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How to Create a Security Culture at the Workplace
October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month(NCSAM) which is designed to engage and educate public and private sector partners through events and initiatives to raise awareness about cybersecurity,
I’ve been asked to share my views on creating a security culture at the workplace with The State of Security.
I believe the goal is not to teach tricks, but to create a new culture which is accepted and understood by everyone. In order to effectively do so, messages need to be designed and delivered according to each type of employee: there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all security campaign. Questions that must always be answered include: What are the benefits? What does it matter or why should I care? What impact do my actions have?
Security campaigns must discard scare tactics such as threatening employees with sanctions for breaches. Campaigns should be oriented towards the users’ goals and values, as well as the values of the organisation, such as professionalism and delivery.
A security campaign should emphasise that employees can cause serious damage to an organisation when they engage in non-compliant behaviour, even if it appears to be in an insignificant way. They should understand that they are bearing some responsibility for the security of the organisation and its exposure to risk.
Furthermore, the entire organisation needs to perceive security as bringing value to the company, as opposed to being an obstacle preventing employees from doing their job. It is important for employees to understand that they contribute to the smooth and efficient operation of business processes when they follow recommended security practices, just as security enables the availability of resources that support these processes.
The Psychology of Information Security Culture
In order to reduce security risks within an enterprise, security professionals have traditionally attempted to guide employees towards compliance through security training. However, recurring problems and employee behaviour in this arena indicate that these measures are insufficient and rather ineffective.
Security training tends to focus on specific working practices and defined threat scenarios, leaving the understanding of security culture and its specific principles of behaviour untouched. A security culture should be regarded as a fundamental matter to address. If neglected, employees will not develop habitually secure behaviour or take the initiative to make better decisions when problems arise.
In my talk I will focus on how you can improve security culture in your organisation. I’ll discuss how you can:
- Understand the root causes of a poor security culture within the workplace
- Aligning a security programme with wider organisational objectives
- Manage and communicate these changes within an organisation
The goal is not to teach tricks, but to create a new culture which is accepted and understood by everyone. Come join us at the Security Awareness Summit on 11 Nov for an amazing opportunity to learn from and share with each other. Activities include show-n-tell, 306 Lightening Talks, video wars, group case studies and numerous networking activities. Learn more and register now for the Summit.
Risk management fundamentals
The focus of many of my projects is on risks. I’ve observed through multiple assessments in various companies and industries a lack of formalised risk management process. Some of the plans may exist but they are not linked to specific risks and risk reduction levels are not being measured and reported on appropriately.
The security function can be effective in responding to incidents but the strategic risk-driven planning is often missing. The root cause of this state of affairs is often can be generalised as low maturity of the security function. If that’s the case, the team spends most of its time fighting fires and have little capacity to address the challenges that cause these fires in the first place.
To address this, I assess current state of the security function, define the target maturity level and then develop a high-level roadmap to achieve that desired state.
If the company is geographically distributed, noticeable differences usually exist between a number of business units in terms of overall policy framework. The suggestion here is to define a baseline level of security controls across the entire enterprise. The first step in defining these is to understand what we are trying to protect – the assets.
Modern corporations own a wide range of assets that enable them to operate and grow. They broadly include physical and non-physical assets, people and reputation. Engagement from appropriate parts of the business to identify these is important here as potential attacks to these assets might negatively affect the operations.
By understanding the assets we are able to better identify risks, enable effective detection and response, and prioritise controls and remediation efforts better.
It also helps to conduct a bottom-up review of assets to understand what exactly we’ve got there, focusing on the most critical ones and creating and updating asset inventories.
Understanding the asset base and setting standards and guidance for protecting them will focus the efforts and help you prevent and better respond to security issues.
Assets are tightly linked to threat actors, because it’s not enough to know what we need to protect – we also need to know what we are protecting our assets against. Threat actors vary in their motivation and ability and – depending on the company – include nation states, organised crime, insiders, hacktivist, competitors, etc.
A combination of assets and threats helps us to define risks.
Identifying risks and placing them on a heat map helps determine the inherent, residual and target risks. Inherent risks show the level of risk assuming all the controls or remediating measures were absent or failing. Think of it as if security function didn’t exist. It’s not a happy place where we see the majority of risks have high impact and likelihood being in the top right hand side corner of the chart.
Luckily, security function does exist and even if they don’t have a formalised risk management process, they are usually doing a good job in addressing some of these risks.
Current level of risk is taking into account all the controls and remediating measures in place. The initial impact and likelihood is usually reduced and sometimes to an acceptable level agreed by the business. The idea here is although further reduction of impact and likelihood is possible, it might not be cost-effective. In other words, the money might be better spent in addressing other risks.
Target risks is the future state risk level once additional controls and remediation measures are implemented by the security team.
The main takeaway here is that a formalised risk management approach (with accompanying processes and policies) is needed to ensure all risks are identified and tracked over time, and the appropriate resources and efforts are spent on the top priority risks.
How to conduct a cyber security assessment
I remember conducting a detailed security assessment using the CSET (Cybersecurity Evaluation Tool) developed by the US Department of Homeland Security for UK and US gas and electricity generation and distribution networks. The question set contained around 1200 weighted and prioritised questions and resulted in a very detailed report.
Was it useful?
The main learning was that tracking every grain of sand is no longer effective after a certain threshold.
The value add, however, came from going deeper into specific controls and almost treating it as an audit where a certain category is graded lower if none or insufficient evidence was provided. Sometimes this is the only way to provide an insight into how security is being managed across the estate.
Why?
What’s apparent in some companies – especially in financial services – is that they conduct experiments often using impressive technology. But have they made it into a standard and consistently rolled it out across the organisation? The answer is often ‘no’. Especially if the company is geographically distributed.
I’ve done a lot of assessments and benchmarking exercises against NIST CSF, ISO 27001, ISF IRAM2 and other standards since that CSET engagement and developed a set of questions that cover the areas of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.
I felt the need to streamline the process and developed a tool to represent the scores nicely and help benchmark against the industry. I usually propose a tailor-made questionnaire that would include 50-100 suitable questions from the bank. From my experience in these assessments, the answers are not binary. Yes, a capability might be present but the real questions are:
- How is it implemented?
- How consistently it is being rolled out?
- Can you actually show me the evidence?
So it’s very much about seeking the facts.
As I’ve mentioned, the process might not be the most pleasant for the parties involved but it is the one that delivers the most value for the leadership.
What about maturity?
I usually map the scores to the CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) levels of:
- Initial
- Managed
- Defined
- Quantitatively managed and
- Optimised
But I also consider NIST Cybersecurity framework implementation tiers that are not strictly considered as maturity levels, rather the higher tiers point to a more complete implementation of CSF standards. They go through Tiers 1-4 from Partial through to Risk Informed, Repeatable and finally Adaptive.
The key here is not just the ultimate score but the relation of the score to the coverage across the estate.
I’ve been interviewed by Javvad Malik about my career in InfoSec
I’ve been interviewed by Javvad Malik about my career in Information Security. He published the interview on his website
The difference between Leron and anyone else that has ever asked for advice is his willingness to learn and take on board as much knowledge as possible and then apply it. In a few short years, not only was Leron able to complete his MSc, but he landed a job (while turning down other offers), spoke at events, and wrote a book. Achieving more in 3 years than most people do in 10.
So, the roles are now reversed. I needed to catch up with Leron and pick his brains about his journey and see what I could learn from him.
Read the full story
Pokemon Go and Security Awareness
I wrote about the games you can play to enhance your privacy and cyber security knowledge. We also talked about gamification in the security context. But how do we apply this knowledge to “gamify” security awareness efforts in you organisation?
A recent company I’ve been working with has been experimenting with their security awareness programme; in particular, they’ve designed posters to remind employees of potentially risky behaviours. They placed these posters in the areas where violations could occur: near the confidential bins or printers. They’ve invested in a memorable design and created funny-looking creatures people can relate to. For example, they’ve had something resembling an angry Twitter bird to emphasise the fact that employees should be mindful of what they share on social media. Other examples included monsters on the lookout for confidential data.
I liked the idea and I saw employees discussing the posters shortly after they were released. But what if we wanted to take this a step further? What if people could not only look at the posters but also engage with them?
The recently released and hugely popular Pokemon Go app gives us an example of how this could be done. In the game, players are encouraged to explore the real world around them and catch creatures that appear on the map. The game uses augmented reality to make the experience of catching Pokemon a lot more fun.
The app developers used classic game design elements in this game:
- There’s a ton of items to be collected, like stardust, pokeballs, various potions and eggs.
- You get frequent rewards and feedback on your progress.
- The game is very social in nature and players are encouraged to engage with each other.
- There are leadership boards and there is a chance to get your name displayed in a gym – a place where Pokemon battles take place.
How can some of the ideas from this game be applied to a security awareness programme?
What if we take the monsters from the company’s posters above and make them more engaging? It only takes a small financial investment to attach a QR code to a monster, so an employee could get immediate access to the relevant section in the security policy. Or how about giving employees a quick quiz and, if answered correctly, reward them with bonus points?
These points could be also collected for accomplishing other tasks. Your employee volunteered to participate in a security awareness presentation with her story? 100 points! Attended a lunch and learn session? How about 20 points? Reported a phishing email? Stopped a tailgater? There are many ways people can demonstrate their involvement in a security awareness programme.
As long as participation is voluntary, there are clear objectives and rules, feedback is readily available and rewards are desirable, we’ve got a chance to change security culture for the better!
Is consulting changing?
As David Maister famously puts in his timeless book The Trusted Advisor, “it’s not enough to be right, you must also be helpful”. You first need to earn your client’s trust, and with it, right to offer advice and be critical of the way things are right now.
What do clients want? You need to demonstrate that you understand them and you are transparent with them. It’s unhelpful to try and bamboozle your clients with jargon and numbers, instead tell what these numbers mean for them.
Consulting has traditionally thrived on information asymmetry: consultants used to know more than clients but this is going away. Not only do we need to shift to provide insight rather than just information, we need to disrupt our own industry to remain relevant. I’m talking, of course, about automation.
Yes, there will always be cases were clients hire consultants when they have already made up their mind and just want to rubber stamp their agenda. But these situations are becoming rare.
From my experience, clients are increasingly reluctant to pay for glossy PowerPoint decks. Managed services and post-implementation support might be some viable options to remain relevant and, therefore, profitable.
Intrusion detection in the ICS environment
There are many network traffic analysis tools out there but how many of them understand industrial protocols like Modbus, Profibus or DNP3? More importantly, how effective are these solutions in the industrial control systems environment?
In this post I would like to share a quick summary of security vendors in this domain.
Please note that this space moves quickly so the list may not be up-to-date by the time you are reading this. That being said, I hope it provides a high-level overview of vendors and capabilities in this space.
Cyber Security Leadership 