Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: security

  • Attack of the killer drones

    Attack of the killer drones

    We’ve heard much about the benefits of fun about drones – remote control aircraft – but what about the security and safety issues of the device. At the Black Hat Security conference today Jeff Melrose of the Yokogawa industrial controls company described the risks posed when bad people use these devices.

    With typical consumer drones having a range of up to five kilometers the idea of an attacker needing to be physically close to their target no longers applies. A drone, as Melrose points out, can  can tailgate workers easier than people and even navigate within offices.

    Fences are no barrier as Melrose showed with a camera equipped drone being able to fly up to valve within a gas field and then read its meter. The drone doesn’t even need to have to make it back, it could be landed on a roof where it quietly record its surroundings for weeks.

    Put more than a camera on a drone, say a wireless packet sniffer or a jamming device and the possibilities for mischief are endless. Melrose illustrated this by starting his presentation with a video of The Killer Drone, a flying chainsaw developed by a pair of Finnish farmers.

    Scarier still, was Melrose demonstration of the ‘target tracking’ technology included on the latest consumer drones by chasing one of his research assistants across a lawn. Despite the assistant’s best efforts to escape, the aircraft was able to follow her.

    Despite the scary aspects of drone spying, vandalism and harassment the devices aren’t invulnerable. The two Finnish farmers had their drone brought down by a balloon and all the risks – from chainsaws to signal jammers – that drones present they themselves are vulnerable to.

    Melrose’s demonstration shows how the physical security world is changing a drones become commonplace. Fences, padlocks and ‘keep out’ signs are not enough to keep today’s generation of technologically savvy trespassers.

    Jeff Melrose’s presentation was a thought provoking view of how the threat landscape is changing and that risks evolve with technology.

    Paul travelled to Las Vegas as a guest of Nuix

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  • Crowdsourcing the security world

    Crowdsourcing the security world

    Following the success of their Hack the Pentagon project, the US Department of Defense is to extend the project across its network.

    Run over four weeks earlier this year, the pilot program reportedly generated t138 unique bug reports and paid out $71,200 to hackers.

    The company running the pilot, Hacker One, is one of a group of companies organising bounty hunts for the hacking community.

    Casey Ellis, the CEO of competing service Bugcrowd, describes his business as being “essential a community of thirty thousand hackers from around the world.”

    “The whole idea is to identify where the vulnerabilities are discovered and fixed before the bad guys,” he says. “your guys who you are paying by the hour are plenty smart but they are competing with a crowd of bad guys who think creatively.”

    Ellis explained how services like Bugcrowd allow clients like the US Department of Defense to manage the risk and administrative aspects of running a security competition, making it easier for large organisations to run crowdsourced projects like this.

    Much has been written about crowdsourcing but it’s commercial fields like security testing where tapping the wisdom of the community really pays off. For some consulting firms, these services could turn out to be real threats.

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  • The benefits of being public

    The benefits of being public

    Both the public cloud and a publicly listed company are good things for a business says Netsuite’s Zac Nelson.

    “Managing a public company is a great discipline and in some ways gives us an advantage over non-public company who don’t have to have discipline and make good investments,” says Zac Nelson, the CEO of Netsuite.

    Nelson was talking to Decoding the New Economy yesterday at the annual Suiteworld conference, Netsuite’s annual gathering in San Jose.

    The CEO’s comments are in contrast to a common view that being publicly listed company distracts a company’s management from focusing on long term objectives, a sentiment Nelson rejects.

    “In terms of managing a public company I think it’s an important discipline, I think a lot of people are opposed to these SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) rules but when I look at these rules I think they are just common sense. Are you managing your business right? You want to have control of your business so you aren’t blindsided.”

    Probably the biggest advocate of taking companies private is Michael Dell who took his eponymous business off the markets three years ago and is now looking at doing the same thing with EMC in what will be the biggest IT merger in history.

    Dell going private

    Nelson doesn’t think Dell going private was a mistake though, “I saw Larry Ellison say it was one of the greatest business moves in the history of man, I’ll agree with Larry – he’s usually right on that stuff,” he laughed.

    “The thing I see Dell doing that I understand is they are giving their smaller division more autonomy. Dell Boomi is going back to being just Boomi and Secureworks just went public. Certainly from a structural standpoint and business model innovation that makes sense and it’s what I understand.”

    As a public company, Netsuite does come under scrutiny and one of the criticisms is that it continues to post losses, something that Nelson puts down to the treatment of stock options. In the last earnings report, the company claimed capitalising stock options added $30 million in costs and not including them would see the company reporting an eight million dollar profit last quarter.

    “We’re cash flow positive, we generate over $140 million in cash,” Nelson says. “People are happy with it, we’re still investing. What we’re investing in this year is different to the past, we’re investing in services to enable our customers to invest in product.”

    Integrating the stack

    One of the advantages Nelson sees that cloud based companies like his have are integrated systems, “the client server world created this perspective that dis-integrated systems actually work – you have Windows, you have third-party apps – but what really works well are integrated systems.” he says. “Look at the most common system you guys use, called Apple, it’s an integrated end-to-end system. Same with Amazon, that’s what we’ve built.”

    “The detour we took in the client-server world is still being taken in the software world, a lot of software people believe you can compile this stuff and it will magically work. No, it doesn’t. Integrated systems work better.”

    Securing the cloud

    One area he specifically sees where cloud services have an advantage in being integrated is with security, “a problem that large enterprises have that we to some degree don’t have is we have one system, we have five data centers. You look at some of these large enterprises and some of them don’t even know where some of their data centres are. How on earth do you secure that environment? It’s not a product problem, it’s a process and IT management problem.”

    Nelson’s comments on security are a swipe at competitors like SAP and Oracle who are often criticised for having disparate systems.

    With Suiteworld moving to Las Vegas next year, it will be interesting to see who’s taking bets against cloud services like Netsuite. Certainly with salesmen like Zac Nelson, they’re able to tell a good story. The key though is to show some profits in the longer run.

    Paul travelled to Suiteworld in San Jose as a guest of Netsuite.

     

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  • Probing the weakest links of the banking system

    Probing the weakest links of the banking system

    The breach of the Bangladeshi banking network has been shocking on a number of levels, not least for the allegations the institutions were using second hand network equipment with no security precautions.

    Fortunately for the Bangladesh financial system the hackers could spell and so only got away with a fraction of what they could have.

    Now there are claims the SWIFT international funds transfer system may have been compromised by the breach, which shows the fragility of global networks and how they are only as strong as the weakest link.

    As the growth of the internet shows, it’s almost impossible to build a totally secure global communications network. As connected devices, intelligent systems and algorithms become integral parts of our lives, trusting information is going to become even more critical.

    The Bangladeshi bank hack was a lucky escape but it is an early warning about securing our networks.

    Update: It appears the hackers were successful in getting malware onto the network according to Reuters but, like their main efforts, were somewhat crude and easily detected. One wonders how many sophisticated bad actors have quietly exploited these weaknesses.

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  • Reaping the security dividend

    Reaping the security dividend

    Boards and executives have finally got the message about security John Stewart, Chief Security and Trust Officer at Cisco.

    For most of the computer era security has been seen as an inhibiter to innovation and speed to market, but now with most businesses finding they face a three year time frame to transform in face of digital disruption Stewart says corporate managments now see security of their products as being a valued feature.

    Stewart bases his view on an online survey, Cybersecurity as a Growth Advantage, where Cisco polled 1,014 senior executives with extensive cybersecurity responsibilities in 10 countries and 11 in-depth interviews with senior executives and cybersecurity experts.

    From this, Cisco found a third of businesses now sees security as being a competitive advantage.

    Digital disruption drives the shift

    Stewart puts this down to boards and senior executives realising how widespread digital disruption is, “it’s highly unlikely Weight Watchers saw the disruption coming from Fitbit,” he muses. “In fact it’s hard to see how anyone could have seen that coming.”

    As a consequence of these widespread and often unexpected disruptions, corporate leaders are trying to shore up their existing positions against unforeseen competitors by shifting to digital platforms as quickly as they can.

    “We have to do digital and if we are going to do digital we have to have strong cybersecurity controls,” says Stewart in explaining why cybersecurity is an important part of this strategy.

    Security as a cornerstone

    “By making cybersecurity a cornerstone of their businesses, security-led digital organizations are able to innovate faster and more effectively, because they have significantly greater confidence in the security of their digital capabilities,” Stewart says.

    Certainly managers are worried about the risks of going digital with Cisco reporting many businesses have put projects on hold due to concerns about security risks, “a lack of cybersecurity strategy can cripple innovation and slow business, because it can hinder development of digital offerings and business models.”

    According to Cisco’s findings, seventy-one percent of executives said that concerns over cybersecurity are impeding innovation in their organizations. Thirty-nine percent of executives stated that they had halted mission-critical initiatives due to cybersecurity issues.

    Encouraging moves

    While the possibility that corporate leaders are taking cyber security seriously is encouraging, that change is yet to be seen in the marketplace, particularly in the consumer Internet of Things market where being first trumps security, design considerations or even basic safety.

    The real test for how important cybersecurity really is remains in the marketplace — will customers pay more for secure products?

    One sense that in Cisco’s marketplace of enterprise customers where security failures could have expensive, embarrassing and possibly catastrophic consequences, customers will pay more for trustworthy devices. In the consumer field it may well be different.

    Probably the most important finding from Cisco’s survey is that businesses are now understanding security has to be designed into products and processes rather than being bolted on as an after thought. If that is true, then we have come a long way.

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