Technically Speaking

Once upon a time, endpoint security was just a hall monitor: it watched for known bad files identified with a simple signature and sent you an alert when the file was blocked. To be safe, it would scan every machine daily, an intrusive activity that slowed down machines, and sped up the heart rates of affected users and hapless analysts at help desks.

Insider Threat: it’s one of the biggest and most persistent issues in cybersecurity. High-profile cases – Manning, Snowden, and others – have kept the issue in the public eye; government security personnel are rightfully concerned. In addition to the willfully malicious, though, many insiders lack ill intent, but pose a threat just the same.

Do developers at your company keep application security top of mind when coding? Do they have training in secure code development?  Do they have the tools to develop code securely? If they find a security issue, can they quickly fix the issue in all instances throughout a large-scale application? If they use open-source code, do they verify its security?

“Build it in, don’t bolt it on” is a mantra we all learn when we study cybersecurity, yet we see it in practice far too rarely. Our adversaries also know this principle and have begun to implement it by infecting the supply chain – hardware and software – as close to the source as possible. DLT technology partners Crowdstrike and Symantec both note the trend in recent threat reports. In their July,2018 report1, Crowdstrike notes that:

Phishing, vishing, whaling, spear-phishing: the list of clever new terms seems constantly to change. A successful attack by any other name, though, is just as sweet to the adversary. Terminology aside, the fundamental problem is this. Phishing is the most common and effective way to steal data because it goes after the weakest chain in our cybersecurity armor: the human being. Even high-profile people, including one CEO of a major cybersecurity firm and major figures in law enforcement, have fallen victim to phishing attacks.