For Top Cyber Threats, Look in the Mirror

October 31, 2016 / G C Network / Comments Off on For Top Cyber Threats, Look in the Mirror

Cloud computing: A data-centric business model

By G C Network | October 3, 2015

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology: “Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers,…

John Mayer At Dell World 2015!! (Oh, I’ll be there too.)

By G C Network | September 30, 2015

An artist who defies all boundaries, John Mayer has won seven Grammy Awards and sold more than 17 million albums worldwide. The singer, songwriter and guitarist’s skills have been widely…

Data-centric Security: The New Must Have

By G C Network | September 23, 2015

Where is your data right now? The explosion of cloud computing and consumer IT means that your data, as well as data about you, can be virtually anywhere.Having your data and the…

Personal email:Pathway to Cybersecurity Breaches

By G C Network | September 14, 2015

As a business communications tool, email is the dominant option, and many corporations have policies that allow the use of personal email on corporate computers. In a recent Adobe Systems…

IEEE Cloud Computing: Legal Clouds

By G C Network | September 11, 2015

The new issue of IEEE Cloud Computing is now available!   This special issue looks at how to balance privacy with legitimate surveillance and lawful data access. Some of the…

Cloud hosting: Look beyond cost savings and weigh pros, cons

By G C Network | September 3, 2015

Is your company struggling with the idea of using “cloud hosting” in order to save money? Truth be known, using cost savings as the primary reason for moving to cloud…

“Cloud First” Lessons Learned from ViON

By G C Network | August 25, 2015

In 2011, then United States CIO Vivek Kundra released the US Federal Cloud Computing Strategy [1]. In the executive summary he pointed to cloud computing as a key component of…

Looking for Security Peak Performance?

By G C Network | August 19, 2015

You can find it at Dell Peak Performance 2015!!! I’ll be there at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas attending as a social media correspondent with a full…

The Cybersecurity Sprint: Are we safe yet?

By G C Network | August 7, 2015

UPDATE: NBC News reports U.S. officials have disclosed a hack of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff unclassified email system, which took place on July 25. Recent unauthorized access to a U.S. government database…

Cloud Computing + Things = “Information Excellence”, Not IoT

By G C Network | July 31, 2015

The Internet of Things (IoT) has quickly become the next “be all to end all” in information technology. Touted as how cloud computing will connect everyday things together, it is…

A recent report by Praetorian, a cybersecurity company headquartered in Austin, TX, focused on threats that resulted in data compromise or access to sensitive information. Based on a review of 100 separate internal penetration test engagements the study identified the five most prevalent threats to corporate data.  The amazing thing about these weaknesses is that the top four are all based on utilizing stolen credentials and the last one helps an attacker be more effective in using those stolen credentials.  In other words, the enemy is right there in the mirror!  The study spanned 75 unique organizations and only focused on security weaknesses that were used to obtain a full network compromise.

Where are your pain points?

The most prevalent threat is something we’ve all heard of before – Weak Domain User Passwords.  Since most corporate environments use Microsoft’s Active Directory to manage employee accounts and access, it needs some improvements in order to fully address complex passwords. Since Active Directory only requires passwords to be a specific length and contain specific character sets so addressing this weakness will require the use of third-party software.

The next most common corporate threat is Broadcast Name Resolution Poisoning.  Using this vector, an attacker responds to broadcast requests (i.e. LLMNR, NetBIOS, MDNS, etc) by providing its own IP.  When this is done, the credentials of a user accessing network resources can be instead transmitted to the attacker’s system.
The next big no-no is when system administrators all use the same Local Admin password. If an attacker is able to compromise the LM/NT hash representation of the password, then the attacker can use the hash to authenticate and execute commands on other systems that have the same password.  Using the hash, an attacker doesn’t need the actual password at all!
Microsoft Windows operating systems have another embedded password weakness.  Believe it or not, the operating system stores domain credentials in cleartext within memory of the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) process.  Although this weakness requires an attacker to have Local Admin or SYSTEM-level access, it ranks high on the threat list.
This last threat enhances all of the other – Insufficient Network Access Controls. Many organizations don’t restrict network access based on business requirements.  This will enable unfettered attacker mobility after only a single system on the internal network has been compromised.
These threat vectors, last updated by Praetorian in June 2016, were evaluated as part of a complete corporate network compromise kill chain.  They also highlight the importance of understanding the cybersecurity threat.  Although the mirror is a good place to start improving on network security, you must also work to identify all your organization’s security pain points.  With that knowledge you can more effectively enhance your team’s defenses and eventually evolve towards a better understanding of your security threat environment.
If you are serious about protecting your data, download the full report and read about the effective strategies your company can use to protect itself.  If you are a CISO or corporate executives, IBM also provides some excellent information on how to secure the C-suite.  They also provide an interactive toolthat can help better analyze your threats, protect your users and save your data from these and many other security challenges.

This post was brought to you by IBM Global Technology Services. For more content like this, visit Point B and Beyond.

Cloud Musings

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS – © Copyright Kevin L. Jackson 2016)

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson
Posted in

G C Network

Cloud Computing

Cybersecurity