QPC Security - Breakfast Bytes

Felicia King is an internationally recognized CISO and considered to be one of the top network layer security strategists in the U.S. Since launching in 2004 on the WGTD network, her Breakfast Bytes podcast has focused on information security risk management and the issues business leaders need to be aware of to benefit from the challenges others have faced. Learn about the most effective approaches, what you can do to mitigate risk, and how to protect your most valuable assets, your data, and your time. Felicia is the vCISO and security architect at QPC Security / Quality Plus Consulting.

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Felicia regularly collaborates with other IT service providers in an advisory capacity and is a significant contributor to international IT service provider strategy and problem resolution forums. Concepts, patterns, and examples covered in Breakfast Bytes come from the decades of experiences of the speakers and guests through their work with hundreds of companies. Statements are not representative of a specific organization. Experienced professionals will recognize that the majority of organizations have very similar challenges.

Use the tags in the menu above to quickly access episode topics most relevant to you.

Visit our primary website https://qpcsecurity.com for more articles and webinars.

Our public knowledge website is https://kb.qpcsecurity.org

Episodes

Friday Apr 30, 2021

The most secure helpdesk is the one that is not outsourced

Friday Apr 30, 2021

Challenges with having baseline 101 level quality IT services
Beware of outsourced help desks
Items to use to assess your IT services provider

The most secure help desk outsourcing is no help desk outsourcing.
There are many ways in which help desk outsourcing can create compliance and security violations.

How Help Desk Outsourcing Undermines Your Security | IT Pro (itprotoday.com)

The user's identity should be validated when they are calling for support. We use a system where end users have support PINs that change and are readable to them and us through a system. That is not the only method of validation.

How should you be investing in equities? You probably are not an industry insider. You probably cannot run a company like the one you are investing in. You don't have tremendous expertise in risk management for that industry. So how are you to make a decision about what company to invest in?

How MSPs are the breach vector for a lot of clients
The BIGGEST issue that creates problems for your business when you utilize any outsourced IT whatsoever is if the service provider's executive management team is not comprised of highly experienced, and highly trained security personnel.
Businesses owned and operated by sales and marketing people usually end up making decisions using the wrong criteria.
Since you cannot do what they do, you have to trust in the management of that company.

Many of these companies have zero ability to assess the efficacy of any security solution or strategy. They use and promote the flavor of the year that they picked up at a conference or that is being talked about in their industry groups and peer accountability groups.

There are tons of IT service providers that say that in order for them to scale, they have to use large help desks of 60 - 200 people or more that end up having administrative access to things in your environment.

Questions for the technology service provider
What type of technology do you use?
Will the same be used to support my company?
How will you manage my current infrastructure?
How will integrations with legacy systems be managed?
Do you use subcontractors?

Wednesday Mar 31, 2021

Patching strategy and lessons from the Exchange HAFNIUM attack

Wednesday Mar 31, 2021

Exchange HAFNIUM attack
Pretty much every Exchange server on the planet got hacked that was internet accessible without protections in front of it
Anything that does not have MFA protections in 2021 is going to be hacked, especially if it is accessible from the internet
Not having MDR and THIS with zero trust posture is just not acceptableYes this is increasing the cost substantially, but your alternative is what?
It is possible to proxy the traffic ingressing to the Exchange server and inspect that for IPS signaturesFireboxes Detect HAFNIUM Attacks in the Wild | Secplicity - Security Simplified
It is also possible to put a web portal in front of the Exchange server that is required to be accessed with MFA before it would be possible to use the services there.Reverse Proxy for the Access Portal (watchguard.com)

Patching properly and thoroughly is an art form
Getting updates deployed for an operating system requires quite a bit of technique and multiple layers with validation
How thorough is your third party patch catalog and platform?
Are you looking for EOL or deprecated software?
Are you cataloging what business software is dependent on deprecated junk and what are you doing about getting rid of it?
How frequently are the physical machines being patched for firmware, drivers, BIOS?
Do you have mechanisms to update PowerShell?
Are you auditing and restricting WMI and PowerShell?

Ubiquiti - multiple significant security fails
Ubiquitous for all the Wrong Reasons | Secplicity - Security Simplified