In this episode of Security Gets Serious, host Ben Carr sits down with Richard Greenberg (CISSP), President of ISSA-LA, a well-known cybersecurity leader and evangelist, former CISO, advisor and speaker.

Ben and Richard dive into the buzz around how AI is being used to both enhance cybersecurity defenses and as a tool for cyber attackers, then they examine the potential for bias in AI models as it becomes more integrated into security systems.

They also look at what ethical concerns arise regarding bias in AI algorithms, and how organizations ensure their AI-driven security measures are fair, effective and unbiased.

Ben then asks Richard about his thoughts on to what extent is it ethical for organizations to monitor their employees' activities to ensure security, and what guardrails should be in place to protect employee privacy.

The of course we have to dig into some of the latest ransomware trends, and what steps can organizations take to protect themselves – like engaging with ethical hackers for penetration testing, and how organizations ensure that these practices are conducted responsibly and ethically.

Ben and Richard also delve into whether Zero Trust is really working or if it is just another security strategy that puts too much focus on a concept and not the execution, and cloud security challenges and how organizations can mitigate risks.

Lastly, they discuss the culture of security and learning from failure – namely how security failures can lead to significant improvements in an organization's security practices and why we need to do to a better job in fostering an environment where failures are seen as learning opportunities.
Richard brings over 30 years of management experience and has been a strategic and thought leader in IT and Information Security as a CISO, Director of Surveillance and Information Systems, Chief of Security Operations, Director of IT, and Project Manager for various companies and agencies in the private and public sectors.

Be sure to check out Richard’s spot on Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy Podcast – it's a riot.

Your Host, Ben Carr, Halcyon Chief security and Trust Officer: Carr is a Security & Risk Executive and recognized thought leader with more than 25 years of results driven experience in developing and executing security strategies. Carr has served in global leadership roles at advanced technology, high risk, and rapid growth companies such as Ericsson (Cradlepoint), Qualys, Aristocrat, Tenable, Visa and Nokia. Ben has served as a member of the Board of Directors for organizations such as IT-ISAC and NTXPKUA. He is an advisor for Noname Security and Syn Ventures and has previously served on Advisory boards for Living Security, TruStar, Mimecast, Qualys, and Accuvant.

The other week, the UK has its own Change Healthcare level attack where medical procedures were canceled at multiple London hospitals for weeks on end, and a critical emergency declared following a ransomware operation that disrupted pathology services provider Synnovis.

As well, CDK Global fell prey to a ransomware attack that led to a massive disruption in the US auto sales market and impacted hundreds of dealers to the tune of tens of millions in lost sales.

Point: The Change Healthcare attack revealed a financial chokepoint in the US healthcare system that impacted hundreds of providers and their patients, while the Synnovis attack similarly disrupted care at dozens of hospitals in the UK, and the CDK attack demonstrated how attacks on SaaS providers can similarly be a chokepoint.

Are we starting to see attackers consciously targeting these chokepoints? If not planned, are they taking notes for future targeting where - much like supply chain attacks – attacking one compromises many?

And of course, we all agree that it’s never a good idea to pile on after an attack by blaming the victims, but sometimes it’s like, “come on?”

Last year CISA alerted nearly 2,000 organizations about vulnerabilities that could be exploited in ransomware attacks, yet only about half took any action on the alerts. We already know that ransomware operators are adept at taking advantage of unpatched vulnerabilities and misconfigurations and are automating these aspects of their attack progressions – so why is patching not a priority?

There are only two reasons for an organization having failed to patch in a timely manner: they could patch but didn’t, or they wanted to patch but couldn’t. How much blame should we put on victim orgs if they are not doing all they can to help themselves?

Last but not least, we dive into the exposure of what is being referred to as the “Gili Ra’anan Model,” where CyberStarts – an Israeli investment VC – ran a CISO rewards program where they can “earn points” worth tens of thousands of dollars for “recommending and purchasing” vendors who happen to be in the CyberStarts’ portfolio of companies.

While there is nothing wrong with a CISO benefiting monetarily for lending their time and expertise to the evaluation of vendor offerings, the program gave the appearance of financially incentivizing CISOs to choose products that would earn them cash versus better protect their organizations, For reference, the CyberStarts portfolio has 22 companies whose combined value is $35 billion, and five of these companies are unicorns (including Wiz who just got bought by Google for $23 billion), and the portfolio companies have raised $1.8 billion in recent months.

Principal investor Gili Ra'anan, for whom the “model” is named, showed an internal rate of return of more than 100%, which is a very unusual figure even for the best funds in the world. So how much did this program influence the valuations, funding raises, stock prices, and subsequent acquisition of these portfolio companies? Are programs like this ethical, or can they be run in a more ethical manner?

The guys dig in...

‍About Our Guest:

Richard Greenberg, CISSP, President of ISSA-LA, is a well-known Cyber Security Leader and Evangelist, CISO, Advisor, and speaker with over 30 years of management experience. Richard has been a CISO, Director of Surveillance and Information Systems, Chief of Security Operations, Director of IT, and Project Manager for various companies and agencies in the private and public sectors.

Your Hosts:

Anthony M. Freed, Halcyon Director of Research and Communications
Ben Carr, Halcyon Advisory CISO

In this edition of the Halcyon video/podcast series Last Month in Security, host Anthony M. Freed and panelists Ben Carr and Ryan Golden fly solo and dig into the impact that vulnerability exploits are having on the threat landscape.

The latest Verizon DBIR is out, and the Halcyon team was excited to make our debut as contributors to the report, which was more focused on pathways to breaches - the ways attackers got into networks than prior reports.

Verizon Threat Research Advisory Center (VTRAC) looked at 30,458 incidents of which 10,626 were confirmed data breaches - the highest ever. And vulnerability exploitation was back big time with a 180% increase from the previous year.

The surge was mostly driven by MOVEit exploit leveraged by Cl0p to compromise thousands of organizations in just a matter of weeks - likely through automation – with the end result most often being extortion via ransomware.

We made mention that Memorial weekend is the anniversary of the MOVEit campaign, where it is estimated that as many as 8,000 organizations were targeted over the last year.

The report also revealed that about one-third of all breaches involved ransomware or data extortion. More specifically, 9% of breaches involved straight data extortion while 23% included the detonation of ransomware payloads.

Data exfiltration, ransomware payloads and subsequent extortion attempts were the number one attacker actions observed, while stolen credentials, phishing, privilege abuse etc. were much lower in frequency. Verizon also notes this “ramstortion” trend remains a top threat across 92% of industries.

Then we dug into the latest Power Rankings: Ransomware Malicious Quartile report which aligned with many of the DBIR findings – namely how automation of vulnerability exploits in Q1-2024 led to campaigns by ransomware groups leveraging misconfigured MSSQL servers, TeamViewer flaws, Fortra GoAnywhere (again), Citrix NetScaler (still), and even vulnerable Python libraries.

We also discussed how the data exfiltration issue may be bigger problem than ransomware payload, leading to further extortion opportunities for the attackers as well as a drastic increase on potential regulatory and liability for victim organizations, putting the C-level and BoDs at risk like never before.

Of note in the Ransomware MQ Q1-2024 report was the demise of BlackCat/ALPHV, which dropped out of the Frontrunners quadrant, while a new RaaS emerged dubbed RanomHub who is on the rise and very well may be a rebrand of BlackCat/ALPHV.

Other notable movements include LockBit slipping out of the top spot after reigning for quite some time following the identification of a 31-year-old Russian national named Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev as the developer and admin for the LockBit RaaS platform and a takedown of the LockBit leaks site and attack infrastructure.

Yet, despite all the LEO actions against these two formerly top-ranking groups, we noted that the attacks leveraging the LockBit payloads continue to be reported in addition to the possible rebrand of BlackCat/ALPHV, calling into question whether the criminal justice system is enough to combat these prolific groups.

Hosts:

Anthony M. Freed, Halcyon Director of Research and Communications

Ben Carr, Halcyon Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)

Ryan Golden, Halcyon Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)