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Ireland’s cybersecurity watchdog publishes new guidance for businesses

Ireland’s National Cyber Security Centre has published guidance on cybersecurity for Irish businesses. It’s a welcome addition to the roster of material available to help organisations to develop or refine their security strategy. The team at BH Consulting has picked out key points from the guide, and added some more context and analysis.

The report’s non-technical language show that it’s clearly intended for a wide audience. In a move that’s doubtless designed to help spread the message widely, the document presents its 12 steps in three formats: as an infographic (see below), on a single page of text, and then as longer descriptions for each step.

Preparing for ‘when’, not ‘if’

Reading through the guide, it’s striking how it starts from the premise that attacks are already going on. As the introduction makes clear:

“Cyberattacks make headlines on a daily basis. It’s no longer a question of if your company will be breached, or even when, it’s likely to have happened already. The real question is whether you will know and are you prepared?”

This language echoes the Central Bank of Ireland’s 2016 guidance which warned about this risk in similarly stark terms. “Firms should assume that they will be subject to a successful cyber-attack or business interruption”, the bank said.

A resilient approach to security

The NCSC’s high-level document aims to make businesses more resilient to security incidents. That’s an approach we can all get behind. In several blogs from last year, we looked at this very issue through a business and risk lens. In one post, Brian Honan suggested a four-step process to improving resilience:

  • Identify key systems and services for your business
  • Look at the key risks and threats to those services
  • Based on that risk analysis, identify the key areas to address such as single points of failure, inter-reliance of systems and interdependency of systems
  • Engineer ways to mitigate the impact of any potential failure, either through cybercrime or other means.

Looking back, it’s interesting how many of the themes overlap with the NCSC guidance. As we noted at the time, this is about thinking of security as a business problem, not a technological one.

Obviously, businesses still need to put effort into preventing certain types of attacks and security incidents. But it’s arguably even more important to put measures in place to keep the business running no matter what. Resilience takes many forms: after attackers defaced the website for the Luas, the tram service kept running but it took nearly a month for the site to reopen.

The Irish National Cyber Security Centre’s 12-step activity plan.

Rather than advising a ‘big bang’ culture change to embrace security, the guide suggests using the steps as an activity plan to undertake over a 12-month period. The report spends a lot of time at a high level before getting into specific actions to take, or naming particular tools to use. In fact, the first five steps don’t look in-depth at technology. Instead, they’re about orienting a business to think about security in a systematic way.

Steps 1-4

The guide is free to download from here. Step one covers governance and organisation: that means getting senior management support for a cybersecurity plan. Next comes the step of identifying the assets that matter most. (This is a broad list, covering everything from business goals, products, and services through to people, processes technology and data infrastructure underpinning them.) The steps then follow through to identifying threats and defining risk appetite.

Steps 5-6

Interestingly, the document advises focusing on education and awareness before it covers basic technical protections. These include secure configuration, patch management, firewalls, anti-malware, removable media controls, remote access controls, and encryption.

(For organisations that prefer to skip directly to this step, the guide offers a ‘minimum baseline’ of essentials protection that includes boundary firewalls, secure configuration, patch management, malware protection, encryption and access controls.)

Steps 7-11

Step seven involves setting up the ability to monitor for suspicious activity. In another nod to the broad mix of businesses this advice applies to, the guide notes that security monitoring can range from a basic alerting system through to a more sophisticated security operations centre.

The subsequent steps cover putting in place post-incident measures. They include having a formal cyber incident management team, establishing recovery plans, and implementing extra protections to supplement the basic controls. Step 11 advises running a mocked-up exercise to test how the management would react to a security breach.

Step 12 and context

The lifecycle finishes on creating an ongoing cyber risk management lifecycle. This twelfth and final action needs to be part of ‘business as usual’, the NCSC advises. The guide strikes a fair balance between useful advice and appealing to the broadest possible audience. The ‘practical considerations’ page, which isn’t part of the 12 steps, lays out the message in simple terms. A company’s level of security will vary depending on lots of factors like the potential threats that affect it the most, the level of risk it’s prepared to accept, and the amount of budgetary and people resources it can afford to allocate.

Valerie Lyons, chief operations officer with BH Consulting, says the guide provides a really good grouping of the various areas in which to approach cyber resilience. However, she feels some areas need clarification. For example, using months as a measure could be misleading. “Identifying what matters most can take a day in a small accounting office, and take a year in a large hospital. If we take May for instance, ‘focus on education and awareness’, this should in fact be a throughout-the-year activity engrained throughout every step. However, the steps by virtue of their month-by-month presentation allow a plan to be developed,” Valerie says.

Beyond the guide: extra steps

It’s arguable that the step of creating a cyber risk management lifecycle, which the guide puts in December, should in fact be in January. “We should determine up front what the regulatory landscape looks like and the resources required to achieve it,” Valerie says.

The guide would also benefit from clear definitions of cyber resilience, and what cyber risk means to the organisation. Instead of only focusing on the threat of external attacks, businesses should weigh up the risk from their own users’ accidental or deliberate actions.

As well as the practical steps in the guide, Valerie says organisations can also run tests, red teaming exercises, and table-top scenarios to test their security. Lastly, she recommends that businesses should manage cyber risk like all other risks, and it should be led by the chief risk officer, or risk unit.

The Irish NCSC report is a welcome addition to a growing crop of business-focused security advice from trusted, independent sources. There’s a wealth of free material for businesses of all sizes that are only starting to get the security message. ENISA, the European Union agency for network and information security, regularly publishes advice which you can find here. Similarly, The UK National Cyber Security Centre also publishes excellent, easy-to-read advice. Think of it as a form of public immunisation. The more organisations are vaccinated against the most common security risks, the safer we’ll all be.

The post Ireland’s cybersecurity watchdog publishes new guidance for businesses appeared first on BH Consulting.

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Security for startups: why early-stage businesses can’t neglect this risk

In the early days of a startup, it’s easy to get caught up in the buzz of building a new business. Keeping so many plates spinning – from
fundraising and hiring to shipping product – can mean security sometimes falls off the priority list. But in the face of ever-rising volumes of data breaches and security incidents, it’s a subject that early-stage companies can’t afford to ignore.

That was one of the key themes from a wide-ranging discussion at Dogpatch Labs, the tech incubator in Dublin’s docklands. The speaker was Todd Fitzgerald, an information security expert and Dogpatch member. His ‘fireside chat’, as the event organisers dubbed it, looked at why no company is too small to develop a cybersecurity strategy.

Pragmatic approach

Todd shared insights into a pragmatic approach to cybersecurity strategy and the implications of recent security and privacy breaches. “Any company that doesn’t have cybersecurity as one of their top five risks is really not addressing cybersecurity,” he said.

Recent ransomware outbreaks have shown cybercrime’s huge impact, no matter the size of the victim. FedEx and Maersk each suffered $300 million in damages from the NotPetya ransomware. Data breaches are a growing risk. In 2005, there were an estimated 55 million reported breaches in the US. Now, that figure is somewhere close to 1.4 billion. As Todd pointed out, those are only the ones we know about because victims have reported them.

Startups, in tech especially, often rely heavily on data but that brings added responsibility. “If you don’t know where your data is and you don’t know the privacy laws around it, how can you give any kind of assurance [to customers] that you’re protecting that?” asked Todd.

Strategy vs execution

The moderator asked the obvious question: why should startups care about cybersecurity when they’re concerned about getting product out the door? Financial loss due to ransomware is one reason, and there are many other common security issues a startup needs to think about. Protecting valuable intellectual property is critical. If a startup’s bright idea falls into the wrong hands, a competitor could reverse engineer the code and bring out a copycat product in another market. “It’s the same issues, just the scale is different,” Todd said.

Startup teams can change quickly while the business is still evolving, so another risk to watch is staff turnover. Without proper authentication, ex-employees could still have access to confidential files after they leave the company. Simple carelessness is another potential threat: someone might accidentally delete important code from a server. Startups need to put incident response processes in place in case the worst happens. “There is business benefit to having good security,” Todd said.

For founders with no infosecurity experience, Todd also offered advice on protecting an early-stage company on a shoestring budget. He recommended speaking to an independent consultant who can advise on a cybersecurity strategic plan that reflects the business priorities.

Starting on security

Startup founders can start to familiarise themselves with the subject by reading cybersecurity frameworks like ISO 27001. The information security standard costs around €150 to buy, is easy to read and is suitable for companies of any size. “Walk through it and ask yourself: ‘would I be protected against these cybersecurity threats?’ That will probably prompt you to do a vulnerability assessment against your environment,” he said.

Todd Fitzgerald has more than 20 years’ experience in building, leading and advising information security programmes for several Fortune 500 companies. He has contributed to security standards and regularly presents at major industry conferences. A published author, he wrote parts of his fourth and most recent book, CISO COMPASS: Navigating Cybersecurity Leadership Challenges with Insights from Pioneers, in Dublin.

The post Security for startups: why early-stage businesses can’t neglect this risk appeared first on BH Consulting.

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Nine for 2019: New Year tips for cybersecurity and privacy professionals

A new year is almost upon us, and that means one thing: resolutions. Easily made, even more easily broken, they’re nevertheless a useful way of setting goals for the next 12 months. We asked Brian Honan, Tracy Elliott, Sarah Clarke, Valerie Lyons and David Prendergast to share their tips for information security practitioners and privacy professionals. Here’s what you can do differently or better to protect your organisation and its critical data in 2019.

1 Attend security conferences

The first resolution is to attend at least two cybersecurity conferences this coming year. Choose the events well, and they can be a great source of knowledge and learning to apply in the daily security role. “It’s important to pick conferences that you feel will help you learn, not a vendor event that’s about how great their products are. Look for conferences that provide independent speakers, or topics on areas of interest to you,” says Brian.

Another reason to go to more conferences is the valuable opportunity to network with peers. “Sometimes we learn more from talking to others thanfrom training courses or reading articles,” adds Brian.

2 Collaborate more with your peers

Resolve to take key business leaders in your organisation out to lunch, to discuss the challenges they face and understand how security can help them to address those challenges. Those lunchtime conversations can uncover important business needs. For example, HR might have difficulty retaining staff. Devising a secure way to let certain employees work remotely, or from home, could help employee retention rates without putting sensitive data at risk. Similarly, the marketing department might need a way of exchanging large documents and files with external design houses or ad agencies. But how is this possible if the company restricts mailbox sizes and blocks file sharing platforms like Dropbox?

These lunches can help to position the security function as a business enabler, not an obstacle to getting things done. It’s about finding workable solutions that maintain security because otherwise, people will find their own workarounds – and that introduces risk. “When you meet with your business peers, you can better understand their challenges. It becomes about how I as a security professional support that business objective while protecting the company’s key assets. Rather than ‘no”, the security practitioner says ‘yes, but’. Or better still, ‘yes and this is how we recommend you do it’,” says Brian.

3 Rest up

Brian’s third tip for security practitioners is to try and sleep more. By his own admission, it’s slightly tongue-in-cheek but there’sa serious point behind it. There’s a growing conversation around the high levels of fatigue and stress in the profession, leading to burnout. “To be effective, we need to look after our own personal health. It’s important to take steps to ensure we can keep ourselves in the best condition to do our jobs. It’s trying to make sure you’re compliant as well as your security programme,” Brian advises.

4 Get Detailed on Privacy Regulations [GDPR]

Turning to privacy, Tracy Elliott predicts 2019 will see activity around the General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR] move from theory to practice. “A lot of 2018 was about writing data protection policies and putting governance structures in place. The next 12 months will focus on training people in specific jobs in what they need to know about data protection,” she says. 

The responsibility for training and awareness falls to an organisation’s designated data protection officer (DPO). That ranges from simple things like posters in staff canteens to help refresh people’s memory about, and awareness of, GDPR. Then DPOs should identify key roles in an organisation,who need tailored data protection training that reflects their specific job. For example, a nursing home healthcare assistant needs to know about speech privacy as part of protecting sensitive patient information.

5 Batten down for Brexit

Even as confusion surrounds Brexit, it’s time to plan for whatever the outcome might be. (Insert your own joke about seeing the words ‘Brexit’ and ‘plan’ in the same postcode, let alone the same sentence.)

Sarah Clarke points out that a future adequacy agreement is not certain between the UK and the EU. It’s possible that in the event of a no-deal Brexit, the UK will become a third country outside of the EEA. That would mean all transfer of data between Ireland and the UK will be considered as international transfers.

With this in mind, Tracy Elliott says data protection officers should review their organisation’s processing activities. They should identify what data they are transferring to the UK, and whether that includes data about EU citizens. “Consider your options of using a contract or possibly changing that supplier. If your data is hosted on servers in the UK, contact your hosting partner and find out what options are available,” she says.

Larger international companies may already have data sharing frameworks in place, but SMEs that routinely deal with UK, or that havesubsidiaries in the UK, might not have considered this issue yet. All communication between them, even if they’re part of the same group structure, will need to becovered contractually for data sharing. “There are five mechanisms for doing this, but the simplest and quickest way to do this is to roll out model contract clauses [MCCs]. They are a set of guidelines issued by the EU,” Tracy advises.

6 Plan for all outcomes

Here’s where contingency planning is vital. “Use of MCCs has its own risks as they are due an update to bring them into line with GDPR,and Privacy Shield [the EU-US data transfer mechanism] is still on trial,” Sarah warns. However in the short term, MCCs fits the bill both for international transfers between legal entities in one organisation, and for transfers between different organisations. “For intra-group transfers, binding corporate rules are too burdensome to implement ‘just in case’. You can switch if the risk justifies it when there is more certainty,” she adds.

Sarah points out that regulators won’t tolerate inactivity. That said, they may grant some leeway if an organisation decides on a particular approach and documents its reason for doing so – even if that approach needs to change later. In other words, doing nothing is not an option – a bit like the best New Year’s resolutions.

7 Prepare beyond regulations

Valerie Lyons writes: “If we look to the US patents office, we see the top patents of 2017 fell into cloud, AI, machine learningand big data. Privacy regulation alone will not be able to address the challenges associated with many of these technologies. Gartner agrees, highlighting Digital Ethics and Privacy as one of its top trends of 2019. Privacy practitioners should familiarise themselves with digital ethics frameworks and look not just at privacy governance but information strategy and data management.”

8 Complete one thing

Sometimes, working as a security or privacy professional can feel like the circus act who keeps plates spinning. There are so many things to do, and so many places in the organisation to start mitigating risks. All the time, there’s an audience of compliance officers, auditors, regulators and bosses, waiting to see if one of the plates will drop. “Stop prevaricating. Pick one initiative and get it done, rather than starting three things and finishing none. That way, you’ve achieved something tangible you can point to. And it’s one less task on the list,” says David Prendergast.

9 Just do it

When it comes to security awareness strategy, as a certain sportswear company might say, just do it. “Don’t wait for a big budget. You don’t need huge sacks of money to explain to people what the risks are, and why they need to change behaviour,” says David. “Security professionals can often be quite shy of talking to IT people because we think they want us to fail. They don’t. They read different press, and if you just tell them the basics, you might just win some allies.” David also agrees with Brian’s point about collaborating more during 2019. “Talk to your colleagues and talk to your peers; they’re probably struggling with the same issues you are. The only daft question is the one you didn’t ask,” he says.

What resolutions have you made for 2019? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Nine for 2019: New Year tips for cybersecurity and privacy professionals appeared first on BH Consulting.

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EU Cyber Security Month roundup – advice on staying secure

During October, BH Consulting has been sharing daily advice about digital security and privacy on its social media channels as part of EU Cyber Security Month. This blog gathers together all of these tips into a single place. As each week goes by, we will keep adding to the content, in descending order. By the end of October, it will be a single resource for security advice you can share with colleagues or friends and family.

EU Cyber Security Month – tips from week four

For week four of our campaign, we looked at ways to improve online security and privacy in our personal lives. With recent social media breaches still fresh in the memory – or at least they ought to be – it’s worth reviewing privacy settings on these sites. We shared a link to Europol’s page with excellent tips for adjusting the settings on some of the most popular social channels like Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Staying with social media, our following tip covered the risk of sharing misinformation. Sometimes we do it with good intentions, but it’s always worth checking the truth with a reliable source. As Brian blogged earlier this year, the internet is a breeding ground for urban myths and untruths. “Every time we unthinkingly share false news, we’re helping them to grow and spread.”

Our Wednesday warning covered the phenomenon of scam calls, which are still very prevalent. Apart from the nuisance value, they could be criminals tricking you into divulging bank details, or stealing your money. For this tip, we shared a link to the Office for Internet Safety, which has a range of guides on ensuring a safer online environment.

Our Thursday tip urged people to watch for suspicious web addresses and scam offers. Visiting fake websites could infect your tablet, mobile or laptop with malware – or steal your data. The consumer magazine Which has some excellent advice on how to spot fraudulent websites.

Continuing the theme from our previous message, our Friday post warned of face shopping websites. That’s a year-round risk but it’s especially true in the runup to the holiday season. As our blog from last year shows, if you plan to part with your money online, make sure you only visit safe, verified websites.

EU Cyber Security Month – tips from week three

Week three of EU Cyber Security Month began with a reminder about the importance of reading. Well researched, highly regarded reports like Europol’s IOCTA (internet organised crime threat assessment) and the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report are valuable sources of intel.

Improving security culture is often a matter of taking some simple steps to improve readiness. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre looks at 10 of these areas with a series of free guides. The advice includes making security a board-level responsibility, through to implementing secure configuration and managing user privileges to stop threats.

With threats and risks changing all the time – while your organisation also adapts and grows – it’s essential to stay on top of current best practice. Our Thursday tip reminded that it’s always worth refreshing your knowledge of network and information security. We linked to a quick-fire quiz from the organisers of EU Cyber Security Awareness Month. Taking the quiz might identify areas where you can up your game.

Our fourth tip of the week was aimed at organisations with mature security controls. For those with confidence in their defences but wanting to improve, a red team exercise can identify possible weak points. Here’s our blog about the benefits of red teaming.

Now that we accept that security incidents can lead to business downtime, what can we do about it? We start by making the organisation resilient. This happens through agreed processes and careful preparation so that if the worst happens, the business can keep operating. BH Consulting CEO Brian Honan has spoken about this very topic, and that was our link for the final tip of the week.

EU Cyber Security Month – tips from week two

We kicked off week two of EU Cyber Security Month with a reminder that information security covers more than just data. Having a clean desk policy at work can protect important information in physical documents, as well as computers. Here’s a good sample policy developed by SANS Institute.

Our second tip of week two covers a key starting point for any good security plan. Knowing what data you hold helps in making choices about what level of protection it will need. (This is also an important part of privacy and data protection strategy, too.) We recently blogged about classifying data in this way, referring to IBM’s recent decision to ban USB storage keys.

Day three was a reminder that data breaches and security incidents are crimes. By reporting these cases to police, victims not only help with the investigation of their own incident, they also contribute valuable information to help law enforcement tackle cybercrime.

Next, we explained how digital forensics capability can help in tracing internal security incidents. Companies with the security resources in place can set up their own digital forensics lab without needing a large investment. Having an in-house lab allows security teams to carry out inquiries into everything from a security breach to HR issues.

Rounding out our advice for the week, we focused on the importance of risk assessment. This is where security and business goals meet. The key to developing solid risk assessment is to have a repeatable approach that guides your decisions. For this tip, we linked to David Prendergast’s excellent blog with advice on developing just such a risk assessment framework.

EU Cyber Security Month – tips from week one

Our first tip raised awareness of the need to prevent CEO fraud and fake invoice scams in your business. This is easy to do and doesn’t need technical fix; it’s just a matter of changing your business processes. Anyone with access to payment systems should check with a colleague before paying money to unfamiliar accounts. Here’s a link to a recent blog we posted about this.

Tip number two covers ransomware, which is one of the most widespread security threats today. Regularly backing up your data can help you recover from a ransomware infection. You’ll find more details here.

For our third tip of the week, we looked at phishing: one of the most effective tactics in an attacker’s arsenal. One of the best investments you can make is in security awareness: train company staff to spot fake emails.

We use so many different online services and invariably, they all ask us for a password. It’s vital to use different pass phrases a password manager when logging in to these services as securely as possible. Here are our tips on what to do – and not to do – when choosing a password.

For our last tip of week one, we covered data breaches. Unfortunately, they’re all too common and there seems to be a new incident on an almost weekly basis. Planning and preparation in advance of a possible breach means you’ll be ready to react if the worst happens. In today’s climate, you’ll be judged not on having suffered a breach but how well you respond to it. Here’s our advice for putting that plan in place.

Be sure to check back as we update the page throughout October. You can also catch the daily tips as they land by following BH Consulting on Twitter or on LinkedIn.

 

The post EU Cyber Security Month roundup – advice on staying secure appeared first on BH Consulting.

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BH Consulting marks EU Cyber Security Month with daily tips on staying secure

October is EU Cyber Security Month and to mark the occasion, BH Consulting will be sharing advice about digital security and privacy. Every working day during October, we’ll post useful information on our Twitter feed and on our LinkedIn page.

These short tips will draw attention to common security risks and threats that many of us face. We’ll be using various hashtags as appropriate, including #CyberSecMonth, #Cybersecuritymonth2018 #cyberaware, #cyberhygiene and #saferinternet4EU. (We also recommend you visit the official website for the EU-wide awareness campaign, at www.cybersecuritymonth.eu.)

Staying secure at work and in the home

The themes we plan to cover include staying secure in the workplace by preventing CEO fraud, ransomware, phishing and spam. As the month goes on, we’ll also give advice you can pass on to family members about protecting personal information and using digital technology securely.

Many of our posts will link to blogs we have written or to other open source security awareness material. At the end of each week, we’ll round up those tips into a post which we’ll publish here on our blog. This will be a ‘living’ post about EU Cyber Security Month that we’ll keep adding to as each week passes during October.

Please like and share widely to help us spread the word and improve security awareness for everyone. And a quick reminder: we also publish a monthly newsletter for information security professionals and people working in related roles. You can sign up for the newsletter

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