Tag Archive for: Tackling

Tackling next generation cyber hacking the focus of new training lab – WPXI

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — New cyber hacks are emerging every day and the targets aren’t just businesses, governments and universities.

The next generation of hacks can even affect systems we rely on every day to get to work, or get household products delivered to our door.

“There are nation states, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea…that are coming after us in the cyber domain,” said Jamil N. Jaffer, founder and executive director of the National Security Institute.

These evolving cyber hacks are even discussed at the highest levels of government.

“We need to be able to both defend ourselves, but also take the fight to our adversaries and deter them from engaging in behavior that might affect our nation,” said Jaffer.

Inside a pilot lab located on George Mason University’s Arlington, Virginia campus, there’s testing ground for these new cyber security threats. Jaffer said this Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) Living Innovation Lab is critical for training the next generation to defend against new hacks.

“Students have the ability to see how the systems work, how the hackers might come in, how they might get in how they might establish persistence, and then how they might take action on those targets, to make them do things you don’t expect,” said Jaffer.

In the lab, students are learning about security for self-driving cars and researching how to streamline self-driving car signals and keep them secure.

“We’re able to work on commercial grade equipment so the same kinds of equipment that you see out in the real world, not just, you know, theoretical ideas on simulated on a computer,” said Liza Wilson Durant, Associate provost for strategic initiatives and community engagement at George Mason University

Liza Wilson Durant runs the lab on campus and she showed us some of the equipment they work with.

“Each one of these steps could be hacked by an outsider whether they’re trying to disrupt the robots or the machine itself,” she said.

As supply chain issues and higher prices hit the country, Durant said a mini factory helps research potential cyber threats in those systems.

“We feel that, you know, if we can understand how to limit some of the ramifications of…

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How the Air Force is tackling electronic warfare challenges — FCW

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Defense

How the Air Force is tackling electronic warfare challenges

  • By Lauren C. Williams
  • Sep 23, 2021

concept image of radio communication (DARPA) 

The Air Force is on high alert when it comes to electromagnetic spectrum threats. But extensive system updates pose a risk.

“If we lose the war in the spectrum, we lose the war in the air and we lose it quickly,” Gen. Mark Kelly, the commander of Air Combat Command, said during keynote remarks at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space, and Cyber conference Sept. 22, noting that a peer adversarial fight would engage frequencies across the spectrum.

Kelly’s comments come a month after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin signed out the classified implementation plan for the Electromagnetic Spectrum Strategy released last year.

The Air Force, in recent years, has made organizational changes to elevate the importance of electronic warfare, including moving the Air Force Spectrum Management Office into its Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Cyber Effects Operations (A2/6) branch under Lt. Gen. Mary O’Brien. That branch will also soon be home to the Air Force’s EMS directorate in October, O’Brien said Sept. 22.

“This is key terrain. We have to connect our joint force,” Kelly said during his presentation of the Air Force’s fighter roadmap, “because if the adversary can break our network, or if we can never establish a network, they can break our blue kill chains and potentially break our force.”

Kelly told reporters Sept. 22 that electronic warfare upgrades, such as with the Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System, were “major surgery” that could take F-15s out of commission for several months.

“That system requires a significant amount of power and cooling to be pulled off the engines to power it,” Kelly said. “The number of panels and amount of plumbing they pull out of that airplane to get their hands to the area they need to go is major surgery.”

The solution to keep pace with EMS threats, according to Gerald Gerace, Leidos’ chief scientist for its electronic warfare…

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Tackling the many (sur)faces of a zero trust security framework

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By Vijay Jayaraman – Director – System Engineering, India & SAARC, Citrix

For a business to thrive in today’s world, it is critical for it to have innovation and technology at its core. However, it is also important to understand that the more we try to diversify the technology we use and rely on it to carry out work, the more vulnerable we are to external threats and attacks. It is therefore important for every organization to not only use technology to ease processes but also create a robust security framework that safeguards the entire business.

So, what is the best way to protect your business from malicious threats?

Let’s take a look at our own homes. Everyone has a lock on their front door which provides a certain level of security. This security improves significantly once complemented with an alarm and video surveillance system that is capable of tracking movement through the house. But this won’t stop criminals from trying to break a window, deactivate the alarm system or even just monitor your every move to gather any sensitive information. Now, translating this to businesses – a zero-trust network architecture (ZTNA) is an important first step to enhance workplace security. As opposed to a VPN based security system, zero trust adds multiple layers and restricts access to the critical business resources whether they are on premise or on cloud. It employs multi-factor authentication, machine learning-based analysis, and continuous monitoring that ensures optimum security in the network.

However, just implementing this architecture is not enough. In many companies, it has been observed that most vulnerabilities reported are in applications and not in the network. Businesses, therefore, need to take additional steps for a comprehensive strategy that not only understands vulnerabilities in the network but in the applications as well. With applications moving away from being monolithic and progressing towards cloud-based micro service architectures, it becomes important for organizations to focus on in-house applications and on the new public cloud or hybrid cloud-based micro services.

While doing so, emerging technologies like Artificial…

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Elevating cyber resilience and tackling government information security challenges

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Esti Peshin is VP, General Manager, Cyber Division, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). Previously, she served 11 years in the Israeli Defense Forces, in an elite technology unit, where she was Deputy Director.

Peshin recently spoke at Cyber Week 2021 in Tel Aviv, and in this interview with Help Net Security, she discusses national defense and security challenges, as well as developing technologies and systems resilient to cyber attacks.

elevating cyber resilience

What were the most important takeaways from your 11 years in the Israeli Defense Forces? How did being part of this elite technology unit shape your vision of cybersecurity protection?

The most important takeaway from the service in the IDF is that nothing is impossible. If there is a need, there is a way. The means will be identified and it just a matter of creativity to find the right way to achieve any goal. This is, in my view, the essence of Israeli entrepreneurship, and one of the reasons the cyber eco-system is striving in Israel.

IAI leverages state-of-the-art technology for national defense and security challenges. Based on the feedback from your clients, which technologies are most in demand today?

We, at IAI, believe that most important and sought technologies are those that help organizations to detect that something bad is happening, at a very early stage. Preferably, even allowing organizations to predict that something bad can happen or is about to happen, and to direct the organization on how to avoid it or mitigate it.

The main problem with most of the common cyber monitoring technologies available today is that they generate large number of alerts without prioritizing them. Therefore technologies that can generate actionable insights are the key to improving cyber resilience.

Therefore, the main solution that is sought by our national level customers is establishing national level cyber security operation centers. These centers, essentially proactively monitor national cyber space in order to perform the following operations:

  • Conduct a national level, on going and real time, cyber risk assessment
  • Monitor national cyberspace in real time in order to identity cyber attacks or predict attacks based on indicative…

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