Tag Archives: CISO

How to select cyber insurance

I wrote previously about how cyber insurance can be a useful addition to your risk management program.

Unlike more established insurance products, cyber doesn’t have the same amount of historical data, so approaches to underwriting this risk can vary. Models to quantify it usually rely on a number of high-level factors (the industry your organisation is in, geography, applicable regulation, annual revenue, number of customers and employees, etc.) and questions aimed at evaluating your security capabilities.

You are usually asked to complete a self-assessment questionnaire to help the underwriter quantify the risk and come up with an appropriate policy. Make sure the responses you provide are accurate as discrepancies in the answers can invalidate the policy. It’s also a good idea to involve your Legal team to review the wording. 

While you can’t do much about the wider organisational factors, you could potentially reduce the premium, if you are able to demonstrate the level of security hygiene in your company that correlates with risk reduction.

To achieve this, consider implementing measures aimed at mitigating some of the more costly cyber risks. What can you do to prevent and recover from a ransomware attack, for example? Developing and testing business continuity and disaster recovery plans, enabling multi factor authentication, patching your systems and training your staff all make good sense from the security perspective. They can also save your business money when it comes to buying cyber insurance.

If possible, offer to take the underwriter through your security measures in more detail and play around with excess and deductibles. Additionally, higher cover limits will also mean higher premiums and these are not always necessary. Know what drives your business to get cyber cover in the first place. Perhaps, your organisation can’t afford to hire a full time incident response manager to coordinate the activities in the event of a breach or manage internal and external communication. These are often included in cyber insurance products, so taking advantage of them doesn’t necessarily mean you need to pay for a high limit. While it is tempting to seek insurance against theft of funds and compensation for business interruption, these can drive the premium up significantly. 

It’s worth balancing the cost of the insurance with the opportunity cost of investing this sum in improving cyber security posture. You might not be able to hire additional security staff but you may be able to formulate a crisis communication plan, including various notification templates and better prepare with an incident simulation exercise, if you haven’t already. These are not mutually exclusive, however, and best used in conjunction. 

Remember, risk ownership cannot be transferred: cyber insurance is not a substitute for security controls, so even the best cover should be treated as an emergency recovery measure.

Webinar: A CISO panel on weaving security into the business strategy

I had a lot of fun participating in a panel discussion with fellow CISOs exploring the link between cyber security and business strategy. It’s a subject that is very close to my heart and I don’t think it gets enough attention.

In the course of the debate we covered a number of topics, ranging from leveraging KPIs and metrics to aligning with the Board’s risk appetite. We didn’t always agree on everything but I believe that made the conversation more interesting.

As an added bonus, my book The Psychology of Information Security was highlighted as an example of things to consider while tackling this challenge and to improve communication.

You can watch the recording on BrightTalk.

How to secure a business in decline

Many business have felt the economic impact of the Covid pandemic. Depending on the industry, some managed to adapt and pivot to new models and ways of working, but not all were successful.

As a result, some companies were unable to continue to operate profitably and entered administration. The cause of financial troubles, however, doesn’t have to be pandemic-related to pose new security challenges.

In this blog I would like to share some of the priority areas for a security leader in a business in, sometimes rapid, decline.

As the business is failing, the leadership might not treat cyber security as their top priority. However, the organisation still has obligations to its customers who entrusted the company with their data and comply with relevant laws and regulations. It goes without saying that previously identified cyber security threats and risks are unlikely to disappear either.

If there is a chance of survival, a poorly managed security incident can be the last straw.

How should security teams adapt? What should they focus on?

Broadly speaking, there are two main areas a CISO can support the business: securing a potential rescue deal and managing the decline.

There are investors specialising in distressed businesses and part of the administration process might involve looking for a capital injection or an acquisition of a failing company.

Potential investors would understandably need to know what they might be buying which normally involves conducting due diligence on the target. Although circumstances are different, the process itself is very similar to an M&A scenario or a startup acquisition.

As a security leader, it’s your job to provide transparency on the matters related to data protection, past breaches and existing security controls and processes. If done right, it presents the business in a favourable light as a well-governed enterprise, increasing investors’ confidence and therefore chances of a successful rescue deal.

In many ways, this is comparable to overseeing a divestment. A lot of such conversations are confidential, so raising awareness of what can and can’t be shared externally (including on social media), and maintaining appropriate need-to-know access controls is paramount.

Some things, however, are outside of our control and sometimes all we can do is to make the best out of a bad situation.

There are a few key areas to pay attention to when it comes to embedding security for a business in downturn.

People. There will naturally be a lot of leavers, so having a robust joiner-mover-leaver process is key. All access permissions should be timely revoked when no longer required. In addition, data loss prevention controls and broader insider risks should be considered as the morale in the company worsens. On a positive note, people and a culture of security can significantly contribute to the company’s security posture, especially in the conditions of scarce resources (see next point).

Resources. Investment in security is going to understandably diminish. Some of the top talent will leave, so you will have to learn to do more with less. If your desired control to mitigate a particular risk is no longer affordable, what is the next best thing? Can this be done cheaper, or better still, for free? Business leadership should be made aware of the potential consequences of risk acceptances, and there will likely be a higher than usual number of these.

Data. There also might not be enough money to pay for non business critical systems and services. These should be decommissioned in the way that ensures that sensitive (including personal) data is destroyed securely in line with company’s retention policies. Having data maps and asset inventories is invaluable to maintain visibility.

Sustaining operational resilience in the face of cost pressure is challenging but not impossible. For many, it’s a unique learning experience regardless of the outcome.

Cyber incident readiness

As many organisations are recognising and experiencing first-hand, cyber-attacks are no longer a matter of if, but when. Recent cyber breaches at major corporations highlight the increasing sophistication, stealth, and persistence of cyber-attacks that organisations are facing today. These breaches are resulting in increased regulatory and business impact.

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One year in: a look back

In the past year I had the opportunity to help a tech startup shape its culture and make security a brand differentiator. As the Head of Information Security, I was responsible for driving the resilience, governance and compliance agenda, adjusting to the needs of a dynamic and growing business.

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About me

Thank you for visiting my website. I’m often asked how I started in the field and what I’m up to now. I wrote a short blog outlining my career progression.

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How to secure a tech startup

scrum_boardIf you work for or (even better) co-founded a tech startup, you are already busy. Hopefully not too busy to completely ignore security, but definitely busy enough to implement one of the industrial security frameworks, like the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF). Although the CSF and other standards are useful, implementing them in a small company might be resource intensive.

I previously wrote about security for startups. In this blog, I would like to share some ideas for activities you might consider (in no particular order) instead of implementing a security standard straight away. The individual elements and priorities will, of course, vary depending on your business type and needs and this list is not exhaustive.

Product security

Information security underpins all products and services to offer customers an innovative and frictionless experience.

  • Improve product security, robustness and stability through secure software development process
  • Automate security tests and prevent secrets in code
  • Upgrade vulnerable dependencies
  • Secure the delivery pipeline

Cloud infrastructure security

To deliver resilient and secure service to build customer trust.

  • Harden cloud infrastructure configuration
  • Improve identity and access management practices
  • Develop logging and monitoring capability
  • Reduce attack surface and costs by decommissioning unused resources in the cloud
  • Secure communications and encrypt sensitive data at rest and in transit

Operations security

To prevent regulatory fines, potential litigation and loss of customer trust due to accidental mishandling, external system compromise or insider threat leading to exposure of customer personal data.

  • Enable device (phone and laptop) encryption and automatic software updates
  • Make a password manager available to your staff (and enforce a password policy)
  • Improve email security (including anti-phishing protections)
  • Implement mobile device management to enforce security policies
  • Invest in malware prevention capability
  • Segregate access and restrict permissions to critical assets
  • Conduct security awareness and training

Cyber resilience

To prepare for, respond to and recover from cyber attacks while delivering a consistent level of service to customers.

  • Identify and focus on protecting most important assets
  • Develop (and test) an incident response plan
  • Collect and analyse logs for fraud and attacks
  • Develop anomaly detection capability
  • Regular backups of critical data
  • Disaster recovery and business continuity planning

Compliance and data protection

To demonstrate to business partners, regulators, suppliers and customers the commitment to security and privacy and act as a brand differentiator. To prevent revenue loss and reputational damage due to fines and unwanted media attention as a result of GDPR non compliance.

  • Ensure lawfulness, fairness, transparency, data minimisation, security, accountability, purpose and storage limitation when processing personal data
  • Optimise subject access request process
  • Maintain data inventory and mapping
  • Conduct privacy impact assessments on new projects
  • Data classification and retention
  • Vendor risk management
  • Improve governance and risk management practices

Image by Lennon Shimokawa.

Agile security. Part 2: User stories

Clickup

In the previous blog, I wrote about how you as a security specialist can succeed in the world of agile development, where the requirements are less clear, environment more fluid and change is celebrated not resisted.

Adjusting your mindset and embracing the fact that there will be plenty of unknowns is the first step in adopting agile security practices. You can still influence the direction of the product development to make it more resilient, safe and secure by working with the Product Owner and contributing your requirements to the product backlog.

Simply put, product backlog is a list of desired functionality, bug fixes and other requirements needed to deliver a viable product. There are plethora of tools out there to help manage dependencies and prioritisation to make the product owner’s job easier. The image at the top of this post is an example of one of such tools and you can see some example requirements there.

As a security specialist, you can communicate your needs in a form of user stories or help contribute to existing ones, detailing security considerations. For example, ”Customer personal data should be stored securely” or “Secure communication channels should be used when transmitting sensitive information”. Below are a couple more examples from different categories.

When writing security user stories, you should try and elaborate as much as possible on the problem you are trying to solve, what value it will provide if solved and the acceptance criteria. Each story will then have points assigned which signifies how much effort a particular functionality will require. The process of arriving to the final number is quite democratic and usually involves playing planning (sometimes also called Scrum) poker in which every developer will estimate how long each story is going to take with some discussion and eventual consensus. You can do it with an app as on the image below, or the old school way with a deck of cards. 

You don’t have to use the above number pattern, and opt-in instead for the Fibonacci sequence or T-shirt sizes.

It’s important that the security team is involved in sprint planning to contribute to the estimates and help the product owner with prioritisation. Other Scrum meetings, like backlog refinement and daily stand-ups are also worthwhile to attend to be able clarify your requirements (including value, risk, due dates and dependencies) and help remove security related impediments.

A culture of collaboration between teams is essential for the DevSecOps approach to be effective. Treating security as not something to workaround but as a value adding product feature is the mindset product and engineering teams should adopt. However, it’s up to security specialists to recognise the wider context in which they operate and accept the fact that security is just one of the requirements the team needs to consider. If the business can’t generate revenue because crucial features that customers demand are missing, it’s little consolation that security vulnerabilities have been addressed. After all, it’s great to have a secure product, but less so when nobody uses it.

Agile security. Part 1: Embedding security in your product

Board

Outline security requirements at the beginning of the project, review the design to check if the requirements have been incorporated and perform security testing before go-live. If this sounds familiar, it should. Many companies manage their projects using the waterfall method, where predefined ‘gates’ have to be cleared before the initiative can move forward. The decision can be made at certain checkpoints to not proceed further, accepting the sunk costs if benefits now seem unlikely to be realised.

This approach works really well in structured environments with clear objectives and limited uncertainty and I saw great things being delivered using this method in my career. There are many positives from the security point of view too: the security team gets involved as they would normally have to provide their sign-off at certain stage gates, so it’s in the project manager’s interest to engage them early to avoid delays down the line. Additionally, the security team’s output and methodology are often well defined, so there are no surprises from both sides and it’s easier to scale.

If overall requirements are less clear, however, or you are constantly iterating to learn more about your stakeholder’s needs to progressively elaborate on the requirements, to validate and perhaps even pivot from the initial hypothesis, more agile project management methodologies are more suitable.

Embedding security in the agile development is less established and there is more than one way of doing it. 

When discussing security in startups and other companies adopting agile approaches, I see a lot of focus on automating security tests and educating developers on secure software development. Although these initiatives have their merits, it’s not the whole story.

Security professionals need to have the bigger picture in mind and work with product teams to not only prevent vulnerabilities in code, but influence the overall product strategy, striving towards security and privacy by design. 

Adding security features and reviewing and refining existing requirements to make the product more secure is a step in the right direction. To do this effectively, developing a relationship with the development and product teams is paramount. The product owner especially should be your best friend, as you often have to persuade them to include your security requirements and user stories in sprints. Remember, as a security specialist, you are only one of the stakeholders they have to manage and there might be a lot of competing requirements. Besides, there is a limited amount of functionality the development can deliver each sprint, so articulating the value and importance of your suggestions becomes an essential skill.

Few people notice security until it’s missing, then the only thing you can notice is the absence of it. We see this time and time again when organisations of various sizes are grappling with data breaches and security incidents. It’s your job to articulate the importance of prioritising security requirements early in the project to mitigate the potential rework and negative impact in the future.

One way of doing this is by refining existing user stories by adding security elements to them, creating dedicated security stories, or just adding security requirements to the product backlog. Although the specifics will depend on your organisation’s way of working, I will discuss some examples in my next blog.