Dark Reading is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them.Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Database Security
Authentication
Mobile
Privacy
Compliance
Careers and People
Identity & Access Management
Security Monitoring
Advanced Threats
Insider Threats
Vulnerability Management
Comments
Flash Poll: Critical Skills Gap In Threat Intelligence
Newest First  |  Oldest First  |  Threaded View
Marilyn Cohodas
Marilyn Cohodas,
 User Rank: Strategist
6/23/2014 | 7:40:43 AM
Re: The Team Rules -- jack of all trades
@RobertMcDougal 

You make a great point about specialization. And I suspect your experience -- wearing many security hats-- is fairly typical.  As InfoSec continues to mature and evolve along with the threat landscape, there would definitely seem to be a need for a core group of specialists within the SOC. especially in larger companies. Is anyone aware of that type of organizational structure now?
Robert McDougal
Robert McDougal,
 User Rank: Ninja
6/22/2014 | 9:39:17 AM
Re: The Team Rules
To add to your point, in my experience organizations attempt to cover all areas of security with as few people as possible.  This practice forces the security professionals in those enterprises to become a jack of all trades and master of none.  

We need to do a better job of educating management of the value of security specialization.  Unlike, other areas of IT such as system administratrion or network management you cannot get away with only hiring generalists.  
RetiredUser
RetiredUser,
 User Rank: Ninja
6/20/2014 | 7:35:03 PM
The Team Rules
Is it possible this partially reflects the habit of some companies to keep dropping hats on the same tech with the idea of saving money?  I would argue, especially in enterprise-scale organizations, that security is a team op, and that you couldn't expect one or two people to fill every role, from forensics examiner to systems and network auditor, or to be a perimeter protection analyst, incident handler and intrusion analyst all in one, or even jump from pen tester to reverse engineer, and then secure software programmer/auditor.  A solid security team should break the load up, with each member specializing, though able to switch hats at any given moment. 

To the point of keeping up, every security manager should be daily, if not hourly, reading sites like Dark Reading and Packet Storm, or Infosecurity and keeping tabs on exploit and malware databases, looking for trends, new tech and risks, and assigning one of the team to attack critical topics in order to learn, master and defend against them.  All this requires bodies, smart and enthusiastic ones, and the willingness to do the time, the curiosity to read on beyond the news and exploit titles, and the hacker drive to see a solution through, or to beat the opponent at their own game.
RyanSepe
RyanSepe,
 User Rank: Ninja
6/20/2014 | 5:25:24 PM
Its up to us to fill in the gaps
It also needs to be in the priority of the Information Security professional to fill the gaps within their organization. For example, the forensics being the most lacking was true for my organization as well. However, my coworker and I sought to put this into our security initatives. He having a degree in forensics and myself having done masters work in forensics saw it necessary to develop a process which we documented and have the proper tools and protocols in place to have a successful forensics procedure. As security professionals we need to be enthiusiastic and proactive when it comes to filling in the gaps we perceive our organizations to have.
Randy Naramore
Randy Naramore,
 User Rank: Ninja
6/20/2014 | 3:53:49 PM
Re: Critical Skills Gap
I personally believe that self study is the majority of what employees get in the realm of training. Much cheaper and the class size is smaller.
Marilyn Cohodas
Marilyn Cohodas,
 User Rank: Strategist
6/20/2014 | 3:03:02 PM
Re: Critical Skills Gap
It truly is. It's a job in and of itself just to stay current. Curious to know how much of this is self-directed and how much support you get from your company?
Randy Naramore
Randy Naramore,
 User Rank: Ninja
6/20/2014 | 2:46:36 PM
Critical Skills Gap
Informative. As I have said before this shows why it is quite an task to be at a functional level in all of these disciplines.


Edge-DRsplash-10-edge-articles
I Smell a RAT! New Cybersecurity Threats for the Crypto Industry
David Trepp, Partner, IT Assurance with accounting and advisory firm BPM LLP,  7/9/2021
News
Attacks on Kaseya Servers Led to Ransomware in Less Than 2 Hours
Robert Lemos, Contributing Writer,  7/7/2021
Commentary
It's in the Game (but It Shouldn't Be)
Tal Memran, Cybersecurity Expert, CYE,  7/9/2021
Register for Dark Reading Newsletters
White Papers
Video
Cartoon
Current Issue
The 10 Most Impactful Types of Vulnerabilities for Enterprises Today
Managing system vulnerabilities is one of the old est - and most frustrating - security challenges that enterprise defenders face. Every software application and hardware device ships with intrinsic flaws - flaws that, if critical enough, attackers can exploit from anywhere in the world. It's crucial that defenders take stock of what areas of the tech stack have the most emerging, and critical, vulnerabilities they must manage. It's not just zero day vulnerabilities. Consider that CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog lists vulnerabilitlies in widely used applications that are "actively exploited," and most of them are flaws that were discovered several years ago and have been fixed. There are also emerging vulnerabilities in 5G networks, cloud infrastructure, Edge applications, and firmwares to consider.
Flash Poll
Twitter Feed
Dark Reading - Bug Report
Bug Report
Enterprise Vulnerabilities
From DHS/US-CERT's National Vulnerability Database
CVE-2023-1172
PUBLISHED: 2023-03-17
The Bookly plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the full name value in versions up to, and including, 21.5 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to inject arbitrary web scripts in pages that w...
CVE-2023-1469
PUBLISHED: 2023-03-17
The WP Express Checkout plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Stored Cross-Site Scripting via the ‘pec_coupon[code]’ parameter in versions up to, and including, 2.2.8 due to insufficient input sanitization and output escaping. This makes it possible for authenti...
CVE-2023-1466
PUBLISHED: 2023-03-17
A vulnerability was found in SourceCodester Student Study Center Desk Management System 1.0. It has been rated as critical. This issue affects the function view_student of the file admin/?page=students/view_student. The manipulation of the argument id with the input 3' AND (SELECT 2100 FROM (SELECT(...
CVE-2023-1467
PUBLISHED: 2023-03-17
A vulnerability classified as critical has been found in SourceCodester Student Study Center Desk Management System 1.0. Affected is an unknown function of the file Master.php?f=delete_img of the component POST Parameter Handler. The manipulation of the argument path with the input C%3A%2Ffoo.txt le...
CVE-2023-1468
PUBLISHED: 2023-03-17
A vulnerability classified as critical was found in SourceCodester Student Study Center Desk Management System 1.0. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown functionality of the file admin/?page=reports&date_from=2023-02-17&date_to=2023-03-17 of the component Report Handler. The manipula...