“An amazing thing, the human brain. Capable of understanding incredibly complex and intricate concepts. Yet at times unable to recognize the obvious and simple.”

-Jay Abraham

Cybercrime Costs Businesses More than $400 Billion Globally: Report http://www.securityweek.com/cybercrime-costs-businesses-more-400-billion-globally-report

http://www.csoonline.com/article/2361011/security0/annual-cost-of-cybercrime-hits-near-400-billion.html

http://www.darkreading.com/worldwide-cost-of-cybercrime-estimated-at-$400-billion/d/d-id/1269527?

C-IT Recommendation

  1. Ensure your organization has a structure framework to address security. Frameworks provide a foundation to build effective security practices within an organization. Examples of frameworks include the National Institute of Standards and Technology Framework, International Organization for Standardization 27001, and Information System Audit and Control Association’s Control Objectives for IT.
    1. Ensures your organization has a plan for Information Security
    2. Provides direction for developing information security policies, procedures, standards and guidelines
    3. Ensures organizations have administrative, physical and technical controls to deter, detect and/or prevent malicious behavior
  2. Corporate leaders must establish a security debrief cadence with the information security teams. CSOs/CISO’s should meet with operational teams weekly to understand internal security risks. CSO/CISO’s should then meet with CFOs, CEOs, CIOs monthly or bi-weekly to communicate priority risks to the business. Executives should be prepared to provide feedback and decisions to the information security organizations.
    1. Material to be covered
      1. Current Risks (including potential severity and probability)
      2. Emerging Risks (including potential severity and probability)
      3. Plan to address Risks (Avoidance, Mitigation, Transfer, Acceptance)
      4. Monitoring Progress of Risk Handling

Article Resources

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Report “Net Losses:Estimating the Global Cost of Cybercrime”

http://www.mcafee.com/us/resources/reports/rp-economic-impact-cybercrime2.pdf

Chinese cyberspies targeting U.S, European defense, space sectors http://www.csoonline.com/article/2361425/cyber-attacks-espionage/chinese-cyberspies-targeting-u-s-european-defense-space-sectors.html

http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/38785/second-chinese-pla-hacking-unit-unmasked-in-putter-panda-report/

C-IT Recommendation

  1. Ensure your organization has Firewalls/Intrusion Prevention Solutions in place that is capable of block incoming attempts from bad reputation IP addresses from countries on the watch list.
  2. Verify your security appliances are reporting to a Security Information and Event Management tool (SIEM) that correlates events and displays intelligible information to security analysts.
  3. Validate your organization has an efficient Security Operations Center (SOC) of which trained analysts are trained to alert on potential malicious events or malicious sources.
  4. Verify your company has an effective and enforced data classification standard which requires data owners to seriously assess data sensitivity and requires data custodians to properly secure the information to need-to-know only basis.
  5. Ensure your organization has a solid data storage policy which requires confidential data to be stored in secure, encrypted locations
  6. Perform periodic access reviews for data stores and applications housing highly classified or confidential information to ensure appropriate access is enforced. Any users or groups who are discovered to have access and don’t have a need to have access should be immediately removed.
  7. Confirm network segmentation in your environment so that only required devices are able to access networks where highly classified or confidential data resides.

Article Resources

Crowdstrike putter Panda report

http://resources.crowdstrike.com/putterpanda/

Countering Adversaries Part 1: Espionage and Stolen Credentials

https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/5385/104705

Scammers Trick Thousands of Twitter Users with ‘Follower’ Bait http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/38776/scammers-trick-thousands-of-twitter-users-with-follower-bait/

http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/tweetdeck-scammers-steal-twitter-ids-via-oauth/d/d-id/1269503?

C-IT Recommendation

  1. Evaluate your organizations social media presence. If your social media department is using Tweetdeck to manage its twitter account, uninstall TweetDeck and reauthorize it.
  2. run a security scan to check for malware on any devices they used to log into Twitter.

Article Resources

BitDefender Blog on the Twitter Scam

http://www.hotforsecurity.com/blog/scammers-abuse-twitter-features-trick-thousands-with-follower-scheme-9202.html

See All 50 Episodes of "C-IT Security Podcast "