Cybersecurity Today

There are only two types of organisations:
those that have been hacked and
those that don’t know it yet

 

Assume breach

 

 Just getting worse…

  • Digital transformation...
    • Creating enormous opportunities while also exposing organizations to significant risks
    • Increases commercial economic incentives to roll out complicated, untested and vulnerable features quickly
  • Convergence occurring rapidly
    • Data security and governance slow to keep up
    • IT and Operations Technology (OT) now the same
    • Increasing cascading risk – Reliance upon a limited number of hardware and software platforms, supply chains and systems
    • WFH and other changes require treating external and internal as one
  • Number and type of organizations targeted increasing
    • Increased malicious users – High return versus low odds of getting caught and lack of serious penalties
    • Number of players, level of sophistication and threat landscape changing constantly
    • Frequency of cyber attacks and size of damage growing
  • "Next normal" changing how workforce, customers, supply chain, channel partners, and peers will work together
  • Increasing policy, legislation, regulations, disclosure, audit and compliance requirements
    • Obtaining and maintaining compliance is very inefficient
    • Threat intelligence and security analytics becoming mandatory
  • Business Email Compromise (BEC)
    • Phishing e-mail → voice
      • Bespoke Ransomware 
      • Targeted and cloud focused
      • Ransom , IP theft + blackmail
      • Average $300K ransom for small businesses
  • AI changing the attack landscape
    • Attackers utilizing ML/AI to improve and tailor their attacks
    • Deepfakes 
      • Deepfakes-as-a-Service
      • Synthetic identities (ie., voice of CEO)
  • Technical limitation
    • Testing and verify security is increasingly difficult
    • “Indicators of compromise” evolving to “indicators of behavior”
  • Data security needs increasing
    • Secure all data in-flight, in-motion and at-rest
    • Secure both structured and unstructured
    • Persistent and file-less threats increasing
  • Governments don’t want to…
    • Pursue or retaliate against foreign hackers
    • Create a moral hazard by assuming too much responsibility
  • Intelligence, military and LEO
    • Want to harness vulnerabilities versus eliminating them
    • Weapons grade cyber attack tools - Leaked/stolen tools from national cyber weapon arsenals repurposed for anyone to use

Threat Actors

Insider Threats

  • Malicious intent can be motivated by emotional backlash, financial benefit, political ideology or a combination of factors
  • Unintentional threat due to lack of understanding or misplaced technology

Competitors

  • Motivated by financial gains
  • Seek Information research data and intellectual property
  • Exploit for strategic market advantage

"Script Kiddies"

  • Motivated by making names for themselves
  • Usually unskilled but rely on pre-made exploit programs (“scripts”) to attack networks or deface websites

Hacktivists

  • Motivated by ideological activism
  • Bring awareness to a cause (political, economic, social)
  • Exploit to compromise confidentiality, integrity or resilience

Organized Crime

  • Motivated by financial gain and power
  • Exploit and extort organizations to access and monetize personal, financial, or health data

Cyber Terrorists

  • Motivated by malicious intent to gain support for and deter opposition to a cause
  • Attack and damage reputation, inspire fear or threaten harm to force a political change

State-Sponsored Actors

  • Motivated by interests of nation-states
  • Receive direction, funding, technical assistance
  • Highly sophisticated often targeted and persistent

In the News

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