Most folks seem to understand what a firewall is and why it is so very important. They intuitively understand that they need something between the “trusted” internal computer network and the wild west we call the Internet! The installation of a firewall is generally something all business do, from the wireless network at the local coffee shop, to the medium size law firm and the giant multinational distributed enterprise. The barbarians are at the door, but with a firewall we all feel protected! The largest percentage of cyber security risks, however, do not come through the front door and your firewall will never see them enter. The largest risk to the security of your network comes from the employees and guests allowed, either connected by wire or wireless, to attach to your corporate network.
As a CISCO Certified Security Professional, we do a great deal of work in the area of computer network security. When called on to do a “Security audit”, “voice readiness” or “network assessment”, the first question we ask executive management is where is your AUP? After all we can tell you what protocols are running around on your network and even which user is consuming the most bandwidth. We can not, however, tell you if they are allowed to use that bandwidth! The creation of an “acceptable use” policy (i.e. AUP) is an essential first step in network security. The AUP communicates to all network users what is supported and what applications are allowed on the network. It describes what is acceptable regarding personal email, blogging, file sharing, web hosting, instant messaging, music and video streaming. It defines what is activity is strictly prohibited on the network and clearly outlines what constitutes “excessive use”. The computer network is a valuable corporate asset and as such it needs to be valued, protected and secured.
Does your company have a network access and authentication policy? What is the “password” policy? Do you even need a “password” to use the company network? Can anyone just come in and plug whatever phone, pad or computer device they happen to have into the company network? What is the data storage and retention policy? Do you allow VPN tunnels that extend your company network to a home office or coffee shop? Do you allow your users to connect third party provided equipment to your network? Is it acceptable that Bob just added a hub to his office network connection so he can plug in his own printer? How do we feel if Bob plugs in his own wireless access point? Do we have a “guest” network and do we let those folks know what is acceptable on your network?
What are the legal ramifications and liabilities you are exposed to if you are providing a computer network as part of a lease agreement? Are you liable for damages if your computer network is unavailable or “down for any reason? If Home Land Security shows up because your company’s public IP address was traced as originating a terrorist treat, do you have the user agreements in place to mitigate the costs you are about to incur defending your good name and reputation?
Computer network security is more than a firewall. A computer with an Ebola virus, Adware or nefarious RAT (remote access terminal) will infect all computers on your network, threaten your corporate data and render your firewall as useless as a screen door on a submarine. If your company has taken the prudent step of providing a Human Resource or employee manual that spells out the company’s position on work force violence, sexual harassment, vacation day accrual and drugs in the workplace, why don’t you have a manual that defines the acceptable use of your most vital corporate assess, the computer network?
As many of us are now used to working from anywhere from our preferred device, information protection controls need to evolve to protect data at the individual, file and service levels. The shift to mobility and personally-owned devices also means that the threat landscape is shifting with more individually targeted attacks that work across platforms. On this show, we take an early look at new controls for compliance, security and organizational search with next-generation information protection tools.
This week, Rudra Mitra, engineering lead for the Office 365 information protection team, takes a look at the core themes driving information protection investments and to give us an early look at what’s coming. Rudra describes the approach his teams are taking as they build new controls to be pervasive, transparent and people-centric.
Rudra highlight the new tools for Data Loss Prevention (DLP) coming to OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online, as well as Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) in Exchange Online to show how they’ve evolved to provide pervasive, platform-agnostic protection. These tools also provide new audit capabilities to show things like URL traces when people follow embedded hyperlinks in email and actions taken against centrally-stored files, plus new APIs available to query activity—all in the name of transparency. Transparency extends to organizational search with new eDiscovery analysis capabilities coming in Equivio Zoom.
The controls cannot just exist in isolation from users and core to Office 365 is the inclusion of people in the compliance solution. DLP policy tips are presented to users within email, file sharing experiences and even coming to Office desktop apps. User education of policy along with options to help people securely work on their device and apps of choice are all part of being people-centric.
On the show, Rudra demonstrates all of this and more to give an early look at what’s coming in information protection and as we think about integration with other cloud services. He also provides insights into things to come. Watch the show to learn more and see you next week!
A new malware program is being used to do reconnaissance for targeted attacks against companies in the energy sector.
The program, dubbed Trojan.Laziok by researchers from antivirus vendor Symantec, was used in spear-phishing attacks earlier this year against companies from the petroleum, gas and helium industries.
The attacks targeted companies from many countries in the Middle East, but also from the U.S., India, the U.K., and others, according to malware researchers from Symantec.
The Trojan is spread via emails with malicious documents that exploit a Microsoft Office vulnerability for which a patch has existed since April 2012.
“If the user opens the email attachment, which is typically an Excel file, then the exploit code is executed,” the Symantec researchers said Monday in a blog post. “If the exploit succeeds, it drops Trojan.Laziok, kicking off the infection process.”
Trojan.Laziok is mainly used to determine if a compromised system is worth further attention from the attackers. It collects information like the computer’s name, RAM size, hard disk size, GPU and CPU type, as well as a list of installed software, including running antivirus programs.
The information is sent back to the attackers, who then decide if they want to deploy additional malware that can provide them with remote access to the infected system. For this second stage of attack they use customized versions of Backdoor.Cyberat and Trojan.Zbot, two well known malware threats.
“The group behind the attack does not seem to be particularly advanced, as they exploited an old vulnerability and used their attack to distribute well-known threats that are available in the underground market,” the Symantec researchers said. “However, many people still fail to apply patches for vulnerabilities that are several years old, leaving themselves open to attacks of this kind.”
In a report released earlier this month, the U.S. Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) said that almost 80 percent of the 245 cyber incidents it handled last year involved companies from the energy sector.
“Of the total number of incidents reported to ICS-CERT, roughly 55 percent involved advanced persistent threats (APT) or sophisticated actors,” the organization said. “Other actor types included hacktivists, insider threats, and criminals.”
Original Article: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2904020/new-malware-used-to-attack-energy-companies.html
Photo Source: http://albumarium.com/
This decade witnessed a big transition in the corporate culture. Even a leading men’s clothing brand recently explored it in their advertisement, showing how entrepreneurs are now changing the working rules. They or their workforce don’t need to be confined to the four walls of an office to get the job done. With the advent of smartphones and Internet, the time and location are no more a constraint. People have shunned the 9 to 5 timeline, traffic halts and long drives as they can work practically on anytime and from anywhere, be it a coffee shop, their living rooms or even their cars. They can conveniently share plans, send documents, inquire statuses, hold meetings, check mails and do a lot more. This flexibility promises some relief in today’s fast paced life, giving them some “me-time” and in turn better productivity.
All rosy? Not really. This new working culture has posed a number of challenges for Project Managers. The major being:
An agile project management solution with mobile capabilities can help overcome these sore points. It can help Project Managers materialize projects, while staying on time and in budget, to the satisfaction of all. And, the mobile compatibility feature of the project management tools allow seamless embracing of the new working culture that is driving the change in many business processes.
Simply said, a Project Manager has a number of tasks to do, beginning with laying project plans and setting scope and timelines for the project. Within the confines of these scopes and timelines, they need to break as well as assign tasks and sub tasks, set schedules and milestones, compute costs, check progress, and provide status reports. With a project management tool, all this information can be managed and accessed from at a single central repository; providing a single version of truth to all internal/external staff, beyond borders and time zones.
Being a cloud based application, it bridges the disconnection between the Project Managers and their teams. It facilitates collaboration through inbuilt communication and notification tools. And through mobility, it fosters a day-to-day support essential for steady progress of the project. The whole team can on-the-go update task sheets, discuss problems and together work on the solutions. While the Project Manager can track each change and update, check statuses, modify plans to accommodate deviations, hold online meetings or send notifications to share the same and thus keep everyone in the loop.
A successful Project Manager is not just lost in the minutiae of project delivery, but initiates, inspires, supports and motivates its team all through to work for the best. He has to work on keeping his virtual team real. The off-site team should be, at the very beginning, endowed with a clearly defined goal in order to direct and measure their work. In a typical office setting this and great amount of other information is communicated informally – through conference meetings, hallway conversations and chats at a cubicle. Your remote staff craves for similar information. Managers should take a more organized effort and document project expectations, changes, standards, and updates in writing and distribute them regularly. A project management tool can be used to upload such documents and send an immediate notification for the same via e-mail or an SMS. A regular interaction by any means with the team can keep their spirits up and quality high.
A simple reality is that the mobility is here to stay. Every sector is realizing its importance and coming ahead to embrace it. But to overcome the challenges it serves, a project management tool with mobility is the right mix of technology and communication that every Project Manager needs. Such tools and their wealth of features support each phase of the project life cycle and enable leveraging your remote team efficiently and to the fullest. It works well for both the sides by letting the managers have a real communication with the virtual teams, keep a tab on their everyday progress and lay clear goals plus standards for them. The teams on the other hand, through their mobiles, laptops and tabs can work happily, stay engaged, access conveniently and prove cohesive plus high-performing from anywhere and at anytime!
To ensure the success of your Office 365 migration project, you need to make sure you achieve the following objectives:
In other words, an Office 365 migration that is stress-free! These objectives can be achieved by following these 7 steps:
1. Review your current email system
If you’re like most people, the primary reason for migrating to Office 365 is because you want to move your email to the cloud. Accordingly, it’s important to start by collating the technical details on your current email server and run an audit report that identifies all the active users and groups as well as the size of their email boxes.
2. Review your current Microsoft licensing status
Office 365 has number of technical prerequisites that you need to be aware of before you migrate. The main one that catches people out is that Windows XP and Office 2003 are not supported. As well as making sure your operating system and browser will work with Office 365, it’s also important to take stock of the versions and licenses of the Microsoft Office software you already have. Like most organisations, you are probably using a mixture of Microsoft Office versions, which is just fine – but it’s important to understand what you have currently so that you can make the right decision on which mix of Office 365 plans are best suited for your organization.
3. Review your current data storage locations and size
Office 365 offers two main locations for the storing of your data – Microsoft OneDrive and SharePoint. In order to make an informed decision on how best to store your data once you migrate to Office 365, it’s essential to review and record the locations and size of your data.
4. Decide on the best mix of Office 365 plans
You’re now at the point where you have information on your email system, you’ve got a detailed report on your current Microsoft licensing and you know how much data you have to migrate. Congratulations – you’re now at the point where you can review the different Office 365 business and enterprise plans and decide which ones are best for your organization. Note that Microsoft now allow Office 365 plans to be mixed and matched which is great news for all businesses large and small. It means you can maximise your existing investment in recent versions of Microsoft Office as well as cater for the different requirements your staff may have, depending on their roles.
5. Technical preparation for your Office 365 migration
It’s now time to get all your ducks in a row and that means collating all the technical details you will require to conduct a smooth migration. For example, the last thing you want to do is start your Office 365 migration and then find out you don’t have the right username and password to update your domain name record. An important part of this step is to update all computer software to the minimum specification and also consider whether you want to change the design of your email groups and the way you structure your data.
6. Perform your Office 365 migration
The big day has arrived and it’s time to start your Office 365 migration. This is the critical step, but with the lead-up work all done, you should feel confident that the process will go smoothly. Typically the email system and data is migrated over a weekend to minimize the impact on internet performance and to reduce the impact on normal business operations.
7. Perform a post-migration cleanup
With the actual migration complete, there are still a number of clean-up tasks to perform before the project can be deemed a success. The number and types of tasks will differ for each migration but a common example is the decommissioning of the existing Exchange software from your server. This not only reclaims disk space, but it will also increase the performance of your server and ensure that your server runs reliably going forward.
Is a DIY Office 365 Migration a Good Idea?
As you can see these seven steps collectively require considerable knowledge of your existing systems as well as a good understanding of the Office 365 platform. There are a number of third-party software tools that can be used to assist in this process – the tricky part is to know which ones are of value. In addition you need to carefully consider whether it is worth using internal staff to learn and perform a one-off multi-step project.
It may well be that the best way to assure your organization of a successful Office 365 migration is to use the services of a Microsoft Partner that has Office 365 certifications and real-world experience in performing Office 365 migrations.
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