Category: Zero Trust

Based on the recent publication of the US National Cybersecurity Strategy, here are some practical suggestions for implementing cybersecurity solutions that loosely map to its guidelines:

1. Defend Critical Infrastructure by:

• Expanding the use of minimum cybersecurity requirements in critical sectors to ensure national security and public safety and harmonizing regulations to reduce the burden of compliance

Recommendation: Perform a gap analysis on your cybersecurity defenses. Start with a ‘master list of all recommended defenses and compare that to your organization’s tools’ Prioritize the implementation of any required defenses. Consider consolidation of security solutions under a single vendor’s licence agreement to save on costs. Create good architecture diagrams to describe your infrastructure from a cybersecurity perspective.

• Enabling public-private collaboration at the speed and scale necessary to defend critical infrastructure and essential services

Recommendation: Create an inventory of all critical assets. If you’re a small org then a manual inventory is fine, otherwise consider a mature asset collection tool to help with this (google ‘asset inventory cybersecurity’ and you’ll get plenty of hits). Use your asset inventory to categorize critical assets and use this information in your SIEM to help with better correlations.

• Defending and modernizing Federal networks and updating Federal incident response policy.

Recommendation: Review/create incident response policies and procedures. Consider creating specific response procedures that map to your SIEM incidents to improve clarity and incident response times.

1. Disrupt and Dismantle Threat Actors by:

• Using all instruments of national power, making malicious cyber actors incapable of threatening the national security or public safety of the United States
• Strategically employing all tools of national power to disrupt adversaries
• Engaging the private sector in disruption activities through scalable mechanisms
• Addressing the ransomware threat through a comprehensive Federal approach and in lockstep with international partners.

Recommendation: Have a clear understanding of the ‘kill chains‘ that may affect your organization. Use Mitre ATT&CK  and your favorite security sites to help research threat actor groups. Identify security tools needed to detect/block attackers. Test/validate the effectiveness of those tools using Red/Blue/Purple team events.

1. Shape Market Forces to Drive Security and Resilience by:

• Placing responsibility on those within the digital ecosystem that are best positioned to reduce risk and shift the consequences of poor cybersecurity away from the most vulnerable in order to make the digital ecosystem more trustworthy
• Promoting privacy and the security of personal data

Recommendation: Move data to the cloud and implement a data protection solution that not only tags and categorizes your data but locks out access if it’s stolen.

• Shifting liability for software products and services to promote secure development practices
• Ensuring that Federal grant programs promote investments in new infrastructure that are secure and resilient.

1. Invest in a Resilient Future by: 

• Reducing systemic technical vulnerabilities in the foundation of the Internet and across the digital ecosystem while making it more resilient against transnational digital repression

Recommendation: Implement a robust vulnerability assessment solution. Note that moving all your assets to the cloud can make this far easier to manage and can greatly benefit the effectiveness of your CSPM and SIEM.

• Prioritizing cybersecurity R&D for next-generation technologies such as postquantum encryption, digital identity solutions, and clean energy infrastructure and developing a diverse and robust national cyber workforce.

1. Forge International Partnerships to Pursue Shared Goals by:

• Leveraging international coalitions and partnerships among like-minded nations to counter threats to the digital ecosystem through joint preparedness, response, and cost imposition
• Increasing the capacity of partners to defend themselves against cyber threats, both in peacetime and in crisis; and working with allies and partners to make secure, reliable, and trustworthy global supply chains for information and communications technology and operational technology products and services.

Recommendation: Although many are reluctant to go back to the IBM days of putting all your security solutions into a single basket, cloud vendors and MSSPs have made great progress in the past 5+ years to provide a long list of services under one roof. When looking for one security product it’s very important to think broader and understand the interconnected values between all of your other security tools (XDR!). Security decision makers will often find that re-shuffling several of their security solutions makes more sense than just adding them one brick at a time.