Page 3 - CDM-Cyber-Warnings-March-2014

Being One Step Ahead of the Next Threat… As spring is finally here, some of us will spend less time staring at our SEIM and more time in the fresh outdoors. Financially, it’s in the best interests of the unethical hackers and cyber criminals to step up their game now. As the earth begins a rebirth of plant and animal life, we should think about doing the same with our networks. Take a fresh look at things this quarter – is it time for cyber spring cleaning? Yes. It is time to begin scrubbing, cleaning, deleting, tuning, improving our computers, our smartphones, our networks, etc. While every DNS cache needs a daily refresh, so does our thought process on taking a more proactive approach to cyber security. As we watch the numbers of cyber crime personally identifyable information (PII) breaches skyrocket (see: http://www.privacyrights.org), we should realize that there could not be a better time to take a short breather – a refresher. Maybe visit a trade show like RSA Conference or InfoSec World or plan for Blackhat or Defcon and ultimately step up our game to be one step ahead of the next threat. While mobile malware has been a big subject of late, I believe a deeper study of encryption, cloud computer, cloud hardening, virtual machines and their vulnerabilities will be helpful for the year to come. Even if we think our mobile devices don’t ever touch the cloud – they do every day. Whether it’s running a netflix player, accidentally connecting to a command and control channel for a new bitcoin harvesting botnet or working on a salesforce utility, we’re always ‘in the cloud’. Even some of the largest Banks, to handle volume transactions have moved their servers into cloud-computing, for the benefits of elasticity and scaleability. Let’s, in turn, take this spring to step up our game – to learn about new tools and techniques and spring clean our networks for the year ahead. We hope you enjoy this month’s edition, as we cover these and other exciting topics as well as a little surprise trip report by our Executive Producer, from the RSA Conference 2014, where I wished to have been but was unable to make the journey this year. I shall read his update and follow his leads and hope you will do the same. To our faithful readers, Enjoy, Pierluigi Paganini Pierluigi Paganini, Editor-in-Chief, [email protected] P.S. Congrats Courtney Archibald (USA) – this month’s contest winner! " # % " $ " # ! !