CyberWire-X

“Shift Left”: A case for threat-informed pentesting.

Penetration testing is a vital part of a robust security program, but the traditional pentesting model is in a rut. Assessments happen infrequently, the scope is often very broad, and the report is usually overwhelming. What if you could increase the overall ROI of your pentesting program and avoid these limitations? Every penetration test should have specific goals. Coverage of the MITRE ATT&CK framework or the OWASP Top Ten is a great start, but a pentest could provide exponential value by applying a more strategic approach. In this episode of CyberWire-X, the CyberWire’s Rick Howard and Dave Bittner discuss what it means to "shift left" with your penetration testing by working on a threat-informed test plan with guests and Hash Table members Bob Turner, the Field CSO of Fortinet, Etay Maor, the Senior Director for Security Strategy at Cato Networks, and Dan DeCloss, the Founder and CEO of our episode sponsor PlexTrac.

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The power of web data in cybersecurity.

The public web data domain is a fancy way to say that there is a lot of information sitting on websites around the world that is freely available to anybody who has the initiative to collect it and use it for some purpose. When you do that collection, intelligence groups typically refer to it as open source intelligence, or OSINT. Intelligence groups have been conducting OSINT operations for over a century if you consider books and newspapers to be one source of this kind of information. In the modern day, hackers conduct OSINT operations in order to recon their potential victims by collecting email addresses, personal information, IP addresses, software versions, network configurations, and, if they are lucky, login credentials for websites and social media platforms. The question is, how can the good guys use these techniques to improve their security posture or maybe help the business in some kind of material way? On this episode of CyberWire-X, the CyberWire’s Rick Howard and Dave Bittner discuss OSINT operations to improve your security posture with guests Steve Winterfeld, Hash Table member and Advisory CISO for Akamai, and Or Lenchner, CEO at our episode sponsor Bright Data.

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Strategies to get the most out of your toolsets.

With a recession looming, many business leaders are looking for ways to cut spending wherever possible. And while tool bloat affects many security teams, it can be a challenging problem to tackle for a couple of reasons. First, there’s the fear that security will be lost if a tool is removed. Second, there’s the daunting task of unraveling complex systems. And finally, there’s the perennial talent shortage. Like all challenges in security, they’re made even worse by the fact that there’s not enough people able to tackle them. During this CyberWire-X episode, host Rick Howard, the CyberWire’s CISO, Chief Analyst and Senior Fellow, speaks with Hash Table member Ted Wagner, the CSO of SAP National Security Services, and host Dave Bittner speaks with sponsor ExtraHop Senior Technical Marketing Manager Jamie Moles. They discuss solutions to help business and security leaders to not just address these challenges, but to get more out of their tooling as they do. They discuss strategies for how to determine which tools you actually need and which you can get rid of, as well as the step-change benefits that can be realized when you consolidate, automate, and integrate your security solutions.

Commercial threat intelligence proves invaluable for the public sector.

Historically, the U.S. government has relied almost solely on its own intelligence analysis to inform strategic decisions. This has been especially true surrounding geopolitical events and nation-level cybersecurity situations. However, the explosion of assets being connected to the internet, along with the fact that most critical infrastructure is owned by private sector organizations, means that commercially developed cyber threat intelligence is being generated at a faster pace than ever before. In the Russia/Ukraine conflict, we saw how commercially generated satellite intelligence played a critical role in alerting the public and ensuring our allies were ready for an invasion. At LookingGlass, we believe commercial threat intelligence can provide similar anticipatory insight – and that it can be shared more easily and quickly than intelligence generated solely by the U.S. government. Ultimately, the public and private sectors need to work together to protect the interests of the American people. Currently, both private industry and academia are targeted by foreign adversaries, just as are government agencies. This means that commercial entities also have access to adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and indicators of compromise, and they have that access from a different perspective, which is valuable intelligence for the government. On this episode of CyberWire-X, host Rick Howard, the CyberWire’s CISO, Chief Analyst and Senior Fellow, speaks with Hash Table member Wayne Moore, CISO at Simply Business, and host Dave Bittner speaks with Bryan Ware, CEO at episode sponsor LookingGlass Cyber Solutions. They’ll discuss why the U.S. government needs commercial cyber threat intelligence now more than ever before and how both the public and private sectors will benefit from closer, trusted cyber partnerships.

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Software supply chain management: Lessons learned from SolarWinds.

Between the emergence of sophisticated nation-state actors, the rise of ransomware-as-a-service, the increasing attack surface remote work presents, and much more, organizations today contend with more complex risk than ever. A “Secure-by-Design” approach can secure software environments, development processes and products. That approach includes increasing training for employees, adopting zero trust, leveraging Red Teams, and creating a unique triple-build software development process. SolarWinds calls its version of this process the "Next-Generation Build System," and offers it as a model for secure software development that will make supply chain attacks more difficult. On this episode of CyberWire-X, host Rick Howard, N2K’s CSO, and CyberWire’s Chief Analyst and Senior Fellow, discusses software supply chain lessons learned from the SolarWinds attack of 2020 with Hash Table members Rick Doten, the CISO for Healthcare Enterprises and Centene, Steve Winterfeld, Akamai's Advisory CISO, and Dawn Cappelli, Director of OT-CERT at Dragos, and in the second half of the show, Rick speaks with our episode sponsor, SolarWinds, CISO Tim Brown.

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