Threat Hunters, Multi-factor Authentication and Mental Agility

On Tuesday, the White House announced that we’ll soon get those IoT labels: The US Cyber Trust Mark, which looks like a shield with a microchip on it, will be on products that have cybersecurity protections. Kayne McGladrey, field CISO for Hyperproof, expressed reservations about the mark. His concern is that Cyber Trust Marked devices could be sold at a premium to account for the increased cost of cybersecurity measures, which could lead to most consumers simply choosing whatever’s cheaper, rendering the program ineffective. He also noted that it won’t address all the devices that pre-date the Cyber Trust Mark and are already in people’s homes. “For example, LED light bulbs have lifespans of tens of thousands of hours, which means that insecure light bulbs will be a feature of the IoT landscape for the coming decade or longer,” McGladrey said in an email.

Another newer issue is that “the transition from a fully remote to a partially on-site work environment creates substantive cybersecurity concerns based on the ongoing mental health crisis,’’ said IEEE senior member Kayne McGladrey. As some businesses attempt to mandate a return to the office, they should be aware of the mental health challenges employees are facing, he said. “Research shows a significant decline in workers’ mental well-being, resulting in stress and anxiety. These mental states can negatively affect decision-making and lead to cybersecurity lapses.”

The focus has been on knowing where the crown jewels sit and protecting that space. CSHub Executive Board Member and IEEE Public Visibility Initiative spokesperson Kayne McGladrey notes, “if you don’t know where your data live, you can’t apply any effective policies around access controls or do any meaningful incident response or do any meaningful security awareness.”

For years, security budgets seemed to go only one direction: up. As recently as February of this year, some 62% of organizations said they planned to increase their cybersecurity spending for 2020, according research by analyst firm ESG.

But that was then.

Like their C-suite peers, CISOs today are being asked to do more with less – and probably will be for some time, as the world continues in these uncertain economic times.

Adopting zero trust strategies are a potential solution to mitigate the challenges of ransomware, bulk intelligence data collection, and technical threats to cryptocurrency. As zero trust is predicated on a continuous authentication of user and device identities based on prior known-good behaviors, unusual events from previously unknown devices will be far less frequent and the telemetry far more obvious for investigation by blue teams.