High-Level Project Plan for CIS CSC Implementation

Overview:

Implementing the controls and safeguards outlined in the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Critical Security Controls (CSC) Version 8 is crucial for organizations to establish a robust cybersecurity framework. This article provides a concise project plan for implementing these controls, briefly describing the processes and steps involved.

Plan:

1. Establish a Governance Structure:

– Define roles and responsibilities for key stakeholders.

– Develop a governance framework for the implementation project.

– Create a project charter to outline the project’s scope, objectives, and timelines.

2. Conduct a Baseline Assessment:

– Perform a comprehensive assessment of the organization’s existing security posture.

– Identify gaps between the current state and the requirements of CIS CSC Version 8.

– Prioritize the controls that need immediate attention based on the assessment results.

3. Develop an Implementation Roadmap:

– Define a clear timeline for implementing each control, based on priority.

– Identify the necessary resources, including personnel, tools, and technologies.

– Establish milestones for monitoring progress throughout the implementation process.

4. Implement CIS CSC Version 8 Controls:

– Establish secure configurations for all systems and applications.

– Enable continuous vulnerability management and patching processes.

– Deploy strong access controls, including multi-factor authentication and privilege management.

5. Implement Continuous Monitoring and Incident Response:

– Establish a comprehensive incident response plan.

– Deploy intrusion detection and prevention systems.

– Develop a continuous monitoring program to identify and respond to security events.

6. Engage in Security Awareness Training:

– Train employees on security best practices, including email and social engineering awareness.

– Conduct periodic security awareness campaigns to reinforce good cybersecurity hygiene.

– Provide resources for reporting suspicious activities and encouraging a culture of security.

Summary:

Implementing the controls and safeguards outlined in CIS CSC Version 8 requires careful planning and execution. By establishing a governance structure, conducting a baseline assessment, developing an implementation roadmap, implementing the controls, continuous monitoring, and engaging in security awareness training, organizations can strengthen their security posture and mitigate cyber threats effectively. This concise project plan is a starting point for information security practitioners seeking a robust cybersecurity framework.

If you need assistance, get in touch. MSI is always happy to help folks with CIS CSC assessments, control design, or other advisory services. 

 

*This article was written with the help of AI tools and Grammarly.

Operation Hardened Buckeye

MSI is pleased to announce the immediate formation and availability of Operation Hardened Buckeye!

This special program is dedicated to assisting Ohio’s Rural Electrical Cooperatives.

MSI will set up aggregated groups of Electrical Cooperatives and perform services and offer tools to the groups en-masse at discounted rates, as if they were one large company. Essentially, this allows the co-ops to leverage group buying, while still receiving individual reports, software licenses and overall group-level intelligence & metrics.

MSI will offer a package consisting of the following:

  • External Vulnerability Assessment with aggregated executive level reports/metrics & individual technical detail reports
  • An aggregated Targeted Threat Intelligence engagement with individual notifications of critical findings and an aggregated intelligence report for the group
  • 3 HoneyPoint Agent licenses and a console license per co-op that participates
  • Deep discounts to individual co-ops who desire application assessment, internal vulnerability assessments, wireless assessments or other MSI professional services (including MSI::Vigilance & ICS Network Segregation Services)
  • Deep discounts for ongoing assessments and targeted threat intelligence as a service

Caveats: All assessments will be performed at the same time. Co-ops must each sign onto a common MSA. Each co-op will be billed for the total of the package divided by the number of participating co-ops. Co-ops must provide accurate IP address ranges for their external assessment.

This enables the co-ops to have a security baseline of their security posture performed, including aligning their current status against that of their peers. It also allows for each of the co-ops to deploy a HoneyPoint Agent in their DMZ, business network and control network for detection capabilities. The targeted threat intelligence will provide them with an overall threat assessment, as well as identifying individual targets that have either already been attacked or are likely to provide easy/attention raising targets for future attacks.

We will be holding a webinar for those interested in participating on Thursday, May 21, 2015. You can register for this event here. You can also download the flyer about the program here.

For more information, please contact Allan Bergen via the email below or call (513) 300-0194 today! 

Email: sales@microsolved.com

MSI Risk Assessments and Policy/Process Reviews

MSI still has a few engagement slots open for Enterprise or Application-focused Risk Assessments for the 4th quarter. Avoid the end of the year rush, and give Allan Bergen (513-300-0194, abergen (at) microsolved<dot>com) a call today to discuss booking risk engagements with the team before the end of the year. We have some special incentives for clients who book these engagement slots, so touch base with Allan to hear about them.

Our team has had a wonderfully successful year doing application focused risk assessments. We can tear into the policy/processes and exposures of systems like accounting, CRM, EDI processing and/or industrial control. These assessments can be performed with or without technical components such as vulnerability assessment and penetration testing.

If you would like to close the year with a close look at one of your specific systems or critical processes, give Allan and a call and arrange for a scoping discussion with our risk team. As always, thanks for reading, and we appreciate you choosing MSI as your security partner!

Quick Poll on Social Media and Compliance

Our team is putting together some blog posts and other content on social media policies and compliance. Can you please help us with our research work by spending just 3 minutes to complete the following quick 3 question poll?

You can find the poll here.

Thanks, in advance, for your insights. We will be publishing the results of the poll, along with our other content in the coming weeks. Thanks again for your kindness!

MSI Contributes to Criminal Underground Report

MSI is proud to announce that a Rand report that we contributed to is now available. The report details the underground economy and provides insights into the operation, intelligence and flow of the underground markets.

You can download a free copy of the report here.

We are happy to support research projects such as these and they represent yet another way that MSI fulfills our promise to give back to the security community. If you have questions about this project or about our other contributions, please reach out to me on Twitter (@lbhuston).

Operation Lockdown Update ~ Xojo Web App Security

Just a quick note today to bring you up to date on Operation Lockdown. As many of you may know, MSI began working with Xojo, Inc. a year or so ago, focusing on increasing the security of the web applications coded in the language and produced by their compiler. As such, we gave a talk last year at XDC in Orlando about the project and progress we had made. 

Today, I wanted to mention that we have again begun working on OpLockdown, and we remain focused on the stand-alone web applications generated by Xojo. 

Last week, Xojo released Xojo 2014R3 which contains a great many fixes from the project and our work.

The stand-alone web apps now use industry standard HTTP headers (this was true for the last couple of releases) and have the ability to do connection logging that will meet the compliance requirements for most regulatory guidelines.

Additionally, several denial-of-service conditions and non-RFC standard behaviors have been fixed since the project began.

My team will begin doing regression testing of the security issues we previously identified and will continue to seek out new vulnerabilities and other misbehaviors in the framework. We would like to extend our thanks to the folks at BKeeney Software who have been helping with the project, and to Xojo for their attention to the security issues, particularly to Greg O’Lone, who has been our attentive liaison and tech support. Together, we are focused on bringing you a better, safer and more powerful web application development platform so that you can keep making the killer apps of your dreams!

InfoSec, The World & YOU Episode 2

Once again, Victoria Lowengart (@gisobiz) and I team up to discuss events in the real world and how they impact cyber threats. This time around we talk North Korea, Anonymous and touch on Industrial Control Systems. We also give a quick preview of Op Petrol. Check it out here:

Grab the MP3.

Thanks for listening and until next time, stay safe out there! 

HoneyPoint Used to Confirm Skype URL Indexing

Last week, several sources were talking about the indexing of URLs that happen inside supposedly secure and private Skype sessions. There was a bit of press about it and we thought it would be fun to test it out and easy to do with HoneyPoint Personal Edition. Here’s how we did it:

  • First, we stood up a HoneyPoint Personal Edition and dilated port 80 with a web listener. We configured it to look like a default under construction page on an IIS box. We then exposed it to the Internet.
  • In order to cut down on noise from scanning while we were testing, we decided we would use a target page in our test URL of vixennixie.htm, since scanners aren’t generally looking for that page, if we get scanned while we are testing, it won’t interfere with our data gathering and analysis.
  • Next, we created a Skype chat between to members of the team and made sure each of us was configured for full security.
  • Once this was confirmed, we passed the URL: http://target_ip/vixennixe.htm between us. The time was 1:13pm Eastern.
  • Then, we waited.
  • Lo and behold, we got this nearly 12 hours later:

                     2013-05-22 01:09:45 – HoneyPoint received a probe from 65.52.100.214 on port 80 Input: HEAD /vixennixie.htm HTTP/1.1 Host: target_ip Connection: Keep-Alive

A whois of 65.52.100.214 shows:

#
# ARIN WHOIS data and services are subject to the Terms of Use
# available at: https://www.arin.net/whois_tou.html
#

#
# Query terms are ambiguous. The query is assumed to be:
# “n 65.52.100.214”
#
# Use “?” to get help.
#

#
# The following results may also be obtained via:
# http://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;q=65.52.100.214?showDetails=true&showARIN=false&ext=netref2
#

NetRange: 65.52.0.0 – 65.55.255.255
CIDR: 65.52.0.0/14
OriginAS:
NetName: MICROSOFT-1BLK
NetHandle: NET-65-52-0-0-1
Parent: NET-65-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
RegDate: 2001-02-14
Updated: 2012-03-20
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-65-52-0-0-1

OrgName: Microsoft Corp
OrgId: MSFT
Address: One Microsoft Way
City: Redmond
StateProv: WA
PostalCode: 98052
Country: US
RegDate: 1998-07-10
Updated: 2011-04-26
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/MSFT

OrgNOCHandle: ZM23-ARIN
OrgNOCName: Microsoft Corporation
OrgNOCPhone: +1-425-882-8080
OrgNOCEmail: noc@microsoft.com
OrgNOCRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/ZM23-ARIN

OrgTechHandle: MSFTP-ARIN
OrgTechName: MSFT-POC
OrgTechPhone: +1-425-882-8080
OrgTechEmail: iprrms@microsoft.com
OrgTechRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/MSFTP-ARIN

OrgAbuseHandle: HOTMA-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Hotmail Abuse
OrgAbusePhone: +1-425-882-8080
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@hotmail.com
OrgAbuseRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/HOTMA-ARIN

OrgAbuseHandle: ABUSE231-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Abuse
OrgAbusePhone: +1-425-882-8080
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@hotmail.com
OrgAbuseRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/ABUSE231-ARIN

OrgAbuseHandle: MSNAB-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: MSN ABUSE
OrgAbusePhone: +1-425-882-8080
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@msn.com
OrgAbuseRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/MSNAB-ARIN

RTechHandle: ZM23-ARIN
RTechName: Microsoft Corporation
RTechPhone: +1-425-882-8080
RTechEmail: noc@microsoft.com
RTechRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/ZM23-ARIN

#
# ARIN WHOIS data and services are subject to the Terms of Use
# available at: https://www.arin.net/whois_tou.html
#

I’ll leave it to the reader to decide what they think about the data. You can draw your own conclusions. We just appreciated yet another use for HoneyPoint and a quick and dirty project to play with. Thanks for reading!

SDIM Project Update

Just a quick update on the Stolen Data Impact Model (SDIM) Project for today.

We are prepping to do the first beta unveiling of the project at the local ISSA chapter. It looks like that might be the June meeting, but we are still finalizing dates. Stay tuned for more on this one so you can get your first glimpse of the work as it is unveiled. We also submitted a talk at the ISSA International meeting for the year, later in the summer on the SDIM. We’ll let you know if we get accepted for presenting the project in Nashville.

The work is progressing. We have created several of the curve models now and are beginning to put them out to the beta group for review. This step continues for the next couple of weeks and we will be incorporating the feedback into the models and then releasing them publicly.

Work on phase 2 – that is the framework of questions designed to aid in the scoring of the impacts to generate the curve models has begun. This week, the proof of concept framework is being developed and then that will flow to the alpha group to build upon. Later, the same beta group will get to review and add commentary to the framework prior to its initial release to the public.

Generally speaking, the work on the project is going along as expected. We will have something to show you and a presentation to discuss the outcomes of the project shortly. Thanks to those who volunteered to work on the project and to review the framework. We appreciate your help, and thanks to those who have been asking about the project – your interest is what has kept us going and working on this problem.

As always, thanks for reading, and until next time – stay safe out there! 

[Podcast] Infosec, the World & YOU – Episode 1

Victoria Loewengart (@gisobiz) from AKOTA Technologies and myself (@lbhuston) decided we would start a podcast series to discuss correlation between real world actions and cyber-activity of an illicit nature (“attacks”). This is the first episode which discusses why we think this is a worthy topic for exploration, how it might lead to predictive information security posture improvement and how we got here. 

This episode also covers a real time event that occurred while we were recording that may (or may not) relate to attacks experienced in the time between recording sessions. 

We hope to keep working on it, but this is a first rough attempt, so don’t expect CNN podcast polish. This is a chance for you to stay in touch with a new movement that represents a clear line of evolution for the information security problems of today. 

Stay tuned. We hope to record more episodes as the project progresses.

You can download episode 1 as an MP3 by clicking here.