My buddy Aamir Lakhani joined a handful of security experts for a session on Federal News Radio. The radio show can be found HERE
Highlights from this talk are:
- Thoughts on the current threat environment. Basically, you should expect to be compromised. Security is about limiting exposure and risk rather than total prevention.
- The human element is the top target for cyber attackers
- Two-factor authentication is key for protecting user data. Again, users are the top target
- Big data is important for dealing with the “finding the needle in the haystack” problem of threats being masked by large amounts of data.
- NIST is guidance for dealing with risk management. It should be a baseline rather than all that is used for developing a security strategy. Consider guidelines dated based on the time to market of posting the data.
- Continuously monitoring and proactive reaction to threats is the future of security. Ideally, the goal is removing the human element IE automated security defense.
Moderator: Tom Temin – Host of The Federal Drive, Federal News Radio
Panelists:
Leo Scanlon, Chief Information Security Officer at the National Archives and Records Administration
Ari Baranoff, Assistant to the Special Agent in Charge at the Secret Service
Lee Vorthman, Chief Information Security Officer at NetApp U.S. Public Sector
Aamir Lakhani, Cyber Security and Cyber Counter Intelligence architect for World Wide Technology
All agencies are fighting cyber-attacks. The FBI Director of Cyber Security believes there are two groups of organizations: those whose systems have been attacked and those who do not know they have been attacked. In the federal space, the velocity and variety of attacks has dramatically increased. With Advanced Persistent Threats (APT), the time it can take to comprise a system ranges from hours to days, yet the time it takes for its discovery averages 6 months. The cyber security solution has shifted from the perimeter (firewall) or how to stop the attacks to how to deal with the attacks after they occur. The emphasis is now on the controls and minimizing what the attacker is doing once he gets in. The cost of the attacks is down time and data loss. With a 200% to 300% increase in attacks on agency’s systems, it is imperative the federal government implements a holistic solution including hardware, software, training and compliance.
