Innovation never stops in the mobile world, and that rule applies to security threats as well. Network attacks are becoming more sophisticated and even high-tech businesses with the most advanced security may find themselves in the crosshairs as we shift to more devices and anywhere access.

Just a few weeks ago, multiple leading social networking and large enterprises were hit with an attack when their employees visited a known and trusted website focused on mobile application development. Attackers used a method commonly referred to as “water-holing,” where they compromise a legitimate site commonly visited by employees of their target organizations. Using zero-day vulnerabilities and malicious code that change at a rapid rate, these attacks highlight the need to consistently enhance traditional defenses based on signatures or reputation with global and local context analysis.

This episode underscores how important security is in a more mobile, more connected world—attackers are paying attention, using these industry trends to create targeted and sophisticated attacks that can bypass traditional defenses. The Cisco 2013 Annual Security Report found that Android Malware grew 2,577 percent in 2012 alone. The Internet of Everything is taking shape and the number of online connections is soaring. According to Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013, 30 billion things will be connected by 2020.

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Tags: attackers, byod, Cisco Security, Cisco Security Intelligence Operations, Internet of Everything, IoE, malware, Mike Fuhrman, mobile, mobile malware, security, sio, zero-day vulnerability

There is still time to register for the upcoming FIRST Technical Colloquium April 2-3 2013. The event has a very exciting program covering, bitsquatting, webthreats, RPZ, Passive DNS, Real-world monitoring examples, Spamhaus, SIE, Cuckoo Sandbox, Malware Analysis and many more current issues facing the incident response community.

The event’s line-up includes notables from Cisco Security Intelligence Operations (SIO), Internet Systems Consortium, Shadowserver foundation, KPN-CERT, NATO, MyCert and ING amongst others. Program details can be found here.
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Tags: CSIRT, FIRST, Gavin Reid, KPN-CERT, malware, Malware Analysis, MyCert, NATO, security, security intelligence operations, sio, TRAC

This week, Juniper Networks announced a new cloud-based threat intelligence service focused on fingerprinting attackers’ individual devices. We’d like to officially welcome Juniper to the cloud-based security intelligence market—a space where Cisco has a proven track record of leadership through Security Intelligence Operations (SIO). Imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, but in Juniper’s case, they entered the market years late and with limited visibility.

Let’s take a closer look at Juniper’s latest offering.

To start, here is what we know for certain: cyber threats take advantage of multiple attack vectors, striking quickly or lurking for days, months and even years inside your network. Not only this, but the Cisco 2013 Annual Security Report showcases how the web is an equal opportunity infector, with cyber threats crossing national, geographic and organizational boundaries as quickly and easily as users can click on a link. Security solutions must understand the attacks and infrastructure they are launched from, with tracking individual hackers doing far less for your defenses than blocking malicious activity being actively distributed over the network.

The Problem of Visibility

When a detective walks onto a crime scene, they don’t just focus on one thing. The only way to understand an event is to look at the entire scene: interview witnesses, check the neighborhood and look into the history of everyone involved; in other words, context—or the “who, what, where and how” information using every available piece of data.

Just as a skilled investigator builds a holistic picture, security solutions are only as reliable as the intelligence they receive, with Juniper’s being limited by the number of “honeypots” across their customer base. In network security, focusing on a single piece of information, a single attack vector, or one delivery mechanism misses the global visibility and context needed to stop advanced attacks. Cisco SIO powers our security solutions, receiving over 100 terabytes of network intelligence across 1.6 million deployed web, email, firewall and IPS devices. We correlate this data from physical, virtual and cloud-based solutions with a world-class threat research team, augmenting all of this with an ecosystem of third-party contributors. Fingerprinting is one small tool you should deploy in your arsenal, even though it has limited utility and perhaps even limited accuracy.

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Tags: attackers, attacks, cloud-based threat intelligence, cyber, cyber threats, malware, security intelligence, security intelligence operations, sio, targeted attacks, threat intelligence

The Cisco Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) includes Global Correlation capabilities that utilize real-world data from Cisco Security Intelligence Operations (SIO). We have seen on this blog before how IPS Global Correlation can be used to detect and validate the urgency of emergent threats as well as allow our team to hone the protection capabilities of our IPS Sensors.

Perhaps more fundamentally however, Global Correlation allows Cisco IPS Sensors to filter network traffic using the “reputation” of a packet’s source IP address. The reputation of an IP address is computed by Cisco SensorBase using the past actions of that IP address. IP reputation has been an effective means of predicting the trustworthiness of current and future behaviors from an IP address.

Our team has recently published a new white paper that explores the benefits of IPS Global Correlation and how they relate to various IPS deployment scenarios. I would like to share a couple of items from the white paper and encourage you to read it for more information.

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Tags: global correlation, IPS, security, sio

One of the greatest things about having an interest in security…is the fact that it never stops changing. Understanding how threats have evolved over time and getting a strong baseline introduction to this can really help you appreciate the unique combination of hardware, software and most importantly, services that Cisco brings to customers.  Cisco’s Security Intelligence Operations is, in my opinion, is a very under-marketed differentiator for us.  Network World did a fantastic feature on this: Inside Cisco Global Security Operations that is well worth the read. But to prep you for it…I must more strongly recommend 5 minutes of your time…

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Tags: Cisco, intrusion prevention, IPS, security, sio