The Internet of Things, or IoT, refers to the billions of physical devices around the world that are now connected to the Internet. These include surveillance cameras, lightbulbs, medical devices, pacemakers, smartphones, home routers, thermostats, printers, control systems and pretty much any device that is connected to the Internet, all collecting and sharing data. They have sensors that detect states or movement of equipment or materials and the data acquired by the sensors are transmitted over the network to a server. Location information can be derived as well.

The explosion of IoT devices has also increased cyberattacks on them. Hackers probe and access them via http, ftp or telnet ports to check what kind of devices they are. They also check for backdoor ports. Then they gain access by logging in via telnet (the common one, although they may also use other vulnerable ports) using default or weak username and password, and sometimes using dictionary attack. Once they gain access, they will install malware. Once malware is installed, the device will be under control of the hacker’s server, and is then used for further cyberattacks.

Hackers usually control hundreds of thousands of IoT devices all around the world that are used for DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks. These DDoS attacks can cause significant impact to companies being targeted.

IoT devices are specially vulnerable because they are usually online 24/7, they don’t have security or anti-virus protection, they have weak/default login password and they have global IP addresses. Security is an afterthought of the manufacturers of these devices.

To mitigate IoT security vulnerabilities, there should be an active monitoring and alerting system that notify users when their IoT devices are vulnerable, so they can take appropriate action. Technology solutions must be established to remotely detoxify IoT malware while the original IoT functions can continue to operate. There should also be a way to remotely disable IoT device.

Companies should have a strict security controls for connecting IoT devices in their network.

Finally, the industry should develop IoT security guidelines for IoT device maker/developer, IoT service provider, and IoT device user, as well as promote international standardization.

As more and more organizations are becoming digital, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, it is imperative for businesses to build a culture of cybersecurity. This enables them to be more resilient in the face of growing cyber attacks.

Many of these organizations, especially in the manufacturing sectors, have developed a robust safety culture where every employee is trained, knowledgable, and constantly reminded of ways to stay safe and decrease the chance of accidents. But when it comes to cybersecurity, most organizations do not have a similar culture of security.

Just like building a safety culture, building a cybersecurity culture is a big undertaking and usually takes time. It involves transforming processes, changing mindset, getting support from leadership all the way to the top, and changing the way every employee works.

Many companies think that technology alone will solve cybersecurity problems. They rely on the IT department and in some cases on the security office – if one exists – to mitigate security issues. But the goal of every orgainization should be that everyone must feel personally responsible for keeping the company secure.

Building a culture of cybersecurity involves everyone’s attitudes, beliefs and values that will drive behaviors that will lead to better actions such as not clicking a link on a phishing email or not visiting an unknown website. At the heart of a culture of cybersecurity is getting every employee to execute their day-to-day activities in ways that keep the organization as secure as possible.

For more information on this topic and to gain insights on how to build a culture of cybersecurity, visit the MIT CAMS website at https://cams.mit.edu/research/

In the wake of the massive Solarwinds attack affecting major government institutions and public/private companies, the importance of securing your company’s Intellectual Property (IP) has never been more critical.

Companies should be worried that their valuable data, trade secrets, and IP are being stolen by cyber thieves, foreign hackers, and company insiders (current or former employees, partners, trusted customers, distributors, or vendors).  Stolen IP poses a significant threat to a company’s competitive advantage.  A bio-pharmaceutical company, for example, generates a ton of research/clinical data and manufacturing processes that are stored on premise and increasingly on the cloud.

Companies should protect their data.  They should learn the best practices in implementing operational and cyber security measures, instituting policies and processes, and educating end users. They should continually tweak and and re-evaluate their security practices.  They should deploy technologies that are effective in securing their data.

Attacks will only get more sophisticated and their frequency will only increase in the future. It’s better to be prepared than caught off guard.

I recently attended the virtual ISC2 Security Congress 2020. One of the keynote addresses was regarding crisis management by Harvard Kennedy School Professor Juliette Kayyem. She used to be Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security.

Crisis management is central to cybersecurity. When there is a breach or security incident, crisis management is invoked to minimize damage. A well executed crisis management program leads to a successful resolution in a short period of time.

I’d like to share this chart presented by Ms Kayyem on the five stages on how the COVID-19 was managed in the US, which is similar to the five stages of cybersecurity crisis management: Protection > Prevention > Response > Recovery > Resiliency

The keynote address can be viewed here: https://securitycongress.brighttalk.live/keynote-november-18/

As more people are forced to work from home during this pandemic, it is important to maintain a high level of security to safeguard the company’s information assets as well as its employees.  Endpoints such as laptops not connected to corporate network are more vulnerable when used at home.  Stressed out employees are more prone to social-engineering attacks.  They may visit sites that are usually blocked on a corporate firewall. Not surprisingly, this is also the best time for bad actors to take advantage of this opportunity.  

To mitigate these risks, the company’s security office should work with the IT department in implementing the following security measures:

1. Enhance user security awareness by using creative ways to make the users pay attention to the message, such as using short video instead of just sending email.  Emphasize COVID-19-themed scams and phishing email and websites.  
2. Identify and monitor high-risk user groups. Some users, such as those working with personally identifiable information (PII) or other confidential data, pose more risk than others, and their activity should be closely monitored. 
3. Make sure all laptops have the latest security patches.  Critical servers that are accessed remotely should also have the latest security patches.
4. Critical servers should only be accessed via virtual private network (VPN)
5. Users connecting to the corporate network via VPN should use multi-factor (MFA) authentication. Corporate applications in the cloud should also use MFA authentication
6. If your Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) can handle the load, users should use virtual desktops in accessing corporate applications.
7. To support the massive users working remotely, IT should add more capacity to the network bandwidth, VDI, VPNs and MFA services.
8. Validate and adjust incident-response (IR) and business-continuity (BC)/disaster-recovery (DR) plans.
9. Expand monitoring of data access and end points, since the usual detection mechanism such as IDS/IPS, proxies, etc. will not secure users working from home. 
10. Clarify incident-response protocols. When a breach occurs, security teams must know how to report and take action on it.
    
    

Source: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/our-insights/cybersecurity-tactics-for-the-coronavirus-pandemic?cid=other-eml-alt-mip mck&hlkid=cc61f434b9354af8aaf986862aa59350&hctky=3124098&hdpid=fd48c3f4-6cf9-4203-bfae-3df232c30bb7

One thing to keep in mind when putting your company’s applications in the cloud, specifically on Amazon AWS, is that you are still largely responsible for securing them. Amazon AWS has solid security in place, but you do not entrust the security aspect to Amazon thinking that your applications are totally secure because they are hosted there. In fact, Amazon AWS has a shared security responsibility model depicted by this diagram:

Source:  Amazon AWS

Amazon AWS is responsible for the physical and infrastructure security, including hypervisor, compute, storage, and network security; and the customer is responsible for application security, data security, Operating System (OS) patching and hardening, network and firewall configuration, identity and access management, and client and server-side data encryption.

However, Amazon AWS provides a slew of security services to make your applications more secure. They provide the AWS IAM for identity and access management, Security Groups to shield EC2 instances (or servers), Network ACLs that act as firewall for your subnets, SSL encryption for data transmission, and user activity logging for auditing. As a customer, you need to understand, design, and configure these security settings to make your applications secure.

In addition, there are advance security services that Amazon AWS provides, so that you don’t have to build them, including the AWS Directory Service for authentication, AWS KMS for Security Key Management, AWS WAF Web Application Firewall for deep packet inspection, and DDOS mitigation.

There is really no perfect security, but securing your infrastructure at every layer tremendously improves the security of your data and applications in the cloud.