Cybersecurity Expert

Today I was quoted in the  Focus Training's Blog . An 'Ask the Experts' piece on 'How to Protect your business from Cyber Crime', my advice was as follows. Educate all business staff about dangers and latest attack methods, particularly ensuring they aware of targeted scam emails (spear phishing). Cyber criminals are increasingly targeting individual business staff members, typically those with finance responsibilities, by crafting highly convincing emails using information about the business, its staff and its suppliers. These scam emails once responded to, will typically try to convince (social engineer) individual staff members to arrange a bank transfer or payment to a bogus account operated by the cyber criminals Keep all Servers, PCs, Laptops, Tablets and Smart Phones operating systems and applications updated (security patching). Out of date software is vulnerable and commonly exploited by malware and hackers. Business staff should use unique passwords wi...

UK identity fraud is on the rise according to the latest research by Equifax. The data shows UK ID crime is going up within all age groups, with those living in the London and Manchester areas increasingly the most likely to become victims of ID fraud. Equifax has asked me to share the following infographic on their research, which includes good advice to stay protected. Are you losing your identity? We look at the growth of identity fraud and what can be done about it

Just over three months ago I posted about  Yahoo, The Largest Data Breach in History...so far . It was apt I added "so far" in the post title as in the early hours today, Yahoo announced an even more mind-blowing data theft hack of over One Billion Yahoo user accounts. If you are a concerned Yahoo email account holder 1. Reset your Yahoo account password, make sure your old Yahoo passwords are not used on any other of your online accounts 2. Change your Security Questions and Answers on all accounts with same Q&A as Yahoo, you might have to make up false answers only you know to ensure safety 3. Be extra vigilant, especially with signs of any access to your email account, and receiving scam phishing emails 4. See  My advice to Stay Safe from Cyber Crime Mark Crowther, Associate Director at Cyber Security Specialists Cyberis ( www.cyberis.co.uk ),   has some interesting thoughts on the latest breach at Yahoo, raising serious questions about...

Several major UK household brands made the headlines for wrong reasons following cyber attacks in October. Tesco Bank refunded £2.5 million to over 20,000 of its customers after Tesco Bank account credentials were hacked and account funds were stolen. Mobile giant ‘Three’ said 6 million of its customer’s personal data records could be at risk after hundreds of new mobile phones were stolen following the hack of a Three employee account. The National Lottery disclosed 26,500 of its online customer accounts had been accessed by hackers, leading to three arrests. Elsewhere a 17 year old pleaded guilty to taking part in the recent TalkTalk hack. The next evolution of ransomware has arrived with a new variant called Ransoc, and it's pretty nasty. The malware scans internet history, social media accounts, Skype and photos, and then uses any found illegal, embarrassing and sensitive information to threaten the victim’s reputation should a payment not be sent.  It turns out locked...

I have just finished reading the book "Hacked Again" by US CyberSecurity Expert Scott Schober. Along with covering and explaining several recent major hacks, the book provides excellent advice and tips for staying safe from cyber crime.  What I found particularly interesting was Scott's own account on how he was hacked. As CEO of his own successful Wireless Security company and a popular Cyber Security TV pundit, I imagine Scott's natural instinct would be to not disclose his "been hacked" experience with the world. Scott disregards any potential embarrassment to himself and chooses to explain what exactly happened to him and why, passing on valuable lessons learnt to help others, a brave and noble undertaking I applaud. What "Hacked Again" is, is a potent reminder that no one is ever safe from the clutches of persistent cyber criminals. But this doesn't mean we should give up trying to be secure, on the contrary, as following the practica...

Given I am regularly asked to explain cyber attacks and then advise on how to protect against them, particularly to home users of late, I thought I would try my hand at creating a simple InfoGraphic to help. It was a challenge to create due to the limitation to the amount of space for text, which means you can't cover everything and you can't go into much detail. However concise messaging is kind of the point of infographics, especially when using them as awareness tools.  This InfoGraphic is squarely aimed at the average "home user", it highlights what the bad guys are after, their most popular and most successful attack methods, and then provides 10 tips to help avoid and detect home user cyber attacks, simples. If this InfoGraphic proves popular I'll create some more, starting with one covering home IoT Security advice, another subject I'm regularly asked about at the moment. Download full version here

Law firms collect, process and store vast amounts of extremely sensitive data about their clients, this when combined with a poor 'people security' culture and a general lack of digital security know-how, is a recipe that leaves legal companies highly vulnerable to cyber attacks. Given the typical large scope and sensitivity of data held by law firms, cyber attacks in the legal industry can be particularly costly affairs to recover from. Often you will read about regulators imposing considerable data breach fines on companies that have been the subject of a cyber attack. Yet the hidden cost of a data breach recovery in using crisis management services, disruption of critical business operations, contractual penalties, bringing in forensic investigators, and engaging a legal counsel, ironic I know, and the loss of client trust often exceeds the financial penalty figures plastered across the headlines. Emphasising the legal profession's vulnerability to cyber at...

Cyber security experts have long predicted that thousands of vulnerable Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as internet-connected CCTV systems would be hacked on mass and directed to perform huge DDoS attacks. That’s exactly what happened on 21 st October when 152,000 IoT devices infected with malware were remote controlled by hackers and then used to orchestrate a 1Tb DDoS attack, the largest in history. A tsunami of network traffic was directed at a company called Dyn, a major domain name registrar, and it impacted their client’s web services, including Twitter, Yammer, PayPal, Starbucks, The Guardian, PlayStation, Wix, CNN, Spotify, Github, Weebly and Reddit. Those IoT developers may want to read up on my IoT guidance on the IBM developersWorks website -  Combating IoT cyber threats  Top security best practices for IoT applications The UK National Cyber Security Centre HQ went operational, which is part of the UK government's 5 year £1.9 billion cyber defence s...

IBM Security recently released a white paper on the mobile malware threat, which included general guidance on managing the mobile threat and an overview of IBM’s MaaS360 Mobile Threat Management tool, I thought it was good advice and well worth sharing. Mobile is the New Playground for Thieves: How to Protect against Mobile Malware According to Arxan Technologies. 97% and 87%t of the top paid Android and iOS apps, respectively, have been hacked and posted to third-party app stores. Mobile Security Guidance (by IBM Security) Educate Employees about Application Security: Educate employees about the dangers of downloading third-party applications and the potential dangers that can result from weak device permissioning . Protect BYOD devices: Apply enterprise mobility management capabilities to enable employees to use their own devices while maintaining organisational security. Permit Employees to download from Authorised App Stores Only : Allow employees to download ap...

The theft of over half a billion Yahoo user accounts by hackers has dominated the news headlines in the last couple of weeks. Since announcing the largest hack in history, Yahoo has come in for heavy criticism, given it took two years for Yahoo to notice the massive data theft, talk of lacklustre security behind the scenes at the company, and doubts over Yahoo’s claims the cyber attack was state-sponsored. Lawyers representing users, the US Senate and the UK ICO have all lined up to take pop-shots at Yahoo and are threatening action.    I posted known Yahoo hack information and advice , and Yahoo hack industry analysis Interesting example of Hacktivism after a Russian group called "Fancy Bears" hacked and released the World Anti-Doping Agency medical records of prominent British and American Olympic athletes. The motivate appears to be a revenge protest aimed at causing embarrassment to medal winning Western athletes  following...

Yesterday I spoke at the R3 Summit (Resilience, Response and Recovery) in London, on the topic of Cyber Security Incident Management and response. Given the Q & A and the ensuing discussion after my talk, the attendees were particularly interested in my views on incident containment ahead of recovery. Below is a summary of what I said. Step 1: Incident Management Planning and Preparation The most crucial part of incident management is the preparation, it is important to always consider cyber security incidents as a ‘When’ not an ‘If’ as you plan ahead. So here’s my ‘brain dump’ of an incident management planning strategy: A company Cyber Security Incident Management Policy It must define what the company (aka the board) consider as a cyber security incident Cyber Security Incident notification communications channel or even better a reporting application/system Upon identifying an incident who do staff notify (the incident management team) Staff awareness of how to...

Today I received several interesting cyber security expert views on the Yahoo breach following my blog post yesterday -  Yahoo, The Largest Data Breach in History...so far ,   Broken Security Model? Paul German, VP EMEA at Certes, a specialist in cyber security and encryption, believes the Yahoo hackers were able to steal such vast amounts of account data due to a problem with the cyber security model of 'Protect, Detect and React'. Specifically the time in detecting the protection had been overcome. In Yahoo's case this time lag appears to be months and possibly even years, which allowed the hackers plenty of time to scout around the inside network undetected and extract such huge amounts of data out. To counter this lag, Paul suggests any potential hacker access to the data should be contained, I'm guessing by cranking down on data access control. Here's his full comments below. “The problem lies in the face that once hackers cross a company’s ...

Yahoo have just disclosed  over 500 million of its user accounts have been compromised, that's a huge number, think about it for second, that's half a billion people across the globe affected and at risk. This is largest known data breach in history to date. We know the Yahoo account data were stolen in late 2014, said the hack is said to have been orchestrated by state-sponsored actors, although there's no evidence to back this claim up. Yahoo has not disclosed how the data was hacked, or why it has taken almost two years to either discover the breach or disclosure the breach publically. A cynic might say Yahoo delayed informing its massive user base until after it's recent £3.7 billion sale to Verizon was done and dusted. However in late July 2016 hackers were found offering 200 million Yahoo accounts for sale on the dark web ( www.telegraph.co.uk/200-million-yahoo-account-details-for-sale-online ), so it is likely the 2014 data theft was discovered on the back o...

The fallout from massive data breaches in recent years continued to dominate the August headlines. Dropbox enforced password changes for 68 million users after accounts as a result of the 2012 Dropbox breach, when a Dropbox employee stole a load of account details. Meanwhile over 200 million Yahoo user credentials were found up for sale on the dark web. The large user account data breaches didn’t stop there; several large online user forums operating on vBulletin were found to be vulnerable and compromised with SQL injection attacks, leading to the theft of millions of forum user account details. Ransomware continues to plague all industries, especially the UK health sector, with half of all NHS Trusts confirming ransomware infiltrations. The Locky ransomware continues to be updated by cybercriminals, making the malware much harder for anti-virus software to detect and prevent. Finally a report by ‘Cybersecurity Ventures’ predicts a Cyber-Apocalypse, estimating that cybercrime will...

In July there were several reports affirming the continued escalation of Cybecrime in the UK, with the National Crime Agency (NCA) including cybercrime in its crime statistics for the first time, confirming there were more incidents of cybercrime than physical crime in the UK. NCA concluded that UK businesses and law enforcement were losing a “cyber arms race” with online criminals. The Information Commission’s Office (ICO) highlighted the UK Health and Local Government as the worse industries for data protection, accounting for 41% of data breaches reported to the ICO in Q1 of this year.  The EU approved “EU-US Privacy Shield” as a replacement for ‘Safe Harbor’, however there is speculation this is merely a temporary fix, as the EU data protection committee, Working Party 29, raised concerns with the Privacy Shield agreement, which they intend to address in 2017. BT's broadband outages in July has led to concern about the resilience of the UK's national digital infrastructure...