How to inventory your AWS assets
Posted: November 12, 2019 Filed under: Cloud Computing Security, Cyber, Information Security Management, Risk Management | Tags: AWS, Cloud, Security Leave a comment
Securing your cloud infrastructure starts with establishing visibility of your assets. I’ll be using Amazon Web Services (AWS) as an example here but principles discussed in this blog can be applied to any IaaS provider.
Speaking about securing your AWS environment specifically, a good place to start is the AWS Security Maturity Roadmap by Scott Piper. He suggests identifying all AWS accounts in your organisation as a first step in your cloud security programme.
Following Scott’s guidance, it’s a good idea to check in with your DevOps team and/or Finance to establish what accounts are being used in your company. Capture this information in a spreadsheet, documenting account name, ID, description and an owner at a minimum. You can expand on this in the future to track compliance with baseline requirements (e.g. enabling CloudTrail logs).
Once we have a comprehensive view of the accounts used in the organisation, we need to find out what resources these accounts use and how they are configured. We can get metadata about the accounts using CloudMapper’s collect command. CloudMapper is a great open source tool and can do much more than that. It deserves a separate blog, but for now just check out setup instructions on its GitHub page and Scott’s detailed instructions on using the collect command.
The CloudMapper report will reveal the resources you use in all the regions (the image at the top of this blog is from the demo data). This can be useful in scenarios where employees in your company might test out new services and forget to switch them off or nobody knows what these services are used for to begin with. In either case, the company ends up paying for these, so it makes economic sense to investigate, and disabling them will also reduce the attack surface.
In addition to that, the report includes a section on security findings and will alert of potential misconfigurations on the account. It also provides recommendations on how to address them. Below is an example report based on the demo data.
As we are just establishing the view of our assets in AWS at this stage, we are not going to discuss remediation activities in this blog. We will, however, use this report to understand how much work is ahead of us and prioritise accordingly.
Of course, it is always a good idea to tackle high criticality issues like publicly exposed S3 buckets with sensitive information but don’t get discouraged by a potentially large number of security findings. Instead, focus on strategic improvements that will prevent these issues from happening in the future.
To lay the foundation for a security improvements programme at this point, I suggest adding all the identified accounts to an AWS Organisation if you haven’t already. This will simplify account management and billing and allow you to apply organisation-wide service control policies.
Security product management
Posted: November 1, 2019 Filed under: Agile, Entrepreneurship | Tags: Product management, Startup Leave a commentIn one of my previous blogs I wrote about building a security startup. Here I would like to elaborate on the product management aspect of a venture.
There are many businesses springing up in the cybersecurity space at the moment. A lot of them are developed by great technologists yet still struggle. The market conditions might be right and the product itself can be secure but it often fails to get traction.
When I’m asked why this might be and what to do about it, my immediate response is to dive deeper and understand the product management function.
In truth, it’s not enough to have a technically flawless solution, it has to align with what your customers want. Moreover, the bar in new product adoption is high. As Nir Eyal famously pointed out in his book Hooked, “for new entrants to stand a chance, they can’t just be better, they must be nine times better … because old habits die hard and new products or services need to offer dramatic improvements to shake users out of old routines. Products that require a high degree of behaviour change are doomed to fail even if the benefits of using the new product are clear and substantial.”
Thankfully, it’s not all doom and gloom – there are things you can do to overcome this challenge.
Depending on the stage of your venture, the most important question to answer is: are people using your product? If not, get to the point where customers are using your product as fast as you can. Then talk to them and learn from them. Find out what problem they are trying to solve.
Provide that solution and measure what matters (revenue, returning usage, renewal rate) and build measurement targets and mechanisms into your specifications.
Disciplined product management is there to bridge the gap between business (sales and marketing) and technology teams. As a product manager, you should support these teams with market analysis, planning, prioritisation, design and measurement based on customer feedback.
Knowledge of the customer and their needs will help define your strategic position and overarching guiding principles to support decision-making in the company.
That strategy in turn should be supported by tactical steps to achieve the vision. We are now beginning to shape actual work deliverables and help the technology teams prioritise them in your development sprints.
Principles described here are applicable in any type of organisation, it doesn’t have to be security specific. The industry you are in matters less than the company culture.
People often focus on tools when talking about product management or adopting agile development. The reality is that it’s often about the culture of collaboration. Break the silos, make sure customer feedback is guiding the development and don’t lose sight of the strategy. Your customers will love it, I promise.
GITEX Technology Week in Dubai
Posted: October 11, 2019 Filed under: Conference, Skills Development | Tags: Conference Leave a comment
I travelled to Dubai to attend the GITEX conference this year. The scope and scale of this technology event is vast. It covers all things tech with a focus on innovation, including artificial intelligence, 5G, smart cities, future mobility and much more.
It was interesting to attend talks and participate in workshops, as well as just walk the floor to better understand current technology trends.
Of course, there was also time to explore Dubai and enjoy the many things this city has to offer.
How to respond to a security incident
Posted: October 2, 2019 Filed under: Cyber, Information Security Management | Tags: Cyber, Incident response Leave a commentIn this blog I would like to outline a process of responding to a security incident, including a breach of personal data. It is intended to be high-level in nature to allow for adaptation to different types of incidents and specific needs of your organisation.
There are many definitions of a security incident out there. I prefer this one: a security incident is an attempted or successful unauthorised access, use, theft, disclosure, modification or destruction of information, or interference with or misuse of information processing infrastructure, applications and data. A personal data breach is one of the types of a security incident which occurs when personal information is subject to loss or unauthorised access, use, disclosure, copying or modification.
Cyber security in divestments
Posted: September 9, 2019 Filed under: Cyber, Information Security Management, Risk Management | Tags: Cyber Leave a comment
A company may divest its assets for a number of reasons: political, social or purely financial in order to free up resources to focus on core business. Regulators may also demand a divestment to prevent one company holding a monopoly. When such a decision is made, the security function can support the business by managing risks during this process. These risks not only include the obvious legal and regulatory compliance ones, but also risks related to business disruption and leaks of intellectual property or other sensitive information. Security teams can also help the business identify value adding opportunities through, for instance, saving costs on software licenses.
The scale of divestments vary and depend on the nature of the organisation: they can range from a single subsidiary to a whole division. Information usually accompanies physical assets, which opens up potential challenges with data governance when these assets change hands. The magnitude of such risks differ depending on specific conditions of the deal, for example:
- Number of assets is scope
- Criticality of assets
- Location of assets and applicable jurisdictions
In my experience, divestments are almost always associated with aggressive timelines for completion usually in the form of legally binding agreements. Therefore, as a security professional, the last thing you want to do is to slow down the process and prevent the business from meeting these timelines.
You need to balance this, however, with the risk exposure. It helps when the security team gets involved early to support the process from the start. All too often, however, the business can be asking for security sign-off after the finalisation of the deal. This can be disappointing, particularly when a number of data transfer requirements have already been violated.
So if you’re one of the lucky ones, and the business is asking for your advice on divesting securely, what should you tell them? What areas do you consider? Here are some examples to get you started:
- Information asset inventories and data maps. These might include data, software and infrastructure assets. You can’t help securely transfer something you don’t know exists. Start with establishing visibility and interdependencies.
- Access control. Who has access to what? Do they need that access? Will they need that access in the future? Segregation of duties and least privilege principles are not just abstract philosophical concepts – they have real applications when it comes to divestments.
- Consider legal and regulatory requirements when it comes to data asset transfer, retention and disposal. Involve your legal team, but don’t forget about technical controls, like encryption and secure data wipes.
- Availability of skilled resource and mature IT function on the ‘buy’ side. Remember, whoever is buying the assets must have their infrastructure ready to support the acquisition and integration of new assets. Despite being perceived as a ‘buyer’s problem’, risks like that can negatively impact the overall project and should be considered.
All in all, the divestment process can be challenging but the early integration of security professionals ensures the appropriate oversight is given to all relevant areas for a smooth transfer to the buyer.
Image by Jason Kuffer.
What can a US Army General teach us about security?
Posted: August 5, 2019 Filed under: Productive Security, Security Culture, Security Strategy, Team Leadership | Tags: Cyber, Productive Security, Security Awareness, Security Culture Leave a comment
General Douglas MacMarthur said “never give an order that can’t be obeyed”. This is sound advice, as doing so can diminish the commander’s authority. If people want to do what you are asking them to do, but can’t, they would doubt your judgement in the future.
Despite the fact that most of us operate in commercial organisations rather than the US Army, there are some lessons to be learned from this.
Security professionals don’t need to rally their troops and rarely operate in command-and-control environments. Their role has largely shifted to the one of an advisor to the business when it comes to managing cyber risk. Yet all too often advice they give is misguided. In an effort to protect the business they sometimes fail to grasp the wider context in which it operates. More importantly, they rarely consider their colleagues who will have to follow their guidance.
Angela Sasse gives a brilliant example of this when she talks about phishing. Security professionals expect people to be able to identify a phishing email in order to keep the company secure. Through numerous awareness sessions they tell them how dangerous it is to click on a link in a phishing email.
Although it makes sense to some extent, it’s not helpful to expect people to be able to recognise a phishing email 100% of the times. In fact, a lot of information security professionals might struggle to make that distinction themselves, especially when it comes to more sophisticated cases of spear phishing. So how can we expect people who are not information security specialists to measure up?
To make matters worse, most of modern enterprises depend on email with links to be productive. It is considered normal and part of business as usual to receive an email and click on the link in it. I heard of a scenario where a company hired an external agency and paid good money for surveying their employees. Despite advance warnings, the level of engagement with this survey was reduced as people were reporting these external emails as “phishing attempts”. The communications team was not pleased and that certainly didn’t help establish the productive relationship with the security team.
The bottom line is that if your defences depend on people not clicking on links, you can do better than that. The aim is not to punish people when they make a mistake, but to build trust. The security team should therefore be there to support people and recognise their challenges rather than police them.
After all, when someone does eventually click on a malicious link, it’s much better if they pick up the phone to the security team and admit their mistake rather than hope it doesn’t get noticed. Not only does this speed-up incident response, it fosters the role of the security professional as a business enabler, rather than a commander who keeps giving orders that can’t be obeyed.
Privacy and data protection considerations
Posted: July 2, 2019 Filed under: Compliance, Privacy | Tags: GDPR, Privacy Leave a commentIf people entrust your company with their personal data, it is your responsibility to protect it. GDPR provides a good framework even if it doesn’t apply in your geography.
Below is a list of things you can do in no particular order which I use as a cheat sheet when I start up a data protection programme in a company.
Inventory
Make an inventory of all personal data you hold. Know (and document) what and how you collect, why you collect it, who you share it with and where and how long it is being stored.
Honour the rights of individuals
Develop comprehensive processes to support data subject access requests (right to be informed through consent and notice, right to access and data portability, right to erasure, etc.).
Privacy and security by design
Make privacy, compliance and data protection considerations during product development with regular review and testing. Minimise and don’t store beyond necessary.
Technical security measures
Implement technical controls to protect customer data, for example access control, encryption, logging and monitoring.
Processes for breach response
Establish an end-to-end incident identification and response process to handle security and privacy incidents as part of the broader security strategy.
Awareness and training
Provide data protection and privacy training for staff. Extra points for regular bespoke education and awareness sessions addressing topical issues.
Data Protection Officer
Appoint a data protection officer and get legal support. Perform data identification and classification. Make conducting privacy impact assessments on new projects a habit. Involve relevant stakeholders.
Legal framework
Get on top of data protection addendums to agreements, vendor management, client consent management and cross-border transfer agreements.
