Posts Tagged ‘security’

 LAS VEGAS—There is a lot private sector companies can learn from the Federal Bureau of Investigation when it comes to beefing up their security defenses, a former official told attendees at Black Hat security conference.

The private sector has to accept that companies can’t keep focusing on protecting the network perimeter but acknowledge the adversaries are already inside, Shawn Henry, director of the FBI and currently a president of CrowdStrike Services, a division of security startup CrowdStrike, told attendees at the Black Hat security conference. The private sector should bear the responsibility for defending their networks from criminals, lone-wolf attackers, nation states, and corporate espionage, Henry said, calling it a matter of “life and death” if the companies failed to step up.

The FBI had to change their approach and tactics after 9/11, because it was clear terrorists were already inside the country. The best way to catch them once they were in was to work with other intelligence agencies to gather and share better intelligence, Henry said. The private sector has to shift the “paradigm” and approach security as a strategic exercice, collecting and analyzing intelligence before taking concrete steps before the attackers can cause damage.

In his keynote speech on the first day of Black Hat in Las Vegas, Henry laid out five lessons the FBI and other intelligence agencies learned from when dealing with hostage situations in the return world.

The actual tactics used to launch the attacks may be different, but the theory is the same, he said.

Assume you’ve been breached.
Companies are accepting they can’t keep out intruders, so they are shifting their focus on minimizing the amount of time the adversary spends in the network. The goal is to quickly spot intrusions and quickly respond, Henry said.

“I can’t tell you how many times FBI agents are deployed onsite, saying they found data that was breached, because we found all of this company data outside of the network,” Henry said. “We sit down with the CISO or COO, and they said it couldn’t have happened.”

Of course, after some analysis, the same “couldn’t have happened” official realizes the perimeter had been breached months before. In some cases, the breach may have happened years ago, and the organization just didn’t notice, Henry said.

Be Proactive.
Once the organization has accepted that someone has breached the network, the logical next step is to look for them, Henry said. IT administrators and security teams have to constantly be looking for traces of malicious, unexplained activity. He did not advocate hacking back at the adversaries, noting that was illegal. However, he did encourage leaving behind fake files and information as decoys to trick adversaries looking for certain types of information. If the company was engaged in sensitive negotiations over a merger, that is what the thief is most likely looking for, so leaving fake data out for them to find is a way to foil their attempts, Henry said.

Not Everything Has to be on the Network.
Organizations are putting a lot of information on the network, without thinking about what really has to be there, Henry said. If the super-sensitive data is not on the network, adversaries can’t steal it. The FBI doesn’t put certain information, such as transcripts from court-ordered intercepts and documents detailing sensitive investigative techniques, on the network, Henry said.

“I don’t understand why more companies aren’t compartmentalizing their data,” Henry said.

Change How You Measure Success.
For a while, the FBI focused on how many arrests and indictments they made, Henry said. That wasn’t a good metric because it didn’t give any insight into whether they were going after the big threats or impacting the landscape. Private sector should also change their metrics, and instead of worrying about keeping out intruders, focus on reponse speed, Henry said.

“How long after the adversary gets access to my network will I be able to identify and mitigate the threat?” Henry said.

Share Notes.
Information-sharing is the katest buzzword in security circles, and in a good way. Businesses should be sharing with each other and with the government information about security threats they are seeing, Henry said. Granual intelligence gives the security teams the necessary intelligence to figure out where the attacks are coming from, what the motivations are, and what form the attacks may take, Henry said.

“We need to understand who the adversary is, because if we understand who they are, we can take proactive measures,” Henry said.