Thinking about Cyber Security Awareness Month in October
As most of our readers know, the past three years we participated in Cyber Security Awareness Month by covering a special topic each day. We are less than two months away from this year's awareness campaign and we are looking for your ideas on what we should focus on this year. Here are links to summaries of the past three years so that you can see what we've done:
2007: http://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=3597
2008: http://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=5279
2009: http://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=7504
The handlers were discussing this topic a couple of weeks ago and came up with some ideas. Here is what we've been noodling as possible topics for 2010:
- Key services that should or should not be running, and how to secure those services that are necessary
- How to secure popular applications in categories like social (Facebook, etc.), desktop (MS Office, etc.), mobile (iPhone apps, etc.), web apps (online banking, etc.) and cloud (Google Docs, etc.)
- How to use security tools like Nessus or Wireshark
- Manipulating Windows registry settings
- Security horror stories
We'd really like to do something that has a lot of meaning for our readership. So use the comment link below to add your ideas and thoughts, or if you want to share your thoughts privately with us use our contact form. In the past, we've had a general theme for the entire month then discussed sub-themes each week. If you look back at the previous years you can see how that theme is carried out.
Marcus H. Sachs
Director, SANS Internet Storm Center
Comments
Amar
Aug 8th 2010
1 decade ago
You should always strive towards personal ID's and passwords, but many / most systems also use "master accounts" (example: KVM switches, UPS) that must be set to a secure password.
And these accounts will sometimes need to be used (again the exampe of KVM switch - reset the switch to restore AD / Radius authentication).
Without a good way of sharing this (!) / these password(s) you end up with the classic "well known password(s)". The same password(s) are often used across too many systems - and it/they can't easily be changed when a member leaves the team because you never wrote down where you used it...
dotBATman
Aug 8th 2010
1 decade ago
IT will often have a standard account locally on each system ("SWInstall", "Administrator", "root" or similar).
They should regularly change the password, and it should not be the same name / password for all PC's if at all possible to limit worm propogation and put a SMALL obstacle in front of malicious people.
But how do you manage that in an environment with imaging, SW distribution, rotation of IT staff and more?
dotBATman
Aug 8th 2010
1 decade ago
Instead of laying all the onus onto the end user, as we have been for years, perhaps we should be working with software writers to produce un-exploitable software, and pressuring government and law enforcement agencies into being significantly more pro-active in fighting cyber crime and punitive to miscreants to the extent of establishing a tangible deterrent.
Karl
Aug 8th 2010
1 decade ago
I like your zeal, but why not do both (more like a defense in depth approach). There is no silver bullet for the security issues we face today. I think educated end users is a positive regardless.
I vote to see "Key services that should or should not be running, and how to secure those services that are necessary".
tumtum73
Aug 8th 2010
1 decade ago
I would much prefer to read success stories that we can learn from, i.e. "our organization had this tough problem and this is what did and didn't work in addressing it".
In addition, I think a discussion of meta topics around security awareness would be very useful. Here are some that particularly interest me. I hope that other readers will submit a few more.
1. How to modify behavior with an awareness project, rather than just training the target audience to answer test questions correctly.
2. What are good ways to measure the effectiveness of an awareness program?
3. Dos and don'ts when targeting awareness program to particular audiences, e.g. executive management, middle management, government officials, various IT employee groups (software developers, system/network/database admins, etc.), factory workers, office workers, ...
John
Aug 9th 2010
1 decade ago
Peter P
Aug 9th 2010
1 decade ago
David
Aug 9th 2010
1 decade ago
Kevin K
Aug 9th 2010
1 decade ago
Amata
Aug 9th 2010
1 decade ago