Building Your Own Intelligence Program within the SOC and Beyond
Release Date: 04/25/2022
Insider Threats and Social Engineering Tactics by Counterintelligence Institute’s Peter Warmka
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In Episode 90 of TheCyber5, we are joined by , founder of the Counterintelligence Institute. Warmka is a retired senior intelligence officer with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) where he specialized in clandestine HUMINT (human intelligence) collection. With 20+ years of breaching security overseas for a living, Warmka now teaches individuals and businesses about the strategy and tactics of “human hacking”. Warmka highlights how insiders are targeted, the methods used by nationstates for committing crimes, and what organizations need to help focus their security training...
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The Top Nisos Investigations Of the Last Seven Years with Nisos Research Principal Vincas Ciziunas
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In Episode 89 of TheCyber5, we are joined by Nisos Research Principal, It was 7 years ago, at a restaurant in Ashburn, Virginia, when Nisos’ co-founders Justin Zeefe and Landon Winkelvoss met Vincas. At the time, Vincas was working as a contractor for the US government but was considering a pivot into the private sector. It was Vincas’ impressive intellect, strategic thinking, and technical capabilities that made him the ideal intelligence operator on whom to depend for the launch of Nisos. Over the course of several years, Vincas’ experience, as a developer, open threat...
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The Vital Role of Customer Success in Intel Programs with Senior Director of Nisos Brandon Kappus
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In Episode 88 of TheCyber5, we are joined by Nisos Senior Director for Customer Success, . Here are five topics we discuss in this episode: Intelligence Playbooks Start with Education to the Customer Playbooks should include three major steps. The first step is education on how intelligence is going to be consumed and not be nonstop noise. Discussions between customers and vendors should start around requirements that customers are trying to address with business stakeholders. Understanding Commercially and Publicly Available Data to Avoid Noise The next...
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Identifying When Attribution of Threat Actors Matters and How to Track the Outcomes with Senior Information Security Leader Charles Garzoni
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In Episode 87 of TheCyber5, we are joined by senior information security leader . Here are five topics we discuss in this episode: Defining When Attribution is Relevant and Necessary Many corporations are not overly concerned with attribution against cyber adversaries, they just want to get back to business operations. However, if someone robbed your house, you would want to know if it was a random drive-by, or if it was your neighbor because that will inform your defenses much more appropriately. Defending Against Nation States Versus Crime Groups The ability to attribute...
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Properly Defining a Threat Management Department within Enterprise with Senior Manager of Nvidia Chris Cottrell
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In Episode 86 of TheCyber5, we are joined by Senior Manager of Threat Management for Nvidia . Here are six topics we discuss in this episode: What is a threat management department within enterprise security? Threat management departments are usually formed when security teams become mature and have table stakes functions within threat intelligence, red team, penetration testing, and threat hunting. These functions are usually formed after compliance, risk, governance, vulnerability management, and security operations center (SOC) are operational. Unfortunately, threat...
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Operational Resiliency Framework Pertaining to Supply Chains by Foundation for Defense of Democracies George Shea
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In Episode 85 of TheCyber5, we are joined by Chief Technologist of Transformative Cyber Innovation Lab for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) Here are four topics we discuss in this episode: What is the Operational Resiliency Framework (ORF)? The Operational Resiliency Framework (ORF) is a framework that is intended to be used by executives to ensure business continuity processes when their suppliers are knocked offline during natural disasters and cyber attacks. Defining Minimum Viable Services Step one, and the most important step, is defining a minimum level of...
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Integrating Attack Simulation with Intelligence to Provide Actionable Outcomes with CrossCountry Consulting
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In Episode 84 of TheCyber5, we are joined by members of the CrossCountry Consulting team: , Offensive R&D Lead, , Associate Director, and , Director, Cyber and Privacy. Here are five topics we discuss in this episode: Adversary Emulation vs. Simulation and Use of Threat Intelligence Replaying attacks from adversaries is considered . The pros of emulation are you can react and defend against threat intelligence and the actual techniques during a penetration test. The cons are that many times these are yesterday’s threats. Simulation is the art of coming up with new attack...
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Data Governance and Threat Intelligence Converge with Egnyte’s Chief Governance Officer Jeff Sizemore
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Topic: Title: Data Governance and Threat Intelligence Converge In Episode 83 of TheCyber5, we are joined by our guest, Egnyte’s Chief Governance Officer, Jeff Sizemore. We discuss the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) and the impact on Department of Defense (DOD) contractors to mature their cybersecurity hygiene in order to compete for US government contracts. CMMC was based on NIST Standards 800-71. Here are 4 topics we discuss in this episode: Why Does CMMC Matter? In the near future, contracts are going to be rated L1-3 and if contractors are not certified up to a...
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Driving Diversity in Cyber Security and Intelligence with BGH Security CEO Tennisha Martin
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In episode 82 of The Cyber5, we are joined by guest moderator and senior intelligence analyst for Nisos, Valerie G., and CEO of BGH Security, Tennisha Martin. In this episode, we discuss the challenges and opportunities of promoting and enabling diversity and inclusion in cyber security. Key Takeaways: Showing Impact for Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) within Security Beyond filling cyber security skills gaps, some metrics that show success in D&I include: Jobs Feeling more confident in interviews Recommending minorities for employment opportunities...
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Leveraging Open Source Intelligence in Insider Threat Programs with Vaillance Group CEO, Shawnee Delaney
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In episode 81 of The Cyber5, we are joined by the Head of Insider Threat at Uber and CEO of Vaillance Group, Shawnee Delaney. In this episode, we provide an overview of different functions within an insider threat program. We also discuss the support open source intelligence provides to such programs and how to change company culture to care about insider threats. We also discuss the ROI metrics that are important to different stakeholders when implementing an insider threat program. Three Takeaways: Departments and Functions within Insider Threat Insider threat programs...
info_outlineIn episode 71 of The Cyber5, guest Nisos moderator and teammate Matt Brown is joined by security practitioner Matt Nelson.
They talk about a recent intelligence blog Matt Nelson wrote about how to operationalize intelligence for the SOC and some outcomes that an incident response team looks for from intelligence. They also talk about how to make intelligence more broadly used for investigations and discuss the intelligence market more holistically.
Three Key Takeaways:
1) Threat Intelligence Augments Threat Hunting in the Security Operations Center (SOC)
Intelligence requirements are critical throughout the business and not just limited to the SOC. Threat intelligence can be a significant help to the threat hunting and detection team. The outcomes that threat hunting teams generally look for are:
- Cyber Kill Chain: Analyzing payload, including commands it’s running, attack hosting infrastructure, what ports is the infrastructure using to communicate, etc.
- Target Verification: Identifying who and how they are being targeted and for what intent is often missing context when just looking solely at forensics data.
- Collection Intent of Attacker: Trying to determine what kinds of data the attackers are aiming for. This is hard to determine simply from forensics data.
- Target of Opportunity Versus Targeted Attack: Determining if attacks are targeting the many or the select few is critical for defense strategies. If targeting efforts are directed solely at IT personnel with admin access, that’s more significant than a “spray and pray” campaign.
- Outcomes: Outlining detections, protection strategies, and awareness campaigns.
2) Evolving Threat Intelligence Beyond the SOC
Threat intelligence is not just cyber news or indicators of a compromise (IoC) feed. Threat intelligence is useful for insider threat, fraud, platform abuse, corporate intelligence, and supply chain risk.
3) Single Data Aggregators for Enterprises (SIEMs, TIPs, MISP) Aren’t the Panacea
- The SIEM is not the greatest place for threat intelligence data because there are too many internal logs that aren’t relevant.
- The TIPs are mostly focused externally and good for IOCs and correlating threat intelligence that’s not useful. It’s simply repeating what is already known.
- MISP (https://www.misp-project.org/) is open source but can be effective with the right resources. Data modeling and getting the right taxonomy of the data is the most critical.