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
New Data Illustrates Reality Of Widespread Cyberattacks
Newest First  |  Oldest First  |  Threaded View
GonzSTL
50%
50%
GonzSTL,
 User Rank: Ninja
1/14/2015 | 12:16:11 PM
Re: Security Suite versus Cost
Keeping up with the bad guys is a never ending battle. The threat landscape is always widening, and the sophistication of attacks grows with each successful breach. What's a company to do? There is no such thing as a bottomless budget so something has to give. Within that budget is the expense of security products and employee training to keep up with technology. Perhaps we should rethink the strategy of keeping all security activities in-house. Years ago, I worked for a service company – outsourced Payroll and Human Resources applications and even functions. The philosophy behind the marketing was that companies should stick to their core competencies and outsource other functions to companies that have invested heavily to provide those services at a high level of competency. There is no reason why security services shouldn't be one of those outsourced functions, especially in this age of connectivity.

Imagine a company that has invested heavily in (at the time) state of the art security appliances. They pour lots of dollars into installation, configuration, training, optimization, etc. Well, what was state of the art then becomes somewhat outdated very rapidly given the ever changing threat landscape, increasing sophistication of the attack vectors, and mitigating technology advances. The company then has to spend a lot every year just to update and maintain those systems (hopefully not forklift and replace them), and train employees on the updates, in addition to whatever "normal" training they have to undergo. Outsourcing the hardware and monitoring components seems like a more reasonable and predictable cost. Within the company, there needs to be a very comprehensive and well defined Event and Incident Response strategy that can rapidly act upon any suspect event identified by the solution provider. Target had a similar model, but the breach was largely aided by an improperly handled event; their security personnel were notified of the suspect event (malware presence) by their service provider, but their incident handling procedures failed them.

I'm sure many companies have the strategy where they throw technology in to resolve a security gap, giving them an increased sense of security, but in reality, unless the companies have a sound security strategy in place that is based on well known basic security practices (such as the SANS 20 Critical Controls among others), all that technology will only serve as a false sense of security.
RyanSepe
50%
50%
RyanSepe,
 User Rank: Ninja
1/14/2015 | 8:24:41 AM
Security Suite versus Cost
The magic wand widget of 5 -10 years ago is a monumental security hole. But when it comes down to it, upgrading and purchasing new protections can become expensive quickly. Also pointed out in the article is that there needs to be a maintained human element, which may be scarce based on company resources.

I would recommend a solution that is managed by the same third party and has a security suite that encompasses the majority of prevalent security safeguards. In this way you will be able to reduce cost by coupling products, ensure cross system compatibility (which is huge for SIEM and other correlation), and upgrades can be managed more seamlessly. Also, if you company bandwidth is not large than an MSSP who focuses on this may also cut cost and increase security expertise for the organization.

Thoughts?


COVID-19: Latest Security News & Commentary
Dark Reading Staff 10/23/2020
7 Tips for Choosing Security Metrics That Matter
Ericka Chickowski, Contributing Writer,  10/19/2020
Russian Military Officers Unmasked, Indicted for High-Profile Cyberattack Campaigns
Kelly Jackson Higgins, Executive Editor at Dark Reading,  10/19/2020
Register for Dark Reading Newsletters
White Papers
Video
Cartoon
Current Issue
Special Report: Computing's New Normal
This special report examines how IT security organizations have adapted to the "new normal" of computing and what the long-term effects will be. Read it and get a unique set of perspectives on issues ranging from new threats & vulnerabilities as a result of remote working to how enterprise security strategy will be affected long term.
Flash Poll
How IT Security Organizations are Attacking the Cybersecurity Problem
How IT Security Organizations are Attacking the Cybersecurity Problem
The COVID-19 pandemic turned the world -- and enterprise computing -- on end. Here's a look at how cybersecurity teams are retrenching their defense strategies, rebuilding their teams, and selecting new technologies to stop the oncoming rise of online attacks.
Twitter Feed
Dark Reading - Bug Report
Bug Report
Enterprise Vulnerabilities
From DHS/US-CERT's National Vulnerability Database
CVE-2020-24847
PUBLISHED: 2020-10-23
A Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability is identified in FruityWifi through 2.4. Due to a lack of CSRF protection in page_config_adv.php, an unauthenticated attacker can lure the victim to visit his website by social engineering or another attack vector. Due to this issue, an unauthenticat...
CVE-2020-24848
PUBLISHED: 2020-10-23
FruityWifi through 2.4 has an unsafe Sudo configuration [(ALL : ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL]. This allows an attacker to perform a system-level (root) local privilege escalation, allowing an attacker to gain complete persistent access to the local system.
CVE-2020-5990
PUBLISHED: 2020-10-23
NVIDIA GeForce Experience, all versions prior to 3.20.5.70, contains a vulnerability in the ShadowPlay component which may lead to local privilege escalation, code execution, denial of service or information disclosure.
CVE-2020-25483
PUBLISHED: 2020-10-23
An arbitrary command execution vulnerability exists in the fopen() function of file writes of UCMS v1.4.8, where an attacker can gain access to the server.
CVE-2020-5977
PUBLISHED: 2020-10-23
NVIDIA GeForce Experience, all versions prior to 3.20.5.70, contains a vulnerability in NVIDIA Web Helper NodeJS Web Server in which an uncontrolled search path is used to load a node module, which may lead to code execution, denial of service, escalation of privileges, and information disclosure.