cyber – Page 4 – PwnDefend

Current State Cyber Challenges and why communication is important

Currently I’d list some of the major challenges we face as a civilisation as the following (clearly not exhaustive etc.)

The general population largely don’t understand cyber
Lots of people think there is nothing they can really do
People have shockingly bad personal cyber security
A large number of organisations have shockingly poor cyber security postures
People’s passwords are often ridiculously weak
People re-use passwords all the time
People seem to believe we have “magic nation state cyber shields”
Organisation’s largely do not invest adequately in cyber security

News

Cyber News Today

Another day in the life o’cyber! There’s probably new exploits, new vulnerabilities, new updates and industry changes galore but here’s some highlights from the day!

Hacking

Office 365/Azure Pentest Tools

I’m not going to talk about these… yet… and there’s duplicates because I think it’s useful to see where they can be used in different scenarios. Expect this list to grow!

Defense

Defending Against Direct Authentication Attacks in Microsoft Office 365

Whilst conducting security testing and assurance activities, I went looking to show logon events in Office 365. My first query was on IdentityEvents, this led to a view of a multi month attack by a threat actor/s against a tenent, followed by exploring the rabbit hole of logs and computer systems. This blog summarises some of the methods and findings when considering threat hunting and authentication defences for Office 365. (bear with me I am tired so this might need a bit of a tune up later!)

Guides

Cyber Essentials for Ubuntu Servers

I thought about doing a step by step bash script or CLI walkthrough but decided to go with the high levels steps. If we wanted to ensure our Linux servers are configured in alignment with Cyber Essentials what are the main areas we need to consider? For this I’m using Ubuntu Server as a base, I’ve not gone through every line in the standard but these should be in line with the 5 areas and fit within the Cyber Essentials theme. As always there are many ways to skin a cat! (don’t skin cats they are frens!). Anyway hope this is useful.

Leadership

What is a “Winning Cyber Security Strategy”?

A winning cyber security strategy should have several key components.

First, it should involve a thorough assessment of your organization’s current security posture, including identifying any potential vulnerabilities or weaknesses. This assessment should be ongoing, with regular updates to ensure that your security measures are keeping pace with the evolving threat landscape.

Education

Enterprise Technology Generalisations

I’ve waked around one of two organisations, across a load of verticals and well I see people post things online about common technology generalisations and frankly it sometimes leaves me wondering what networks they have been in, but also am I just on another planet? So, I thought I would jot down some notes on common tech I see in orgs during my business travels but also on in the ciberz! It’s not a list of everything I see, it’s just what appears in my head as quite bloody common.

Leadership

How to not lose your job as a CISO

A mRr3b00t Adventure

Join me on an adventure of rambling and exploring the idea that you can in fact not lose the security leadership game! This blog is WIP, it’s just my brain wondering around the question of: can we win the in the face of a seemingly insurmountable force? What do we do as a security leader to protect ourselves and the organisation? How do we start?

Leadership

UK laws and cyber security considerations for business

I am not a legal export! Haha get used to saying that a lot if you work in cyber and are not in fact a legal expert! I wanted to put together a list of common laws that people should be aware of when doing business in the UK, it’s just a starter for 10 and there are likely others, but this should get people started for their security awareness and security policy documentation:

Data Protection Act 2018
Freedom of Information Act
Communications Act
Computer Misuse Act 1990
Investigatory Power Act 2016 (IPA)
Theft Act 1990
Terrorism Act 2000
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR)
The Regulation of Investigatory privacy Act 2000 (RIPA)
Official Secrets Act 1989 (OSA)
Companies Act 2006
Copyright and Design patents Act 198
Trademarks Act 1994
The Malicious Communication Act 1988
Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981
Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984
Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999
Fraud Act 2006
Network and Information Systems Regulations 2018 (NIS)
Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021
The Bribery Act 2010
Freedom of Information Act 2000
Defence of the Realm Act 1914

can you think of any others that I should add?

Thanks Gary and Kevin and the other AVIS I can’t name for inputting!

Education

Information Security Risk Management

I wrote this in 2018 and don’t believe it ever made it to the interwebs, so I’m basically posting as is with an extra section for some useful links! Hopefully it still stands the test of time!

Risk Management doesn’t have to be risky!

Risk assessments are complex, they require cross domain knowledge and generally do not deal in absolutes. Threats, vulnerabilities and asset intelligence is combined, weighed and assessed, leading to the construct of a risk assessment document. It can be easy to overcomplicate this process, which in turn (in my experience) often leads to far wider reaching consequences (the business starts to bypass security management or take short cuts), so I thought I would write a short post to clarify what I’ve seen work out in the field. So, to start with let’s try and align on what exactly a risk is.