Quantifying cyber exposure: Attackers are racing ahead>
Help Net Security – Eitan Bremler
Over the series, we learn that Tyrionâs strengths lie in his ability to be empathetic and use peopleâs motivations to suit his own needs, all while being quick to identify problems (like his treacherous sister and father) and head them off. In regard to the white walkers, heâs one of the first to believe the king of the North, Jon Snow, and is critical in creating an alliance with the showâs other hero, Daenerys Targaryen, mother of dragons. For CISOs, it can be a bit like herding cats when trying to unite the executive suite, employees and users against hackers. Everyone has different goals, whether it be short-term profits, streamlining user experience, or simply inertia and apathy. CISOs have the unenviable task of leading a team of ragtag warriors (the C-suite) to fight off the white walkers (hackers.) Here are some things CISOs can do that will help unite the front against their enemies: Get C-suite buy-in from the beginning. Tyrion used his relationships with the most powerful people in Westeros to unite them in their long-term goal of survival. Show, donât tell. In the most recent season of the âGame of Thrones,â Tyrion used action, not words, to get his point across. Know who youâre dealing with. Know which personality youâre dealing with, their motivations, and share how they could lose if nothing is done to stop hackers. Tyrion can teach us a lot about business through his expert use of communication and diplomacy to bring an organization together to fight against hackers. His quick-thinking and pragmatism are attributes that are highly sought-after in CISOs, because they are often the warning system to a company of what could happen or is happening right now. According to a new Tenable report, it takes a median six days for a cybercriminal to weaponize vulnerabilities once a new public exploit first becomes available. However, security teams can take a median 13 days before launching their initial assessment for a new vulnerability â the first, crucial step in determining overall cyber exposure in modern computing environments. The resulting seven-day lag time means that cybercriminals can attack their victims at will while security teams and their organizations remain in the dark as to the true level of risk to the business. Many organizations still run their operations programs on fixed cycles â every six weeks, for example â as though they were operating only legacy IT environments, not the dynamic computing platforms of today. Latency is therefore built directly into the cybersecurity process, giving the attacker the advantage from the outset as security and IT teams operate in organizational silos. Many CISOs are left struggling to gain basic visibility into a constantly changing threat landscape and are hampered in their efforts to manage cyber risk proactively based on business criticality. The research indicates that: ⢠76 percent of analyzed vulnerabilities showed that the attacker had the first-mover advantage. ⢠Attackers had a seven-day window of opportunity to exploit a vulnerability before a defender was even aware that they were vulnerable. ⢠For 34 percent of the analyzed vulnerabilities, an exploit was available on the same day that the vulnerability was disclosed, meaning that attackers set the pace from the beginning. ⢠24 percent of analyzed vulnerabilities are being actively exploited by malware, ransomware or exploit kits in the wild. ⢠Start-stop and cyclical security models fall short in an era where vulnerabilities and exploits are discovered and published incessantly, and attacks and threats evolve at a rapid pace and can strike at any time. The cyber exposure gap cannot be reduced by the security organization alone, but necessitates better alignment with operational business units.
Link: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2018/05/29/quantifying-cyber-exposure/