Cybersecurity Expert

Cybersecurity is not a One-Stop-Shop Boris Johnson announced the Government’s roadmap to lift Coronavirus restrictions for both businesses and the general public earlier in February, and since then, this has provided a glimmer of hope for many across the country. However, since the start of the pandemic, the way business is conducted has changed permanently, with many workforces wanting to continue to work remotely as lockdowns and restrictions ease over time. So, as companies relax and rules are eased, life is expected to return to a form of ‘new normal.’ But, the issues around cybersecurity are here to stay, and the gas pedal must not be eased – especially with the increased risks associated with continued remote working. If anything, security should be more reinforced now than ever before to ensure all aspects of a business are secure. But this isn’t the case. Steve Law, CTO, Giacom and Kelvin Murray, Threat Researcher, Webroot, detail the importance of embedding a trilogy securi...

Which Is Better? A Vulnerability Scan Or A Penetration Test? Vulnerability scanning and penetration tests are two very different ways to test your system for any vulnerabilities. Despite this, they are often confused about the same service, which leads to business owners purchasing one service when they are really in need of the other. In an effort to help these business owners tell the difference between the two services and understand which is best suited to their needs, SecureTeam , a cybersecurity consultancy, has written this guide to explain vulnerability scans vs. penetration testing. In a brief summary, a vulnerability scan is an automated, high-level test that looks for and reports potential vulnerabilities in your system. A penetration test, on the other hand, is a detailed hands-on examination by a cybersecurity professional that tries to detect and exploit weaknesses in your system. Now, let’s look a little deeper at the two services. What is a Vulnerability Scan? Vulnerabi...

Article by  Beau Peters For better or worse, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we work and our corresponding cybersecurity needs. Now, millions of us across the world are adapting to remote work. And this requires securing our networks for the new normal of IT infrastructures. Surprisingly, a large portion of cyberattacks can be best prevented by reducing the risks to a remote workforce created by human error. Lack of employee knowledge, distraction, and neglect all can leave remote networks vulnerable. While there is no way to guarantee against data breaches, securing the human element can help mitigate security threats and improve the integrity of your remote work systems. This article will explore not only the cost of human error but the practices you can employ to prevent it. The Cybersecurity Cost of Human Error While many security executives agree that ransomware poses the greatest threat to security infrastructure, a majority believes that human error is the greatest r...

Article by Paul German, CEO,  Certes Networks   Why is it that the security industry talks about network security, but data breaches? It’s clear that something needs to change, and according to Paul German, CEO, Certes Networks, the change is simple. For too long now, organisations have been focusing on protecting their network, when in fact they should have been protecting their data. Paul outlines three reasons why the security industry has been protecting the wrong thing and what they can do to secure their data as we move into 2021. They’re called data breaches, not network breaches, for a reason Looking back on some of the biggest data breaches the world has ever seen, it’s clear that cyber hackers always seem to be one step ahead of organisations that seemingly have sufficient protection and technology in place. From the  Adobe data breach  way back in 2013 that resulted in 153 million user records stolen, to the  Equifax data breach  in 2017 that exp...

Guest article by Sean Everson, Chief Technology Officer at Certes Networks In today’s increasingly complex cyber landscape, it is now more important than ever for organisations to be able to analyse contextual data in order to make informed decisions regarding their network security policy. This is not possible without network observability. Organisations can now see inside the whole network architecture to explore problems as they happen. Observability is a property of the network system and should not be confused with visibility which provides limited metrics for troubleshooting. With observability, organisations can make the whole state of the network observable and those limitations no longer exist. Observability provides the contextual data operators need to analyse and gain new and deeper insights into the network. This enables teams to proactively make more informed decisions to improve network performance and to strengthen their overall security posture because context is now...

Bruce Schneier summed it up best in 1999 when he said " C omplexity is the Worst Enemy of Security" in an essay titled A Plea for Simplicity , correctly predicting the cybersecurity problems we encounter today. The IT industry has gone through lots of changes over the past few years, yet when it comes to cybersecurity, the mindset has remained the same. The current thinking around cybersecurity falls into the definition of insanity, with many organisations doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, and are then shocked when their company is the latest to hit the hacking headlines. The current security model is broken and is currently too complex. As Paul German, CEO, Certes Networks , argues, it’s time to strip network security back and focus on the data.  What should Organisations Really be Protecting? Ultimately, by overcomplicating network security for far too long, the industry has failed - which won’t come as a surprise to many. We’ve ...

Yahoo announced the largest ever data breach in history, with over 1 billion Yahoo user accounts compromised by a past cyber attack, which I covered in  Yahoo's Mind-blowing One Billion Data Theft Hack . This truly humongous data hack is distinct from the 2014 breach of 500 million accounts reported by Yahoo in September. Elsewhere KFC, Topps, The Daily Motion and LinkedIn’s Lynda.com also reported large customer data breaches of millions of records during December.  We need to be mindful of never to "get use to" and accepting these massive numbers of hacked online accounts, by businesses we entrust with our personal information, especially where these businesses have been found 'wanting' on the cyber security defences by under investing. The old spin doctor excuses of indefensible super hacks orchestrated by sophisticated nation-state backed dark forces tends not to stand up once the facts are uncovered. There is nothing sophisticated about ...

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

The explosion in the number of connected devices on the Internet, as fuelled with more users worldwide getting cheap access to net, now over 3.2 billion users, and the rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), means the Internet is fast running out of IP addresses. IP addresses are important on the World Wide Web and every internet-enabled device has at least one IP address. Unfortunately, the current IP addressing system has a limited number of IP addresses, which means they’ll soon be running out. This outdated system, IPv4 was deployed more than three decades ago and it is still in use. IPv6 is an improvement on IPv4 and it’s seen as its replacement since it offers almost an infinite number of IP addresses. The New Jersey Institute of Technology has created and asked I share an excellent Infographic on How Engineers can insure the web doesn't run out of IP Addresses, comparing IPv4 to IPv6 .   To learn more, checkout the New Jersey Institute of Technol...

Irish based Exigent Networks has produced the following Infographics on Building a Network Infrastructure.  The graphic outlines the steps that need to be taken in building a network infrastructure, detailing each part of the process, while also advising as to the benefits of having a quality network infrastructure in place, and provides security tips. Considering all the security requirements at the design stage is far cheaper, and indeed results in a more secure network infrastructure, as opposed to trying to bolt on security to a poorly designed network. Also remember keeping the network infrastructure secure is an ongoing process, vulnerability testing, patching systems and devices, including switches, firewalls and routers, requires a continued process.   http://www.exigentnetworks.ie/solutions/managed-services/ .

I have written the following article for IBM which was published today on  IBM Development Works . https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/iot-security-best-practices-iot-apps/ The Internet of Things is changing the way that businesses operate, especially in the areas of warehousing, transportation, and logistics. These changes make the security of IoT devices even more crucial, given the time and money that is required if a hacker breaks through the defenses. This article outlines the best practices for securely developing robust IoT solutions.

The big danger of firewall deployments within a complex dynamic network infrastructure (a typical enterprise) is you end up with placebo network security. It is a problem that creeps in with each firewall rule change over the course of time. No one ever seems to be concerned when adding a new rule to a firewall ruleset, but removing a rule is a fearful business, so often it is not risked, so not to break anything.  The g eneral adhoc adding of rules without first understanding the entire ruleset is what seriously weakens firewall security, it makes rulesets hard to understand and can mushroom into an ineffective firewall configuration. So instead of allowing a network range through on specific set of ports as a single rule, you end up with tens of rules allowing individual IPs each on a specific port. I have seen firewall rulesets with thousands of unnecessary individual rules, caused by a combination of poor firewall management, lack of change control...

The standard information security management doctrine is to consider the internal IT infrastructure as a secure trusted zone, free from any malicious third party compromise. But the reality is different, as network intrusions, malware infections, data thefts and other malicious activities are not being detected within most UK business networks. According to the Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report , 100% of business networks analyzed by Cisco, have traffic going to websites that host malware. Sophisticated and expensive security monitoring may well be implemented to detect malicious activity, but in my experience, monitoring and alerting systems are often poorly configured and not correctly base-lined. This results in the security staff being bombarded with a steady stream of false positive alerts, which completely hampers their ability to spot actual attacks. Security monitoring can also lure the business into a false sense of security, take File Integrity Monitoring (FIM), an excel...

I was privileged to speak at the SC Congress in London today. I was asked to talk about my views on Point of Sale (POS) credit card data breaches which had recently occurred stateside, the role of PCI DSS compliance with such breaches, and whether the UK could expect similar breaches despite widespread adoption of Chip & Pin (EMV), and what are the lessons to be learnt.  The following is a summary of what I said. In the United States there has been a number of high profile Point of Sale (POS) credit card data breaches, occurring at around seven shopping chains towards the end of last year. The most provident of these breaches was at Target, where hackers stole an estimated 40 million credit card details.   The hackers managed to load credit card data stealing malware onto Target’s POS systems, in each of Target’s 1800 stores. It is one of the largest and most sophisticated data breaches the payment card industry has ever seen. As Target cashiers swiped cus...

Curiosity successfully landed on Mars today, and an amazing feat of engineering, many congratulations to all the engineers and scientists involved at NASA for what could prove to be one of the most ground breaking space missions in human history. Curiosity is the latest, biggest and most sophisticated NASA rover to make it to the read planet, and like it's predecessors is controlled from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. NASA JPL sends instructions and receiving communications to the Curiosity Rover using either X band (radio waves), and also by relaying communication through one of the two spacecraft in orbit around Mars, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Odyssey Orbiter, using UHF Electra-Lite. NASA JPL use the Deep Space Network (DSN), a series of  large antenna  dishes across the Earth, to send and receive these communications directly with Curiosity and with the two spacecr...