Mergers and Acquisitions: Look Before You Leap!

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Brent Huston

Mergers and acquisitions are taking place constantly. Companies combine with other companies (either amicably or forcibly) to fill some perceived strategic business need or to gain a foothold in a new market. M&As are most often driven by individual high ranking company executives, not by the company as a whole. If successful, such deals can be the highpoint in a CEO’s career. If unsuccessful, they can lead to ignominy and professional doom.

Of course this level of risk/reward is irresistible to many at the top, and executives are constantly on the lookout for companies to take over or merge with. And the competition is fierce! So when they do spot a likely candidate, these individuals are naturally loath to hesitate or over question. They want to pull the trigger right away before conditions change or someone else beats them to the draw. Because of this, deal-drivers often limit their research of the target company to surface information that lacks depth and scope, but that can be gathered relatively quickly.

However, it is an unfortunate fact that just over half of all M&As fail. And one of the reasons this is true is that companies fail to gain adequate information about their acquisitions, the people that are really responsible for their successes and the current state of the marketplace they operate in before they negotiate terms and complete deals. Today more than ever, knowledge truly is power; power that can spell the difference between success and failure.

Fortunately, technology and innovation continues to march forward. MSI’s TigerTraxTM intelligence engine can provide the information and analysis you need to make informed decisions, and they can get it to you fast. TigerTraxTM can quickly sift through and analyze multiple sources and billions of records to provide insights into the security posture and intellectual property integrity of the company in question. It can also be used to provide restricted individual tracing, supply chain analysis, key stakeholder profiling, history of compromise research and a myriad of other services. So why not take advantage of this boon and “look” before you leap into your next M&A?

This post courtesy of John Davis.

Tips for Writing Good Security Policies

Posted on November 13, 2014 by Brent Huston

Almost all organizations dread writing security policies. When I ask people why this process is so intimidating, the answer I get most often is that the task just seems overwhelming and they don’t know where to start. But this chore does not have to be as onerous or difficult as most people think. The key is pre-planning and taking one step at a time.

First you should outline all the policies you are going to need for your particular organization. Now this step itself is what I think intimidates people most. How are they supposed to ensure that they have all the policies they should have without going overboard and burdening the organization with too many and too restrictive policies? There are a few steps you can take to answer these questions:

Examine existing information security policies used by other, similar organizations and open source information security policy templates such as those available at SANS. You can find these easily online. However, you should resist simply copying such policies and adopting them as your own. Just use them for ideas. Every organization is unique and security policies should always reflect the culture of the organization and be pertinent, usable and enforceable across the board.
In reality, you should have information security policies for all of the business processes, facilities and equipment used by the organization. A good way to find out what these are is to look at the organizations business impact analysis (BIA). This most valuable of risk management studies will include all essential business processes and equipment needed to maintain business continuity. If the organization does not have a current BIA, you may have to interview personnel from all of the different business departments to get this information.
If the organization is subject to information security or privacy regulation, such as financial institutions or health care concerns, you can easily download all of the information security policies mandated by these regulations and ensure that you include them in the organization’s security policy.
You should also familiarize yourself with the available information security guidance such as ISO 27002, NIST 800-35, the Critical Security Controls for Effective Cyber Defense, etc. This guidance will give you a pool of available security controls that you can apply to fit your particular security needs and organizational culture.

Once you have the outline of your security needs in front of you it is time to start writing. You should begin with broad brush stroke, high level policies first and then add detail as you go along. Remember information security “policy” really includes policies, standards, guidelines and procedures. I’ve found it a very good idea to write “policy” in just that order.

Remember to constantly refer back to your outline and to consult with the business departments and users as you go along. It will take some adjustments and rewrites to make your policy complete and useable. Once you reach that stage, however, it is just a matter of keeping your policy current. Review and amend your security policy regularly to ensure it remains useable and enforceable. That way you won’t have to go through the whole process again!

Thanks to John Davis for this post.

Three Danger Signs I Look for when Scoping Risk Assessments

Posted on November 11, 2014 by Brent Huston

Scoping an enterprise-level risk assessment can be a real guessing game. One of the main problems is that it’s much more difficult and time consuming to do competent risk assessments of organizations with shoddy, disorganized information security programs than it is organizations with complete, well organized information security programs. There are many reasons why this is true, but generally it is because attaining accurate information is more difficult and because one must dig more deeply to ascertain the truth. So when I want to quickly judge the state of an organization’s information security program, I look for “danger” signs in three areas.

First, I’ll find out what kinds of network security assessments the organization undertakes. Is external network security assessment limited to vulnerability studies, or are penetration testing and social engineering exercises also performed on occasion? Does the organization also perform regular vulnerability assessments of the internal network? Is internal penetration testing also done? How about software application security testing? Are configuration and network architecture security reviews ever done?

Second, I look to see how complete and well maintained their written information security program is. Does the organization have a complete set of written information security policies that cover all of the business processes, IT processes and equipment used by the organization? Are there detailed network diagrams, inventories and data flow maps in place? Does the organization have written vendor management, incident response and business continuity plans? Are there written procedures in place for all of the above? Are all of these documents updated and refined on a regular basis?

Third, I’ll look at the organization’s security awareness and training program. Does the organization provide security training to all personnel on a recurring basis? Is this training “real world”? Are security awareness reminders generously provided throughout the year? If asked, will general employees be able to tell you what their information security responsibilities are? Do they know how to keep their work areas, laptops and passwords safe? Do they know how to recognize and resist social engineering tricks like phishing emails? Do they know how to recognize and report a security incident, and do they know their responsibilities in case a disaster of some kind occurs?

I’ve found that if the answer to all of these questions is “yes”, you will have a pretty easy time conducting a thorough risk assessment of the organization in question. All of the information you need will be readily available and employees will be knowledgeable and cooperative. Conversely I’ve found that if the answer to most (or even some) of these questions is “no” you are going to have more problems and delays to deal with. And if the answers to all of these questions is “no”, you should really build in plenty of extra time for the assessment. You will need it!

Thanks to John Davis for this post.

Data Breaches are a Global Problem

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Brent Huston

For those of you who maybe just thought that data breaches were only happening against US companies, and only by a certain country as the culprit, we wanted to remind you that this certainly isn’t so.

In fact, just in the last several weeks, breaches against major companies in the UK, Australia, Japan, Kenya, Korea, China and others have come to light. Sources of attacks show evidence of criminal groups working from the US, Brazil, Northern Africa, the Middle East, Russia and Asia among others. Just follow the data for a few weeks, and it quickly becomes clear that this is a GLOBAL problem and is multi-directional.

Even loose alliances seem to come and go amongst these criminal groups. They often steal data, talent, techniques, tools and resources from each other. They work together on one deal, while treating each other as competitors in other deals simultaneously. The entire underground is dynamic, shifting in players, goals and techniques on almost moment by moment basis. What works now spreads, and then gets innovated.

This rapidly changing landscape makes it hard for defenders to fight against the bleeding edge. So much so, in fact, that doing the basics of information security and doing them well, seems to be far more effective than trying to keep up with the latest 0-day or social engineering techniques.

That said, next time you read a report that seems to cast the data breach problem as a US issue versus the big red ghost, take a breath. Today, everyone is hacking everyone. That’s the new normal…

Consumers are Changing their Minds about Data Breaches

Posted on November 4, 2014 by Brent Huston

Per this article in Fast Company, it now seems that some 72% of consumers expressed an impact in their perception of a retail brand following a breach announcement. However, only 12% actually stopped shopping at the breached stores.

This appears to be a rising tide in the mind of consumers, with an increase in both attention and action versus previous polls.

Add to that the feelings of fatigue that we have been following on social media when breaches are announced. TigerTrax often identifies trending terms of frustration around breach announcements, and even some outright hostility toward brands with a breach. Not surprising, given the media hype cycle today.

TigerTrax also found that a high percentage of consumers were concerned to a larger extent about information privacy than in the past. Trending terms often include “opt out”, “delete my data” and various other conversation points concerning the collection and sharing of consumer information by vendors.

Retailers and other service providers should pay careful attention to this rising tide of global concern. Soon, breaches, data theft and illicit data trafficking may show significant increases in consumer awareness and brand damage is very likely to follow…

A TigerTrax Success Story

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Brent Huston

I wanted to share a recent success story from our TigerTrax work with you. The TigerTrax platform is opening a wide-variety of new opportunities for MSI. We are building entirely new suites of services around the platform and the unique capabilities it provides for us.

Recently, we were asked by a client to use TigerTrax to perform investigations on a foreign bank run attack that occurred a few months ago. The client wanted to use the research to fully understand how the attack was performed, what mechanisms were used to influence the public decisions to cause the bank run and to identify the possible motives of the attackers involved.

The MSI Intelligence Team, now staffed with 3 full time dedicated analysts, deconstructed the events and used a variety of analytics to investigate the attacks. The team identified a variety of possible motives, ranked them by probability and provided them to the client. They also built a step by step time line of the attack details, provided sample social media and traditional media examples, wrote a detailed scenario testing process for the client to use to test their own financial management mechanisms against the threats and briefed the client on their findings.

The client was amazed at how quickly, concisely and clearly the data was analyzed. The Intelligence Team rose past their expectations and gave them actionable intelligence that they could use to not only better understand the attack, but also test their exposures to such an attack in the future!

The success stories around TigerTrax are continuing to pile up, and I look forward to sharing more of them in the near future. In the coming months, you will hear even more about our new spin-off company, called The Bodhi Foundry, which we have built to hold all of the non-security products that the TigerTrax platform is powering. That company is focusing in on branding intelligence, competitive analysis, product innovation research and a wide variety of specialized business data analytics. But, never fear, the core use care of TigerTrax remains information security, threat intelligence, studying cyber-crime and helping our clients use data analytics in new ways to solve old-school security problems.

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

Book Review: Ghost in the Wires

Posted on October 7, 2014 by Brent Huston

I just finished reading Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker and I would have to say that I was impressed. There is a lot of good history and information in the book about Kevin’s exploits, his life on the run and what it was like to live on the razor’s edge of hacking.

The technical content is enough to keep a techie reading, while the story, in general is a real life thrill ride. I found the reading to be easily digestible and the tone to be spellbinding.

If you have any interest in information security, or the history of hacking, then give Ghost in the Wires a read. You won’t be disappointed!

Accepting Identity Theft

Posted on October 3, 2014 by Brent Huston

I can recall a time when I wasn’t concerned about data theft. Eventually, buzz words such as “breach” and “identity theft” became a regular part of my vocabulary. I began to wonder if I would ever be affected by a data breach. In 2003, I received a letter in the mail informing me that my personal data had been stolen. I remember asking myself, “when will this happen next?” In 2004, I once again became a victim of a data breach. Despite my young age at the time, I had already started to think of identity theft in the cynical terms of “not if but when”. It then became apparent to me that I could no longer think in terms of “if” or “when” but I should focus on “how often”.

I find it helpful to compare identity theft to personal health care. Eating the right foods, taking all the trendy vitamins and getting the recommended amount of exercise isn’t enough to guarantee perfect health. You are still susceptible to diseases that you can’t detect on your own. This is why you typically see a doctor for checkups on a regular basis. You should use the same thought process when considering the possibility of identity theft. Regardless of how much effort you put into securing your identity, your personal data will be stolen. This is why I feel strongly that we should focus on monitoring and preparing for identity theft with the same time and energy that we devote to trying to prevent it.

Just like your health care, it’s also worthwhile to take a proactive approach to handling identity theft. It’s important to have multiple methods of discovering if you are a victim of fraud. This can be as simple as checking your debit/credit card statements and using an automated solution (such as LifeLock) to monitor for irregularities in your credit report. Don’t just wait to receive a notice in the mail or find out about the latest hack on the news. It can take the companies that handle your personal data and process your credit cards months before they realize that they have been hacked. This gives the attackers ample time to take advantage of your stolen data.

It’s also worthwhile to prepare yourself for how to handle an incident when it occurs. This can be as simple as keeping a list of the contact information for all of your financial institutions so that you can notify them as soon as you detect suspicious activity. Also, a majority of the aforementioned credit monitoring solutions include assistance services in the event that a criminal begins using your identity. Be sure to take advantage of these resources as these organizations have the necessary institutional knowledge to help assist you.

In short, continue doing what you can to prevent your identity from being stolen. Simple things like setting complex passwords and avoiding the reuse of your passwords between different services can go a long way to prevent you from becoming a victim of identity theft. However, the next time you’re configuring a lengthy password, be sure to ask yourself “Am I prepared for identity theft?”

This article courtesy of Adam Luck – @adamjluck.

Shellshock: Got Inventory?

Posted on October 1, 2014 by Brent Huston

I’m sure you’ve all heard of Shellshock by now? If not, it’s a security flaw in Bash that allows attackers to take control of systems. Bash is really an acronym/pun meaning “Bourne-again shell” that was written as a free software replacement for the Bourne shell that preceded it. It is a UNIX shell that acts as a command processor and also reads commands from scripts. The problem is that Bash is present in all kinds of things including Web servers and operating systems. This is a very serious flaw! Worse than any other code vulnerability I can name off hand. There are several serious exploits already extant in the wild. Hundreds of millions of devices and credit cards are at immediate risk of compromise across the globe. Institutions are strongly recommending that people not use their credit cards to make Internet purchases for at least the next several days. Imagine the loss in revenue and buyer confidence this is going to cause! Productivity may well go down and prices may well go up as a consequence of this flaw.

Luckily there are good patches already available to combat this glitch, and I’m sure additional fixes and tweaks are in the offing. But to have any level of safety you need to patch everything on your network that is vulnerable, and you need to do it quickly. Do you know exactly what devices are a part of your network and exactly what operating systems, software and firmware versions are installed on them? Specifically, do you know where Bash is running? If you don’t, you may install patches furiously over the next few days and still end up being vulnerable without knowing it. Can you in all good conscience assure your Web customers that their transactions and private information are safe?

Shellshock may have one hidden benefit though; it may be the cold dose of reality that causes organizations to finally get serious about information security and adopt best practices security recommendations, especially where inventories of devices and software are concerned. There is a reason why guidance such as the MSI 80/20 Rule of Information Security and the Top 20 Critical Controls for Effective Cyber-Security list making inventories their number one information security project. If you don’t know what you have, how can you possibly secure it?!

Right now, if you are among the prescient few who do keep complete dynamic inventories, ensure that input to all available software fields is validated and have configured each device on your network with a unique admin password, you are sitting pretty! You have the knowledge and time necessary to deal with this problem, and will probably earn kudos and market share from you customers. Isn’t that kind of assurance worth spending some time and money on America?

This blog post contributed by John Davis.

Patch for ShellShock ASAP!

Posted on September 30, 2014 by Brent Huston

If you haven’t paid attention to the Bash Shellshock vulnerability – NOW IS THE TIME!

Source IPs for probes looking for the vulnerability are growing slowly in number and scope of scans. (As of 9/30/14, 10am Eastern).

There are many vulnerable devices and systems available to exploit and a variety of exploitation vectors exist – including web CGIs, DHCP clients, OpenVPN, SSH, etc. It is highly likely that a wide variety of embedded systems are also vulnerable that meet these capabilities. So far, we have seen attack traffic in the HITME coming from a few SOHO routers and a couple of other embedded network devices. Items like printers, some routers & managed switches, home gadgets, cameras, etc. are likely targets as well.

In the industrial control world, there are a variety of embedded devices leveraging Linux at the core, and many with exposed CGI mechanisms for remote management and monitoring. These need to be inspected as well, as they may also prove vulnerable and potentially exploitable via one or more vectors. Patching may require firmware upgrades in some cases. Contact the vendor for more information.

But, no matter what systems you use and manage, NOW IS THE TIME. Pay attention to this issue and get moving on patching, adding compensating controls and rolling forward with enhanced detection mechanisms. GET BUSY!

As always, if we can assist, feel free to give us a call or drop us a line. We have HoneyPoint emulations for HPSS clients that can help identify sources of traffic and we have assessment signatures for up to the moment known attack vectors. Let us know if we can help!

Thanks for reading, and stay safe out there!

UPDATE: Good news on Shellshock for embedded devices: If it runs BusyBox, it’s likely NOT vulnerable.

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