(ISC)² Blog

Cybersecurity Predictions for 2021 from the (ISC)² Community of Security Professionals (Part 3)

By Diana-Lynn Contesti, CISSP-ISSAP, ISSMP, CSSLP, SSCP John Martin, CISSP-ISSAP, CISM Richard Nealon, CISSP-ISSMP, SSCP, SCF In part one of this blog, we discussed privacy, remote access aka work from home (WFH), insider threats, data leakage, zero trust architecture (ZTA) and security architecture. In part two of the blog, we discussed Edge Computing, 5G, IoMT/IoT, AI, and ransomware. Now into the third month of 2021, we foresee issues related to supply chain (both consumer goods and security vendors), digital transformation and digital health vaccine passports Supply Chain (Consumer Products) As 2020 progressed along with the COVID-19 pandemic, we began to... Read more →

Cybersecurity Predictions for 2021 from the (ISC)² Community of Security Professionals (Part 2)

By Diana-Lynn Contesti, CISSP-ISSAP, ISSMP, CSSLP, SSCP John Martin, CISSP-ISSAP, CISM Richard Nealon, CISSP-ISSMP, SSCP, SCF In part one of this blog series, we discussed privacy, remote access (aka Work from Home), insider threats, data leakage, Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) and security architecture. To continue this discussion, we believe that 2021 will still see folks working from home; thus, the risks due to insider threats and data leakage will continue to grow. However, we believe that there are other concerns for information security professionals, including edge computing, 5G, IoMT/IoT, AI and ransomware. Edge Computing Edge Computing is a distributed computing... Read more →

RETHINKING SECURITY PREDICTIONS FOR 2020 FROM THE (ISC)² COMMUNITY OF SECURITY PROFESSIONALS

By Diana-Lynn Contesti, CISSP-ISSAP, ISSMP, CSSLP, SSCP and John Martin, CISSP-ISSAP In February 2020, we put together our thoughts on Security Predictions for the upcoming year in a two-part series (Part 1, Part 2). Little did we know that COVID-19 would happen and change the way that folks work in our organizations, nor we as security practitioners work. In our original blog, we suggested that the following issues would be of concern to the industry: Data Privacy changes Lack of secure coding practices 5G and WiFi-6 Phasing out passwords Lack of perimeters Backups and their role with ransomware We believe... Read more →

10 Critical Skills for the Cybersecurity Workforce

With breach rates growing and cyberattacks becoming a daily occurrence for business, IT leaders are looking to beef up their security teams. This is good news for anyone who is considering a career in information security. But as new talent begins to navigate breaking into the field, many may wonder: What skills should I focus on developing for a security career? Most security hiring managers are looking for a blend of skills and backgrounds. Here are 10 things you need to enter the cybersecurity workforce today. Technical prowess While some career paths in security may not require technical skills, many... Read more →

Study: Pandemic Boosts Cybersecurity Demand

Demand is up for cybersecurity solutions and services as businesses try to cope with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a survey of technology firms, industry association CompTIA found that customer inquiries regarding cybersecurity were up by 36% in April -- second only to inquiries about communications, collaboration and A/V technologies. The increased demand for cybersecurity and collaboration technologies makes sense in light of the sudden increase in work-from-home (WFH) numbers. The ranks of remote workers shot up as a result of stay-at-home and lockdown directives issued by governments in efforts to manage the spread of COVID-19. Recent (ISC)2... Read more →

Let’s Work Together

As published in the November/December 2019 edition of InfoSecurity Professional Magazine By Michael Bergman, CISSP An (ISC)2 member details a software security integration system that eliminates that ’50-page security policy’ for developers. Unless your organization is gifted with resources, your software development teams do not have a dedicated first-line-of-defense function that integrates controls and makes it easier for developers to secure the products they build. Instead developers, particularly those using Agile for project management, typically are handed a 50-page security policy document and told to “implement that along with your functional requirements, all within your two-week sprint cycle.” The result... Read more →

Healthcare is the Preferred Target of Cyber Attackers

U.S. healthcare institutions are under constant attack from cybercriminals, and unless hospitals take concrete steps to protect themselves, the situation won’t get any better. In 2019, the healthcare industry was the number one target for cyber attackers, with the cost of breaches totaling $4 billion, according to a new report. 2020 Vision: A Review of Major IT & Cybersecurity Issues Affecting Healthcare, published by security intelligence firm CyberMDX, provides an in-depth look at the causes and types of cybersecurity threats affecting the industry, as well as recommendations for healthcare institutions to fortify their cyber defenses. Attacks on healthcare are prevalent,... Read more →

Threat Hunting: Is Your Security Operation Ready to Launch Such a Program?

As published in the November/December edition of InfoSecurity Professional Magazine. It could be a blended attack as slick as a multichannel marketing campaign. Or a spontaneous crime of opportunity by a single dis-gruntled employee. It could even be an innocent configuration error. When a threat exists, there will be indicators. The perennial challenge is to hunt for signs in the right places and to isolate the signal from the noise. How best to find—and remove, where possible—such threats remains up for debate. Lance Cottrell, chief scientist at Ntrepid, approaches threat hunting less as a specific set of techniques than as... Read more →

UNDER ATT&CK: How MITRE’s methodology to find threats and embed counter-measures might work in your organization

As published in the November/December 2019 edition of InfoSecurity Professional Magazine By Naresh Kurada, CISSP Threat modeling is gaining even more attention with today’s dynamic threat environment. The sophistication of threat actors and development of advanced tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) has put a brighter spotlight on the process of finding vulnerabilities by incorporating the attacker’s point of view. There are several threat modeling approaches and techniques to consider. Often, these can be classified as asset-centric, system-centric, people-centric or risk-centric. For instance, Microsoft’s STRIDE (Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information Disclosure, Denial of Service and Elevation of Privilege) is system-centric, while PASTA... Read more →

Breaches Increased in 2019, but the Number of Exposed Records Declined

The number of U.S. data breaches bumped up 17% in 2019 but despite the increase, the volume of sensitive consumer records that were exposed declined substantially by 65%, according to a newly published report. These statistics are a complete reversal of what happened in 2018, when the number of exposed consumer records soared by 126% and breaches declined by 23%, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center’s (ITRC) End-of-Year Data Breach Report for 2019 Data breaches tracked in 2019 in the United States jumped to 1,473, from 1,257 in the previous year, the report revealed. Meanwhile, 164,683,455 sensitive records were... Read more →

Security Predictions for 2020 from the (ISC)² Community of Security Professionals (Part 2)

By Diana-Lynn Contesti, CISSP-ISSAP, ISSMP, CSSLP, SSCP and John Martin, CISSP-ISSAP Continued discussion from Security Predictions for 2020 from the (ISC)² Community of Security Professionals (Part 1) Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Operating Technology (OT) related to the state of digital certificates The issue is not just self-signed digital certificates or expired certificates. Many of these devices have digital certificates, which need to be managed via a Key Management System and maintained. The fallout, of course, is that without proper controls, these devices can and will be compromised. Currently, the onus is on the consumer... Read more →

Don't be a sitting duck in the next OT cyberattack

By Ravindra Krishna, CISSP In a recent Operational Technology (OT) cyberattack, Monero Crypto-currency mining malware was discovered in the ICS network of a water utility company located in Europe. The company found the malware during a routine monitoring check of their OT network and confirmed that the malware infected five servers including the Human machine interface (HMI), which is used to control and manage physical components of OT networks. This attack provides further evidence that OT networks are not simply vulnerable, but actually easy targets. The Post-Stuxnet OT Cyberattack Era I believe that we can divide OT attacks into two... Read more →

Reaching More Cybersecurity Professionals in a Growing Market

Though more attention has come to the security industry, cyber crime continues to challenge defense. Cybersecurity can no longer be ignored. In case you missed the press release last week, we’re letting you know that (ISC)² announced an open call for expert cybersecurity speakers for our 2018 Security Congress. In fact, there was lots of news coming out of (ISC)² last week. We are also welcoming nominations for the 2018 Information Security Leadership Award – Government. It’s the end of the year, which means the start of a new one. With the new year comes the promise of growth and... Read more →

ISO 27001 – Between the Reality and the Myth

By Tony Chebli, Senior Manager, Information Security Department/Risk Management Division, Credit Libanais S.A.L Tony will be hosting the session ISO 27001 Between the Reality and the Myth at (ISC)² Secure Summit MENA in Dubai on the 21st and 22nd November 2017. It seems like yesterday, but actually it has been over 13 years, since I obtained my ISO 27001 Lead Auditor certification and started travelling from country to country around the Middle East, preaching the benefits of ISO 27001 certification and its importance to companies that are looking to secure their information assets. I admit it was (and still is)... Read more →

CISSP Spotlight: Tony Harris

Name: Tony Harris Title: Consultant, Cyber Security Employer: KPMG LLP Location: Vancouver, Canada Education: MSc, Cyber Security (in progress) from the University of Liverpool, and Bachelor of Arts in American Studies & International Relations from the University of British Columbia Years in IT: 8 Years in cybersecurity: 7 Cybersecurity certifications: CISSP, CISM How did you decide upon a career in cybersecurity? I began my career in general IT processes eight years ago as your typical jack-of-all-trades IT. I wanted to narrow my focus into a specialty that I'd be interested in and cybersecurity ultimately was that choice. The reason was... Read more →

CISSP Spotlight: Mark A. Singer

Name: Mark A. Singer Title: Principal Software Engineer Employer: DoD Sub-Contractor Location: Indianapolis, IN Education: Business Management Years in IT: 19 Years in cybersecurity: 12 Cybersecurity certifications: CISSP How did you decide upon a career in cybersecurity? Evolution. I stumbled into computers when I served in the U.S. Navy from 1985 to 1989 when PCs with 8086 processors were common. When I got out of the service, I was able to get a job working for Naval Avionics in Indianapolis and was placed in a role where I was doing local computer support on tempest computers (386, 486, & 486DX... Read more →

Security Headlines: Payouts and Panic

WannaCry and NotPetya aftermath means payouts and panic. Here are the top security headlines for the week of August 7, 2017: Big money, no whammies! It seems like the hackers behind WannaCry have cashed out their bitcoin into Monero, a harder to track cryptocurrency. Mo money means mo malware. The success – can we call it that? – of WannaCry and NotPetya means ransomware is not going away any time soon, because… well, people and businesses pay the ransom. What’s that definition of insanity? Oh yeah, doing the same thing and expecting a different result… Tripwire research indicates that two-thirds... Read more →

SIEM: Understanding, Parsing and Correlating Logs

Building an effective SIEM requires ingesting log messages and parsing them into useful information. While it might be easy to stream, push and pull logs from every system, device and application in your environment, that doesn’t necessarily improve your security detection capabilities. What you do with your logs – correlation, alerting and automated response – are the strength of a SIEM. Real-time security starts with understanding, parsing and developing actionable information and events from your log messages. With the launch of a new site, (ISC)² was presented an opportunity to refine our security monitoring services. Linked below is an example... Read more →

SSCP Spotlight: Ronald Ricohermoso

Name: Ronald Ricohermoso Title: IS Security Operations Analyst Employer: Ingram Micro Location: Philippines Degree: BS in Computer Science Years in IT: 6 Years in information security: 4 Cybersecurity certifications: SSCP, Security+, CEH, ITIL Foundation How did you decide upon a career in cybersecurity? I started working as a service desk, but decided to leave and specialize in other fields of IT (ex. networking or infrastructure). It started when I got a job at Ingram Micro as a security administrator and learned about the importance of information security and the challenges it offers due to the changing threat landscape. I learned... Read more →

2017 Americas ISLA – nominations are open!

(ISC)² has had the honor of celebrating leaders in cyber, information, software and infrastructure security since 2004. The 2017 Americas Information Security Leadership Awards (AM-ISLA®) are now open for nominations. We can’t wait to hear about your latest achievements, so please tell us about a cybersecurity leader whose work deserves recognition by the industry and by their peers. The categories for nomination are: Information Security Practitioner Senior Information Security Professional Up-and-Coming Information Security Professional Community Awareness The deadline to submit is June 7, 2017 at 11:59pm EST. Nominations and awards are open to (ISC)² members and non-members alike. Winners will... Read more →