Year: 2017

July 6, 2017 4 Comments
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Cisco leads the way to 5G networks – Microservices and Advanced Automation

The Communications Services Provider (CSP) industry is at a very exciting time as we transition towards a 5G world. 5G has the potential to be a greater step forward than any of the previous generations of mobile wireless generations. A major focus of 5G are use cases of business and IoT. Indeed, while not forgetting the individual joys for a subscriber to have a gigabit of bandwidth at their fingertips, the majority of the evolutionary drivers to 5G are business oriented. To that end, the industry has wisely realized that 5G is much more than just a new radio. 5G is about the digital transformation. It is worth noting a GSMA report from 2015 pointed out that approximately 85% of services associated with 5G depend on the network being 5G ready and with that can be delivered over existing radio access technologies like Wi-Fi and LTE. So clearly, 5G is more about the network than the radio. A key part of that 5G ready network enabling these 85% 5G services is in the mobile core platform. Not just the evolved packet core, but also policy, automation, and the ability to support both people and things, via licensed and unlicensed access. Another important requirement is that the 5G ready mobile core is virtualized and supports a distributed architecture via control/user plane separation (CUPS). An IDC report from 2016 discusses the significant efficiency gains and cost savings that are attributed when deploying a distributed virtualized architecture over purpose-built or simple NFV for the mobile core.

Well that was then and this is now, and technology marches forward. While the distributed virtualized core is highly beneficial, 5G requires even more advanced NFV and automation functionality. Cloud native capabilities and microservices along with advanced automation provide even greater benefits. Microservices coupled with advanced automation can deliver even greater OPEX efficiencies through the virtualization of network functions to a common NFV cloud architecture. These microservices are containerized and run in a highly efficient manner. Updates can happen as needed and do not impact services or other functions, and scaling can be far more granular. Microservices are new, but not brand new, and a fair amount has been said about it.

Cisco’s Ian Campbell, Distinguished Engineer and CTO of the Mobile Core Business Unit has just written a white paper titled “Evolving the Mobile Core to Cloud Native”, which provides an excellent explanation of the functions and benefits of microservices and automation along with a look at some of the work Cisco is doing in this area.

Cisco actually leads the way with 5G ready networking with the introduction of the Ultra Services Platform (USP) at MWC 2016. This was the first and most complete commercial ready virtualized mobile core platform. More than just a NFV packet core, the USP supports CUPS and enables a distributed architecture which enables edge compute functionality. While other companies have worked to catch up, Cisco has continued to lead with commercial deployments of USP in over 35 commercial CSP around the world and with many more being readied for commercial implementation as I write this blog. Additionally, Cisco continues advancing the development of microservices with advanced automation. Not just for point products here and there but undertaking this as a full cloud native solution (a platform) with the view to provide complete services as needed in a 5G environment. So while others are talking about what they will do, Cisco is in commercial deployments with full service 5G ready solutions.

The cloud native Ultra Services Platform was demonstrated live at the TechXLR8 – 5G World in London June 13-15, 2017 in the Excel Exhibition Center. Our cloud native Ultra Services Platform delivers on one of 5G’s most challenging requirements – sub 1ms round trip latency of services. This capability was introduced via live demonstrations at this year’s MWC in Barcelona. Cisco’s truly unique ability is to deliver this sub 1ms over existing radio access technology (LTE, WiFi) which some thought was not even possible.

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Dan Kurschner

Marketing Manager, Product/Systems

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How My Cisco Team Helped Me While I Served Overseas

How do you get through a 12-month deployment with the US Army to the Middle East? For me, much of it was through my Cisco Family.

As you can imagine, life in a combat theater can be quite lonely, especially for a person of my rank, Command Sergeant Major. The good news is that, after having been deployed four times now, I knew what to expect before leaving. And, while I was away, I was never too far from home.

Cisco was with me every step of the way – but two of those moments mattered the most to me. It started with our leadership.

Before I left, our CEO Chuck Robbins, and VP’s Brian Marlier and Sandy Hogan made things even more personal.  Each, without coordination or the others knowing, called me before I left and gave me their personal cell phone numbers.

These numbers were not for me — they were for my wife!

I was told by each of them separately to tell my wife that if she needed ANYTHING at all while I was away, whether Cisco related or not, that she was to call them directly. This moment floored me.

This is the second time I have deployed overseas while working at Cisco. The first time it was John Chambers and a host of other leaders that did this same thing.  I am sure they did not collaborate to do it again, but somehow they each got it right in my opinion.  Our leaders truly care about us, and our families.

In a company of over 70k people – have you ever heard of the CEO making a call such as that?  It’s an easy answer for me, there’s only one company of that caliber – and you’re reading about them right now. And that sentiment is a companywide approach that I have seen many places.

Which leads me to my other moment that mattered – My Team:

When I found out about my deployment, I was instructed to quickly transfer all knowledge of projects to fellow team members so that I could focus on the upcoming deployment. The team didn’t even flinch. They were more concerned that I start preparing for the trip and would not allow me to take on any more while I got things in order. After I deployed into theater, they were determined to stay in contact and help as much as they could.

 

Here’s some of the ways they achieved this:

1. Cisco Spark: Logging into Cisco Spark after each mission became my “post-game” routine where I was always greeted by my co-workers back here in the states. My fellow Cisconians were always curious about what my day had been like, and wanted to help take my mind off of the missions – they were never without an encouraging word.

From all things Cisco to exchanged pictures, and care packages – my extended Cisco family kept me going.  Whether our chat was a quick instant, five minutes, or an hour – those moments transported me back home and everything I was experiencing overseas was forgotten.  In that span of time, everything was normal again, and the insanity of supporting the war was the last thing on my mind.

2. Mail Call: Receiving packages is always a moment to look forward to when you’re deployed, and my Cisco co-workers routinely sent really well thought out packages which I would share with my buddies overseas. There were always treats like candy and gourmet beef jerky, drink mix, and even apparel from my favorite team – the Minnesota Vikings.  I came home from one mission and there were 23 boxes waiting for me – it was like Christmas in the sand!

Some packages even included a personal item from where my co-workers were from! In one care package there was a Canadian flag and delicious maple syrup, another had a summer sausage that their area was known for. It was such a great way to get to know my co-workers while knowing that we were being thought of back home.

3. Toast of the Troops: One of my colleagues, Jim Henschel, hosts a semi-annual “Toast of the Troops” to raise money to support deployed soldiers – this time they had someone they knew on the receiving end! This event purchased the parts for a complex tactical operations kit that we delivered to partner nation forces.

When part of your job is to gain access to other militaries, and you are able to leave behind a useful gift of this high caliber – the small exercise in generosity that the Toast of the Troops provided helped me to do my job by enabling me to make friends with the right people in the countries I was completing missions in.

4. Celebrating the Good Times: Bookending my trip overseas was also an amazing effort by the team to show their support. Co-workers flew in from around the US to go to dinner here in Raleigh. We even had a virtual happy hour over TP before dinner for those who could not join!  My wife was invited to share in the Cisco family culture, which was an impactful moment for us both.

Finally, I want to point out that Cisco paid differential pay (the difference between my Army pay and Cisco pay) for the entire time I was gone, and then allowed me up to 90 days paid transition leave to decompress before coming back to work.  They are not required to do this but, once again, their generosity ensured we were taken care of.

I feel that words simply do not convey how grateful I am to Cisco, our leaders, and my team for the support they provided throughout my deployment. But for them to also extend that care and concern to my wife…it took my love and respect for these people to an all new level that I know I could simply never repay.

How do you thank people who cannot truly grasp the impact they had on your life and the life of your family?  “Thank you” cannot be enough, and gifts seem too ordinary to equal what they have given me. To some people, the people alongside them in the office are just that. But here at Cisco, the people in these offices are so much more, and I am certainly proud to be amongst them.

Love supporting our troops? We do too! We’re hiring! Join us!

 

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Jim Shepard

Business Architect.Sales

DTG

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ETA: Why We Strive for Security That Doesn’t Compromise Privacy

Security owns a complex relationship with privacy, one that can work to protect privacy or undermine it. It is often a compromise, one for the other. Enterprises and other organizations regularly balance this relationship when protecting information systems.

I am excited about Cisco’s launch of Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA), which offers a better balance point between privacy and security for some important use cases.

ETA uses enhanced network visibility to detect encrypted malware traffic on enterprise networks. Its principal benefit is preserving the privacy of legitimate traffic by not relying on the process of decryption. It instead analyzes encrypted traffic by deeply investigating important data features that are observable through passive monitoring.

In a blink of an eye, faster than the human mind can comprehend, ETA uses an extensive understanding of the TLS/SSL protocol to fingerprint TLS client libraries, scrutinize certificates, analyze the lengths and arrival times of encrypted messages, and then combine this analysis with knowledge of known-bad and suspicious Internet servers.

It’s an exciting new capability for Cisco’s threat analytics service.

You may have heard by now the underpinning issue that network traffic is increasingly encrypted using protocols such as HTTPS. This is great news for application security, because TLS encrypts and authenticates application data, preventing eavesdropping and tampering. TLS also makes cryptographically strong authentication of the client and server possible.

Applications that use HTTP (without the ‘S’), must trust all of the devices on the network path between the client and the server, while applications using HTTPS need only trust the client and server (and the issuing certificate authority). These important security benefits are driving the growing use of HTTPS. In the past year, the amount of traffic using TLS has grown significantly. Most estimates expect between 50 and 70 percent of all traffic will be encrypted by the end of this year.

Unfortunately, malware can also take advantage of those security benefits, and use HTTPS as a

way to hide from network monitoring. Malware’s use of HTTPS is increasing along with that of benign applications. Malware uses the network to spread itself, to exfiltrate stolen data, to ransom encrypted data, and to receive commands from its operators. Each time that malware uses the network, it provides enterprise security operations teams a chance to detect it and block it.

Traditional HTTP monitoring methods also have shortcomings when it comes to encrypted traffic. Web security gateways, for instance, cannot be applied to HTTPS. One way around that is to have the inspection point decrypt HTTPS sessions. A web security gateway or Intrusion Protection System (IPS) can act as a trusted Man-In-The-Middle (MITM), which terminates, inspects, and then re-originates the SSL/TLS session.

While trusted MITM approach is suitable for some scenarios, and is used by many enterprises, in other cases it can be problematic. If the application traffic contains personal data for instance, it is exposed to the MITM. This conflict with privacy makes it a non-starter in some regulatory environments. A web security gateway can be configured so that MITM decryption is not applied to selected traffic, as a way to avoid sensitive application data. This is good, but in many cases the whitelist is large, dynamic, and constantly growing.

Besides the privacy considerations, an HTTPS MITM can be difficult to deploy and manage, as it requires HTTPS applications or endpoints to be provisioned with a root certificate. It can be costly, because the MITM must perform as much cryptographic processing as the endpoints themselves. Also, some applications and endpoints cannot be configured to work with a MITM, causing them to fail outright or increasing support tickets for confused users met with a confusing “click-to-continue” prompt.

By design, ETA does threat detection on enterprise networks, and it is emphatically not about tracking the activity of human users. Previous academic research has shown that the passive analysis of encrypted traffic can reveal information about human activity, such as what Netflix movie a person is watching, or some spoken phrases inside of encrypted Voice over IP sessions. ETA also performs passive analysis of encrypted traffic, but with the totally different goal of detecting and understanding malware, using classifiers trained on the vast Cisco network and the ever-growing ThreatGRID library of malware.

Everything touches the network, which is what makes network visibility so powerful. And this is what makes the application of ETA to the network such a powerful security additive. End host monitoring agents have deep visibility on the devices where they are installed, while the network has much broader visibility, covering devices for which no host monitoring is available.

This product is a huge advancement in Cisco’s goal to use the network to apply security everywhere. And I’m excited to work with Cisco’s product teams on new ways to use the network to detect and stop malware.

For more information on how ETA works and its results on live data tests, see Blake Anderson’s blog post here.

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David McGrew

Cisco Fellow

Security

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New KONNI Campaign References North Korean Missile Capabilities

This blog was authored by Paul Rascagneres

Executive Summary

We recently wrote about the KONNI Remote Access Trojan (RAT) which has been distributed by a small number of campaigns over the past 3 years. We have identified a new distribution campaign which took place on 4th July. The malware used in this campaign has similar features to that distributed earlier in 2017 with the following changes:

  • A new decoy document copy/pasted from an article published on the 3rd of July by Yonhap News Agency in Korea;
  • The dropper includes a 64 bit version of KONNI;
  • A new CC infrastructure consisting of a climbing club website.

North Korea conducted a test missile launch on 3rd July. This campaign appears to be directly related to the launch and the ensuing discussion of North Korean missile technology. This is consistent with previous KONNI distribution campaigns which have also frequently mentioned North Korea.

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Talos Group

Talos Security Intelligence & Research Group

July 5, 2017 2 Comments
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Collaboration at #CLUS, Final Wrap: “Ahh, the Cloud” and Endangered Chickens

It definitely took the long weekend to recover from the energy of Cisco Live. From the keynotes to the innovation talks to the DevNet Zone and the show floor, I definitely got my convention center mileage numbers. I’m probably due for an oil change. The good news is that some of those footsteps are going to provide energy for schools. The Cisco Live team placed kinetic tiles in the major hallway and pledged to donate the equivalent of the kinetic energy created by attendee footsteps to schools in Nepal. The goal was 1 million steps. Attendees easily hiked past 2 million steps.

The final day of the show didn’t disappoint. There was a full agenda of sessions, innovation talks, and – of course – the celebrity keynote to close out the week’s event.

Worried about putting data in the cloud? 
Collaboration VP and CTO Jonathan Rosenberg made a room full of people nervous – on purpose. The session title probably provided a clue: “Worried About Putting Your Data in the Cloud? Good, You Should Be.” Wait, why is this guy who spends so much time focused on cloud technology trying to scare me? Complacency is dangerous. Information is powerful.

Think about it, 93% of organizations today are using cloud services. No one, and certainly not Jonathan, will dispute the huge advantages of cloud and software as a service (SaaS). But these services bring with them more security challenges. As Jonathan explained, one of the real problems of cloud is the “honeypot” problem. Instead of companies having close control over their own data in their own data centers, much of that data is in the hands of SaaS vendors.

“I’m a believer in SaaS as a way to make people’s lives better at work,” Jonathan confirmed. “But not if you don’t do it securely.”

Now you don’t have to attack five data centers, you go for the SaaS vendor. For example, if you’re “Bad Guys R Us” and your goal is to attack the automotive industry, you just need to go after their common SaaS vendor. And if you’re trusting your SaaS vendor, you’re also trusting all their secondary providers and their employees. Consider how much user-generated content exists across your email, messaging, and data platforms: Strategy discussions and documents, financial information, product roadmaps. Kinda scary, right?

“Data flows like water in the cloud.”

Jonathan Rosenberg

The standard “encryption in transit and at rest” alone is no longer enough. There are hundreds of servers in between. But end-to-end encryption works very differently. Your data is always encrypted. The keys are not in the cloud. You have the ability to provide compliance personnel the access they need within the parameters you define. This is the difference between Cisco Spark and other cloud solutions: encryption itself isn’t enough. It’s about where and how it’s encrypted – and who has the keys.

Two questions to ask your SaaS vendor:
1. Does your system use end-to-end encryption on our user content?
2. Can my compliance personnel access user content?

The main point – you hold the keys. You have the control. The same variety of potential attacks against SaaS vendors can’t reach your data. Watch the full session here, including a deeper dive on end-to-end encryption:

https://youtu.be/_JAhh91-U-A

It’s not every day you make it into an executive presentation at Cisco Live, especially being called out as a trouble maker. I can blame Jonathan for my reputation going forward. Thankfully, the compliance and security teams have not reached out (yet) to confirm any on-stage rumors of true non-compliant network activity. In truth, I’m 100% flattered.

Chickens, beware…
And the award for best imitation of nervous poultry by an award-winning actor at a major technology event goes to Bryan Cranston for his performance at the closing keynote. You can doubt me now, but once you watch the video, you’ll agree.

Bryan Cranston onstage at CLUS.Bryan Cranston and Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins shared the stage, starting their conversation with what they have in common: Childhoods with chickens. They shared great stories about chickens and storytelling grandfathers, two things that may be inextricably linked. The exchange was definitely entertaining.

The conversation ventured out of the barnyard into work ethic, celebrity, and even a bit of figure-skating history. “I maintain the blue-collar work ethic, said Cranston. “I don’t have any expectations of the world owing me anything.”

And somehow, it came back to the barnyard.

Cranston: “I’m not completely comfortable in celebrity. It is what happened. And it happened from doing work.”
Robbins: “If it’s worth anything, you just come across to me like a blue-collar chicken killer.”

I’m trying to decide where I fit…
Am I the clown of collaboration? A twit of Twitter? The snark of Cisco Spark?

Thanks for a great week!
It was a busy week, but it was a good week. In particular, the final day of Cisco Live US 2017 was a day of firsts. It was my first time:

  • Being name-dropped in a CTO’s presentation
  • Handing a teddy bear to a CEO (as in Chuck Robbins himself)
  • Witnessing an award-winning actor nail a spot-on imitation of a chicken on a keynote stage.

A day for the record books! And with that, 2017’s de facto summer camp for nerds is a done deal.

Catch up with what happened with collaboration during Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 of the show.

For video of the major keynotes and talks, plus photos from each day, check out the daily highlights from the Cisco Live team.

Keep watch on Twitter for the adventures of the Cisco Spark Bear. He made quite the social media splash last week and his cousins have traveled as far as Saudi Arabia to share their Cisco Live experiences. He’s still showing up in tweets with #CiscoSpark. I have it on good authority that he plans to continue to drop by the @CiscoCollab Twitter feed on a regular basis. A variety of his adventures from last week.

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Kim Austin

No Longer with Cisco

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Protecting Innovation: Presidential Review Period Expires in ‘945 Investigation

We learned this morning that the U.S. Trade Representative and the White House have rejected Arista’s “trade policy” pleas, and refused to stop the ITC’s limited exclusion and cease and desist orders from going into effect. The orders were issued in response to Arista’s infringement of two Cisco patents. That means that effective today, Arista is barred from importing infringing products and components to manufacture those products (or have others do so), and they are barred from selling infringing products made from imported components. Arista has indicated that in order to have continued marketplace sales, they have stockpiled components or infringing products.

Arista is now in an interesting position: while the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has found the two patents in this current case invalid, the ITC – whose orders they are apparently violating today if sales continue – has found the patents valid and infringed. The ITC rejected Arista’s validity challenge to one of the patents because its validity had been sworn to by Arista’s founder and current board chair, Andreas Bechtolsheim, who invented the technology when he was a Cisco executive.  The other patent also covers technology invented at Cisco that Arista knowingly used in its products.

Arista has asked the ITC to suspend its orders until the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals can resolve the inconsistency.  For our part, we don’t think a suspension is warranted.  First, Arista has evinced what the ITC referred to as “a corporate culture of copying”, and these patents represent only a part of the technology Arista copied from Cisco.  No special sympathy should point in their direction in “close cases”, which is how the ITC’s staff characterized this case. Second, the conflict is largely due to Arista’s own efforts to delay matters; they filed the challenge at the PTO on the last possible day, a year after we first brought the legal action over their infringement.  And finally, Arista insisted the PTO do the review partly blindfolded, not allowing the PTO access to information that the ITC had. That information could have informed the PTO as to the difficulties Arista had in developing other solutions that don’t copy, undermining any claim that the Cisco patents were “obvious” in light of prior inventions.

Even if the ITC refuses to suspend its orders, Arista will still have the right to seek a stay from the Federal Circuit. And that is where the issue should be decided, not by the ITC, which would have to undermine its own earlier findings.  If a suspension is issued, however, we will seek reversal by the Federal Circuit.

The right solution, as we’ve emphasized from the beginning, is for Arista to stop using technology they copied from Cisco.

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Mark Chandler

Retired | Executive Vice President

Chief Legal and Compliance Officer

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The MeDoc Connection

Summary

The Nyetya attack was a destructive ransomware variant that affected many organizations inside of Ukraine and multinational corporations with operations in Ukraine. In cooperation with Cisco Advanced Services Incident Response, Talos identified several key aspects of the attack. The investigation found a supply chain-focused attack at M.E.Doc software that delivered a destructive payload disguised as ransomware. By utilizing stolen credentials, the actor was able to manipulate the update server for M.E.Doc to proxy connections to an actor-controlled server. Based on the findings, Talos remains confident that the attack was destructive in nature. The effects were broad reaching, with Ukraine Cyber police confirming over 2000 affected companies in Ukraine alone.

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Talos Group

Talos Security Intelligence & Research Group

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Cisco and TomTom Teaming up to Build Safer, Less Congested Roads

No one likes a traffic jam, but they are a daily reality for most large and growing metropolitan areas around the world from Los Angeles to Mexico City to Moscow. And the problem will only get worse, with 70 percent of the global population expected to live in cities by 2050. So, what can be done?

Intuition tells us that if roads are congested, then we should build more roads or add additional lanes. In reality, that is hardly the panacea to our global traffic woes. Researchers at the University of Toronto and University of Pennsylvania actually found that congestion actually increases when new roads are built.

While public infrastructure improvements are still necessary, the world will benefit most immediately and profoundly by connecting roadways through digital technology. Cisco estimates that connected transportation solutions, such as sensors embedded in pavement, license plate-recognition systems, and video cameras that monitor traffic incidents in real time represent a $188 billion opportunity world-wide. We’re already seeing the incredible impact that Connected Roadway solutions can have on improving traffic issues in places like Austria, Stockholm, and Alaska, where we’ve securely connected disparate intelligent transportation systems to improve traffic flow, reduce roadside incidents, and provide a centralized view of highway systems.

Through our Country Digitization initiative, we are now proud to take Cisco Connected Roadways to the next level by working with TomTom, a global leader in navigation, mapping and traffic products. This project and eventual joint solution will help the Netherlands to achieve its goal of reducing the average travel times in the busiest areas of the country by 10 percent. Additionally, by integrating TomTom’s traffic management technology with Cisco’s converged network infrastructure, we’re building the next wave of traffic optimization and leading the way into the next levels of programmable driving. The collaboration with TomTom is key to the success of delivering data from roadside sensors remarkably faster than traditional methods. TomTom will interpret Cisco’s data, technology, and expertise and turn it into a traffic feed that can be shared with drivers and road authorities. We share TomTom’s commitment to fighting congestion and improving mobility around the world, and look forward to working with them on the goals that follow.

Ending Traffic Jams for Good

Imagine a world without traffic. It is difficult considering that in the United States alone traffic congestion results in 4 billion hours of travel delay, and nearly 3 billion gallons of gas used, at a cost of $80 billion per year. Cisco builds the industry leading roadside infrastructure platform to absorb and normalize roadside sensor data by leveraging their edge compute platform, which will predict traffic gridlocks before they occur and redirect incoming vehicles to enable the reduction in cost and time delays.

These solutions will also dramatically reduce carbon emissions around the globe. The logic is simple: less traffic means less time on the road, which means fewer tanks of gas used over the same distance. For example, Cisco’s work with the Stockholm government to cut down on traffic congestion has reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 2 to 3 percent.

 Putting Safety First

According to the World Health Organization, 1.25 million people die each year from road traffic events. These incidents are largely avoidable and caused by improper traffic management or inadequate road conditions. Advanced data analytics paired with increased communication has the power to make our roads and our lives safer. The Cisco Connected Roadways system simplifies collaboration between transit operators and emergency services, enabling smart streetlights to recognize a public safety vehicle approaching and clear the route in advance, improving emergency response times and potentially saving lives. Cisco will be the bridge between roadside authorities and the automotive industry. With strong relationships with TomTom, we will jointly provide infrastructure technology for next level safe, smart, and programmable driving.

In extreme conditions this new system will help save lives. Take for instance Alaska’s Elliott and Dalton highways of which long stretches are hundreds of miles from town and often buried under ice and snow. Thanks to Cisco’s work with the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities (ADOT & PF) which digitized these highways, plow drivers can now quickly assess local conditions along the highway and report accidents. This relationship began saving lives right away in Deadhorse, Alaska, where authorities were able to identify a truck fire 40 miles from town. The fire was located and reported, and a rescue crew dispatched immediately – a process that was would have previously taken hours.

Improving Our Investments

The American Road & Transportation Builder Association reports that the construction of a new two-lane undivided road in a rural area costs $2 million to $3 million per mile – increasing to $5 million in urban areas. Billions of dollars are poured into maintaining and constructing infrastructure every year, not only in the United States, but around the world. By working with existing structures, Cisco’s Connected Roadways solutions are a cost-effective and scalable way to strengthen and prolong these investments.

The benefits of digitizing the world’s highways are numerous. Cisco, in partnership with TomTom, is proud to play a role in helping ensure the road ahead is smooth, literally and figuratively, for all the world’s travelers.

For more information on our collaboration with TomTom follow the link here.

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Guy Diedrich, Ph.D

Senior Vice President

Global Innovation Officer

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GDPR: Start Your Privacy Protection Planning Now

One of the most talked about topics at the June Infosecurity Europe 2017 conference in London was the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This is a new law concerning data privacy which will render the implications of a data breach much more severe and comes into force in all EU countries from 25th May 2018.

It should be noted that the GDPR will affect any organisation that stores personal information on EU citizens. Under current legislation, the processing of data should happen inside the EU, unless the outside country offers a similar level of protection (for example, EU-US Privacy Shield). While the GDPR will harmonise data protection laws across the whole of the EU, which theoretically makes it easier for non-EU organisations to comply, the new requirements will be stricter which will ultimately make compliance more challenging.

The main consequence of not complying with this regulation is a fine for any organisation that suffers a data breach, and anything in that compromised data containing personal information on someone who resides within the EU. Such data can include someone’s name or address, as you might expect, but also their IP address. This law holds true of all personal data, which includes employment data and not just that of consumers. The fine can be as large as €20 million or up to 4% of annual global revenue, whichever is higher. In addition, organisations will be legally obliged to report a breach within 72 hours of it being discovered.

One question that people may have is whether Brexit will affect the GDPR. In short, it won’t. The governing body for data protection in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office, has already stated that it will be upholding the GDPR. While the future of UK law remains to be seen, there is a pressing urgency for organisations to get ready for the GDPR.

Everyone I spoke to at the Infosecurity Europe conference about the GDPR told me that they had started preparations, but could not clearly state how far along the compliance process they were. The fear is that many organisations are of the opinion that GDPR is a legal concern rather than a security concern. These discussions, and others, suggest that many organisations will not be equipped to avoid a fine in a year’s time.

What is the risk of GDPR non-compliance to you?

The risks of non-compliance should be considered by looking at the possible impacts and the likelihood of the occurrence of a breach. The most obvious impact is the large fine from the regulatory authorities. In addition to this, there will be the cost of informing everyone affected that their data has been breached, as well as the potential cost of removing their data should they make that request (all EU citizens will have the right, at any time, to ask for their personal data to be removed). These are the clear-cut financial impacts. There are also the impacts that are substantial but harder to quantify, such as brand and reputation damage, a decrease in trust and a negative news cycle which leads to a decrease in future revenue and lost business opportunities.

Establishing the likelihood of a breach is tricky. Data collected previously should give some indication of the probability within a 12-month period; however, organisations may not know that they have been breached and, if they do, they may not necessarily report it. While past data underestimates the likelihood of a breach, it does give us an indication.

Cisco’s 2017 Annual Cybersecurity Report provides insight into the impacts of a data breach. The organisations surveyed reported the following results of security breaches:

  • 49% had to manage public scrutiny
  • 31% of those breaches were disclosed by third-parties
  • 23% reported loss of opportunities
  • 25% of which was between 20-40%
  • 29% reported loss of revenue
  • 39% of which lost 20% or more

As a company that advises on security practices, it is clear to see why Cisco does not recommend running the risk of not making improvements. The idea – or misguided hope – that a breach is unlikely is simply incorrect.

Start planning for GDPR now.

Devising or updating a risk management plan in light of the GDPR is only one piece of a larger framework. Becoming GDPR-compliant requires taking a methodical and structured approach: start by understanding what is legally required, and then develop a solution. Simplistically, this process will require identifying all of the EU residents’ data held within your organisation’s estate, consolidating it into manageable clusters of data, and then ensuring that the data is secure and would maintain privacy if breached.

The determination of compliance will not rest simply upon the technical measures put into place. There must be policies that address the GDPR and staff must be made aware of these policies through training and education. Moreover, the business processes must uphold these policies. The regulator can deem that non-compliance came from a failure in culture rather than from misconfigurations in the implementation of technologies. This is why it is important to ensure that the GDPR compliance is aligned across people, processes, and technology.

The Cisco Security Advisory Services team can help to define the roadmap to becoming GDPR compliant, as well as provide support at every step along the way in the security lifecycle.

To learn more about how Cisco Security Services can help with GDPR compliance across people, processes and technology, then read more on our website here. Cisco Services can also help with conducting a Cybersecurity Management Program Assessment, intelligence-led security assessment, preparing an Incident Response plan and responding should an incident occur.

See what Cisco is doing internally to prepare for GDPR.

Authors

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Edward Thomson

Information Security Consultant

Cisco Advanced Services - Security Advisory EMEAR