The document discusses the current state of cybersecurity, highlighting the limitations of existing tools and the importance of a strategic approach to defense. It emphasizes the need for enterprises to enhance their security posture through better awareness, compliance with regulations, and by leveraging actionable threat intelligence. Various tools and practices are recommended for securing infrastructure, monitoring networks, and managing data in transit, while suggesting that real security can also facilitate compliance.

2. World’s biggest Hack?
• Was their security ”make believe”?

3. Me
• Father of 3, happily married.
• I work for a Bank. Am also independent IT/Infosec
consultant. Any opinions presented here are my own
and do not represent my employer.
• Contributor to ”@TheAnalogies project” making IT and
Infosec understandable outside the echo chambers
• Member of the I am the Cavalry movement – trying to
make connected devices worthy of our trust
• @ClausHoumann
• I present on security a lot at conferences -> Find my
work on slideshare

4. What is a keynote?
• Painting the big picture
• Strategic views -> Not Tactical view

5. The big picture
• Existing tools, and even Next-
Generation APT tools have limits/are
broken:
– Examples: https://blog.mrg-effitas.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/11/Crysys_MRG_APT_detection_test_20
14.pdf
– He created the stupidest malware imaginiable. No one detected
it.
– http://archive.hack.lu/2014/Bypasss_sandboxes_for_fun.pdf
– Paul Jung -> Present here today -> shows how easily malware
can detect sandboxes

6. The big picture
• No silver bullets exist. Beware of the phrases:
– ”Counter any threat”
– ”Detect any malware”
– ”You only need our solution”
– Proceed with caution
– VPT
(vendor persistent threat)

7. The big picture
• That being said, many awesome vendors and
products are present today! There is no
#Infosec without them
• They have my respect

8. Solar Eclipse?

9. Doing it wrong (Source: Stefan Esser)

10. Source: With permission from Daniel Miessler @danielmiessler

11. And my own version

12. Doing it right
• EURODNS in Luxembourg has just made it
possible for each client to get an SSL
certificate for their website for free
• This simple change makes a difference

13. The job of the enterprise defender:
• Trying to not purchase crappy products
(Lemons -> Source: Haroon Meer @wearetroopers
• While trying to build a real skilled defense

15. It’s an assymetrical conflict
X-wing

16. Compliance
• Is
• NOT
• Security
• Compliance is preparing to fight a war
• Using antiquated weapons
• Against enemies of decades past

17. Why worry now?
• Companies that get hacked are fine...look at
Sony, Target, Apple etc. -> stock prices not
affected, end users don’t care.
– Breaches and lawyer expenses following these are
an acceptable cost of doing business
– Right?
– No, maybe not anymore...next slide

18. Board Level Attention required, NOW!
• EU Data protection regulation:
– Mandatory breach reporting within 72 hours
– 5% of revenue as fine possible
• Threat level increasing sharply
• Attack surface increasing (think IoT, BYOD)

19. Want to beat assymetricality?
Here’s how:
• A strategic approach to security leveraging
methods that work

20. Pyramids
- This one is Joshua Corman’s.
Defensible Infrastructure
Operational Excellence
Situational
Awareness
Counter-
measures

21. The Foundation
Defensible Infrastructure
Software and Hardware built as
”secure by default” is ideal
here. Rugged DevOps.
Your choices of tech impacts
you ever after
You must assemble carefully,
like Lego
Without backdoors or Golden Keys!

22. Mastery
Operational Excellence
Master all aspects of your Development,
Operations and Outsourcing. Train like the
Ninjas!
DevOps (Rugged DevOps)
Change Management
Patch Management
Asset Management
Information classification & localization
Basically, all the cornerstones of ITIL
You name it. Master it.

23. Gain the ability to handle situations correctly – Floodlights ON
Situational
Awareness
”People don’t write software anymore, they assemble it” Quote Joshua Corman.
-> Know which lego blocks you have in your infrastructure
-> Actionable threat intelligence
-> Automate as much as you can, example: IOC’s automatically fed from sources
into SIEM with alerting on matches
Are we affected by Poodle? Shellshock?
WinShock? Heartbleed? Should we patch now?
Next week? Are we under attack? Do we have
compromised endpoint? Are there anomalies
in our LAN traffic?

24. Counter that which you profit from
countering
• Decrease attacker ROI below critical threshold
by applying countermeasures
• Most Security tools fall within this category
• Limit spending until you’re laid the
foundational levels of the pyramid
Counter-
measures
Footnote: Cyber kill chain is patented by Lockheed Martin.

25. Mapping to other strategic approaches
Defensible Infrastructure
Operational Excellence
Situational
Awareness
Counter-
measures
Lockheed Martin patented
Nigel Wilson ->
@nigesecurityguy

26. Defensive hot zones
• Basketball and
other sports
analysis ->
• – FIND the
HOT zones of
your
opponents.
• Defend there.

27. Defensive hot zones
• Basketball and
other sports
analysis ->
• – FIND the
HOT zones of
your
opponents.
• Defend there.

28. Hot zones!
• You need to secure:
– The (Mobile) user/
endpoints
– The networks
– Data in transit
– The Cloud
– Internal systems
Sample protections added only, not the
complete picture of course

29. Best Practices – High level
• Create awareness – Security awareness training
• Increase the security budget
– Justify investments BEFORE the breach.
– It’s easier when you’re actually being attacked. But
too late.
• Use the Cyber Kill Chain model or Nigel Wilsons
”Defensible Security Posture” to gain capability to
thwart attackers
• Training, skills and people!

30. Hot zone 1:
A real world PC
• Microsoft EMET 5.2
• Java
• Adobe Flash Player/Reader
• AV
• Executable files kill you, so use:
– Adblocking extension in browser
– Advanced endpoint protection solutions
– Secure Web Gateway
– White listing, black listing
– No admin credentials left behind
And then cross your fingers

31. Hot zone 1, more
• PC defense should include:
– Whitelisting
– Blacklisting
– Sandboxing
– Registry defenses
– Change roll-backs
– HIPS
– Domain policies
– Log collection and review
– MFA
– ACL’s/Firewall rules
– Heuristics detection/prevention
– DNS audit and protection

32. Hot zone 2:
The networks
• Baselining everything
• Spot anomalies
• Monitor, observe, record
• Advanced network level tools
• Test your network resilience/security with Ixia
BreakingPoint. Ask me for free test licenses.
• Network Security Monitoring (NSM)
• Don’t forget the insider threat

33. Hot zone 3+4:
Data in Transit/Cloud
• Trust in encryption
• Remember you secure what you put in the cloud. The Cloud
provider doesn’t
• Great new mobile collaboration tools exist
• SaaS monitoring and DLP tools exist -> ”CloudWalls”
• Cloudcrypters
• CloudTrail, CloudWatch, Config-log/change-trackers, vuln.mgmt
• Story about the Vulnerability patched during Bash/Shellshock public
confusion period
• And this for home study: https://securosis.com/blog/security-best-
practices-for-amazon-web-services

34. Cloud
• Segmentation
• Compartmentalisation
• Need to know

35. Cloud
• Concentration risk
• Secure the administrative credentials and APIs
• ENISA:
– https://www.enisa.europa.eu/activities/risk-
management/files/deliverables/cloud-computing-risk-
assessment
– https://resilience.enisa.europa.eu/cloud-computing-
certification
• A funny story about cloud certification providers
hacking me

36. Best practices
• Use EMET
• Use ad-blockers
• Use advanced endpoint threat prevention
solutions
• Use ”Adversary mind-set” and threat modeling

37. A more defensible infrastructure
• Avoid expense in depth
• Research and find the best counter measures
• Open Source tools can be awesome
• Full packet capture and Deep packet
inspection/Proxies for visibility
• KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON IN YOUR
NETWORKS
• Watch and learn from attack patterns

38. Best practices - Mitigate risks
Source: Dave Sweigert

39. Automate Threat Intelligence IOC
• Use multiple IOC feeds
• Automate daily:
– IOC feed retrival,
– Insertion into SIEM,
– Correlation against all-time logfiles,
– Alerting on matches
– Manual follow-up on alerts

40. You need to ally up!
• Security and Infrastructure aren’t enemies
• Security and the office of the CIO aren’t
enemies
• Ally up & Bromance!

41. And the unexpected extra win
• Real security will actually make you compliant
in many areas of compliance

42. Q & A
• Ask me question, or I’ll ask you questions

43. Sources used
– http://www.itbusinessedge.com
– Heartbleed.com
– https://nigesecurityguy.wordpress.com/
– Lockheed Martins ”Cyber Kill Chain”
– Joshua Corman and David Etue from RSAC 2014
”Not Go Quietly: Surprising Strategies and
Teammates to Adapt and Overcome”
– Lego