Category Archives: Risk Management

EDI – The Often Overlooked Critical Process in Utilities

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EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is an often forgotten underpinning of many utility companies, even though many of its functions are likely to be critical to the operation. In many states, EDI is a mandated operation for commercial bill pay and meter reading data exchange with third party services. In fact, between the Gas Industry (GISB) and North American Energy (NAESB) Standards Boards, a substantial set of requirements exist for industry use of EDI.

Data

While EDI exists as a specific set of functions for exchanging digital data, it is often managed through third party applications and networks. These operations carry several different threat models, from disruption of service and outages that impact the data availability, to tampering and compromise of the data in transit. As such, it is essential that utilities have performed business function and application specific risk assessment on EDI implementations.

Additionally, many of our clients have performed EDI-focused penetration testing and technical application assessments of their EDI translators and network interconnects. Some clients still utilize a Value Added Network (VAN) or other service provider for EDI transmissions, and MSI can work with your VAN to review their security program and the configuration of your interconnections to ensure maximum security and regulatory compliance.

Lastly, our team has been very successful doing tabletop incident response and disaster recovery/business continuity exercises involving modeling EDI outages, failures and data corruption. Impacts identified in these role playing exercises have ranged from critical outages to loss of revenue.

If you’d like to learn more about our EDI services and capabilities, give us a call at 614-351-1237 or drop us a line at info@microsolved.com. We’d love to talk with you about our nearly 30 years of experience in EDI, information security and critical infrastructure.

 

 

 

Announcing the Launch of the SecureDrive Alliance

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LMS Consulting and MicroSolved are proud to announce the launch of the SecureDrive Alliance. This team effort is specifically focused on the needs, regulatory requirements and threats facing automotive dealerships today.

SecureDrive Alliance

The alliance will be providing the following focused services to dealerships across the US:

  • Risk assessments
  • Vulnerability assessment and penetration testing
  • Application security
  • Phishing simulations
  • Risk management training

To learn more about the SecureDrive Alliance, the leaders of both companies have put together a quick MP3 discussing the reasons behind the launch and the capabilities that the alliance brings to bear. You can listen to the 9 minute MP3 here.

To put the team to work on securing your dealership, give a call to Justin LeBrun, or drop him an email.

Three Things I’ve Learned About Credit Union Risk Management

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I have been working with Credit Unions for more than 20 years and have done a wide variety of information security and risk management work over that time. I’ve worked with technical teams, management and boards over the span of more than two decades. Here are three things I’ve learned about how CUs manage risk during that time. 

1) Most credit unions that I’ve worked with care just as much, if not more, about information security than most of the regional size banks they often compete with.

I’ve heard more than one CU leader tell me that they have to be better than the banks, because when a bank gets hacked – that bank makes the news and feels the impact. However, he said, when a credit union gets hacked – all credit unions suffer from the bad press. I am not sure the data supports his claim, but it’s an example of how CUs often focus on working together to solve big problems, and put a lot more attention to detail into it.

2) Many of the credit unions I have worked with look at information security and threat awareness as something that they can offer to their members (“customers, in bank speak”).

More than a few of the CUs have engaged so deeply with their customers on phishing and identify theft, that they include them in discussions about what products and services the CU buys. They do trials, include members in beta-tests and I’ve even seen them do onsite training for how to use new multi-factor authentication tools – even ones that weren’t in use at the CU – just to help make the members more secure and reduce the threat of password re-use across personal sites.

3) The board is often more involved in the risk management process at my CU clients than my banking clients.

The NCUA has taken a lot of steps to increase board member awareness about information security, and it often shows at credit unions. Several times a year, I am asked to present threat updates or review the information security program of a CU, specifically with a presentation to the board in mind. I am often engaged as a third party, to spend a couple of days looking at a security program and reporting to the board on it’s maturity and areas of potential improvement.

During these board sessions, it is not uncommon for the board questions to last more than an hour, after the presentation has completed. The point is, most CU boards that I have worked with are deeply engaged in thinking about risk management at the credit union.

For those of you interested in more about risk management at credit unions, here are some of the best sources, which I refer to often in my presentations:

  • Credit unions also face such internal risks as internal fraud, legal and regulatory noncompliance, data breaches, and injuries to staff and visitors. (boardeffect.com)

  • The bottom line: Figuring out the risk appetite will help guide credit unions to create realistic and measurable risk guidelines. (visibleequity.com)

  • We have helped Credit Unions develop risk appetite statements and risk frameworks and can work with your Credit Union to develop the documentation you require. (creditunionupdate.com)

If you’d like to learn more about MSI and our work with credit unions, just drop us a line (info@microsolved.com) or give us a call (614-351-1237) and we’d be happy to talk about how we might be able to help your credit union excel in IT risk management.

A Quick Expert Conversation About Gap Assessment

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Gap Assessment Interview with John Davis

What follows is a quick interview session with John Davis, who leads the risk assessment/policy/process team at MicroSolved. We completed the interview in January of 2020, and below are the relevant parts of our conversation.

Brent Huston: “Thanks for joining me today, John. Let’s start with what a gap assessment is in terms of HIPAA or other regulatory guidance.”

John Davis: “Thanks for the chance to talk about gap assessment. I have run into several HIPAA concerns such as hospitals and health systems who do HIPAA gap analysis / gap assessment in lieu of HIPAA risk assessment. Admittedly, gap assessment is the bulk of risk assessment, however, a gap assessment does not go to the point of assigning a risk rating to the gaps found. It also doesn’t go to the extent of addressing other risks to PHI that aren’t covered in HIPAA/HITECH guidance.”

BH: “So, in some ways, the gap assessment is more of an exploratory exercise – certainly providing guidance on existing gaps, but faster and more affordable than a full risk assessment? Like the 80/20 approach to a risk assessment?”

John Davis: “I suppose so, yes. The price is likely less than a full blown risk assessment, given that there is less analysis and reporting work for the assessment team. It’s also a bit faster of an engagement, since the deep details of performing risk analysis aren’t a part of it.”

BH: “Should folks interested in a gap assessment consider adding any technical components to the work plan? Does that combination ever occur?”

JD: “I can envision a gap assessment that also includes vulnerability assessment of their networks / applications. Don’t get me wrong, I think there is immense value in this approach. I think that to be more effective, you can always add a vulnerability assessment to gauge how well the policies and processes they have in place are working in the context of the day-to-day real-world operations.”

BH: “Can you tie this back up with what a full risk assessment contains, in addition to the gap assessment portion of the work plan?”

JD: “Sure! Real risk assessment includes controls and vulnerability analysis as regular parts of the engagement. But more than that, a complete risk assessment also examines threats and possibilities of occurrence. So, in addition to the statement of the gaps and a roadmap for improvement, you also get a much more significant and accurate view of the data you need to prioritize and scope many of the changes and control improvements needed. In my mind, it also gets you a much greater view of potential issues and threats against PHI than what may be directly referenced in the guidance.” 

BH: “Thanks for clarifying that, John. As always, we appreciate your expert insights and experience.”

JD: “Anytime, always happy to help.”

If you’d like to learn more about a gap assessment, vulnerability assessment or a full blown risk assessment against HIPAA, HITECH or any other regulatory guidance or framework, please just give us a call at (614) 351-1237 or you can click here to contact us via a webform. We look forward to hearing from you. Get in touch today! 

Zelle…quick, easy, and…problematic?

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Measuring risk

With the increasing adoption of PayPal, Venmo, and other instant payment services…it’s no surprise that the financial services industry entered the arena. The concept is simple – P2P payments via phone or email. At least one entity – sender or recipient – needs to have a bank account with a bank that supports Zelle. The other entity can simply link a supported debit card to enable the exchange.

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About the Ohio Data Protection Act

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The Ohio Data Protection Act differs from others in the country in that it offers the “carrot” without threat of the “stick.” Although companies are rewarded for implementing a cyber-security program that meets any of a variety of security standards, having a non-compliant program carries no penalty under this act.

The theory is that Ohio companies will be more willing to put resources into their information security programs proactively if a tangible return on their investment is available; like investing in insurance to hedge risk. Alternatively, if there is no threat of penalty for non-compliance, why wouldn’t a business simply adopt a wait and see attitude? After all, most companies do not have big data breaches, and developing and documenting a compliant information security program is expensive.

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Is your website in a “bad” neighborhood?

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If, when you wake up in the morning, you look out outside and view something like the image below, you probably understand that you are not in the best of all possible worlds.

So, what “neighborhood” does your website see when it “wakes up”?

It could be just as disquieting.

It is not uncommon for MSI to do an an analysis of the Internet services offered by an organization and find that those services are being delivered from a “shared service” environment.

The nature of those shared services can vary.

VM Hosting:

Often they are simply the services of an virtual machine hosting provider such as Amazon AWS. Sometimes we find the entire computing infrastructure of a customer within such an environment.

The IP addressing is all private – the actual location is all “cloud”.

The provider in this case is running a “hypervisor” on it’s own hardware to host the many virtual machines used by its clients.

Application Hosting:

Another common occurrence is to find third-party “under the covers” core application services being linked to from a customer’s website. An example of such a service is that provided by commercial providers of mortgage loan origination software to much of the mortgage industry.

For example, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellie_Mae

A quick google of “site:mortgage-application.net” will give you an idea of the extent to which the service is used by mortgage companies. The landing sites are branded to the customer, but they are all using common shared infrastructure and applications.

Web Site hosting:

Most often the shared service is simply that provided by a website hosting company. Typically many unique websites are hosted by such companies. Although each website will have a unique name (e.g. mywebsite.com) the underlying infrastructure is common. Often many websites will share a common IP address.

It is in this particular “shared service” space we most often see potential issues.

Often it’s simply a reputation concern. For instance:

host www.iwantporn.net
www.iwantporn.net is an alias for iwantporn.net.
iwantporn.net has address 143.95.152.29

These are some of the sites that are (or have recently been) on that same IP address according to Microsoft’s Bing search engine:

My guess I some of the website owners would be uncomfortable knowing they are being hosted via the same IP address and same infrastructure as is www.iwantporn.com.

They might also be concerned about this:

https://www.virustotal.com/#/ip-address/143.95.152.29

Virustotal is reporting that a known malicious program was seen  communicating with a listening service running on some site with the IP address 143.95.152.29 .

The implication is that some site hosted at 143.95.152.29 had in the past been compromised and was being used for communications in what may have been a ransomware attack.

The IP address associated with such a compromised system can ultimately be blacklisted as a known suspicious site,

All websites hosted on the IP address can be affected.

Website traffic and the delivery of emails can all be affected as a result of the misfortune to share an IP address with a suspect site.

“Backplaning”

When such a compromise of the information space used by a client in a shared service occurs, all other users of that service can be at risk. Although the initial compromise may simply be the result of misuse of the website owner’s credentials (e.g. stolen login/password), the hosting provider needs to ensure that such a compromise of one site does not allow the attacker to compromise other websites hosted in the same environment – an attack pattern sometimes referred to as backplaning.

The term comes from electronics and refers to a common piece of electronics circuity (e.g a motherboard, an IO bus, etc. ) that separate “plugin” components use to access shared infrastructure.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backplane

Example:

The idea is that a compromised environment becomes the doorway into the “backplane” of underlying shared services.  (e.g. possibly shared database infrastructure).

If the provider has not taken adequate precautions such an attack can affect all hosted websites using the shared service.

Such things really can happen.

In 2015 a vulnerability in commonly used hypervisor software was announced. See:  http://venom.crowdstrike.com/

An attacker who had already gained administrative rights on a hosted virtual machine could directly attack the hypervisor and – by extension – all other virtual machines hosted in the same environment. Maybe yours?

What to do?

Be aware of your hosted environment’s neighborhood. Use the techniques described above to find out who else is being hosted by your provider. If the neighborhood looks bad, consider a dedicated IP address to help isolate you from the poor administrative practices of other hosted sites.

Contact your vendor to and find out what steps they have in place to protect you from “backplane” attacks and what contractual protections you have if such an attack occurs.

Questions?  info@microsolved.com

Segmenting With MSI MachineTruth

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Many organizations struggle to implement network segmentation and secure network enclaves for servers, industrial controls, SCADA or regulated data. MicroSolved, Inc. (“MSI”) has been helping clients solve information security challenges for nearly twenty-five years on a global scale. In helping our clients segment their networks and protect their traffic flows, we identified a better approach to solving this often untenable problem.

That approach, called MachineTruth™, leverages our proprietary machine learning and data analytics platform to support our industry leading team of experts throughout the process. Our team leverages offline analysis of configuration files, net flow and traffic patterns to simplify the challenge. Instead of manual review by teams of network and systems administrators, MachineTruth takes automated deep dives into the data to provide real insights into how to segment, where to segment, what filtering rules need to be established and how those rules are functioning as they come online.

Our experts then work with your network and security teams, or one of our select MachineTruth Implementation Partners, to guide them through the process of installing and configuring filtering devices, detection tools and applications needed to support the segmentation changes. As the enclaves start to take shape, ongoing oversight is performed by the MSI team, via continual analytics and modeling throughout the segmentation effort. As the data analysis and implementation processes proceed, the controls and rules are optimized and transitioned to steady state maintenance.

Lastly, the MSI team works with the segmentation stakeholders to document, socialize and transfer knowledge to those who will manage and support the newly segmented network and its various enclaves for the long term. This last step is critical to ensuring that the network changes and segmentation initiatives remain in place in the future.

This data-focused, machine learning-based approach enables segmentation for even the most complex of environments. It has been used to successfully save hundreds of man-years of labor and millions of dollars in overhead costs. It has reduced the time to segment international networks from years to months, while significantly raising the quality and security of the new environments. It has accomplished these feats, all while reducing network downtime, outages and potentially dangerous misconfiguration issues.

If your organization is considering or in the process of performing network segmentation for your critical data, you should take a look at the MachineTruth approach from MSI. It could mean the difference between success and struggle for this critical initiative.


Quick & Dirty Palo Alto Log Analysis

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OK, so I needed to do some quick and dirty traffic analysis on Palo Alto text logs for a project I was working on. The Palo Alto is great and their console tools are nice. Panorama is not too shabby. But, when I need quick and dirty analysis and want to play with data, I dig into the logs. 
 
That said, for my quick analysis, I needed to analyze a bunch of text logs and model the traffic flows. To do that, I used simple command line text processing in Unix (Mac OS, but with tweaks also works in Linux, etc.)
 
I am sharing some of my notes and some of the useful command lines to help others who might be facing a similar need.
 
First, for my project, I made use of the following field #’s in the text analysis, pulled from the log header for sequence:
  • $8 (source IP) 
  • $9 (dest IP)
  • $26 (dest port)
  • $15 (AppID)
  • $32 (bytes)
 
Once, I knew the fields that corresponded to values I wanted to study, I started using the core power of command line text processing. And in this case, the power I needed was:
  • cat
  • grep
    • Including, the ever useful grep -v (inverse grep, show me the lines that don’t match my pattern)
  • awk
    • particularly: awk ‘BEGIN { FS = “,”} ; {print $x, $y}’ which prints specific columns in CSV files 
  • sort
    • sort -n (numeric sort)
    • sort -r (reverse sort, descending)
  • uniq
    • uniq -c (count the numbers of duplicates, used for determining “hit rates” or frequency, etc.)
 
Of course, to learn more about these commands, simply man (command name) and read the details. 😃 
 
OK, so I will get you started, here are a few of the more useful command lines I used for my quick and dirty analysis:
  • cat log.csv | awk ‘BEGIN { FS = “,”} ; {print $8,$9,$26}’ | sort | uniq -c | sort -n -r > hitrate_by_rate.txt
    • this one produces a list of Source IP/Dest IP/Dest Port unique combinations, sorted in descending order by the number of times they appear in the log
  • cat log.csv | awk ‘BEGIN { FS = “,”} ; {print $8,$9}’ | sort -n | uniq -c | sort -n -r > uniqpairs_by_hitrate.txt
    • this one produces a list of the uniq Source & Destination IP addresses, in descending order by how many times they talk to each other in the log (note that their reversed pairings will be separate, if they are present – that is if A talks to B, there will be an entry for that, but if B initiates conversations with A, that will be a separate line in this data set)
  • cat log.csv | awk ‘BEGIN { FS = “,”} ; {print $15}’ | sort | uniq -c | sort -n -r > appID_by_hitrate.txt
    • this one uses the same exact techniques, but now we are looking at what applications have been identified by the firewall, in descending order by number of times that application identifier appears in the log
 
Again, these are simple examples, but you can tweak and expand as you need. This trivial approach to command line text analysis certainly helps with logs and traffic data. You can use those same commands to do a wondrous amount of textual analysis and processing. Learn them, live them, love them. 😃 
 
If you have questions, or want to share some of the ways you use those commands, please drop us a line on Twitter (@microsolved) or hit me up personally for other ideas (@lbhuston). As always, thanks for reading and stay safe out there! 

3 Reasons You Need Customized Threat Intelligence

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Many clients have been asking us about our customized threat intelligence services and how to best use the data that we can provide.

1. Using HoneyPoint™, we can deploy fake systems and applications, both internally and in key external situations that allow you to generate real-time, specific to your organization, indicators of compromise (IoC) data – including a wide variety of threat source information for blacklisting, baseline metrics to make it easy to measure changes in the levels of threat actions against your organization up to the moment, and a wide variety of scenarios for application and attack surface hardening.

2. Our SilentTiger™ passive assessments, can help you provide a wider lens for vulnerability assessment visibility than your perimeter, specifically. It can be used to assess, either single instance or ongoing, the security posture of locations where your brand is extended to business partners, cloud providers, supply chain vendors, critical dependency API and data flows and other systems well beyond your perimeter. Since the testing is passive, you don’t need permission, contract language or control of the systems being assessed. You can get the data in a stable, familiar format – very similar to vulnerability scanning reports or via customized data feeds into your SEIM/GRC/Ticketing tools or the like. This means you can be more vigilant against more attack surfaces without more effort and more resources.

3. Our customized TigerTrax™ Targeted Threat Intelligence (TTI) offerings can be used for brand specific monitoring around the world, answering specific research questions based on industry / geographic / demographic / psychographic profiles or even products / patents or economic threat research. If you want to know how your brand is being perceived, discussed or threatened around the world, this service can provide that either as a one-time deliverable, or as an ongoing periodic service. If you want our intelligence analysts to look at industry trends, fraud, underground economics, changing activist or attacker tactics and the way they collide with your industry or organization – this is the service that can provide that data to you in a clear and concise manner that lets you take real-world actions.

We have been offering many of these services to select clients for the last several years. Only recently have we decided to offer them to our wider client and reader base. If you’d like to learn how others are using the data or how they are actively hardening their environments and operations based on real-world data and trends, let us know. We’d love to discuss it with you!