I gave this keynote at the Infosec / CISO / GRC conference in Prague this week to a great audience

2. World’s biggest Hack?
• Was their security ”make believe”?

3. Me
• Father of 3, happily married.
• I work for a Bank. Am also independent IT/Infosec
consultant. Any opinions presented here are my own
and do not represent my employer.
• Contributor to ”@TheAnalogies project” making IT and
Infosec understandable outside the echo chambers
• Member of the I am the Cavalry movement – trying to
make connected devices worthy of our trust
• @ClausHoumann
• I present on security a lot at conferences -> Find my
work on slideshare

4. The big picture
• Existing tools, and even Next-
Generation APT tools have limits/are
broken:
– Examples: https://blog.mrg-effitas.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/11/Crysys_MRG_APT_detection_test_20
14.pdf
– He created the stupidest malware imaginiable. No one detected
it.
– http://archive.hack.lu/2014/Bypasss_sandboxes_for_fun.pdf
– Paul Jung -> Present here today -> shows how easily malware
can detect sandboxes

5. Solar
Eclipse?

6. New attack surfaces?

7. The Vendor threat
• No silver bullets exist. Beware of vendors using the phrases:
– ”Counter any threat”
– ”Detect any malware”
– ”You only need our solution”
– > Proceed with caution
– VPT
(vendor persistent threat)

8. Patching works? (Source: Stefan Esser)

9. Source: With permission from Daniel Miessler @danielmiessler

10. My own version for CISO

11. Doing it right
• EURODNS in Luxembourg has just made it
possible for each client to get an SSL
certificate for their website for free
• This simple change makes a difference

12. The job of the enterprise defender:
• Trying to not purchase crappy products
(Lemons -> Source: Haroon Meer @wearetroopers
• While trying to build a real skilled defense

14. It’s an assymetrical conflict
X-wing

15. Compliance
• Is
• NOT
• Security
• Compliance is preparing to fight a war
–But using antiquated weapons
–And against enemies of decades past

16. BoD: Why worry now?
• Companies that get hacked are fine...look at
Sony, Target, Apple etc. -> stock prices not
affected, end users don’t care.
– Breaches and lawyer expenses following these are
an acceptable cost of doing business
– Right?
– No, maybe not anymore...next slide

17. Board Level Attention required, NOW!
Strategy! THINK!
• EU Data protection regulation:
– Mandatory breach reporting within 72 hours
– 5% of revenue as fine possible
• Threat level increasing sharply
• Attack surface increasing (think IoT, BYOD)

18. Pyramids
- This one is Joshua Corman’s.
Defensible Infrastructure
Operational Excellence
Situational
Awareness
Counter-
measures

19. The Foundation
Defensible Infrastructure
Software and Hardware built as
”secure by default” is ideal
here. Rugged DevOps.
Your choices of tech impacts
you ever after
You must assemble carefully,
like Lego
Without backdoors or Golden Keys!

20. Mastery
Operational Excellence
Master all aspects of your Development,
Operations and Outsourcing. Train like the
Ninjas!
DevOps (Rugged DevOps)
Change Management
Patch Management
Asset Management
Information classification & localization
Basically, all the cornerstones of ITIL
You name it. Master it.

21. Gain the ability to handle situations correctly – Floodlights ON
Situational
Awareness
”People don’t write software anymore, they assemble it” Quote Joshua Corman.
-> Know which lego blocks you have in your infrastructure
-> Actionable threat intelligence
-> Automate as much as you can, example: IOC’s automatically fed from sources
into SIEM with alerting on matches
Are we affected by Poodle? Shellshock?
WinShock? Heartbleed? Should we patch now?
Next week? Are we under attack? Do we have
compromised endpoint? Are there anomalies
in our LAN traffic?

22. Counter that which you profit from
countering
• Decrease attacker ROI below critical threshold
by applying countermeasures
• Most Security tools fall within this category
Counter-
measures
Footnote: Cyber kill chain is patented by Lockheed Martin.

23. Mapping to other strategic approaches
Defensible Infrastructure
Operational Excellence
Situational
Awareness
Counter-
measures
Lockheed Martin patented
Nigel Wilson ->
@nigesecurityguy

24. Defensive hot zones
• Basketball and
other sports
analysis ->
• – FIND the
HOT zones of
your
opponents.
• Defend there.

25. Defensive hot zones
• Basketball and
other sports
analysis ->
• – FIND the
HOT zones of
your
opponents.
• Defend there.

26. Hot zones!
• You need to secure:
– The (Mobile) user/
endpoints
– The networks
– Data in transit
– The Cloud
– Internal systems
Sample protections added only, not the
complete picture of course

27. Best Practices – High level
• Create awareness – Security awareness
training
• Increase the security budget
– Justify investments BEFORE the breach.
– It’s easier when you’re actually being attacked.
But too late.
• Use ”Adversary mind-set” and threat modeling
• Training, skills and people!

28. Hot zone 1:
A real world PC
• Microsoft EMET 5.2
• Executable files kill you, so use:
– Adblocking extension in browser
– Advanced endpoint protection solutions
– No admin credentials left behind
And then cross your fingers

29. Hot zone 1
• PC defense should include:
– Whitelisting
– Blacklisting
– Sandboxing
– Registry defenses
– Change roll-backs
– HIPS
– Domain policies
– Log collection and review
– MFA
– ACL’s/Firewall rules
– Heuristics detection/prevention
– DNS audit and protection

30. Hot zone 2:
The networks
• Baselining everything
• Spot anomalies
• Monitor, observe, record
• Advanced network level tools
– FireEye?
• Test your network resilience/security with Ixia
BreakingPoint. Ask me for free test licenses.
• Network Security Monitoring (NSM)
– Suricata, SecurityOnion, BroIDS?
• Don’t forget the insider threat

31. Hot zone 3+4:
Data in Transit/Cloud
• Trust in encryption
• Remember you secure what you put in the cloud. The Cloud
provider doesn’t
• Great new mobile collaboration tools exist
• SaaS monitoring and DLP tools exist -> ”CloudWalls”
• Cloudcrypters
• CloudTrail, CloudWatch, Config-log/change-trackers, vuln.mgmt
• Story about the Vulnerability patched during Bash/Shellshock public
confusion period
• And this for home study: https://securosis.com/blog/security-best-
practices-for-amazon-web-services

32. Cloud
• Segmentation
• Compartmentalisation
• Need to know

33. Cloud
• Concentration risk
• Secure the administrative credentials and APIs
• ENISA:
– https://www.enisa.europa.eu/activities/risk-
management/files/deliverables/cloud-computing-risk-
assessment
– https://resilience.enisa.europa.eu/cloud-computing-
certification
• A funny story about cloud certification providers
hacking me

34. A more defensible infrastructure
• Avoid expense in depth
• Research and find the best counter measures
• Open Source tools can be awesome
• Full packet capture and Deep packet
inspection/Proxies for visibility
• KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON IN YOUR
NETWORKS
• Watch and learn from attack patterns

35. Best practices - Mitigate risks
Source: Dave Sweigert

36. Automate Threat Intelligence IOC
• Use multiple IOC feeds
• Automate daily:
– IOC feed retrival,
– Insertion into SIEM,
– Correlation against all-time logfiles,
– Alerting on matches
– Manual follow-up on alerts

37. You need to ally up!
• Security and Infrastructure aren’t enemies
• Security and the office of the CIO aren’t
enemies
• Ally up & Bromance!

38. And the unexpected extra win
• Real security will actually make you compliant
in many areas of compliance

39. Q & A
• Ask me question, or I’ll ask you questions

40. Sources used
– http://www.itbusinessedge.com
– Heartbleed.com
– https://nigesecurityguy.wordpress.com/
– Lockheed Martins ”Cyber Kill Chain”
– Joshua Corman and David Etue from RSAC 2014
”Not Go Quietly: Surprising Strategies and
Teammates to Adapt and Overcome”
– Lego