The new CRD IV banking regulation being introduced to bring Europe into line with Basel III regulation is prompting growing debate amongst regulatory authorities and banks alike.  Many aspects remain unclear, so it’s timely that a conference providing deep insight into the new regulatory landscape is taking place on June 17^th at the London Hilton on Park Lane. Continue Reading

Cyber security has long been a priority for CIOs, CTOs, and others in working in technology. But following a number of high profile attacks, and as IT becomes increasingly integral to everyday life, cyber is becoming a mainstream issue of concern, not just across the across the whole of the c-suite, but also among policy makers and wider society. New research released by the UK government last week found that 87% of small firms and 93% of large enterprises had experienced security breaches last year, with some attacks causing more than £1    million of damage.

Like many other countries, the UK has responded to the increasing cyber threat by developing a comprehensive national cyber security policy programme. The £650million, 4-year agenda includes actions to strengthen Britain’s cyber intelligence, defensive, and offensive capabilities; boost skills; and increase resilience in the private sector.  Continue Reading

The UK government identified cyber security as a key area of focus and new investment and in 2011 announced a budget of £650 million to shore up defenses in the UK.  So, after two years let’s examine where it’s been spent?

Here’s some of the good things that have resulted from the investment

-          SOCA took down 36 website domains that sold credit card data – this is probably a very small tip of the iceberg.

-          15,000 fraud websites were suspended

-          GCHQ announced a scheme to help companies deal with cyber attacks and give guidance on response to a compromise

-          8 universities have been given the Academic Centre for Excellence in Cyber Security and Research

-          CISP, the Cyber security Information Sharing Scheme

However, there are areas that need further investment

-          60% of the budget was spent ‘detect and defend’ – We hope that ‘response’ is also a large portion of this investment although it’s not  very clear Continue Reading

Last week Mandiant produced their report entitled ‘Mandiant APT1 report’ you can download a copy here.  The report was covered by media globally and essentially exposes a ring in China responsible for APT attacks.  This in itself should be startling news and there have been many stories pointing the finger at China.

However, on reading the report an interesting statistic about how long APT1 were in organizations stands out. We know from the Verizon Data Breach Report 2012 that breaches lead to compromise Continue Reading

I had a great time at the Barbican on Monday last week, speaking at the RSA Security Summit. Art Coviello and Eddie Schwartz led off the day with their usual flair, giving very interesting and cogent talks on the main theme of the summit: “how big data transforms security”. There were great break-out sessions, like the one by RSA’s Matthew Gardiner on security analytics. And there was time for great conversations during breaks and lunch — like one I had with Phillip Hoyer (of Actividentity, now part of HIDGlobal) about mobile security and PKCS #11.

My own session, in the last segment of the day, was on “Breaking the Kill Chain”. We’ve been thinking a lot at RSA about the attack models that enterprises are confronted with these days, especially targeted, stealthy attacks. The “kill chain” described in a paper published by Lockheed-Martin is a very useful tool for modeling APTs and for understanding how to put in place intelligence-driven defenses.

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RSA leads the User Authentication market

Late last week, Gartner published the latest version of its Magic Quadrant for User Authentication, which aims to provide end-user organizations with an overview of the key vendors in this market and Continue Reading

Last week Mandiant produced their report entitled ‘Mandiant APT1 report’ you can download a copy here.  The report was covered by media globally and essentially exposes a ring in China responsible for APT attacks.  This in itself should be startling news and there have been many stories pointing the finger at China.

However, on reading the report an interesting statistic about how long APT1 were in organizations stands out. We know from the Verizon Data Breach Report 2012 Continue Reading

Art Coviello at RSA often refers to the skills gap in the number of Cyber security professionals in his keynotes. A UK National Audit Office report out today quotes it could take “up to 20 years to address the skills gap”.

The truth is the number of IT and cyber security professionals in the UK has not increased in line with the growth of the internet and the NAO warns that the UK faced a current and future cyber security skills gap, with “the current pipeline of graduates Continue Reading

Most of us have grown up with a form of authentication – one factor or two factor and it’s become part of our everyday lives from accessing corporate resources to our personal bank accounts.  However, two factor is no longer enough and the cybercriminals are always ahead of the game.

As today’s IT infrastructures become more fragmented across cloud-based applications and mobile devices, enterprise network boundaries are all but disappearing.  At the same time, Continue Reading

Prevent and Predict Attacks – Really!

When it comes to defending our networks we have to be right 100% of the time but a cybercriminal has to be right just once.  We must shift this balance if we are ever going to be in a position to truly protect and defend our networks.  In fact, defence is probably no longer appropriate because it is not enough we need to be in a position to stop the attacks and even predict attacks.  Predict cyber attacks you say? How?  Attend RSA’s Security Summit in London on the 23th April.  Register here

Those of you familiar with the Lockheed Martin Kill Chain methodology will know that ultimately the goal is to analyze persistent intrusions for patterns and trends and then use this data to stop attacks or even predict attacks.  Breaking the chain in one place means that you may have been successful in stopping that one attack however to be truly resilient you really need to break the chain in several places.  How can you do that and what tools would you need? There is an answer…. Continue Reading