed.

7. Collaboration with external partners: Establishing a partnership with cyber security company that understands the issues that affect SMEs and who themselves can establish a solid working relationship with the IT provider that is providing and administering your network and IT resources, will enhance your protections, significantly improve your employee and managerial awareness of the issues, and provide you with the peace of mind you need, allowing you to concentrate on your core business.

Business Continuity Planning

How many SMEs have a business continuity plan in place should they be subject to a cyber-attack that seriously disrupts business to the point where you can’t process and order, raise an invoice or get in essential supplies. It happens, don’t kid yourself and business continuity is not the same as disaster Recovery. Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery are two closely related concepts that are often used interchangeably, but they serve different purposes within an organization.

Business Continuity refers to the proactive strategies and plans put in place to ensure that essential business functions can continue in the event of a disruption or disaster. This could include natural disasters, cyber-attacks, power outages, or any other event that could disrupt normal business operations. Business Continuity planning typically involves identifying critical business processes, implementing redundant systems and processes, and developing communication plans to ensure that the organization can continue to operate smoothly in the face of adversity.

In general, along with your insurers, the IT support company you have under contract, should be able to help you with disaster recovery, which is often defined by a physical disaster ie fire, flood etc, as well as a cyber-attack. Business continuity on the other hand requires much more thought and planning.

In essence then, business continuity is the ability to recover quickly and continue operating when there has been a serious disruption to the business function caused by equipment failure, power outage, fire, flood, or other type disruption (manmade or otherwise). Business continuity may be achieved through resiliency – which is an essential part of system architecture, associated with business continuity planning. Resiliency considers the business impact and corresponding plans to restore business functionality after a disruptive event. However, as many SMEs have carried out no real risk assessment and have no real risk management plan in regard to cyber security, then it is unlikely that they have a system architecture robust enough to take account of this requirement. The exception is that the majority have taken to cloud computing which goes someway to achieving resilience, although that was probably not their primary reason for going down that road.

There are 4 elements that are essential to the business continuity component of the security operations function are as follows:

Business impact assessments (BIA)
Disaster recovery planning.
Business recovery planning.
Plan, testing and analysis.

Arguably the most important is the BIA, developing an understanding of what could happen to the business if the loss of systems, leading to the loss of access to critical data and the ability to continue to function efficiently, should a disaster overcome you.

These are the issues all business owners should get to grips with and here at H2 we understand that it isn’t easy, and that advice and guidance is necessary.

Innovation – Why Do Many Shy Away from it?

I read an interesting piece recently where the thrust was that true innovation consists of doing now what you should have done ten years ago. Harsh, maybe, but also fair. I’m constantly reading industry surveys which highlight the low level of cybersecurity maturity amongst large firms and, increasingly, an even lower level amongst smaller firms. We never seem to learn.

Of course, and as I’ve mentioned before, many of these surveys are written, or at least sponsored, by cybersecurity vendors and largish consultancies, who could potentially be seen as biased in that they are pushing their own solutions. But keeping that in mind, there is still and underlying truth.

My focus remains on SMEs, so I’ll skip more talk about the corporate world. In conversation with people I’ve worked with for years, their anecdotal evidence supports the underlying truth of these surveys. SMEs in particular struggle with the basics of good cybersecurity housekeeping, such as monitoring of basic network events, timely removal of user accounts, timely deployment of security patches, and revalidation of access level, particularly privileged access. This list is far from exhaustive. Whilst this message has been pushed over and over by cybersecurity professionals over the last 10-15 years, SMEs continue to rely on technical solutions which simply don’t stack up in many areas. Why? Simple, because they are relying on local IT providers to give them solutions and those IT providers continue to push the technologies that they sell. SME owners and managers are very reluctant to relinquish that argument. Strange when often the best solutions are procedural and as such, much much cheaper than a technology that probably doesn’t quite match up anyway.

Before we go any further, let’s briefly explore some issues that are common amongst SMEs. Some common myths first:

Small to medium size businesses are not worth attacking.
Cyber Security is an IT Issue.
Technology will keep me safe.
My policies and procedures are up to the job.
My staff are young and have been brought up with IT. They know the score.

Now let’s look at some of the more common issues that we see often amongst SMEs:

Lack of awareness around the current real-world cybersecurity risks
False sense of security, with a heavy reliance and dependence on an external IT third-party provider
Lack of cybersecurity knowledge, and understanding
Poor cybersecurity maturity and posture within their businesses
Lack of staff training (at all levels) – just like Health & Safety, cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility.

Back to the topic in hand, innovation and how and when should we be seriously considering it. Ideally, we should be constantly looking for innovations, not just to keep us safe, but to encourage efficiency and cost savings, and I’m sure all SME owners would love to have the time and resource to do just that. But we live in the real world and will be cost, and resource constrained. But that’s not an excuse to not keep a weather eye on the need to innovate. We live in a changing world and what we in the business call the threat landscape, changes constantly. This simply means that threats evolve all the time, often to meet new circumstances, and AI for instance, is reducing the response time of cyber criminals to new technologies and changes in working patterns, to almost what is known as the zero day threat, ie zero days from the release of something new, to a threat being created to exploit it.

When COVID hit, many SMEs had to move very quickly to keep going, adopting remote working without the time or luxury of any real planning. It was a knee jerk born of necessity and certainly not the way they would have liked to do it. There are multiple cases of companies not having the necessary equipment, in terms of hardware, desktop, laptops etc, and allowing staff to work from home using their own home machines, connecting to both office and cloud-based systems, without any check on how those machines were configured, whether or not they were kept up to date with the latest patches, or whether they were used by other family members.

In terms of equipment, cloud usage and some working practices, that situation is righting itself, sort of. There are now surveys by HR consulting companies, suggesting that 60 to 70% of companies of all sizes are either planning to, or have adopted a hybrid model. In the IT industry, particularly amongst IT consultancies, this model has been in use for many years and is well regarded, allowing the downsizing of office space and a lower cost base. That new working model has arguably had the biggest effect on working practices and in turn, cyber security as it affects SMEs, since the innovation of IT itself.

So, what needs to be done if hybrid working patterns are to continue? Well, first and foremost comes your policies. Do they reflect the new hybrid working model? Have you laid down what is and what is not an acceptable use of company IT equipment if it’s being transported to a home address? Do you allow the use of home machines, and have you laid down how those machines must be configured before they can be used for company business? That list is not exhaustive.

Secondly comes user training. Cyber awareness training for staff, along with a broad understanding of data protection principles, becomes even more important when staff are working from home. It is a clear no brainer which many SMEs still don’t recognise as necessary.

Of course, those 2 things are hardly innovation, unless of course, you haven’t taken any of those measures and then it becomes innovative within your company. Real innovation perhaps comes from reviewing the technologies you have in place, and have relied on, possibly for years. Most, if not all those technologies will be based on the old bastion model of security, ie a network perimeter with a secure gateway, protecting your assets within that perimeter. With the new working model, relying usually on cloud connectivity, your staff could be working in the office, at home, from a coffee shop etc etc. You now have a mobile workforce. What is needed is real innovation that protects your data regardless of where it is, technologies which themselves are cloud based, not caring where the end point it is monitoring actually is, whilst maintaining cost effective pricing. This is something we’ve been at great pains to research and have now come up with such solutions.

We are holding a webinar to discuss and highlight these solutions and would love to see you there:

Event Details:

Date: 8^th May
Time: 12pm
Event link: https://bit.ly/3UDaUy9

Cyber Security Benchmarking

As long as I’ve been in this industry, clients have always had a thing about benchmarking, particularly those in the higher echelons, who are naturally driven by maturity, budgets, and the frequency of cyber breaches in their industry. It’s often how they decide their spend. Fair enough. In the SME world it’s perhaps not that formalised but is still a thing. An SME owner wants to know what other people are doing to try and gauge what they should be doing.

I talked, in a post last week, about conformational bias, which is a posh way of talking about the herd mentality and benchmarking falls loosely into that bracket. What we’re actually talking about is the need for reassurance, deflecting plain discomfort, around the proposal to spend money on something that often seems a little esoteric to many.

Of course, not every situation, or every company is the same. Their cyber maturity and risk appetite will often drive different approaches to a similar problem. One company might have a heavy focus on data protection. For example, an accountancy firm, a solicitors, even an estate agency, might assess that a serious data breach involving the Information Commissioner, could, potentially, put them out of business and they would therefore make this a number one risk. On the other hand, a manufacturing company may consider this a risk, but of less importance than say, their designs for their next improvement to their product line.

So how good is a benchmark? Well, it’s a guide, but that’s all it is, and you might think that if you’re close-ish to that guide, and you have an understanding about why you’re not closer, then that is probably OK. What I’m saying is, don’t take an industry benchmark to be gospel, it isn’t, and basing decisions on what is essentially anecdotal evidence, isn’t, in my opinion, a very good basis for making that decision.

This is where building relationships with suppliers is essential for an SME. Trust must be established, especially when dipping your toe in to the murky depths of cyber security. Let’s face it, most people don’t understand it and people don’t trust what they don’t understand. Finding a cyber security company that is happy to work with SMEs is not easy, especially one that isn’t wedded to technology as being the only answer to a problem. Process and procedure can be just as effective as technology in certain circumstances and of course, is much much cheaper. And let’s not forget cyber awareness training, still the cheapest quick win any SME can take to offset the risk of a data breach or scam.

All this is easy to say, but just how do you find a cyber security company you can trust? I vaguely remember hearing the saying that you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince. But in this case, you can’t afford to do that. Time is not on your side but in doing your due diligence, you still need to be cautious.

What are you looking for? I would suggest:

Proven track record. Look into the past of the ownership of the company, not just the employees.

Their approach. Do they lead with technology? If they do, walk away. Do they take a risk managed approach? That’s what you’re looking for.
Do they talk in jargon, trying to baffle you with science? If they do, walk away. This subject can be explained without getting into technicalities. You want something that addresses threats to your business, and they should demonstrate they understand that.
Do they talk about the FUD factor. Fear, uncertainty and doubt. What they’re trying to do is to scare you into buying. Giving you the facts is one thing, FUD is completely different.
Have they taken the time to fully understand what your business is about, what it is that drives your revenue, what is important to you and what is not so important?
Do they see you as a long term partner or a quick revenue win? Can be difficult to assess but it is crucial to building the trust I talked about earlier.

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list of criteria, and you’ll almost certainly have things you want to add, and maybe things you will discard. But whatever route you take to build that trust, it is essential to your protection and peace of mind in what is becoming a very dangerous online world.

A Company’s Tale – From COVID to Hybrid – Part 2

In last weeks blog we talked about a company that was forced, by COVID restrictions, to move to working from home, and how that affected the organisations’ structure and ability to continue in business, and some of the difficulties they faced.

We reached a point where they had started to get back into the office but had decided to adopt the hybrid method of working, saving money on floor space, fuel and light etc. But this has come with problems of its own which we’ll look at now.

Hybrid working is something that many SMEs like because of the cost savings, providing of course that the business doesn’t require people on site, such as manufacturing, transport etc. Company’s such as lawyers, financial advisors/accountants, HR facilitators, recruiters and the like, can support hybrid working quite easily, from an operational standpoint.

Last week we saw that the 2 partners are aware that they hold a growing amount of personal and corporate data, not just about their own staff and systems but also about their clients. They were also aware of the Data Protection Act 2018 and GDPR but at a very surface level and were not sure about how much this will affect them. For example, in terms of policies, they have very little that references the DPA 2018 and/or GDPR. Their website does not contain the necessary privacy statement or statements regarding the use of Cookies. They don’t have an overarching security policy or a cyber security strategy in place.

So, what’s are the issues arising from last paragraph? Well, the DPA 2018, or UK GDPR as it’s becoming colloquially known, requires that data is processed and stored securely and that managers and staff are aware of the regulations regarding the safe processing and storage of information, which are quite extensive and can be daunting, but needn’t be an issue for SMEs, if not ignored. The ICO is, in my experience, very helpful in this regard and are not there to hand out heavy fines, threatening to put you out of business. If you can demonstrate that you have done your very best to obey the law, then they will be helpful and conciliatory. On the other hand, if you’ve been neglectful and even a little cavalier about it, then not so much.

But getting back to the case in point, these guys were now at the juncture where they had their staff working from home for about 3 days a week, and coming into the office on 2 days, unless of course they were consultants who were visiting client sites and were working on the move. Everyone now had a company laptop, including admin staff, and data was held on the cloud.

But what didn’t they have, and how would that affect the? Well, firstly they didn’t have a cyber security strategy in place. So, what is a cyber security strategy? It’s a plan that outlines an organisation’s approach to protecting its digitally held assets and information from cyber threats. This strategy typically includes policies, procedures, technologies, and practices that are designed to prevent, detect, respond to, and recover from cyber-attacks. People, Process and Technology combined and integrated to provide protection.

This needn’t be scary, and you can pick and choose what is important to your organisation, what needs to be comprehensive, and what can be less so. The level of risk you are prepared to take, is entirely your call. Key components might include:

Risk assessment: Identifying and prioritizing potential threats and vulnerabilities to the organization’s systems and data.
Security controls: Implementing technical and procedural measures to protect against cyber threats, such as firewalls, encryption, access controls, and employee training.
Incident response plan: Establishing protocols for responding to and recovering from security incidents, including communication plans, containment strategies, and forensic analysis.
Continuous monitoring: Monitoring systems and networks for suspicious activity or anomalies that could indicate a security breach.
Compliance management: Ensuring that the organization complies with relevant laws, regulations, and industry standards related to data protection and privacy.

What the management is doing here, is laying down a framework for how things need to be developed. It doesn’t need to happen all at once,

Not having formulated a strategy, the company didn’t have much of this in place, and what it did have wasn’t well structured and integrated. The security products in use were stand alone, working independently of each other. Another major flaw was that they had no cyber awareness training in place, neither did they have effective policies. Those that they had were downloaded from the internet as a box ticking exercise. They were in fact a cyber disaster looking for somewhere to happen.

The 2 partners were aware of these issues and yes, they took some time to get around to addressing them simply because recovering the business from the issues arising from COVID, took precedence. But they realised that this couldn’t be put off for any longer and took action.

They engaged with us to first carry out a Cyber Maturity Assessment. This covered:

Cyber Security Strategy.
Cyber Security and Data Protection policies.
Protective monitoring and vulnerability assessment.
Incident response and business continuity planning.
Access control.
Employee awareness training.
Compliance.
Technical Security

The strategy they needed could be very much simplified to meet their requirements, but it did cover the salient points and gave a clear indication of what was needed immediately, what could follow and what was more of a nice to have rather than a necessity. To that end we were able to structure remediation that was phased over a number of months, covering 2 budgetary periods.

End result, they had a solution that was affordable as well as appropriate to them. It covered staff in the office, working from home and on the move. It kept them compliant with the relevant legislation and set them up to achieve a standard such as Cyber Essentials, which is next on their list. If necessary, they could even go as far as ISO2700x series, although that might not be appropriate for them at their current size.

Cyber Security Policies – A Must Have or a Nice to Have

How important are policies and processes in comparison with technology, when it comes to Cyber Security and its sister discipline, data protection. The clue is that in Cyber Security we refer to People, Process and Technology, in that order.

Top of this list is People, and I’ve written extensively about how important cyber awareness training is for all, managers and employees alike. This piece is all about policies and processes. First and foremost, policies have to be relevant to the organisation and not just downloaded from the internet, maybe with a few modifications, before applying a tick in the box and moving on. Policies have to mean something and have a purpose. Many organisations I go to either have some very scant policies or actually, none at all.

I often talk about risk in terms of cyber security and how managing that risk is extremely important. And that means understanding what those risks actually are, and then taking steps to mitigate them. When I talk about this, I can often see the wheels turning and the audience thinking technology and how much is that going to cost them. Well, it’s very often the case that technology is not the answer. There are many risks where a good policy, promulgated to, and understood by all, can save the company money.

A good example of that is a fairly common scam that tends to costs SMEs between 5 and 50K depending upon the size of business. How this is achieved is that the scammer or let’s call him/her what he/she is, the criminal, spends some time profiling the company, using various social engineering techniques to work out how the company is organised and who is who. You may be surprised as to how much of that information is freely available on the company website, companies house and other sources. Having discovered who the boss is, and who looks after invoice payments, the criminal then ‘spoofs’ the bosses email. Email spoofing, in simple terms, is sending an email purporting to come from someone else. So, it arrives purporting to come from the boss, but actually it’s from the scammer. Such an email is sent to the person who pays invoices, with an invoice attached, saying please pay this as a matter of urgency. This happened recently to someone I know, and when it arrived in the accounts department it didn’t look cosher to the payments clerk, who replied to the email asking if the boss was sure. Of course, she got an email back saying yes, I’m sure. She paid it and the company lost over 30K. The accounts clerk was clearly switched on but she made a basic error, because she didn’t know any different. If she had sent a fresh email to the boss querying the invoice, it would have gone to the boss who could have stopped the transaction. Instead, she replied to the email and her reply went back to the scammer. A policy which dictates fresh emails rather than using the reply function, and known to all, would have saved the company a lot of money.

Policies and attendant processes are essential for the protection of company data and the bottom line, company money. What needs to be covered and in what depth, depends on the risks that the company is facing, and will differ company to company depending on its type. In broad terms, and as an absolute minimum, the following are required:

Overarching IT security policy – often this only needs to say very clearly what responsibilities employees have in regard to security and data protection, lay down a requirement and responsibility for cyber awareness training, and state that all employees are to be cognisant of all the policies and are to sign that they have read and understood them. And most importantly, it must be signed off at board level making it clear that this is a crucial requirement.
IT Acceptable Use Policy – what is, and what is not, an acceptable use for company IT.
IT Email Policy
IT password policy
IT Mobile working policy – essential for mobile workers who may be tempted to work from a coffee shop, and of course, working from home. This latter might be a separate policy or can be part of the mobile working policy.
Data Protection Policies – a whole other subject.
Social media policy – this can be really important. Probably 100% of your employees will have a social media presence and will use it daily. How important is it that they don’t associate themselves with the company on their private social media? Depends on the person but it could be damaging in reputational terms. The company might also do some digital marketing on social media. Who is, and who is not, allowed to get involved with that function.

This is not an exhaustive list. It depends very much on risks that needs mitigating. They will also be accompanied by processes to support the policy.

Does this resonate with you. If you’d like to know more, we’d like to help.

Scams v Hacks – how does this effect SMEs?

When I speak to SMEs, I make the point that the chances of being ‘hacked’ is relatively low when compared with being scammed. Why? In my view, I look at a hack as being a technical attack on a target by someone who is technically savvy and skilled in identifying and exploiting weaknesses in a company’s defence. A scam on the other hand can be perpetrated by people with relatively low levels of technical ability and scams are in fact, a con, just like any other old fashioned con, in that they get the target to agree to, or to do something, that will benefit the con artist.

We always recommend that our clients try as best as they can to have defence in depth. That’s an old military term which is often used in cyber security now to describe multiple layers of defence. This can be expensive though and it must be tempered by budget, targeting controls where they are most needed. What this does is to deter many attackers who are looking for a quick win, so if they have to work long and hard to break in, they’ll often go elsewhere, where the pickings might be easier. And of course, whilst an SMEs defence might be somewhat less than those of an enterprise organisation, the pickings are likewise smaller, making it not cost effective for the attacker to take too much time with a technical hack.

Does this make scams much more attractive to the criminal? Yes, I believe it does, simply because the amount of effort required is low and they are skilled in manipulating people, especially those that have had minimal cyber awareness training. Scamming, just like hacking is generally preceded by some form of social engineering. Social engineering refers to techniques aimed at talking a target into revealing specific information or performing a specific action for illegitimate reasons. So, whilst a hacker modifies a computer’s software and hardware structure to carry out certain tasks, social engineering uses people as weapons to attack selected targets. In this way the manipulation is accomplished by employing trust through different forms of communication.

Typically, social engineering is achieved via Phishing, Vishing (video), Smishing (via SMS), malware and Spear phishing where the targets are selected for their importance to a specific attack. Whatever method is used the aim remains the same, it is to persuade the unwary to give up sensitive information, install malicious software or do things that compromise your business security. The best protection against social engineering remains a work force that are aware of the techniques and dangers posed by this.

What is the cost of scams to the across the globe? One statistic suggests that public sector fraud losses amount to about £50.2 billion whilst frauds committed directly against individuals, including marketing fraud and identity fraud, is around £8.3 billion. The total cost of fraud has risen from about £190 billion in 2017 to almost £219 billion. (Source Peters, Peters and Crowe). Of course, not all of this is via online fraud, but it is becoming the most common type of scam we see today.

Some of the most common types of scams that we see include, but are not limited to:

Copycat government websites. Some scams involve websites designed to look like official government websites such as HMRC. …
Dating and romance scams. …
Holiday frauds. …
Mandate fraud. …
Pharming. …
Phishing emails.

I received an email only yesterday purporting to come from someone called, and I kid you not, Lisa Monaa, inviting me to partake in an extremely profitable project, and I just couldn’t bring myself to read anymore. It was a badly written phishing email with little chance of success.

AI is having an effect as well. I’ve written earlier about the CEO scam whereby a CEOs email is spoofed and sent to an accounts department with an invoice attach, stating that the CEO has received a complaint from a supplier that their invoice is late and to get it paid without delay. That scam has now been updated to a voice simulated by AI, over the phone, demanding the same.

Whilst that scam is quite old, it shows how social engineering has a play. Firstly, they have to find out what the CEOs email is. Not difficult. The company’s email form will almost certainly be shown on their website with a contact like sales@abc.com. So, the attacker knows that the suffix is abc.com. They may well also be able to get the CEOs name from the website or even Company’s House. Next send an email to JSmith@abc.com. If that bounces send it to John.Smith@abc.com and so on until it goes through. Next phone the accounts department, ask for Mary in accounts payable. No Mary here I’m afraid. Oh sorry, I was sure it was Mary, who handles accounts payable then, Oh that’s Julie. So, he now has CEOs email and someone to send the email to. That would probably take about 30 minutes of the scammers time.

The impacts of scams can be very far reaching. Firstly, there is financial loss, which to many SMEs operating on tight margins, can be quite devastating. Then there is the possibility of data breach. If you are a business with lots of client personal data, say a financial advisor, a lawyer, an estate agent, pharmacist, you get the drift, and the aim was to steal data, then you could be hit with a substantial fine from the Information Commissioner not to mention lawsuits from those whose data has been stolen. Reputational damage can be disastrous and then there is the effect on staff who can suffer greatly thinking they have damaged the company and put everyones job at risk.

Bottom line – scamming is endemic, it’s going nowhere, and AI is going to make it more prevalent, not less. SMEs spend far less on their defences and on cyber awareness training making them more likely to be targeted. Combating this threat should be high on your to do list.

Risk Analysis and Security Strategy