Pattern for malware remediation – A last line of defence tool against Malware in the global communication platform

Malware is becoming a major problem to every organization that operates on the global communication platform. The malicious software programs are advancing in sophistication in many ways in order to defeat harden deployed defenses. When an organization’s defense fails to keep this malice invasion out, the organization would incur significant amount of risks and damages. Risks include data leakage, inability to operate and tarnished corporate image. Damages include compensation costs to customers and partners, service unavailability and loss of customers’ and partners’ confidence in the organization. This in turn will affect the organization’s business continuity. In order to manage the risks and damages induced by Malware incidents, incident responders are called upon to be the last line of defense against the digital onslaught assault. However incident responders are challenged too by the deep levels of knowledge, skills and experience required to contain the ever advancing and persistent Malware. This paper proposes the establishment of a Pattern template for Malware Remediation to aid incident responders to overcome their competency limitations in order to provide organizations the tool to repel Malware and to reduce the associated risks. Examples and details of the proposed patters are provided with discussions on future direction of the research work

A system dynamics approach to evaluate advanced persistent threat vectors.

Cyber-attacks targeting high-profile entities are focused, persistent, and employ common vectors with varying levels of sophistication to exploit social-technical vulnerabilities. Advanced persistent threats (APTs) deploy zero-day malware against such targets to gain entry through multiple security layers, exploiting the dynamic interplay of vulnerabilities in the target network. System dynamics (SD) offers an alternative approach to analyze non-linear, complex, and dynamic social-technical systems. This research applied SD to three high-profile APT attacks - Equifax, Carphone, and Zomato - to identify and simulate socio-technical variables leading to breaches. By modeling APTs using SD, managers can evaluate threats, predict attacks, and reduce damage by mitigating specific socio-technical cues. This study provides valuable insights into the dynamics of cyber threats, making it the first to apply SD to APTs

Cybersecurity program for Philippine higher education institutions: A multiple-case study

Digital technology has become an integral aspect of an educational system. Every state university funded the creation of Information Technology Offices to secure its Management Information System. The challenge on cybersecurity threatens the intellectual capital of students especially in a research university, theft of crucial information, and financial loss. The current study is a multiple case study of cybersecurity threats and challenges of Selected Philippine State Universities and Colleges in the National Capital Region. Sample participants were purposively selected Information Technology experts from various selected State College and Universities. A structured interview as the main instrument of the study investigated threats and challenges of cybersecurity to assess active and proactive approaches to developing a model framework for security resources in respective academic institutions. Responses gathered from the interview were consolidated and analyzed through a thematic coding process. The result of the study revealed the following challenges in cybersecurity are user education, cloud security, information security strategy, and unsecured personal devices. The creation of a program logic model will provide an informed cybersecurity planning, implementation, and assessment framework to the commission on higher education in collaboration with the Department of Information and Communication Technology, and the Philippine Association of the State Colleges and Universities

VISTA:an inclusive insider threat taxonomy, with mitigation strategies

Insiders have the potential to do a great deal of damage, given their legitimate access to organisational assets and the trust they enjoy. Organisations can only mitigate insider threats if they understand what the different kinds of insider threats are, and what tailored measures can be used to mitigate the threat posed by each of them. Here, we derive VISTA (inclusiVe InSider Threat tAxonomy) based on an extensive literature review and a survey with C-suite executives to ensure that the VISTA taxonomy is not only scientifically grounded, but also meets the needs of organisations and their executives. To this end, we map each VISTA category of insider threat to tailored mitigations that can be deployed to reduce the threat

Advanced Threat Intelligence: Interpretation of Anomalous Behavior in Ubiquitous Kernel Processes

Targeted attacks on digital infrastructures are a rising threat against the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of both IT systems and sensitive data. With the emergence of advanced persistent threats (APTs), identifying and understanding such attacks has become an increasingly difficult task. Current signature-based systems are heavily reliant on fixed patterns that struggle with unknown or evasive applications, while behavior-based solutions usually leave most of the interpretative work to a human analyst. This thesis presents a multi-stage system able to detect and classify anomalous behavior within a user session by observing and analyzing ubiquitous kernel processes. Application candidates suitable for monitoring are initially selected through an adapted sentiment mining process using a score based on the log likelihood ratio (LLR). For transparent anomaly detection within a corpus of associated events, the author utilizes star structures, a bipartite representation designed to approximate the edit distance between graphs. Templates describing nominal behavior are generated automatically and are used for the computation of both an anomaly score and a report containing all deviating events. The extracted anomalies are classified using the Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithms. Ultimately, the newly labeled patterns are mapped to a dedicated APT attacker–defender model that considers objectives, actions, actors, as well as assets, thereby bridging the gap between attack indicators and detailed threat semantics. This enables both risk assessment and decision support for mitigating targeted attacks. Results show that the prototype system is capable of identifying 99.8% of all star structure anomalies as benign or malicious. In multi-class scenarios that seek to associate each anomaly with a distinct attack pattern belonging to a particular APT stage we achieve a solid accuracy of 95.7%. Furthermore, we demonstrate that 88.3% of observed attacks could be identified by analyzing and classifying a single ubiquitous Windows process for a mere 10 seconds, thereby eliminating the necessity to monitor each and every (unknown) application running on a system. With its semantic take on threat detection and classification, the proposed system offers a formal as well as technical solution to an information security challenge of great significance.The financial support by the Christian Doppler Research Association, the Austrian Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs, and the National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development is gratefully acknowledged

A Theory on Information Security

This paper proposes a theory on information security. We argue that information security is imperfectly understood and aim to bring about an altered understanding of why efforts are made to engage in information security. The goal of information security is widely recognised as the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information however we argue that the goal is actually to simply create resources. This paper responds to calls for more theory in information systems, places the discussion in philosophical context and compares various definitions. It then identifies the key concepts of information security, describes the relationships between these concepts, as well as scope and causal explanations. The paper provides the theoretical base for understanding why information is protected, in addition to theoretical and practical implications and suggestions for future research

The Chief Information Security Officer and the Five Dimensions of a Strategist

The modern organisation operates within a sophisticated and evolving security threat landscape that exposes its information infrastructure to a range of security risks. Unsurprisingly, despite the existence of industry ‘best-practice’ security standards and unprecedented levels of investment in security technology, the rate of incidents continues to escalate. Furthermore, a review of security literature reveals an apparent lack of strategic perspective in the field of information security management (ISM) which results in a number of strategic challenges for ISM function in organisations. The level of sophistication and dynamism of threat requires organisations to develop novel security strategies that draw on creative and lateral thinking approaches. Such a security campaign requires the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) to function as a ‘strategist’. However, there is little or no evidence in security literature to show that the security leader is required to function as a strategist. In this research, we set out to identify the specific competencies required by CISOs to become effective strategists by performing a systematic literature review of both security and strategic management literature. We thematically analysed and coded the characteristics extracted from strategic management literature into the five dimensions of the strategist. We discuss these macro competencies in the context of ISM, and argue that CISOs with these five dimensions of a strategist will be able to overcome the existing strategic challenges facing ISM in organisations