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New Paper: Security and Privacy on the Encrypted Network

Mike Rothman February 4, 2015 No Comments

Our Security and Privacy on the Encrypted Network paper tackles setting security policies to ensure that data doesn’t leak out over encrypted tunnels, and that employees adhere to corporate acceptable use policies, by decrypting traffic as needed. It also addresses key use cases and strategies for decrypting network traffic, including security monitoring and forensics, to ensure you can properly alert on security events and investigate incidents. We include guidance on how to handle human resources and compliance issues because an increasing fraction of network traffic is encrypted. Check out this excerpt to get a feel for why you will encrypt and decrypt more on networks in the near future: Trends (including cloud computing and mobility) mean organizations have no choice but to encrypt more traffic on their networks. Encrypting the network prevents adversaries from sniffing traffic to steal credentials and ensures data moving outside the organization is protected from man-in-the-middle attacks. So we expect to see a much greater percentage of both internal and external network traffic to be encrypted over the next 2-3 years. We would like to thank Blue Coat for licensing the content in this paper. Without our licensees you’d be paying Big Research big money to get a fraction of the stuff we publish, free. Check out the landing page for Security and Privacy on the Encrypted Network or download it directly (PDF). Share:

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Incite 2/4/2015: 30×32

Mike Rothman February 4, 2015 2 Comments

It was a pretty typical day. I was settled into my seat at Starbucks writing something or other. Then I saw the AmEx notification pop up on my phone. $240.45, Ben Sherman, on the card I use for Securosis expenses. Huh? Who’s Ben Sherman? Pretty sure my bookie’s name isn’t Ben. So using my trusty Google fu I saw they are a highbrow mens clothier (nice stuff, BTW). But I didn’t buy anything from that store. My well-worn, “Crap. My card number got pwned again.” process kicked in. Though I was far ahead of the game this time. I found the support number for Ben Sherman and left a message with the magic words, “blah blah blah fraudulent transaction blah blah,” and amazingly, I got a call back within 10 minutes. They kindly canceled the order (which saved them money) and gave me some details on the transaction. The merchandise was evidently ordered by a “Scott Rothman,” and it was to be shipped to my address. That’s why the transaction didn’t trigger any fraud alerts – the name was close enough and the billing and shipping addresses were legit. So was I getting punked? Then I asked what was ordered. She said a pair of jeans and a shirt. For $250? Damn, highbrow indeed. When I inquired about the size that was was the kicker. 30 waist and 32 length on the jeans. 30×32. Now I’ve dropped some weight, but I think the last time I was in size 30 pants was third grade or so. And the shirt was a Small. I think I outgrew small shirts in second grade. Clearly the clothes weren’t for me. The IP address of the order was Cumming, GA – about 10 miles north of where I live, and they provided a bogus email address. I am still a bit perplexed by the transaction – it’s not like the perpetrator would benefit from the fraud. Unless they were going to swing by my house to pick up the package when it was delivered by UPS. But they’ll never get the chance, thanks to AmEx, whose notification allowed me to cancel the order before it shipped. So I called up AmEx and asked for a replacement card. No problem – my new card will be in my hands by the time you read this. The kicker was an email I got yesterday morning from AmEx. Turns out they already updated my card number in Apple Pay, even though I didn’t have the new card yet. So I could use my new card on my fancy phone and get a notification when I used it. And maybe I will even buy some pants from Ben Sherman to celebrate my new card. On second thought, probably not – I’m not really a highbrow type… –Mike The fine folks at the RSA Conference posted the talk Jennifer Minella and I did on mindfulness at the 2014 conference. You can check it out on YouTube. Take an hour and check it out. Your emails, alerts and Twitter timeline will be there when you get back. Securosis Firestarter Have you checked out our new video podcast? Rich, Adrian, and Mike get into a Google Hangout and.. hang out. We talk a bit about security as well. We try to keep these to 15 minutes or less, and usually fail. January 26 – 2015 Trends January 15 – Toddler December 18 – Predicting the Past November 25 – Numbness October 27 – It’s All in the Cloud October 6 – Hulk Bash September 16 – Apple Pay August 18 – You Can’t Handle the Gartner July 22 – Hacker Summer Camp July 14 – China and Career Advancement June 30 – G Who Shall Not Be Named Heavy Research We are back at work on a variety of blog series, so here is a list of the research currently underway. Remember you can get our Heavy Feed via RSS, with our content in all its unabridged glory. And you can get all our research papers too. Applied Threat Intelligence Use Case #3, Preventative Controls Use Case #2, Incident Response/Management Use Case #1, Security Monitoring Defining TI Network Security Gateway Evolution Introduction Security and Privacy on the Encrypted Network Selection Criteria and Deployment Use Cases The Future is Encrypted Newly Published Papers Monitoring the Hybrid Cloud Best Practices for AWS Security Securing Enterprise Applications Secure Agile Development Trends in Data Centric Security Leveraging Threat Intelligence in Incident Response/Management The Security Pro’s Guide to Cloud File Storage and Collaboration The 2015 Endpoint and Mobile Security Buyer’s Guide Advanced Endpoint and Server Protection The Future of Security Incite 4 U It’s about applying the threat intel: This post on the ThreatConnect blog highlights an important aspect that may get lost in the rush to bring shiny threat intelligence data to market. As lots of folks, notably Rick Holland and yours truly, have been saying for a while. It’s not about having the data. It’s about using it. The post points out that data is data. Without understanding how it can be applied to your security program, it’s just bits. That’s why my current series focuses on using threat intel within security monitoring, incident response, and preventative controls. Rick’s written a bunch of stuff making similar points, including this classic about how vendors always try to one-up each other. I’m not saying you need (yet another) ‘platform’ to aggregate threat intel, but you definitely need a strategy to make the best use of data within your key use cases. – MR Good enough: I enjoyed Gilad Parann-Nissany’s post on 10 Things You Need To Know about HIPAA Compliance in the Cloud as generic guidance for PHI security in the cloud. But his 10th point really hits the mark: HIPAA is not feared at all. The vast majority of HIPAA fines have been for physical disclosure of PHI, not electronic. While a handful of firms go out of their way to ensure their cloud infrastructure

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