CISO

Enterprise Information Security

Private emails, why is it a bad decision?

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Last week New York Times revealed that former USA state secretary Hillary Clinton used a private email account instead of official email address for communications while serving the State department. It is reported that Clinton used a private email server, not the likes of Gmail or Yahoo, but a hosted email server at the domain Clintonemail.com and was hosted at her home.

As a security professional, I wouldn’t be talking about the potential violation of the federal government rules. Instead, I would be worried about the security of the server and the emails in that server. in the age of cyber espionage, countries around the world are in look out for important information assets and Mrs. Clinton’s email is nothing less than a very high value asset. A private server, without the security protections of a federal system / corporate controls would have become an easy victim of attacks from spy agencies and hackers.

In 2009-2010, one of the Banks in the Gulf region hired a new CEO. Though the bank had its own email server with best security available at the time, the CEO decided host another email for his communications. With the help of a 3rd party service provider, he hosted a domain *team.* and issued email addresses to his inner circle team. The inner circle used this email for all critical communications which include, M&A,internal appraisals, Financial reports etc. The inner circle had people from the Bank, 3rd party advisors and even 3rd party advisor’s secretaries.

We were contracted to perform security assessments of this mail server. It was no surprise that we were able to filter out confidential emails from the server. The key findings of our assessment were:

  • Vulnerable Operating System
  • Never patched after the installation
  • No perimeter protection
  • Weak Passwords
  • No security controls such as Firewall / IPS
  • Lack of encryption

The CEO and his banking advisers always thought its safe to run email servers in the internet. With the kind of information we have provided, they have taken steps to improve the security and then eventually moved to Google Apps

Gulf Countries and Data Security Breaches

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Hacked
It is a no brainer to mention that cyber crime is increasing and today, the focus is more on money & cyber war than anything else. We see a lot of such incidents these days including the hacking and data breach at Target, Sony, Anthem to name a few.

What about information security in the other parts of the world? Are we secure enough? Or better, did we have any breaches in the recent past?

I see that a number of organizations were hacked in the recent past in all of the GCC countries. Saudi Aramco cyber incident was a major one in the last 2 years. There were a number of political influenced security incidents in the past

The list above is just a few among a large number of such incidents in the region. Now, lets see how serious are Gulf Countries in terms of Information Security?

UAE emirates Dubai and Abu Dhabi has set up security standards (ISR & ADSIC respectively) that should be implemented within the government sector. Other countries such as in the GCC (Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman) are still weighing their options in terms of developing country security standards.

What about the companies? How serious are they about cyber security? Information Security is still considered as a cost component and regulatory requirement by most of the companies in GCC and not as a better business practice.

Do we have to wait till a major security incident happen in the middle east to make it a better business practice?

National Disaster Recovery Framework published

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FEMA has published the Final National Disaster Recovery Framework on 22nd September 2011. The objective of the guide is .designed to ensure coordination and recovery planning at all levels of government before a disaster, and defines how we will work together, following a disaster, to best meet the needs of states and communities in their recoveries..

More details: www.fema.gov/recoveryframework

Cable cut slows down the communications

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Three cables under the Mediterranean Sea which link Europe to West Asia have been damaged, causing partial slowdown in India.s Internet and telecom traffic.

Experts said outsourcing traffic and Internet speed were affected yesterday. However, most BPO firms and individual Internet connections are working at normal speed today.

Most of India.s Net traffic is routed through the US and consequently the Pacific link is more important for India than the Mediterranean link, they said.

An IPLC is a point-to-point private line used by an organisation to communicate among its offices across the world.

.Today being a Saturday, we may not feel the full impact of the cuts. Moreover, given the global slowdown, most companies themselves are working fewer hours, and, hence, the impact may be lower,. said Rajesh Chharia, the president of the Internet Service Providers Association of India.

Repair teams are on the job and have diverted most of the traffic through the US, but if the three undersea cables, Sea Me We 4 (SMW-4), Sea Me We 3 (SMW-3) and FLAG, are not completely restored by the weekend, companies could face problems next week.

Internet traffic .from Mumbai to London has now been re-routed via Hong Kong which may lead to congestion and increased latency on this route., Reliance said in an e-mailed .traffic disruption update.. A Reliance spokesperson added: .Most services are working normally now.. The company said it would publish another update on its website tomorrow.

SMW-3 and SMW-4 are owned by groups of phone companies, including Bharti Airtel, while FLAG is owned by Reliance Globalcom . part of the Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Communications.

The causes of the cut . located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia on sections linking Sicily to Egypt . remain unclear.

Chharia expressed surprise at .the regularity with which these cuts have been happening.. Earlier this year, SMW4 and FLAG were damaged near Alexandria off the coast of Egypt.

In 2006, an earthquake with its epicentre near Taiwan had severed several undersea cables.

Submarine cables are laid beneath the sea to carry telephone and Internet traffic. They can be broken or damaged by fishing trawlers, anchoring, undersea avalanches and even shark bites.