NCSC- National Cyber Security Centre for cyber expertise

By Cyber SecurityNo Comments

NCSC- the National Cyber Security Centre for cyber expertise review.

NCSC- the National Cyber Security Centre for cyber expertise review.Following on from the Cyber Security Force’s news post yesterday outline NCSC- the National Cyber Security Centre, the UK government plans to make the NCSC the centre of its expertise on what is happening in cyber space, combining the knowledge gathered from incidents and intelligence with that shared with industry, academia and international partners.

The NCSC will aim to use that knowledge to provide best practice advice and guidance and to tackle systemic vulnerabilities to enhance cyber security for all.

The NCSC will support the most critical organisations in the UK across government and the private sector to secure and defend their networks. This will include the provision of bespoke advice and guidance, help to design and test networks and exercise response arrangements.

When a serious cyber incident occurs, the NCSC will work with victims to minimise the damage, help with recovery and learn lessons to reduce the chance of recurrence and minimise future impact.

According to the prospectus, this help will include connecting victims with commercial companies that are recognised as being excellent at cyber incident response, and ensuring that the wider response of government and law enforcement is well co-ordinated.

In the case of very serious incidents, the NCSC’s response may include communicating publicly about consequences and the steps people and businesses should take to protect themselves.

The establishment of the NCSC will bring a new level of coherence and effectiveness to how government does cyber security. It seeks to partner with government agencies and departments, the devolved administrations, and the wider public and private sectors.

The NCSC will also work in close partnership with law enforcement to support their efforts to tackle cyber crime, and with the UK’s security and intelligence agencies and the Ministry of Defence to identify and counter the full range of threats in cyber space.

The NCSC will support the government’s wider security and prosperity agenda by engaging with international partners on incident handling, situational awareness, building technical capabilities and capacity and contributing to broader cyber security discussions.

For organisations that have their own networks, the NCSC will run the Cyber Security Information Sharing Partnership (CiSP). This is aimed at enabling organisations to share information with each other and the NCSC about what they are seeing on their networks, and provide a forum for discussion from beginner through to expert level.

The NCSC will produce tailored advice and guidance to identified sectors and proactively work with companies on this. However, it will initially focus on sectors which form the critical national infrastructure and those of strategic or significant economic importance or tied to the delivery of key public services.

The NCSC will not offer an enquiries line for the general public and Action Fraud will continue to be the first port of call for victims to report suspected cyber crime.

However, when there is a significant cyber incident affecting the UK, the NCSC will have the leading role for government in communicating to the public, to provide reassurance and guidance on what individuals and organisations can do to better protect themselves.

The NCSC’s specialist teams will work with the Ministry of Defence – and other users of very secure communications – to ensure that operational needs are met. It will also ensure the capabilities needed to operate both independently and with the UK’s allies are available in the future.

The NCSC will work with the cyber security industry to help ensure organisations of all kinds can find cyber security products and services that are high quality and meet their needs.

Gloucestershire Safer Cyber Forum accepts Cyber Security Force

By Cyber SecurityNo Comments

The Gloucestershire Safer Cyber Forum has accepted Cyber Security Force to join it.

The Gloucestershire Safer Cyber Forum has accepted Cyber Security Force to join it.The Gloucestershire Safer Cyber Forum (GCSF)  was set up and run by the Gloucestershire Constabulary to to provide a source of crime prevention, advice and to share cyber threat information.

GSCF also provides a secure environment for Gloucestershire business to engage directly with peers and Gloucestershire Constabulary on incidents or concerns around cybercrime, along with the ability to report it anonymously.

Being part of GSCF means that we can be at the leading edge of information on how to avoid cyber security issues and when they do arise how best to prevent and recover from the bad guys out there.

Few organisations prepared for cyber attacks, says report

By Cyber SecurityNo Comments

Only 23% of organisations are capable of responding effectively to critical security incidents, according to NTT Com Security’s latest threat report.

Only 23% of organisations are capable of responding effectively to critical security incidents, according to NTT Com Security's latest threat report.
Nearly 80% of organisations remain unprepared and without a formal plan to respond to cyber security incidents, a report has revealed.

There has been little improvement in preparedness in the past three years, according to the annual Global Threat Intelligence Report (GTIR) by NTT Com Security in The Global Threat Intelligence Report 2016.

Based on data from 24 security operations centres, seven R&D centres, 3.5 trillion logs and 6.2 billion attacks in 2015, the GTIR shows that on average, only 23% of organisations have the capability to respond effectively to critical security incidents.

The lack of improvement was further underlined by the finding that nearly 21% of vulnerabilities detected in client networks were more than three years old, while more than 12% were over 5 years old, and over 5% were more than 10 years old.

Results included vulnerabilities from as far back as 1999, making them over 16 years old.

“Prevention and planning for cyber security incidents seems to be stagnating,” said Garry Sidaway, vice-president of strategy and alliances at NTT Com Security.

“This is a real concern and could be due to a number of reasons, such as security fatigue caused by too many high profile security breaches, information overload and conflicting advice in combination with the sheer pace of technology change, lack of investment and increased regulation.

“Facing security challenges that didn’t exist last year, let alone a decade ago, and struggling with a shortfall in information security professionals, many organisations no longer have the necessary skills or resources to cope. Our mantra is prevention is better than cure and get the security basics right, including having a clear, well-communicated incident response plan.”

Although financial services was the leading sector for incident response in previous annual GTIR reports, the retail sector now takes the lead, with 22% of all response engagements, up from 12% the previous year. But retail – a popular target due to processing large volumes of personal information such as credit card details – also experienced the highest number of attacks, the report shows.

The report shows an increase in breach investigations to 28% in 2015 compared with 16% the previous year, with most incidents involving theft of data and intellectual property.

Internal threats jumped to 19% of overall investigations – from 2% in 2014 – with many of these the result of employees and contractors abusing information and computing assets.

Spear phishing attacks accounted for approximately 17% of incident response activities in 2015, up from 2% previously. Many of these attacks related to financial fraud targeting executives and finance personnel, with attackers using clever social engineering tactics, such as getting organisations to pay fake invoices.

Despite the rise in distributed denial of service (DDoS) hacking groups like DD4BC, the GTIR noted a drop in DDoS related activity compared with the previous two years. This is likely to be due to an investment in DDoS mitigation tools and services, the report said. However, the report also said extortion, based on payments by victims to avoid or stop DDoS attacks, had become more prevalent.

NTT Com Security made four recommendations for incident responses:

Prepare incident management processes and “run books”.
Many organisations have limited guidelines describing how to declare and classify incidents even though these are critical to ensure a response can be initiated. Depending on the type of attack, potential impact and other factors, response activities will be very different for each. Common practices for incident response also suggest organisations should develop “run books” to address how common incidents should be handled in their environment.

Evaluate your response effectiveness.
When incidents occur the last thing you want is to lack an understanding of standard incident response operating procedures. Evaluation of preparedness should include regular test scenarios. Consider post-mortem reviews to document and build upon response activities that worked well, as well as areas needing improvement.

Update escalation rosters.
As organisations grow and roles change, it is important to update documentation related to who is involved in incident response activities. Time is critical to incident response and not being able to quickly involve the correct people can hamper your effectiveness. Updating contact information for suppliers such as external incident response support and other providers is just as important.

Prepare technical documentation.
To make accurate decisions and identify impacted systems, organisations must have comprehensive and accurate details about their network.