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SPOTLIGHT: CYBERSECURITY

Proactive Cyber Defense: Innovation and

Collaboration

Eric Stride
Senior Vice President
root9B

ata breaches increased 40% in 2016 compared to 2015. hostage? Some companies have predicted that ransomware
Within that increase, 62% of breaches came from small will go away in the second half of 2017; I disagree; I think it will
Dand medium-sized businesses that weren’t properly evolve and target inherently less secure systems, and due to
protected or prepared for business impact and lack of
the breach. The attackers are backup controls, I predict
getting more cunning in order many organizations will
to gain access to sensitive unfortunately pay the ransoms.
information. As the first quarter
of 2017 draws to a close, we The Internet-of-Things (IoT),
have already seen a rash of cyber-physical systems, and
cybersecurity activity and data Industrial Control System
breaches at commercial real-es- (ICS) security: these are likely
tate and asset management to get worse before they get
companies. A significant num- better. Many of these systems
ber of those breaches in 2017 are ‘designed to work’ and only
were a variant of what we call afterwards is security a con-
CEO-fraud—someone pretends sideration—if it ever is. We will
to be a high-level executive and see more hijacking of devices:
emails payroll/accounting asking for copies of W-2s, and in many holding some ransom, using some for bot-nets that will in turn
cases, the employee satisfies the request. During the first quarter be used to launch a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack
of the calendar year, companies against others. These devices
need to be on guard for this kind “Newer defensive tools will continue to move will be used to steal personal
of fraud that exposes their em- away from the signature-based approach information. All of these poten-
ployees’ personal information. to more model-driven and behavior-driven tially apply to smart buildings.
Cybercrime in various forms will What happens if someone ‘takes
continue to plague companies. approaches to identify attacks.” over’ your HVAC system in San
Following are some ‘hot topics’ in Antonio in the summer and
cybersecurity for companies to consider for the rest of the year disables the A/C until you pay a ransom? Or they seize control of
and into 2018. the elevators in a New York high-rise? A recent study of over 3000
companies across 20 countries shows that 84% have already
Ransomware—we’ve all heard of this—encrypting your data, experienced some sort of IoT breach.
or holding your device hostage until you pay some amount, Passwords and Authentication: Somewhere between one
typically in bitcoin; CEO-fraud: imitating the CEO or another billion and three billion accounts were compromised in 2016
senior executive and convincing the finance/accounts payable (depending on the source). If a user’s account credentials are
department to transfer money somewhere, or to send employee included in any of these breaches, then that account is effectively
personal information; and of course, Credit Card theft and compromised everywhere else, since many people re-use pass-
Identify Theft. I believe that Ransomware will start to migrate words. If a system only uses username & password for authentica-
from your standard Windows workstations and servers to more tion, it will only be a matter of time before a compromise occurs.
IoT devices. What will a consumer do if someone holds their Unfortunately, many IoT devices and building management
smart-TV hostage or their smart thermostat? What will a business systems (BMS) have no option for two-factor-authentication—
do if their access control system (door swipe system) is held leaving them ripe for attacks.

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