IRISSCON 2016 - 8th IRISSCERT Cyber Crime Conference

IRISSCON 2016 - The 8th #IRISSCERT Cyber Crime Conference
Ireland's first CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team)

This year, my talk was all about Cyber Resilience. The talk provided the opportunity to participants to familiarise and understand what the term really means, and why it should not be considered as another buzzword used in the industry.  

"Threats constantly evolve based on the way our defences counter-evolve, and this cycle is something that is going to happen no matter what. What matters the most, is in what way we act upon, and how our decisions need to be part of a bigger forward looking strategy that does not treat security in an ad-hoc manner, especially when it is too late"

From medium size businesses, to large organisations and all the way up to smart cities, having a proper cyber resilience strategy in place will not only allow us to evolve against future threats but will also allow us to stay within our budgets. In other words, a holistic approach to information security problems (challenges) today, will allow to better ourselves in most aspects of cybersecurity when it comes to safeguarding our vital infrastructures, and without a doubt it will ensure the survivability of our companies, organisations and businesses across the globe.

Cyber Resilience will change the way the board thinks when it comes to security, as it can be measurable (use Key Performance Indicators) and effective, without spending more that anticipated (or even a bit less sometimes). A proper Cyber Resilience strategy will not only dictate us to fix issues as they emerge (on-the-fly) and effectively, but will also put the weight towards detecting unknown threats and have contextual awareness. 

It is time to move beyond the 80% of the attacks that can be prevented with a few simple proactive measures and a preventive culture, and be meticulous by starting to use services that provide solutions to specific problems and business needs. Focus on scalable, rapidly deployable solutions, forward looking (e.g. GDPR), flexible (e.g. include IoT, Scada, etc.), and adaptive (detecting fraud, or insider threats).

Device a plan for emerging threats; such as downtime due to ransomware or denial of service attacks, lost revenue due to a CEO fraud incident, reputation harm after a breach or a service/product vulnerability, stock price manipulation after being targeted for fun and/or profit. 

All of the above are only a few of the key points that were mentioned during the talk. I hope it starts becoming a bit more clear why a Cyber Resilience strategy is considered the next logical step for defending against the unavoidable evolution of threats. 

Solutions such as a managed or on-premises Security Operations Centre (SOC), are part of the Cyber Resilience strategy design as it is the only way to utilise the processing power of computers especially when it comes to detecting threats in real-time, machine learning for adaptation and scalability, and human intelligence for response and recovery. 

If you would like to read more about Cyber Resilience you can take a look at my article on the Tripwire website.

Also, I have copied this year's agenda below which includes all the speakers and their respective talks. 

Time	Speaker	Organisation	Topic
08:30	Registration	IRISS	Registration
09:00	Brian Honan	Head of IRISSCERT	IRISSCERT Year in Review & Key Threats to Ireland
09:30	Marie Moe	Research Scientist at SINTEF	Embodied vulnerabilities - Why I am hacking my own heart
10:00	Christopher Boyd	Malware Intelligence Analyst, Malwarebytes	Always read the EULAAARGH
10:30	Dr. Grigorios Fragkos	Head of Offensive Cybersecurity, DeepRecce	All aboard, next stop; Cyber Resilience.
11:00	COFFEE BREAK	COFFEE BREAK	COFFEE BREAK
11:30	Dr. Jessica Barker	Independent Cybersecurity Consultant, J L Barker Ltd	Cybersecurity vs Infosec: why language matters
12:00	Craig Balding	Head of Barclays Cyber Security Assurance and Innovation Centre	TBD
12:30	Andy Whelan	Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) | US Bank Information Security Services	Sharing is good.
13:00	LUNCH	LUNCH	LUNCH
14:00	Richard Costello	Information Risk Officer, the KBC Group CERT team	Irish Financial Cyber-Scams: 2016 in Review
14:30	Dave Lewis	Global Security Advocate, Akamai Technologies	Barbarians at the Gate(way)
15:00	Robert McArdle	Manager Threat Research Team , Trend Micro	The differences and niches in the different major criminal undergrounds
15:30	COFFEE BREAK	COFFEE BREAK	COFFEE BREAK
16:00	David Rook	Senior Security Engineer at Riot Games	CRITICAL VULNERABILITY, FIX NOW!
16:30	Richard Flanders	EMEA Sales Manager vSEC at Checkpoint Software	Protecting digital assets in a Software-defined world
17:00	Conference Close & Networking Event	Conference Close & Networking Event