Ransomware – The What, Where, and Why

Everyone has heard stories by now of an organization getting hit by ransomware.  From individuals to small and enterprise-level organizations, it can pop up anywhere and cause havoc.  What is it?  Where does it come from? Why isn’t it going away?  Today we’re going to break it down.

Humans are the smartest beings on earth.  So why is it that they are the number one cause for breaches that cost millions of dollars?  It’s because they are kind.

Because of the kindness of human beings, they are easily manipulated by bad actors to give up private information or even hold a door.  This is the foundation of Social Engineering.

Let’s face it.  Security is expensive.  Many organizations think of security as an unwanted expense when budgeting for the next fiscal year.  However, no matter what industry an organization is in, security IS its business too.

Let’s face it.  If you haven’t had a security incident within your organization, you will.  Are you prepared?  An IRP is a plan or playbook that needs to be established and practiced on a normal basis.  When a breach happens, this is your playbook of who, how, and what steps to take to protect your organization and minimize impact. Let’s break down the steps of an Incident Response Plan (IRP). 

If you are an organization with digital assets to protect, you’ve most likely heard the term Penetration Testing, also known as Pen Testing.  Penetration testing is the process used to find vulnerabilities and leverage them to hack an organization.

Secure your Organization with the NIST Blueprint

Breaches are at all time high.  Over 50 billion devices are connected to the internet.  Some of them are secure, and some of them are not.  Which category does your organization fall into?

The year is 2021.  We don’t have flying cars or robot maids, but nearly 5 billion souls worldwide are now connected to the Internet and to each other.  This is a beautiful thing and a remarkable feat of human ingenuity.  However, every rose has its thorn (to borrow from the great post-modern philosopher Bret Michaels) and to us who work in cybersecurity, 2021 was thornier than ever. 

Here is Appalachia’s 2021 Cybersecurity Year in Review!

Even organizations with solid cybersecurity programs will have findings from a security assessment.  After all, cyber attacks and attackers continue to learn and evolve, always trying to be one step ahead of their prospects.  Through our years of performing security assessments, here are the Top 5 areas that we have found to need remediation work post-assessment.

In a previous blog post, we discussed how to calculate your SPRS (Supplier Performance Risk System) score in support of your CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification) efforts.  In that same blog, we also provided a free tool to help you calculate your SPRS score automatically.

In this follow-on blog, we’ll talk about how to provide your SPRS score to the DoD, which is a whole other chore once you’ve actually determined what your score is.  In order to access the part of the SPRS website where your score is uploaded, we first need a CAC (Common Access Card) or a DoD approved medium assurance ECA (External Certification Authority) certificate.  The primary purpose of this certificate is to ensure that the individual person entering the score is who they actually claim to be (non-repudiation), in addition to ensuring the confidentiality of the data.

This month’s release of the much-anticipated CMMC 2.0 left many of us in the world of cybersecurity shaking our heads.  We have been working diligently with the defense industrial base for several years now, even before the CMMC was created, to stop the bleeding of our defense secrets to our adversaries.  As a veteran and a Patriot, I, along with many other Americans, take this very serious problem personally. 

I started writing SSP’s (System Security Plans) well before the original Executive Order mandated deadline of December 31st 2017 and have since written at least 50 SSP’s for defense contractors of every imaginable type and size.  There wasn’t a lot of guidance on how to do this at that time, other than to have a very thorough and complete understanding of the nearly 500-page NIST 800-53 framework. 

The late American author Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” Written in the 20th century, it has been put in practice by 21st century businesses. As the Internet has grown, the amount of companies expanded, and the amount of data that those companies collect has grown exponentially, especially now that there is a market for such data.

The password isn’t nearly as secure as it used to be. Hackers have begun to take advantage of extremely powerful solutions designed to brute force their way into accounts by using software to rapidly guessing thousands of passwords per second, making it extraordinarily difficult to prepare yourself for them.

What’s the best way to guarantee that passwords aren’t going to be the downfall of your company? A great start is by taking a close look at password best practices and two-factor authentication.

Data security isn’t a matter to be taken lightly, as too many businesses have found out the hard way. Unfortunately, there are far too many simple ways to correct common security issues - enough that it’s foolish not to do so. We’ll review a few ways to fix security issues, after discussing one of, if not the, most egregious security failings in modern history.