Blue Pill, White Rabbit

It has been said that 2011 is the year of insecurity, and I guess this is down to the number of successful unauthorised incursions that were ‘reported’ by the press, and in the media. However, in my opinion, 2011 was ‘not’ the year of insecurity, but the period in which we saw such events ‘reported’ – there is a very big difference.

I, like many others maintain a number of systems which seek to gather intelligence of global cyber events, feeding into the value add of a Situational Awareness Mission. It is thus interesting that, notwithstanding the reported events that do make it into the press, many more also occur which go unnoticed, and not reported. The simple facts of the matter are hacked systems, data compromise, successful incursions, and the associated loss and compromise of consumer information assets have been going on for many years.

But just how could such circumstances have been tolerated? And what went so wrong to allow such very high scale levels of hacking cases to have occurred, eventually hitting the press in 2011? The answer here I feel is clear - too many responsible incumbent security professionals have been overdosing on the Blue Pill.

Now cast your mind back to the Matrix, in which Neo is given the choice of taking the ‘Blue’ Pill, and then looking forward to a state of continued uninformed ignorance. Or by taking the ‘Red’ Pill, which would expose him to face realities, and the associated raw cold truth. The fact of the matter is, with some areas of real world of Cyber Security Management it is just that – there has been a state of over-popping the ‘Blue’ Pill, which has resulted in many organisations finding themselves exposed, and above all, not getting best value for the investment in their Cyber Security Defence Strategy.
 

For many years now we have encountered enclaves of on-going states of denial of the changing face of emerging threats, which, in a number of cases have tolerated the same old stuff, year-on-year, with not a jot of stretched imaginations looking over the hill. There has also been an equal level of disinterest by a number of incumbent professionals, who have been relaying on the same old, outmoded tune of soft focused security strategies. This, accompanied by not demonstrating any levels of willingness to consider the wider implications of modern day technological threats in the form of vectors of attack from APT, and AET – after all where such organisations hold ISO27001 Certification, and are satisfying the requirements of PCI-DSS then they must be secure – Right - WRONG!
 

One add-on problematic aspect has been, whilst all the policy, and standards posturing has been done with the very best of intentions, self-belief in the secure envelope delivered under the blanket of the ISMS, and Certificated ISO 27001 is only as good as the underbelly of real-time nuts-and-bolts. Same goes for PCI-DSS, and so don’t get sucked into thinking that this provides the organisation with comprehensive cover which testifies the organisation is secure – it does not – in many cases, it simply ticks the box.

Current day Cyber Threats in the form of new styles of attack need to be dealt with in a manner that underpins the higher level certifications and standards – this being achieved by maintaining a continuous level of operational capabilities, which are stretching to look over the horizon, assessing what may be the next big security issue with which to contend.

To that end our modern day CISO’s, Directors, and incumbent security professionals need to maintain a brains-on appreciation of what the next security threat may be. They need to remove their semi-over-reliance on security hardware, and applications, and add into the pot of the Security Mission the value as of informed imagination. Our new age senior cyber professionals need to read, and plug into a 365 day helping  of Situational Awareness, watching out for that next gotcha vector of attack which could compromise the very business they are charged to protect.  Above all, our new age defenders of the logical boundaries need to throw the stockpile of Blue Pills down the sink (taking care of course to assure they are disposed of safely - we don’t want anyone else to take them – do we?). And then they may start to embrace some of the uncomfortable side-effects of the more powerful Red Pill – this change of medication may cause some early states of drowsiness, accompanied by occasional sleeplessness, and discomfort, but trust me, in the longer term the dose will prove to be enlightening, and will bring value add benefit of real-time enhanced and effective levels of security. Go on follow that White Rabbit, you know it makes sense.

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