Orchestra's Blog
Threat Intelligence + Threat Scenarios = Predictive Cyber Security
Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) involves analyzing information about threats and producing guidance on how to respond. An interesting 2020 survey by the SANS institute on CTI (requires registration) found...
Capitol Breach and Cyber Threats
Last week pro-Trump rioters occupied portions of the U.S. Capitol building. This is a real issue for cyber defense since once there is known or presumed loss of physical...
Surprise: CISOs are Human
The CISO role is generally considered one the highest stress, least appreciated executive\managerial jobs. Even before the COVID crisis, nearly 9 out of 10 executives holding the title of...
Supply Chain Risk Management
NIST Special Publication 800-161 on “Supply Chain Risk Management Practices for Federal Information Systems and Organizations” was issued about 5 years ago (it is currently going through a revision)....
CISOs, Purple Teams and Cynefin
Cynefin is sense making framework created in 1999 by Dave Snowden. Cynefin offers five decision-making contexts or “domains”: obvious, complicated, complex, chaotic, and a center of disorder. Figure by Snowded (Own work,...
Microsoft, SUNBURST and Supply Chain Attacks
Continuing my tracking of the Solarwinds trojan (SUNBURST), I came on an article about Microsoft’s response – “Microsoft unleashes ‘Death Star’ on SolarWinds hackers in extraordinary response to breach”....
More SWAG – This Time Thanks to the US Treasury
There was another breach this week that made headlines – the breach of the US Treasury Department. This time it is assumed to be a supply chain attack through...
SWAG Security Analysis
Here in Israel there were two security breaches that made big headlines over the last couple weeks. The first was a an ongoing ransomware attack on an Israeli insurance...
DORA the (Threat Led) Explorer
As financial firms become more digital, the EU decided these firms need to focus on ensuring their operations are as cyber resilient as possible. Cyber resilience means the ability...
When a Zero Day is Old News
This week Microsoft released a zero day patch for an unpatched local privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerability affecting all Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 devices. The LPE vulnerability stems from the...
Outcome based Cyber Security
Donald Rumsfeld was the US Secretary of Defense from 1975-1977 and once answered a security question using the terms known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. The language is...
Trump, Biden and CVSS
Businesses use predictive metrics all the time. For example, forecasting next quarter’s revenue is a predictive metric used widely in business. When looking at any predictive business metric there...
Security, Compliance and Privacy Risks in the Energy Sector
The energy sector faces a cyber double whammy, IT infrastructure that is vulnerable to the same security, compliance and privacy risks faced by any IT organization, along with the...
Digital Security: CISO, TISO, BISO, BASE
First a little history. CIOs in the 80s and early 90s were focused on the technical side of the job. They would tend to have a technical background, and...
Security in Numbers
Security (or Safety) in numbers is the hypothesis that, by being part of a large physical group or mass, an individual is less likely to be the victim of a...
Cybersecurity and Continuous Improvement
The busy folks at NIST have just released the official version of NISTIR 8286 Integrating Cybersecurity and Enterprise Risk Management (ERM). It focuses on converging cybersecurity risk management (CSRM)...
Protecting Airspace, WLAN, Wireless and WiFi – Oh My
The interest in protecting organizational wireless networks is growing and so are the number of guidelines, best practices and standards being proposed and adopted (see Wireless Red Teams). One...
800-53 Revision 5 – Outcome Based Security and Privacy Control
NIST released Special Publication 800-53 Revision 5 earlier this month. In my mind it is actually different enough from previous releases to be considered version 1 of a new...
Wireless Red Teams: Evil Twins, Eavesdropping, and Password Cracking
Many companies operate wireless networks to allow greater flexibility through mobile computing. In many cases IT departments deploy wireless networks but ignore the dangers of wireless connectivity, assuming that...
Red, White and Blue Make Purple
Vulnerability scanning, penetration testing and red teams are the main detective controls for residual cyber risk – i.e. the risk that remains given controls already in place. Vulnerability scanning...
Red, White and Blue Cybersecurity Risks
Cybersecurity is moving away from using threats, vulnerabilities and exploits as the management metaphor towards risk-based cybersecurity management. Using risk terminology, penetration testing is a standard detective control used...
Lack of Standard Metrics
Lack of standard metrics to measure, manage and benchmark cyber risk limits security efficiency and effectiveness, making it difficult to prioritize and coordinate cyber defenses Single security truth from...
Fragmented technologies
Organizations’ cyber security stack consist of 100-150 different disconnected point tools or technologies making it difficult to assess and act on the big picture. Organizations based their security operations...
Constantly Shifting Business Needs
In today’s modern world business needs are constantly shifting, IT and cyber risk landscape require a constant stream of attention and resources. CISOs role isn’t just about security, but...
Is Cyber Security Fit-to-Purpose?
ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) is a set of detailed practices for IT service management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business. ITIL is used by CIOs (especially...
Cyber security: Emphasize Protect or Detect?
I am a subscriber to the NIST cyber security framework school of thought. Even though it is officially called the “Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity” it isn’t just about securing...
Measuring the Value of Cyber Security
A value-driven approach to cyber security would help businesses understand where to spend their cyber security budget, and how much to budget. One way to estimate how to spend...
Visibility, Analytics, Policies and Control are the Lynchpin of Cyber Security
Visibility is context. Analytics combine context with events. Policy translates that into a ”plan of action implemented by controls. Another way to put it is “Given” a context, “When”...
Is Cyber Defense Simple, Complicated or Complex?
Cynefin is a sense making framework that divides problem response into simple, complicated and complex. The goal is choose the right response paradigm so that when a problem occurs the...
5 Indicators a Market is Ripe for a Platform
What is a Platform? The word “platform” even though it is used quite often, is a chameleon word – meaning different things in different contexts and to different people....
A Cyber Product Platform Stack for MSSPs (Managed Security Services Providers)
There are three business types that lend themselves to becoming a platform – infrastructure management businesses, product innovation and commercialization businesses, and customer relationship businesses [from John Hagel’s post...
The Pure Platform Approach
Another option for starting a platform is a pure platform play, in essence, “let’s bet the bank that we guessed right approach”. This is an expensive approach since you...
Emergent Platform Approach is Best
The best way to create a platform combines an immediate solution approach with an emergent platform play. It requires a market ripe for a platform (see my earlier post...
The Accidental Platform
Creating a platform is the embodiment of the chicken and egg problem. If there are no consumers – producers have no one to sell to. If there are no...