Oren J. Falkowitz @orenfalkowitz - Tumblr Blog

I’ve been working on a very fun project for the past four months, and I finally get to reveal it! Operation: Pineapple Sparkle is a short “graphic novella” that I created for Area 1 Security.

Area 1 is an internet security startup based in Redwood City, California. I worked with the...

Using Data Curation to Assist with Data Security

Business leaders are embracing the increasing amounts of data available to them. Whether to increase profits, bolster supply chain efficiency, deploy more precise marketing tactics, or improve security operations, they see opportunity. As it has become cheaper to store, analyze and share data, more data is coming together than ever before. Simple data integration has proven ineffective and the need for data curation has become ever more important.

Data curation is more than data integration because it is more than transporting, cleaning, transforming, and de-duping. Data curation is about discovery. Data curation reveals new features, and helps entitiy disambiguation.

As we’ve come to appreciate, data attracts data, and when this happens at scale and with diversity, the quality and context of the results increases exponentially. What we have found is that data that reveals insights on human behavior benefits from scale itself rather than hoping for annotations in data that isn’t available. We will never have uniform inputs, instead we must embrace complexity and make use of the best ally we have. The unreasonable effectiveness of data allows us to pursue insights into human behavior that were not possible with elaborate models based on less data.

The possibilities for new modern data curation tools have never been more valuable than they are today in the computer security industry. Countering Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), which have been widely reported on as of late in major breaches at Target, Google, and across the U.S. Government, reveals the need to move beyond signatures, and the stale structure of data fed into Security Incident Event Management (SIEM) solutions. In order to prevent the behaviors, or what security experts refer to as Tactics, Techniques, and Procedure (TTPs), winners and losers in the infosec community will be determined by their ability to fold in broader and richer data for curation outside of traditional data sources. This has never been more valuable if we are to prevent — rather than detect malicious events expo facto.

This post was originally published on the Tamr Blog

#data #bigdata #big data #data curation #tamr

Risk 101: SSL Key Indicator in Security Effectiveness

Our use of the Internet can be characterized as a state of constant data exchange. While the exchanges of data between users and machines are often passive, when we are consuming information or clicking around from page to page, increasingly we need to exchange private or sensitive data. SSL (Secure Socket Layer ), and its successor TLS (Transport Layer Security), have become the de facto standard for encrypted and authenticated communications across the Internet.

SSL / TLS are cryptographic methods that are commonly found within web browsers and e-mail to prevent eavesdropping and tampering when we send PIN numbers, credit card numbers, personal data, and other confidential information across the Internet.

You’re probably aware of SSL / TLS when sending and receiving data across the Internet when you see “HTTPS:” or a lock in the URL bar as a visual cue.

However, you likely never considered how SSL / TLS was implemented, which while deceptively simple, has many common pitfalls that pose serious risk to the secure transfer of data across the world wide web and serve as a key indicator of security effectiveness.

Originally posted at the BitSight Risk Management Blog as part of the Risk 101 Series

#cyber #cyber risk #cybersecurity

The first leap

The second leap is deciding how to take your project to an entirely new level. The way Zappos redefined how shoes were sold, Charity:water changed how fundraising was done, or Mission Chinese recreated their genre of restaurant. These leaps are what the market sits up and notices.

The first leap is deciding to be the kind of leader willing to make precisely that sort of leap.

#inspiration

SPF Misconfiguration Leaves Email Users Vulnerable

The threat from malicious email represents one of the greatest risks to IT security. The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) identifies 85% of incoming mail as abusive or malicious. One of the best practices to curb this risk is the Sender Policy Framework (SPF), an email validation tool to prevent the sending and receiving of forged messages. When properly configured, SPF reduces both the likelihood of any domain name being fraudulently used to send malicious emails and the likelihood that organizations will receive such messages.

Originally posted at the BitSight Risk Management Blog as part of the Risk 101 Series

#cyber #cyber risk #cybersecurity #spam #spf

Target Breach Reveals Need for Timely Disclosures

In a 28 January 2014 letter to Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel, United States Senator and Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) rebukes Target Corporation for failing to disclose details of its recent cyber incident.

Despite publicly acknowledging on 12/19/2014 that it had suffered a major data breach impacting tens of millions of customers, Target Corporation has yet to formally disclose details to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

“A data breach involving the theft of personal information about tens of millions of Target customers is clearly a material cyber attack that has affected how your business operates. I am therefore puzzled why your company has not yet updated its SEC filings to reflect this event.”

In fact Target waited four days after initially discovering the breach before it went public with the information. In calling for a national cyber breach standard Stephen Boyer (CTO and co-founder, BitSight Technologies) cites that “with minimal insight into who has been attacked and the impact of the attack, it is difficult for business, consumers and policymakers to understand and manage cyber risk”. The Target incident is continuing to expose how little timely cyber security information is available. Had this incident not been so publicly reported consumers and third parties would continue to be at serious risk, a likely reality among the lesser known or undisclosed breaches ongoing.

Originally posted on Medium

#cyber #cybersecurity #cyber risk

Risk 101: Using Data to Better Understand Information Security Risk

The answer to the question of how organizations can evaluate information security risk depends on how we first think about risk in cyberspace. Good security risk management is a combination of data, processes, technology, and education. With new opportunities to observe and act on data in real-time, it has become possible to contextualize many different signals into information that supports decision-making for risk mitigation.

You can read this series and this post on the BitSight blog

#cyber #cybersecurity #risk #data

Dismantling Cyber Delivery Systems: Untangling the Threat in Cyberspace

Security professionals will often say that there are two types of organizations: “those that have been hacked and those that don’t yet know that they have been.” Breaches are expensive and embarrassing, and attract scrutiny from regulators and customers. Yet, despite the threat and impact of targeted cyber attacks achieving recognition from decision makers, solutions remain elusive. As disclosures continue to be announced, I’ve noticed that investments in security technologies remain focused on solutions that have been proven ineffective against actors with persistent tactics.

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Oren J. Falkowitz