Cybersecurity in Business - How to Mitigate Cyber Risk

welcome to the cyber rants podcast where we're all about sharing the forbidden secrets and slightly

embellished truths about corporate cyber security programs we're ranting raving and telling you the

stuff that nobody talks about on their fancy website and trade show giveaways all to help

you protect your company from cyber criminals and now here's your hosts michael rotondo zack

fuller and lauro chavez welcome back to the cyber rants podcast this is your co-host zach fuller

joined by lauro chavez and michael rotondo uh we have a good show for you today and as

always we will kick it off with uh what's going on in cyber so mike do you want to give us some

some background what's happening today in the world of cyber security there's a lot of

interesting things in the news today um we've all been hearing about the covid tracking apps that

several tech companies are pushing and if you've gotten the latest apple download you've

seen that they have an option for a covered tractor in there but what we have found at

least according to the news is that 85 percent of cobit 19 tracking apps are actually leaking data

um that would include pi data and location data uh as well um so it's something to be

concerned about um obviously mobile apps don't always have the necessary security in place to

prevent data leakage um the other thing we're finding is that uh with the amount of people

that are working remotely there's another news out there called free vpns or bad for your privacy and

a lot of it is uh that there's ads in there and it is uh they're doing data harvesting so you're

not as secure as you think you are using your free vpn on the other side the secret service

is actually looking for outsiders to help boost financial cyber crimes probes they're trying to uh

well get into the 21st century in only 20 years too late but um they are working on getting into

the 21st century and to expand their cyber crime probes and abilities and then try and leverage the

partnership with the private market uh the udu is releasing interim cyber security rules uh this is

a nist publication that will be out for comment um and then expected to go live sometime in october

um there's also a new document from this it's a guide to help orgs recover from ransomware

and data integrity attacks it's actually a nice step-by-step guide also available for download

we have another issue out there that identifying the large the largest risk in supply chain

is supply chain weak security links for 92 percent of u.s companies so that's kind of

a big deal um a threat to more a more personal threat or a more uh applicable threat to small

to medium businesses that file what fileless malware has become a crucial endpoint threat

uh it's circumventing um existing many existing antivirus solutions

and in the uh other news iranian hackers are running ramp but apparently

iran has stepped up their cyber security game big um and is actually a major player in this

attacking united states in addition to china and russia and north koreans and usual players

something that's really kind of critical especially during the pandemic is that a cyber

attack hobbled a major hospital chain uh staff is now using paper records going back to the 80s

um so that's going on and uh the last thing is that the ransomware crisis is getting worse

um every day we're hearing about more and more ransomware issues and uh this is becoming a

big deal and lastly just going along with the election depending on when you hear this but there

is actually a concern that the u.s attacks could hinder voting access information not actual voting

but actually the process of providing the data to uh precincts and that sort of thing for voter

information so that's uh that's the headlines and that's what's going on in the world today

all right thanks for that mike i appreciate it very much uh let's i guess give updates on the uh

the weekly sev fives by the graces of the powers of the universe microsoft is not on the list

this week i'm shocked however oracle enterprise linux if you're running oracle enterprise linux

make sure you're looking for that postgresql uh update there's a sub five out there uh with

remote code execution also if you're running susie enterprise linux you've gotta save five updates

again uh same type of remote code execution freebsd is also suffering from a similar

vulnerability within samba so again if you're running oracle susie or freebsd get out there

on the internet find those uh those latest patches for that step five security update and

get those installed also drooper core uh multiple vulnerabilities in that so if you've got drupal

running uh make sure you're also checking checking the sheets to find out what what patches are

available and uh get this patch installed for this for this f5 and that that really concludes the

step fives of the week tackle bring it back over to you great thanks laurel for for the next few

episodes we'll be talking about different topics that are in the cyber rants book and i think a

great one to talk about right now it's october cyber security awareness month and really it's

all about building a security conscious culture so we have a whole chapter and a lot more than

a chapter that information flows throughout that book on that topic but i think it's an important

um and timely thing for people to think about you know organizations right now are full bore into

their planning for next year what are they going to do what are the cyber security initiatives

naturally we're having discussions with a lot of different companies especially fast growth

b2b tech companies um you know mid-market and emerging organizations that want to step up to

the next level and so we're talking about that how do we get a security program in place it's

not just adopted from a technical standpoint right that's that's almost uh the easier part for most

companies it's really how do we get buy-in from everybody how do we get you know from from every

every uh layer of the organization we need people to be involved in the cyber security process

so with that of course it starts with leadership right so what's the number one

biggest failure that companies make when it comes to their cyber security what i would say is that

the number one biggest failure companies make their cybersecurity is failing to make a decision

to actually put a formal cyber security program in place most people don't know they need to do

it they put it off and uh wait you know okay well it's gonna happen next year or the following year

whatever um and that's where i think you know we're seeing the most people that you know when

they we get calls about breaches that's that's usually the case for those organizations is that

they didn't actually make a decision to put the security program in place any thoughts

yeah i got a lot of thoughts about that i mean you're right with you know with leadership i

think that's the most important thing so you know you have to make a decision right so let's let's

pretend that we've gotten past that part right so you've made the decision you're going to put in

cyber security program and we need to we need to create a security conscious culture and i think i

think that really the next step there is is is really going to come around you know what what

type of program do you want to put in place or is it something that you want to do once a year is it

something that you feel that you want to integrate into operational processes throughout the year

um but you know i think the next biggest challenge aside from leadership just you know owning up to

the fact that they they have the budget for cyber security is something they have to do

right or they're going to be finding other jobs and we get breached beyond that i think it's

really holding the employees accountable for completing the training if you're using a uh

you know platform based approach uh if you're pulling everybody into a conference room

uh with a powerpoint presentation i think that you know with the sign-in log i think that's perfectly

acceptable too yeah absolutely i think there's a there's a fine line there too right because we

we have to hold people accountable but we also can't run a security program based on um fear

and kind of you know run run the show with an iron fist right it's you kind of have to

no you want to you want to incentify absolutely not well well let me digress a moment i think the

iron fist approach will probably work i mean you if you threaten people of getting fired because

they don't take their security awareness training that might work now you know you're probably not

going to rank on the number one place to work uh for businesses in the united states but i'm

sure it'll be effective uh you know i think incentive-based programs work better i think that

uh you know if you if you get if you get you know some some of your favorite local coffee place gift

cards you know or whatever uh and you start giving those out to people who complete the

training early or who complete the training uh with you know kind of you know not having to

retake it or whatever you know they got 100 on some of the questions i think that that offers a

incentive and then you know kind of expanding that out into this whole security conscious culture

right because it doesn't it doesn't end with cyber security awareness training it's like it's a great

okay you got trained it's just like osha training it's like okay we had your osha training now

you got to look for osha related situations at your work right the same way you got to look for

cybersecurity-related situations at your work and i think one of the ways that the incentive program

does really good is when you're incentifying your employees to walk around and look for

i guess you know you could call them um you know cyber security findings a great

example of somebody who walked away from their workstation and left their work position unlocked

okay now you know in the past it was accepted behavior to send emails to the boss saying that

you know you hate him and you know you expect him to buy everybody kegs of beer and it's haha funny

thing right unfortunately now i don't think that's a good idea to do but what is a good idea to do

is to go up and do a you know a windows l or you know something on that on that desktop to lock it

and then go report that to your security manager and now you can get yourself a

starbucks gift card or whatever you know black rifle cop company whatever the coffee

is that you know that is surrounding the group of the place where you're at

right whatever your local coffee house is but i think that's a great example of a way to enforce

that security conscious culture in a positive way and instead of ruling with iron fist i i disagree

i i don't think that you know you want a bunch of people that have very minimal security knowledge

running around making security decisions i mean that's that's a um and then tattling on i just

i i don't i don't think that's the best way to deal with it i mean you don't want to people

a bunch of people it's almost vigilante justice at that point um because you know the subject of

human nature if i don't like you your computer is unlocked all the time as far as i'm concerned or

um you know that kind of thing so i i think that could backfire if it's not monitored properly um

so i think there needs to be discipline for management there does need to be teeth for not

for not passing the testing for not adhering to it for continual failure to adhere to security norms

needs to be dealt with um you know there can be a certain amount of carrot but there does need

to be a stick especially in today's culture sure i don't i don't disagree with that i mean i just um

you know i mean i i like to think that if given the opportunity humans will tend to want to do

the right thing especially if they're incentivized but i mean i can't say i disagree with you with

a bunch of rookie barely trained cyber security people running around i'm tattling on one another

now um you know self-policing i guess i guess can work but i agree i think you know there

does need to be some teeth and a stick um on the other side of the incentive otherwise you

know i think because i think the goal is to be compliant right i mean you're not going to

start a security awareness or a cyber security conscious culture without having a goal of making

100 you know so i i agree with you sure and then you have to go back and you put the onus on the

security team itself and they have to have the proper policies in place so regardless if you know

you walk away from your desk your desktop is going to lock within five minutes regardless you know if

you don't have policies like that in place um you know acceptable usage or desktop policies in place

then you know if i'm allowed to walk away from my desk for an hour and it stays open

and all my apps stay engaged that's a failing from the security team

that's not neces- you know that is you know it's two parts right so there's personal responsibility

of the user that has the computer open but there's also the responsibility of the security team

to make sure to give them the tools to enable them to allow for the occasional mistake no i agree

but there's always that one work environment right where you've got i don't know what to

call it but you you you'll you'll be a security engineer and you're saying okay we're going to

lock the screens after five minutes of inactivity and lo and behold somebody will come and say that

doesn't work for us and somehow management says set it to 20 minutes or set it to 30 minutes right

right yeah yeah where you know your best practice is now being overwritten by some form of

you know interdepartmental you know hokey poke that's going on right so

un unfortunately you know i think those are the cases where to work but i mean to kind of

transcend the conversation out of the corporate environment i mean you know part of the training

should be that the security conscious culture is that humans are security conscious even

when they leave the work environment and so how do you really ensure that they're

knowledgeable when they're getting that call that you know the cyber attacker's saying you know yeah

you're you know your your social security has been compromised and you know we need you to

uh to help us here to you know stop this leakage of your money from your social security account

right i mean i think that's that's another really important part of the security conscious culture

because i i don't think that i don't think that training should stop when you leave the

the place of employment you know i agree i mean it makes it valuable to the end user if you give

them something they can use at home i think the the moral story there is that uh you know the

organization has to come to terms at some level of of risk acceptance and they have to be able

to define that what level of risk are they willing to accept and then out of that they can determine

what calls management can make right can they allow that you know uh host machine to stay

open for a half an hour with no activity um again they can they make those calls that are that will

override the security department and what level and what's the process behind that right who

who uh ultimately gets to you know look at that objectively and see if it's in line with their

risk management program and then the other thing is that i think the lesson behind all this too

is that it really depends right there is there is no right answer there is no the perfect

way to build a security conscious culture because every company culture is different

and we've got to see the gamut right and so some companies they have to run it with an iron fist

you know they their culture is not there in a place where people are necessarily held

or hold themselves accountable and that's in those situations especially larger organizations that

are like that you know they they have to do things differently than a smaller more nimble let's say

a SaaS company for example that's a bunch of developers and they all want to learn more

about cyber security because it's you know they see it as part of their their role and they they

you know take it to heart they like learning about technology you know that's a very very different

culture so where you may have some of the like what you were alluding to earlier lauro about the

um you know starbucks gift cards or whatever it may be essentially gamification of the security

program that's going to work phenomenally in some cultures and uh and have it be basically uh

um a positive you know beneficial type uh experience whereas in other cultures yeah you

gotta bring down the hammer you know so i think it's it's up to organizational leaders to really

um take an objective look at what what is our culture what what are they going to respond to and

out of that build the security awareness program and the policies and all of that because um

you know it all has to be in place but it's also got to match the company operations if the two are

out of alignment it's never going to be effective no it's not and i don't think

that any business can i mean i understand that you can accept risk but really can you

you know what i mean i mean i think all of this fallout is is eventually going to be even if

it's just a little bit you know getting into the headlines of the news it doesn't matter if it only

costs you 10 grand or 12 grand you get you get a negative impact towards your business and you know

for those of you you know no offense but for those of you leaders out there that are you know listen

to this podcast and you know saying that oh we're going to stave off cyber security for another

year we're not going to you know do cyber security training or we're cutting back on programming

no one is going to shed a tear for you when you show up on the headlines not anyone we're all

going to chuckle you know what i mean we're all going to chuckle in the background like

you figured that was going to happen you know what i mean so you know really you have a choice

you either look at this from a scientific perspective and and deploy this type of a

program right that includes a building a security conscious culture or you choose the other path

which is going to lead you down the road of being in the headlines at some point or another

and i don't see there's too many options it's like a two-prong fork i mean what would you say mike

yeah and you also have to take into account the compliance factor right so if you've got pci

compliance restrictions or adherences that you need to do if you have uh if you're overriding

security and saying you can leave your computer unlocked for 30 minutes that's a violation right

there right i mean that's not going to be allowed so you're going to have to create

a business justification and you're going to have to own the risk because it was your

idea to unlock that so that's you know going back to the responsibility of the leadership of saying

um you know this is my decision and owning it not pushing it onto the security team so you know yeah

it's coming up on the security team to make sure that management understands that they own that

decision whoever you know decides to make that decision owns it so right and if you're a security

personnel write down everything and make sure that you're you're organizing your thoughts in

email so when you try to recommend these things and get shot down by leadership you're at least

saving those emails in an archive so that later when when your profession is questioned you can

point back to the poor decisions of leadership uh that kind of shut down your brilliant ideas

um you know so keep that in mind and you know and the pci thing mike i totally agree with

you but you've got companies doing you know not so intelligent moves like limiting scope

so instead of you know trying to make the whole organization in scope where we have a continuous

deployment of security controls holistically they're trying to isolate just the components that

interact with the the you know the the the the pan data right in your data environment and and limit

the audit just to that so now you've got the whole rest of the environment that that has no security

controls right you've got these 30-minute log outs or whatever right and then you've got just

a very small in-scope portion of your environment focused on the good security controls and what it

what it makes you look like holistically is you're ten percent secure you have to look at that too

in the company i mean how messed up are they what was our last pci audit or if they've never had one

you gotta start and i think you can build out from doing a focus on just the pci group and and

then build it out to the rest of the company you know and take it gradually by step because i think

if you try and swallow it all whole you might wind up you know choking the entire company and

elongating the process and increasing or extending risk longer than you need to

absolutely you certainly need to chunk it up and roadmap it out so that it makes sense

it's palatable for everybody yeah and and you know like what zach was saying you know every

every business environment we've ever been to has always been different the cultures are different

um you know the the dynamics around enforcement are different and and so i think you just need

to kind of understand your own environment and then you know roadmap out the the major points

of the security plan that include the security conscious culture right developing that security

runs training and reinforcing that but you need to do it in a manner that is consistent with your

specific culture your organization and so i know there's some security guys out there that are like

that are like mike you know there's you know they feel like they need to go around and just enforce

this and there's probably guys out there like me that are like oh let's you know try to find

a better way to incentivize people and the truth is you probably need both you probably need the

good top bad cop because you're going to have you're going to have patrons and employees that

are going to do the right thing and you're going to have employees that don't want to do the right

thing and i think so you know i think having that that approach is probably helpful too but yeah you

know you got to start somewhere you got to road map it out you got to do it at a pace that is

it that is you know really kind of marries well with your your own culture and your environment

and one of the things that you know you talk about the good cop bad cop you do have to have

one unified the security team itself needs to be unified the ultimate goal so they're not you know

it's not like the little kids going to mom saying can i go out to a concert ask your father no you

can't go and then go ask your mother yeah you can go kind of thing it's you got to make sure that

you know you have a unified plan structure you know for the security team where you can play that

good cop bad cop and ultimately get the agreed upon goal that the security team is trying to get

yeah absolutely no no the security team needs to have a unified voice um the bad cop i was

saying um was referring to is that you can you could give incentives right you can give

you know gift cards or whatever but you also need to need to whip the stick too and so i think that

that's kind of what i was alluding to by good cop backup was yeah i know what you mean i mean but

you know you don't want you know i'm gonna go talk to lauro because he's nicer than mike you know

kind of thing but that's true i mean and that's what people do i mean because i am nice of you i

mean yeah wow that's a given but you know i'm like oh did i get you with a stick here's a gift card

yeah now lock your damn computer yeah just as long as you're not working it where if you let me

hit you with a stick then you can have a gift card because that just you know gets into another weird

area of i.t yeah i don't know if i should give him a gift card because i got hit with the stick by

you or you know they tried to do the right thing i don't know yeah anyways yeah but you know try to

work toward a a security conscious culture i mean i think that's you know everybody is everybody in

your organization is part of the cyber security team whether you like it or not they're they're

all going to help you succeed or fail so i think you know the more trained they are the

more training they have the more intelligence they have around cyber security you know weaponize them

weaponize your people weaponize your employees your contractors and you're going to have a

more secure organization and you're certainly going to have a more cyber security conscious

culture yeah i think one of the things too is you have to emphasize the importance of it because i

can't i don't know if this happens to you guys but i i can't tell you how many people i see

that are outside of work or you know associates that i know from the cigar shop or whatever that

talk about that security crap training i had to take this week you know and complain about it and

they need to understand it's actually valuable and it's extremely valuable and i think that

anybody who comes out of a i mean you know you should question your employees if they're

if you find him at the cigar lounge complaining about the security awareness training later

well i find it's also from the management i mean there's some guys i know that are vps that are

like complaining about that's like dude of course you got to understand you know we've got vps that

don't even want to take the training that we've got to sign for some of our clients right i mean

exactly it's like your job you're telling me that your leadership job is so

busy and so important you can't take 30 minutes out of your day to complete the training your

developers did it and they're running your software okay your it guys did it and they're

running the infrastructure they found time to do it but you and all your wisdom in your big

corner office can't find 30 minutes to sit down and take the training there's no excuse for that

it's always the sales guy with the puka shell necklace and the frosted tips that

knows more than you do it always always he's rolling he's rolling in the convertible

you know what i mean pop down frosted tips blowing in the wind yeah big idiot that sounds awesome

you want to get your tips frosted yeah right i'll jump right on that

well you'll laugh i saw i was at the um bar having having a cigar and doing some work on my on my

laptop and i saw a guy come in with a major cyber security company shirt on polo shirt on

right embossed logo all that goes to the bar opens his laptop he's working there um his laptop

was obviously company issued you know it had the label on it and everything leaves it open um and

goes to the restroom for about five minutes open unlocked so um it's not just companies

outside the industry that are failing at building a security conscious culture it's it's it's even

within the cyber security industry so oh i could talk about some cyber security companies out there

and i won't blackball you guys today but you you suck i don't understand how you got so big and so

popular the work you're doing is absolute bantha fodder all of it so i i completely agree with you

and you know what to be truth he probably got that polo because one of the he he partnered with the

var that came in and they gave him the polo for letting him sign the gig you know what i mean i

hope he didn't work for the security partner but he might have it wouldn't surprise me i looked i

looked it up by uh yeah i put a face with the name uh oh you linked it you linked in stopped him oh

that's a good job so he was from here i did i i did a quick quick bit of research and uh yeah

sure enough um oh i wish we could blackball those companies i wish i could dox you right now

from being at the cigar bar with your laptop open that's okay we don't do that for a thing you know

it's it's unfortunately not too common but you know i think i think the point um here is and as

we wrap it up it's it's you know there's no right answer um for for anybody because if it was that

easy everybody be doing it right so it's a matter of matching your program to your company culture

understanding what that company culture is in the first place what it really is objectively right

and then putting the appropriate controls in place to both enforce and uh enforce failures and reward

um the all the positive things and out of that i think you're going to get a lot of good data

points and stuff that's going on within the organization what types of attacks are occurring

and and you can be off to a good start and the other thing to remember right is it doesn't

happen overnight i mean we're to shift culture we're talking years um so it's it's something

that has to be worked on day in and day out um and it's it's over time right so but it has to start

with leadership right because if leadership's not doing it nobody's doing it and um they're they're

going to look up to leadership and what's you know what are they how are they using their own devices

you know and what's um are they leaving their own machines unlocked you know what's

uh going on with their actions and and the rest will follow any final thoughts for today

well i think you i think you closed down pretty well you know you got to plan out you know i think

the bigger organization you have the longer it's going to take to

impact the culture then the smaller organization you have it might happen a little faster

than yours right you know they say small ships turn faster so it might be something you can do

aggressively in a couple months and it might take you 24 months

so yeah no i think you i think you nailed it zach it's got to start with leadership

all right well thank you very much all the uh people listening hope this helps reach out to us

anytime you don't have a copy of the book check it out on amazon and uh we look forward to our next

episode have a great day pick up your copy today of cyber rants forbidden secrets and

slightly embellished truths about corporate cyber security programs frameworks and best practices

on amazon and if you're looking to beef up your cyber security visit us online at www

www.silentsector.com join us next time for another edition of the cyber rants podcast

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