Security

Security Champions is a concept that gets more and more attraction. The function might go under another name, such as Security Masters, but the concepts are the same. In this post I will dig into what this role contains and how it can be applied to improve the security posture of an organisation. My experience with Security Champions is in Research and Development organisations, so my views are anchored in RnD. However I see no reason why Security Champions could not be applied in other kinds of organisations as well. ...

In today’s connected world every little store or office needs internet, and the usual way to implement that is by setting up a WiFi. There are endless products that allow for a plug and play experience for the less tech-savvy users. However, there are some common traps that someone inexperienced might fall into when setting up a network. In this post I will discuss some of these traps and what risk they might impose. ...

When people are talking about cybersecurity they are often talking about IT-security, but there are also OT-security. But what are the difference? Most people in tech know what IT is, the tech that handles information. The focus is on handling data, collecting, modifying or providing it. OT (Operational Technology) on the other hand is focused on the tech that impacts the real world. An example could be a control-system that manages the indoor climate in an office. An easy example are the smart homes, where IoT devices control the the house. ...

As in all fields there are lots of decisions that has to be taken in Cyber Security. But how can we maximise our chances to take the correct decisions? This question has many answers, but from my experience many of them boil down to information. To make the correct decision one needs to make an informed decision. But what information is it that is needed, and how can we gather it efficiently? This depends on the decision to be taken, but let’s try to boil it down to some general guidelines that can be applied to all decisions. The first step is to split the information into two categories, internal and external. The external information is what usually comes from Cyber Threat Intelligence. This can answer questions that are generalized outside the own organisation, such as “What attack vectors are most commonly used to by attackers to gain a foothold in organisations?” How to find the answers of these questions is an area of it’s own, so I’m not going to dig deep into it, instead we leave the answers to this kind of questions to external reports published by researchers focusing in the area. A common example of this is OWASP top 10 that shows the most common attacks used to attack web applications. There is however a secondary kind of external information needed to make good decisions in, and that is in regards to the legal or regulatory requirements. These impact all areas of the business, including cyber security. ...

When working with cybersecurity in any development organization it is inevitable that management asks the difficult question. The question that puts us in a very difficult position of grasping the current status of the organizations security efforts. The question I am talking about is as follows, or a version of: How far have we come in our work with cybersecurity? It is an understandable question. We need to see that the time and money put into security are adding value to the business. However assessing the progress in a comparable way is not always easy. As luck would have it there are standards for measuring the maturity level of cybersecurity. One of these models are OWASP Software Assurance Maturity Model, SAMM for short. As it is provided by OWASP it is an open source model that can be used by anyone free of charge, and the results are comparable both over time and between organizations. There are other models that do similar things, but due to the open nature of SAMM it’s a good starting point for any organization getting started. ...