• Discover and document – You can’t protect a system if you don’t know it exists. Take some time to identify and document all of the legacy and unsupported operating systems in your network.
• Isolate – Segmenting the ICS system will reduce the risk of it being compromised by an attacker. Take some time to verify that it is inaccessible from any unnecessary business/ user networks.
• Update and secure – Install all available patches and updates. Be sure that you are notified of any updates to the operating system, firmware and any installed applications.
• Perform thorough log analysis – Implement some sort of centralized logging platform to ensure you have the ability to detect any anomalies that occur within these systems.
• Leverage the use of an ICS honeypot – Creating a HoneyPot ICS device will help you discover suspicious activity within your network before it affects a production system.

As many of you may have heard, businesses throughout the world have seen an increase in ransomware being used against them. What should businesses do to help prevent these sort of extortions from happening to them? This is what we will attempt to answer with this posting.

We have all heard the old adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, nothing could be truer, especially for this particular situation! So lets go over some of the preventative steps that your organization may follow before you become infected with ransomware:

• User education and training! Start off with end-user education, you know the people who are actually going to see these sort of attacks. Lets not focus on just select few like your sys-admins, but rather the entire organization. Everyone has a part in keeping your business secure and education is the key.

• As part of the education of the end-users, let them know who to contact if they see something suspicious, whether that is your help desk or someone who is designated for your organization to help guide them through the process of what to do. The end-users have to be able recognize that something has occurred in order for them to report it in the first place.

• Organizations should enforce the least privileged methodology. This is a way to grant the minimum amount of access to files as the person needs to perform their job-related duties. If a person does not need read/write access to certain files don’t grant it. This will help keep the ransomware from doing the same since they work based on the privileges of the person who is logged in at the time and encrypt files that the person has read/ write access to.

• Most organizations now configure their email servers to prohibit them from sending or receiving executable files. Make sure yours does too. The real issue here are macros that are enabled when sent with a document. As this is a potential attack vector for this and other types of malware.

• Patch your software to the most current version. By not doing so you may be leaving the door open for a variety of malware to take advantage of your company. The malware will exploit flaws in the older versions of software that your company uses. We have seen time and time again where businesses aren’t aggressively keeping their software updated to the latest version and they are targeted by threat actors as a result.

• If possible restrict the execution of programs from temp folders in a user’s profile. For example, “c:\users\<username>\folder\temp”. What do I mean by this? If a virus or ransomware in this case, were to attempt to use a temp folder as the first execution point it would be blocked from being allowed to do so by Group Policy Objects. So you effectively nix the ransomware before it has had a chance to infect your computer!

• Organizations should consider implementing some sort of web filtering such as keeping track of blacklisted IP addresses or domains.

• Whatever antivirus solution your company employs please ensure that they are updated with the latest virus definitions to increase their effectiveness. A company could even consider having different antivirus products for different purposes, such as having one product for desktops and another for email. That way the company is ensuring that there is some degree of overlap in their antivirus coverage!

• Adobe’s Flash should be disabled at this point, as it really has been a very popular infection vector for ransomware. Disabling it would greatly reduce the amount of infection vectors available to would-be attackers.

• Lastly, backups are really the only way to restore functionality to the affected systems once they have been compromised, providing a backup process already exists in your organization and that the backups are checked for completeness. This way if you do need to use your backups, they will get you back on your feet as soon as possible with the least amount of downtime.

As always the education of all of your employees is key to this or any other sort of security related incident before it happens. As is effective communication both before a security incident starts and during the response/ recovery process.

The number of people in the United States has been increasing heavily over time and we are currently the third most populace country on the planet. In the last century, the population has more than tripled here, and it is estimated that we will add more than 100,000,000 to the current total by 2050. One of the things that help us cope with such huge numbers is taking advantage of economies of scale.
For example, we build truly giant ships to carry our oil and cargo because the bigger the ship is the more hydrodynamic advantage there is and the less cost there is per ton for transportation. Similarly, we build enormous power plants and network them into grids because it is more efficient and cheaper per kilowatt hour to do so. There are many more examples of this trend all across American commerce. While this practice indeed does work and enables us in many ways, it comes with a variety of costs; one of which is increased risk.
We stand to lose a lot of oil and cause major environmental catastrophes if someone starts sinking major super tankers, for example. And if an enemy starts destroying our large power plants (or critical nodes in the infrastructure connecting them), the impact could be very much worse than that.
I mention all of this, because now we are seeing the trend toward economies of scale coming into the information processing world, mainly in the form of cloud computing. This trend is inevitable because it truly is more efficient, cheaper and improves peoples’ lives in many ways. But it must be realized that this centralization of data processing and storage brings with it the same increase in impact if a major compromise occurs – and the greater the impact, the greater the risk.
What this means in the information security world is that we need to have more security assurance built into these large cloud systems. It should be stated like a natural law: the bigger the system, the more effective the security controls need to be. So before you put all of your valuables into the cloud, keep the risks inherent in economies of scale in mind and vet your cloud provider’s security measures. Make sure that they have all the technical, operational, physical and management controls in place. Ensure that their information security program is transparent and reactive to realistic criticism. And ensure that your own organization realizes the risks inherent in the cloud and plans accordingly as well. Remember, it is your own organization that is ultimately responsible for the security of their data no matter where it is stored or processed.

Drafting an Incident Response Policy can seem overwhelming. At the beginning, it doesn’t seem feasible that a single document can help you maintain order during a breach. You may ask yourself if it’s even possible to prepare your team for responding to all of the latest Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTP) that attackers are leveraging. It’s not possible to craft a document that addresses every possible threat individually. However, you can create an effective policy that covers each major threat category as opposed to each individual attack.

If you’re not sure which categories to focus on, I recommend taking a look at Microsoft’s STRIDE Threat Model. STRIDE stands for Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information disclosure, Denial of service, Elevation of privilege. By leveraging the STRIDE model (or any other threat model), you can create a policy that will be relevant for years to come. This “one size fits all” approach will not only make your policy more efficient, it will be much more effective.

After you’ve crafted your policy, be sure to take the time to walk through a few scenarios. It’s even worthwhile to bring in a 3rd party to help you simulate a computer security incident on a regular basis. This exercise can help you identify any gaps that exist within your policies and procedures. It will also demonstrate how a simple policy will help your company respond to the even the most complicated security issues.

Working in IT, one of my biggest challenges has been to convince end-users that it is worthwhile to forego a convenience in the name of security. Regardless of whether it’s requiring the use of multi-factor authentication or forcing a computer to auto-lock after a certain amount of idle time, it often boils down to the end-user facing some sort of hinderance to their productivity. I completely understand their frustrations. I’ve managed Active Directory networks that served around 15,000 people and still managed to lock out my account. Was I annoyed? Absolutely, but I understood the need for the control. If you take the time to explain security to the end-user, they’ll be more likely to understand your decisions.

Here are some tips I’ve found to be helpful when convincing an end-user to implement a security control:

1. Remind – Remind them that you’re not making this change just for fun. It’s being completed to reduce the likelihood that your organization’s systems will be compromised by an attacker.
2. Example – Give an example of a high-profile breach that could have been prevented by implementing this control. It’s likely that they’ve had their personal information exposed as a result of a breach within the last few years. Even if they (somehow) haven’t personally been affected by a data breach, they have a friend or family member who has. Using an example of something that has affected them personally will go a long way to helping them understand why it is worthwhile to implement a security control that could have an adverse affect on their productivity.
3. Analogy – Still having trouble rationalizing why you’re implementing a new security system? Try to use an analogy to describe how the new control will help prevent an issue. For example, if they are upset that they can’t reuse a password across multiple systems, remind them that the key to their Ford vehicle won’t work on ALL Ford vehicles.
4. Describe –  Take some time to describe why you’re implementing the new security control. It’s important to make the effort to explain the task in terms that the end-user will understand. Don’t use the complexity of the topic as an excuse. If you can’t explain the issue to a non-technical employee, chances are, you don’t understand it yourself.

A distributed denial of service attack is a malicious attempt to make machines, applications or other network services unavailable to legitimate users. There are many types of DDoS attacks including SYN and UDP floods, reflected attacks, application attacks and multi-vector attacks that employ several types of attacks in combination. In the past, it was typical for businesses to accept the risk of DDoS attacks since they were relatively rare and small scale. But that has all changed in recent years; both the number and scale of DDoS attacks have increased dramatically. Because of this trend many savvy businesses have changed their philosophies and taken steps to mitigate DDoS attacks. Unfortunately, this trend is far from universal. Many businesses remain complacent and have done little or nothing to prepare for DDoS attacks. Is your business one of these and if so, what should you do about it?

The first step I recommend taking is to perform a basic risk and impact study on the subject: how likely is it that my business will be attacked, and if it is, how badly will it hurt us? If the answer to either of these questions is unacceptable, then you should certainly move on to step two and start the process of incorporating DDoS into the incident response plan. In a nutshell – develop the policy language, include likely DDoS attack indicators and attack scenarios in the plan, develop specific strategies to counter these attacks, assign responsibilities to specific individuals and practice the plan. Sounds easy, but how do we go about doing that you may ask. Here are some basic tips:

• Contact your ISP. Get their advice, find out about their experience and capabilities with DDoS attacks, find out about any anti-DDoS tools they might have available and their cost, etc. If you don’t do anything else, at least take this step. You probably won’t be able to do much at all to counter a DDoS attack without your ISP’s help.

• Ensure that your team is fully aware of all the capabilities your present equipment and infrastructure has for handling DDoS attacks.

• Ensure that your IR and IT teams are aware that DDoS attacks are sometimes persistent and can last for days, weeks or more. Make plans for keeping your reactions strong and timely.

• Employ centralized logging and ensure that proper monitoring procedures are in place and reviewed.

• Make sure you maintain a whitelist of source IPs and protocols, major customers, critical service providers and partners that must be allowed access during attacks.

• If you are at high risk and impact levels for DDoS attacks, consider improving your infrastructure and/or employing specialized DDoS services or products. Cloud based servers, for example, have great capabilities for fighting DDoS.

• Ensure that applications, networks and operating systems that may be targeted in DDoS attacks are fully hardened.

Here’s hoping that no one out there targets your business with a major DDoS campaign. But if you think the possibility is high, better take a tip from the Boy Scouts and be prepared!