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Tag Archives: Risk Mitigation
Bad things will happen
How you react to them, and whether you manage them or they control you is a matter of planning, but no one likes to plan for a risk becoming an issue.
Risk Registers are built and Controls are put in place to control the risks. A control, however, only reduces a risk rather than eliminates it completely. There is still a possibility of the events in the risk actually occurring. It is a common failing to believe that identifying a risk, and associating a Control with it makes the risk disappear.
Planning for a Controlled Risk actually happening often feels like a worthless activity, and so there is little effort or enthusiasm in performing it. There is also a view that says “We don’t know what will happen (if we did we’d have stopped if happening), therefore we can’t plan for it.” This is largely true, but a general structure and roles in addressing an event can be established.
The aim of an incident response plan is to reduce the opportunity for chaos, enabling a business to recover as quickly as possible and to reduce the losses.
What is in the plan?
- Pre-agreed Roles and Responsibilities.
- How an the Incident Team is triggered
- Who owns the Incident.
- The support they can call on: Technical and Security experts, Media Relations, Property and Transport.
- How the Team will Communicate, both between the members of the team and with other stakeholders.
- What records they will keep.
- What authority they have
- What limitations will they have on funding and resources.
Doesn’t this sound similar to a Business Continuity and Recovery Plan?
The President’s Phone
It appears that President Trump remains committed to his elderly Android phone. This has caused a flurry of speculation on the risks of doing so. There was a similar debate about President Obama retaining his Blackberry when he took office.
This was a subject I discussed with the US Secret Service during one Obama’s State Visits; and sensibly there are limits on what can be said publicly, so I will avoid going into specifics.
So, what are the Risks here?
- Access to sensitive information on an unencrypted device? Physical access to the device allowing access to data at rest, or account credentials – usernames and passwords. Unlikely, the device is in the jacket pocket of the US President – there are adequate physical controls. This was viewed as adequately managed.
- Remote access to data? This is a more significant risk. If it is a stock devices, running an old version of Android there are unpatched vulnerabilities that allow an attacker to obtain information from the device. At Rest storage encryption doesn’t help here. This remains a risk, and is a good reason for retiring the device. Especially given that obtaining credentials for e-mail and Twitter accounts could be a extremely usedful for an attacker. It is quite possible that this would both as a result of a targeted attack on President Trump or an untargeted attack that just sweeps up all credentials from any device they can find.
- Evesdropping? Again these are attacks against vulnerable, unpatched, devices, and they are available to foreign intelligence services. These attacks enable the device to become a sophisticated bug in any room. Such an attack would be of great interest to foreign governments in giving access to sensitive and non-public discussions. This is going to be a highly targeted attack by highly capable attackers and a significant security threat.
- Location tracking. A mobile phone of any nature has to talk to a network to operate, and that, as well as any compromise of a smartphone to get it to report location. This can be used to understand where it is at any time, and any pattern of movement. It is extremely valuable information that can support both a direct attack on an individual, and to obtain information on who they meet and regular patterns of behaviour. Location can leak by many paths, data in images, social media posts, and is frequently overlooked. This location tracking threat is a critical concern to the physical protection of a VIP.
So, if your Risk Assessment indicates risks that you are unable to accept as part of your business, what controls can be used?
Require a device with patched software and applications that are still under support. Your employee may like their old Galaxy S3, but is their using is a risk to your business? It is at this point that BYOD meets security and should be addressed in the mobile working policy (“BYOD, but not any device”) – unless you are confident in securing and supporting every mobile phone made in the last fifteen years.
The use of an always on VPN, bringing all data traffic back to a point where it can be monitored for abnormal or unusual behaviour. Not all data can be monitored, unless you wish to compromise TLS connections, and users may (quite rightly) object to that on devices they also conduct personal business on. Monitoring, and acting on, unusual connections and activities is normally sufficient.
Periodic audit of the device to identify any unusual or unauthorised software or apps. Either using software continually running on the device, or by periodically inspecting the device with tools.
Controls over where devices are not allowed. If there are particularly sensitive areas in a business, or sensitive conversations, then ban devices. Provide small lockers to allow users to store them outside of the area.
Advice, guidance and training for users. And record when it has been delivered.
Remote disabling or wiping of the device.
Remote application execution: VDI for mobiles, or deliver all information through TLS browser sessions without requiring apps and data storage on the device.
The only control normally beyond the reach of a business is to use a private, closed, network with technologies to prevent RF or network based user tracking. But you would only use that in the most critical of cases…
Fake News
“Fake News”, misinformation, has been in the News recently.
2016 was the year when deliberately misleading “news” stories, used to manipulate public opinion and to directly influence events, really came to the fore. So, what has this to do with businesses, and why, as an Information Security Specialist am I interested in it?
It can be a significant threat to a business – either directly, where fake news has been made to damage a company or influence it’s share price, or as a result of a different attack.
This relates to the circulation of “incorrect information” that is a threat to the business – analogous to the use of incorrect information within the business. The key difference is that the incorrect information is not held and managed by the business.
So, how do you mitigate the risk?
- Be able to respond quickly to fake news:
Have a Response Plan, know in advance who will be involved in the response, and how you will co-ordinate and manage this. - A credible and engaging reply to the story.
This will depend on the nature of the threat facing you. - You also want to ensure that any insurance you have covers such events to mitigate any significant financial loss or damage to the business.
A major problem in addressing such a fake news story is that responding and not responding may both cause an escalation by the attacker:
- Well, it must be true because they obviously can’t correct it or deny it. Or,
- Well, they would deny it wouldn’t they.
This means that you will need to have expertise available to support you in minimising the damage.
Cyber Insurance
There are three ways of managing IT security risks in a Risk Treatment Plan.
- Accept the Risk – a positive decision to accept a risk to the business as being something you are comfortable with.
- Mitigate the Risk – put a control in place to reduce the risk.
- Transfer the Risk – move the cost of the event happening to someone else.
Transferring the Risk is commonly done by Insurance, although there are other methods of Risk Transfer.
Cyber Liability Insurance Cover (CLIC) is often overlooked as an option to help a company survive a critical loss of data or a major security incident. The market and take-up of such insurance is variable. In the US, some form of CLIC is often a regulatory requirement, so take up is high. However in the UK where there is no requirement for a business to be able to survive such an event take up is very low (approximately 1% of UK companies have some form of CLIC).
While some form of Insurance is invaluable to aid a business during a disaster, be it flooding, the loss of a critical member of staff, or a massive business crippling data loss; the devil is, as always in the detail.
I have worked with several large organisations in reviewing their compliance with the expectations of their insurers and have two key lessons:
- The Cyber Insurance Market is relatively recent and has little historical record to generate risk profiles against, additionally, the market is relatively small at the moment giving a low spread for insurers to work against. This has a direct impact on Premiums.
- The Cyber Insurance Policies place obligations on the policy holder to have a good level of security management and protections in place. In many places, this obligation is not complied with – leading to the possible non-payout of the insurance contract.
Insurance services are adapting to this with schemes to reduce Insurance Premiums based on the results of security audits – both to inform the Insurer of the risks they are running and to give the policy holder assurance of the validity of the policy.
