Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:13 — 19.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

In this episode of CHATTINN CYBER, Marc Schein interviews James Kim, the Vice President and Director of Cybersecurity Strategies and Programs at City National Bank in Florida, about the roles and responsibilities of a cybersecurity professional, leveling up into a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) role, and managing cybersecurity risks in an organization.

James begins by discussing his path to his current position, attributing his success to luck, ambition, and grit. He started as a help desk technician at a bank and worked his way up over the years, focusing on risk management and developing business acumen. He realized that there was a gap between the technical aspects of cybersecurity and business, which led him to focus on improving the relationship between the two areas. He believes that this focus on developing relationships and maintaining partnerships is critical to his role and cybersecurity more broadly.

James’s day-to-day responsibilities involve incident reviews, working with governance, risk and compliance teams, reviewing policies and controls, managing projects, and tracking various initiatives. He enjoys the variety of tasks and the opportunity to work across the entire spectrum of cybersecurity, including governance, risk and compliance, security architecture, identity and access management, and business continuity and vendor risk management.

James discusses the future of the CISO role and where he sees himself in five years. He believes that the CISO role will continue to expand in prominence, with more emphasis on managing cybersecurity risks for the organization.

He concludes the conversation by advising young professionals interested in cybersecurity to know the many different aspects of the field, including governance, risk and compliance programs, cybersecurity auditing, and security engineering and analysis. He also stresses the importance of work-life balance, given the challenging and stressful nature of the work.

 

Highlights:

 

“We all have similar responsibilities around maintaining a robust information security or cybersecurity program, ensuring that we have proper processes, procedures in place to report incidents; and at the end of the day, having the appropriate safeguards in place to protect client information or patient information.”

 

“If you’ve been kind of following along with current events, I feel that within the next five years, the CISO role will continue to expand and gain more prevalence with management and the board.”

 

Time-Stamps:

 

[00:50] How did James get into cybersecurity?

[02:38] James’s day-to-day responsibilities as a security operations manager.

[04:04] Working across the entire spectrum of cybersecurity.

[06:06] Where do you see the Ceo role in five years?

[08:07] How to promote awareness internally and externally within the organization.

[10:13] Advice for young professionals trying to enter cybersecurity.

[12:14] Challenges in the future of cybersecurity.

 

Connect with James:

 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james7kim/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:54 — 17.7MB)

Subscribe: RSS

In this episode of CHATTINN CYBER, Marc Schein interviews Nadav Aharon-Nov, VP of Cybersecurity at R-MOR, Israel. He is experienced in Organizational and Regulatory Compliance, Information Security Management, Auditing and Governance, among many other areas of cyber risk management. During the conversation, Nadav shares getting into cybersecurity, leading a cybersecurity firm in Israel, the differences and similarities of the threats observed in Israel and America, the importance of investing in internal systems for any company, and how to mitigate cyber risks by thinking from the point of view of the attacker.

Nadav explains that due to the constant cyber-attacks faced by Israel, the country has learned to be creative on the cybersecurity front. They’re always thinking outside the box to figure out ways to keep their civilian life safe. The majority of the threats faced by the companies in Israel is due to ransomware attacks. Cybersecurity firms like his’ continually level up their attempts to study the attacking group’s moves and intelligence and try to get them from the inside without them knowing.

He also talks about the importance of assessing a business’ infrastructure from the outside – from the viewpoint of the attackers or hackers. While internal assessments are fairly common, external assessments could give a firm a competitive edge. Another critical piece of information shared is about automation. Attacking groups tend to use more manpower and less automation to analyze issues and make decisions quickly.

The present times have highlighted the importance of cybersecurity more than ever. Working from home, with not more than a VPN connection as security, the security offered by office spaces is quashed. Nadav explains that his company offers two unique departments – web analytics and cybersecurity to create a strategic platform that collects information from all three layers of the web to understand the hacker’s perspective, security gaps in the existing technologies and products, and to assess a company’s internal infrastructure thoroughly. A company must invest in their internal systems more than anything else, especially in today’s times.

Tune in to the episode now!

Highlights:

“There’s a big blind spot when it comes to businesses, seeing their infrastructure from the outside in. So they’re usually looking from the inside out, doing internal assessments,  (…) they’re forgetting about the other point of view. And that is the external point of view – how a criminal or a hacker or someone with malicious intent looks from the outside-in.”

“The problem is you have nothing to secure yourself at home other than a VPN connection. And most of the infrastructure at your house is either a simple modem, no firewalls, no true security on your endpoints, and everything is very exposed. So the comfort that you had in your infrastructure back at the office is literally smashed and you have nothing to get home.”

“(Every company) needs to invest in internal systems, because the criminal could be either from the outside (or) from the inside. Everyone could have criminal intentions when it comes to manipulating data, stealing data.”

Time-Stamps:

 

[02:19] – The threats faced by Israel vs. America in cybersecurity

[03:23] – How Nadav got into cybersecurity

[05:24] – How COVID has caused a rise in the need for cybersecurity

[10:19] – Where should a company invest more to mitigate cyber risks (other than cybersecurity teams)? 

Connect with Nadav

Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadav-aharon-nov-62a8b5a/?originalSubdomain=il

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:15 — 14.1MB)

Subscribe: RSS

In this episode of CHATTINN CYBER, Marc Schein interviews Greg Edwards, the Founder of Canauri, a well-known cybersecurity firm, to discuss the growing threat of ransomware attacks and how businesses can safeguard against them.

Greg has been involved in the backup and disaster recovery industry since 2007. In 2012, as ransomware attacks rose, he observed that many of his off-site backup clients were affected and needed full recovery. Recognizing that this could escalate into a greater issue, he founded Canauri and decided to address this threat using deception technology.

According to Greg, the rise of ransomware coincides with the increased use of cryptocurrency. He believes that cybercrime, in general, gained momentum in 2012 when Bitcoin became mainstream. He emphasizes the significance of layered security and recommends that businesses configure and manage all layers of defense effectively.

During this discussion, Greg also talked about how MSPs (Managed Service Providers) can fall prey to ransomware, and the devastating impact it can have on their clients. Greg narrated an incident where an MSP’s RMM (Remote Monitoring and Management) was hit by ransomware, causing 80 of their clients to be affected simultaneously.

With the shift towards remote work, Greg suggests that businesses must secure all endpoints, including laptops, desktops, and mobile devices, and ensure that the networks they use are secure. He also stresses the importance of patching systems as the most crucial action people can take to defend themselves against ransomware.

In conclusion, Greg shares valuable insights into the increasing prevalence of ransomware, the importance of layered security, and the measures businesses can take to protect themselves from ransomware attacks.

 

Highlights:

 

“If you look back again to 2012, the rise of ransomware coincides with the use of cryptocurrency. So not (that) I’m a fan of cryptocurrency, personally, but the rise of ransomware and cybercrime in general, all started to take off around that 2012 mark. And that’s when that’s when Bitcoin became really big and started to become mainstream.”

 

“In the pandemic, everyone said, go home, go work from home, here’s your laptop, or even people were carrying desktops in their monitors out of the office to go work from home, and then connecting remotely in any fashion that they could. And so that inherently just opens up lots of additional vulnerabilities and attack surfaces for the attackers. So what has to be done is all of those endpoints, laptops, desktops, even mobile devices, need to be properly locked down, and then also need to make sure that the networks that they’re on got to have the proper security now, across all of those remote workers, and manage them, just like you would if it were in an old corporate network environment.”

 

Time-Stamps:

 

[00:50] Greg’s experience starting an off-site backup company in 2007.

[02:37] The rise of ransomware coincided with the rise of cryptocurrency.

[03:56] Layman’s understanding of layered security.

[06:01] Ransomware attack on remote monitoring and management.

[07:16] Advice on how to better protect yourself.

[08:41] What to do to protect yourself from ransomware?

 

Connect with Greg:

 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gedwardswpd/

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:25 — 22.6MB)

Subscribe: RSS

In this episode of CHATTINN CYBER, Marc Schein interviews Joe Weiss, the Managing Partner at Applied Control Solutions LLC, Managing Director at ISA99 ICS Cyber Security Pioneer and keynote speaker. The discussion revolves around cybersecurity challenges in control systems, with a focus on those in critical infrastructure like nuclear plants. Joe was formerly a control system engineer who worked on instrumentation controls, primarily control and safety systems in nuclear plants.

Joe notes the different challenges in implementing effective cybersecurity measures in control systems. The first, he shares, is the cultural gap between engineers and IT personnel. He explains that these two groups have different mindsets and concerns, which makes it challenging to work together. For example, IT personnel might need to upgrade a computer or perform maintenance, but engineers might resist because taking a workstation down could cause the entire plant to shut down. Joe suggests that doughnut diplomacy, which involves getting engineers and IT personnel together to work out their differences over doughnuts and coffee, has not worked in bridging this cultural gap.

Another challenge is the technical gap in control systems. Joe explains that many control systems are older systems that have been upgraded from a very insecure base. Legacy devices lack basic security features like passwords, authentication, and encryption, which makes them highly vulnerable to cyberattacks. He provides an example of how some brand-new digital sensors installed at a petrochemical plant in Abu Dhabi did not have any passwords in their vendor spec sheets. Therefore, there was no way to send calibration data to the cloud securely.

Joe adds that control systems are very different from traditional IT systems, and security measures that work in one domain might not work in the other. For example, while data is the main focus in traditional IT systems, physics is the primary concern in control systems. Control systems are designed to manipulate physical processes, and the closer they get to the edge, the more efficient the processes become. This makes it difficult to implement traditional security measures like zero trust, which assumes that nothing can be trusted until proven otherwise.

Joe concludes the conversation by suggesting that insurance companies and credit rating agencies can play a significant role in driving improved cybersecurity in control systems. These organizations are highly risk-averse and can convince boards to take cybersecurity more seriously. He believes that control system cybersecurity is not going to be solved by the government and requires a concerted effort from all stakeholders involved.

Highlights:

 

“The general rule is that these big control systems are 1980s, 1990s technology that have been in a funny sense upgraded. But they’ve been starting with a very, very insecure base.”

 

“To a sensor controller in real time, this thing is happening in milliseconds, it’s 100% trust. What’s worse, these devices are built in backdoors, directly to the internet. So everything you’re trying to say not to do on the network side is exactly what’s in this most critical of all of our critical devices.”

 

Time-Stamps:

 

[01:53] Joe’s journey into cybersecurity

[04:10] Everything is about data and data processing.

[05:52] The engineers and the network people don’t get along.

[09:04] Calibrating the sensors

[10:39] Zero trust is 100% trust

 

Connect with Joe:

 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joew1/

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:31 — 26.8MB)

Subscribe: RSS

In this episode of CHATTINN CYBER, Marc Schein interviews Paul Christopher, Senior Social Scientist at the RAND Corporation, where he serves as the principal investigator for various defense and security related research projects. In today’s conversation, Paul talks mainly about AI and the need for introducing/enhancing AI cybersecurity and advancing information technology protection with time.

Paul begins the conversation by discussing cognitive security, or the concept of protecting the safety of ideas and thought processes. From a national perspective, it is about protecting citizens from foreign interference in their right to think and participate in national politics. It is an old concept, rooted in the idea of war being a contest of wills and politics by other means.

Further into the conversation, he discusses AI and how it is affecting propaganda by allowing for automated amplification through the use of bots. As AI becomes more sophisticated, there is a greater danger of it being used for propagandistic purposes. One example is using a Gann, a generative adversarial network, where one AI generates messages and the other detects and prevents them, but in an unethical manner, the second AI could be removed and the messages could be directed at real people. Countries are spending more money on propaganda, but it is still cheaper than traditional military capabilities. The effectiveness of propaganda is difficult to measure, but the power of an integrated physical and informational campaign, as seen in the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, is highly effective.

Paul and Marc also discuss deep fakes and shallow fakes—methods of creating fake videos using AI technology and how both these types of fakes can be effective in deceiving people. They also discuss counter propaganda—a method of countering the effects of propaganda by providing counter messaging or a counter narrative to counteract it.

Towards the close of the conversation, Paul highlights the human vulnerability to misinformation and disinformation and how it’s important for everyone to remember that we are challenged cognitively. Humans often think fast and use heuristics, which make them more susceptible to being tricked, manipulated, or deceived. He also mentions the cognitive bias called Blind Spot bias, where people are willing to see vulnerabilities in others but not in themselves. He advises people to be aware of these vulnerabilities, not to believe everything they see and to find ways to improve their media literacy and to use tools to screen disinformation or at least pop up warnings when there’s an uncredible source.

Highlights:

“If you’re countering propaganda, either your counter messaging or doing a counter narrative, where you’re trying to claim the opposite of whatever the propaganda is, or overwhelm it with the truth or counteract it. Which unfortunately, the research in social psychology suggests isn’t very effective, because the first mover advantage is hugely important.”

“There are things that the government can do to pass laws and regulations to make foreign propaganda, either require labels or to be illegal so that you can then indict foreign propagandists and affect them.”

“There’s this thing called Blind Spot bias, where we’re willing to see these vulnerabilities in others but we imagine that we ourselves are special or magical or invulnerable.”

Time-Stamps:

[00:14] – How Paul ended up becoming a senior social scientist at the Rand Corporation

[01:35] – What is cognitive security?

[04:15] – Are countries spending money on propaganda campaigns?

[06:26] – Distinguishing deep fakes and shallow fakes

[12:21] – Understanding counter propaganda and the ways to curb it

[17:24] – Final thoughts

Connect with Paul:

Website: https://www.rand.org/about/people/p/paul_christopher.html

https://2018.cybersecforum.eu/en/speakers/christopher-paul/