Sisa Top 5: Forensic Driven
Sisa Top 5: Forensic Driven
THERE ARE ONLY TWO TYPES OF COMPANIES: THOSE THAT HAVE BEEN HACKED AND THOSE THAT
WILL BE.
– ROBERT MUELLER, FORMER FBI DIRECTOR
It is highly likely that the focus and Due to COVID-19 and work from The foundation of any organization
spend to secure the systems is home mandates, organizations are building a relationship with its
going to increase with changing heavily investing in cloud-based customers is trust. When security is
work environments. Because the tools. We may also see a surge in compromised, then the foundation
shift from a secured and less digital transformation, leading to of trust becomes weak. Loss of
vulnerable infrastructure (where the adoption of cutting-edge business is a high price that most
carrying devices like mobiles, technologies such as Artificial organizations pay for a security
tablets, or pen drives was Intelligence, workplace breach. There are multiple
restricted) to unsecured remote collaboration tools, mobility, etc. As overarching reasons why
working environments, makes the organizations gear up for rapid organizations fail to detect or
systems more vulnerable . With a digital transformation, it is respond to cybersecurity attacks.
vast transformation in mass work pertinent that they also adopt a
from home movements, it is highly holistic security approach that
likely that the systems have takes care of all endpoints and
become more vulnerable to threats. infrastructures with no loose ends.
It only takes a small loophole for an
Malware (including ransomware)
attacker to ingress into a corporate
and account compromises are
network.
stated to have increased with new
work environments. For instance, in the wake of the
COVID-19 situation, SISA warns
The average cost of a data breach
organizations of online skimming.
has reached to $3.92 million, which
The nature of these attacks is
is an alarming number for any
dangerous and hard to detect.
organization. In this situation,
Threat actors use various ways to
taking proactive security steps, and
inject malicious JavaScript into the
following security best practices
target websites and is triggered
can protect organizations from the
when the victim submits payments
dreadful cyber attacks.
on the website.
THIS DOCUMENT IS THE ESSENCE OF OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE ATTACK PATTERNS, THE EVOLVING SITUATIONS,
AND THE POTENTIAL NEW NORMAL THAT THE FUTURE HOLDS FOR MOST ORGANIZATIONS.
Mitigations
Frequent patch management is With the increased usage of cloud Most organizations adopt a
essential to safeguard systems or applications, the environment is differentiated approach, where
applications. Benchmarking against now gone beyond Data centers. patches on mission-critical
CIS (Center for Internet Security) Organizations must adopt holistic applications take place promptly,
provides necessary guidance to security that goes beyond but there exists a lesser priority on
ensure that infrastructure is on par traditional datacenters and non-mission critical applications.
with the latest security norms. operating systems. But the However, paying attention to all
approach must include network non-mission critical applications
devices, OEMs, Hyper-Vs, 3rd party and ensuring quarterly patches at
applications, etc. the minimum is essential to avoid
security lapses, as often these
applications become the primary
ingress points into corporate
networks for attackers.
ALMOST HALF OF RESPONDENTS (48%) REPORT THAT THEIR ORGANIZATIONS FACED ONE OR MORE
DATA BREACHES IN THE PAST TWO YEARS. 60% OF THESE RESPONDENTS SAY THESE BREACHES
COULD HAVE OCCURRED BECAUSE A PATCH WAS AVAILABLE FOR A KNOWN VULNERABILITY BUT NOT
APPLIED.
– PONEMON INSTITUTE LLC, COSTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF GAPS IN VULNERABILITY RESPONSE
Overview Observations
Often as an initial intrusion point, most hackers tend SISA’s forensic investigations conclude that
to target vulnerable applications like HRMS systems, application security vulnerabilities are one of the
CRM, etc. Hacking one of these applications is not the top contributors to breaches. Also, SISA observed
end game; hackers leverage these ingress points to that Application Vulnerabilities resulted in most
make lateral movements, to access more confidential common exploits, including SQL injection,
and sensitive IT assets/ data. Hence, paying utmost command injection, and insecure cryptographic
importance to security, starting from inception to storage. Open source components and their usage
deployment is highly critical and often, takes back are prevailing in the industry. When codes are loosely
seat during rushed release cycles of an application. used without vetting for proper security, then the
While solutions like Web Application Firewall (WAF) possibility of opening the application with security
can be used to counter application security issues, loopholes is far higher. While DevOps has created
addressing the root cause via its development code is noise in the industry for its agility and faster releases,
still an essential and unavoidable aspect to make an it also comes with its set of challenges of ignored
application secure. security. Considering the nature of DevOps,
organizations tend to make more frequent and faster
releases. With various release pressures, security is
often ignored, or not channelized, through proper
testing mechanisms. Besides, frequent application
changes, including new features and opening APIs,
SOAP requests, lead to the exploitation of hosted
application libraries. Security is not just about
technology; it is also the culture. Oftentimes, security
does not come as a practice. Resources are more
focused on feature-based development of
applications and pay less attention to security
practices leading to the development of vulnerable
apps. Security flaws are often discovered at grass root
levels and must be rectified at the development
stage. Lack of trained resources on secure coding is a
great contributor to issues in applications.
Mitigations
Thorough vetting of open source As part of DevOps, Continuous Security by design is often
codes and not a mere copy-pasting Integration (CI) and Continuous neglected. Most applications are
is essential. Delivery (CD) must embed security tested for security during the
from the beginning of the testing phase. Imbibing best
development cycle, thereby practices like 3Ds – secure by
following DevSecOps’ best design, secure by development,
practices. Proper testing and secure by deployment is highly
mechanisms using automation critical.
would help speed up processes,
ensure security, and employee
productivity.
The change in the mindset of It is suggested for application Following the process of
developers play a significant role, as developers and penetration testers continuous testing by including
developers are more focused on to follow the OWASP testing guide security best practices such as Red
features. While it is an essential that helps in testing web Team Exercise, Black Box
aspect of application development, applications and web services. Penetration Testing Activities, etc.
but security goes on a back burner. would help organizations in taking
However, paying attention to that additional measure towards
security right from design plays an securing their applications.
important role. A developer’s Including all web interfaces,
mindset must change to embed respective roles, and web services
security right from inception. as part of application security
testing is also essential.
THE HIGHEST SECURITY RISKS TO THE ORGANIZATION CAME FROM A CUSTOMER-FACING WEB
APPLICATION (49%) FOLLOWED BY INTERNAL BUSINESS APPLICATIONS AT 22% AND THE REST FROM
MOBILE APPLICATIONS AND EMBEDDED DEVICES (IOT).
– RSA
Mitigations
BY 2022, 50% OF ALL SOCS WILL TRANSFORM INTO MODERN SOCS WITH INTEGRATED INCIDENT
RESPONSE, THREAT INTELLIGENCE, AND THREAT-HUNTING CAPABILITIES, UP FROM LESS THAN 10% IN
2015.
– GARTNER
Mitigations
Organizations procure software and Securing the passwords by using Multifactor authentication is a
often have shared users. Repeated password vaults and using strong critical mitigation factor to avoid
usage of access credentials can password credentials is essential. breaches.
lead to weakening of the system
security, and hence, organizations
must avoid shared user access.
THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF PRIVILEGED ACCESS POLICY VIOLATIONS FOR A YEAR IS 3.2, AND THE
AVERAGE COST TO THE ORGANIZATION TO RESPOND AND REMEDIATE THE POLICY VIOLATION IS $5,580.
– ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES (EMA) SURVEY
Mitigations
Running forensics in third-party Security is a very niche skill. Most Organizations must follow an
managed infrastructure can be often, finding the right skill set to incident response plan,
challenging due to high address the security threats is due encompassing four critical phases,
dependency on the infrastructure to lack of proper skills within an preparation, detection and
providers and could potentially organization. Finding the right analysis, containment, eradication,
delay the response time. Thus, talent or engaging with and recovery and post-event
organizations must have defined cybersecurity experts on a activity (ref: NIST).
agreements with these providers retention basis would be essential.
for necessary support during the
forensics activity.
OF THE SEVERAL FORENSIC AUDITS CONDUCTED, SISA OBSERVES THAT 9 OUT OF THE 10 COMPANIES
DO NOT HAVE A DEFINED GAME PLAN TO DEAL WITH SUSPECTED COMPROMISE IN THE ENVIRONMENT.
– SISA
ALL THE ABOVE STREAM OF OFFERINGS PERIODICALLY INCORPORATE OUR LEARNINGS FROM FORENSIC INVESTIGATIONS. THIS HELPS US
STRENGTHEN OUR CUSTOMER SECURITY POSTURE, THEREBY REDUCING THE BREACH EXPOSURE OF OUR CUSTOMERS DRAMATICALLY.
GLOBAL PRESENCE