Adopting Zero Trust

Beyond the Buzzword: Applicable use of AI in Cybersecurity

Catch this episode on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or Google. You can read the show notes here.
 
The word AI, much like Zero Trust, has come with a lot of baggage in the past few years. It’s a term that’s been misused, slapped on the front of startups’ overpriced booths at RSA and Black Hat, and it feels like every cybersecurity product under the sun now supports it in some flavor or fashion. It's the same cycle we’ve been in the past, but this time everyone is jumping in. This week we are getting in front of the bandwagon and chat with a pioneer in the cybersec AI space who has seen how the technology has been evolving over the past decade, Oliver Tavakoli, the CTO of Vectra AI.
 
“My contemporaneous definition of AI at any given moment in time is there's got to be enough pixie dust in it for people to view it as somewhat magical; so that's my incredibly technical definition. I'd say over the past 10-15 years, that is typically meant neural nets-that has those have been a stand in-and and obviously, neural nets can be used for discrimination [As opposed to a generative AI model]. Again, the example of cat (You search “Cat” on Google images, and it returns results that show images, in theory, of only cats) is an example of how they can be used in a generative sense, which is really the latest revolution that you see. And then the other thing is how broadly applicable they are and how well read they are.
 
Tavakoli’s definition of AI provides the context for how AI is primarily applicable today in cybersecurity. But, in the past, typically these concepts were held back by technology. There is also a stark difference between what has been referred to as AI, or a discriminative AI model, and what is most popular today, or generative AI.
It turns out in these large language models, as you make them bigger, there was always kind of the question of if you make them big enough. Will they just plateau or will they take off? It really wasn't a foregone conclusion that if you made them big enough they would take off, but it was a bet that was placed and a bet that turned out to have some merit to it.
And that is the crux of today’s interview: what was and will be the past and future impact of AI on cybersecurity?
Key Takeaways
AI plays a significant role in both offensive and defensive cybersecurity strategies.
Threat actors use AI to enhance their attacks, making them more believable and harder to detect.
Defensive uses of AI include improving workflow and making SOCs more productive.
Organizations must always assume that compromise is possible and focus on minimizing the impact of breaches.

AZT: Zack Butcher on Building Zero Trust Standards and Securing Microservices

Season two, episode 16: Zack Butcher discusses building upon NIST’s Zero Trust policies and standards, and ZT’s influence on a service mesh as it relates to microservices.
 
Catch this episode on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or Google. You can read the show notes here.
 
There are several guiding concepts that make it easier for organizations to build a Zero Trust strategy. The first that typically come to mind come from CISA and NIST. These core elements, ranging from the five pillars through to building a ZT architecture, offer a vendor-neutral path towards removing implicit trust. Organizations like CSA also do a great job of expanding upon this knowledge with more contributions from technology and service providers. This week, we take our first step towards understanding what goes on behind these policies, standards, and recommendations, and for that we have a well-equipped guest to walk us through it.
 
Zack Butcher is one of the founding engineers over at Tetrate, a vendor that provides a consistent way to connect and protect thousands of individual microservices and deliver Zero Trust security operations across any environment. They also have their roots stemming from a team that worked at Google, which many of you are likely familiar with their connection to Zero Trust through BeyondCorp. However, he is also the co-author on NIST special publication 800-207A. If that looks familiar, it’s because it’s an expansion of the earlier mentioned core NIST resource, 800-207.
 
NIST SP 800-207A builds upon that core architecture piece and hones in on access controls in cloud-native applications in multi-cloud environments. That is a bit of a mouthful, so here is Zack on what you need to know.
 
When we talk about Zero Trust at runtime, there's a lot of FUD and a frustrating amount of FUD in the in the marketplace and a lot of vendors claiming certain things are Zero Trust and not.
And you know, in that landscape, I wanted to really kind of push for people to have a very clear definition of Zero Trust at runtime, and it's a minimum definition. Let me be clear. You can do a whole lot more than what we talk about in the SP, but I try and give a very, very simple minimum definition. And that is five policy checks at runtime, and we call that identity based segmentation.
Butcher also co-authored NIST SP 800-204A that focuses on building secure microservices-based applications using service-mesh architecture. So this week, Neal and Butcher ran down the rabbit hole of expanding upon these core Zero Trust resources, implications of a more secure environment at runtime, and identity-based segmentation.

AZT: API Security with John Kindervag, Chase Cunningham, and Richard Bird

Season two, episode 15: We talk ZT History and API security with the godfather of Zero Trust, Dr Zero Trust, and Richard Bird.
Catch this episode on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or Google. You can read the show notes here.
In the past few years, supply chain attacks and their impacts have or will soon overtake that of the damage done by ransomware. It’s of no surprise then that APIs are a critical attack vector that threat actors like to exploit, yet many organizations do not have a good understanding of how many doors they have running into their data.
This week we chat with the godfather of Zero Trust, Dr. Zero Trust, and a chief security officer about the current state of API security maturity. Considering our guests, we, of course, also took the opportunity to chat a bit about Zero Trust's history.
This week we have three very special guests:
John Kindervag, the creator (godfather) of Zero Trust
Chase Cunningham, AKA Dr Zero Trust, and the now VP of Market Research for G2
Richard Bird, Traceable AI’s Chief Security Officer
Key Takeaways
Like any other cybersecurity concept, APIs must have an asset inventory
There is enough margin of error tied to the intended use of APIs that require continuous monitoring/verification
There is a current maturity gap associated with securing the use of APIs in the name of speed and innovation, and often there is not a well-established owner
Editors Note
We will be taking a publishing break for the month of September as my daughter has arrived, and I will need to catch up on all the sleep I can get. We should be back in October and run through until the holiday break before we wrap season two. I’m also working on a few experimental podcast series during my parental leave, so stay tuned. At least one in particular should be of interest to our audience here. Also, if you work for a cybersecurity org and are interested in launching a podcast, slide into my inbox if you need a hand.

Adopting Zero Trust: The Illusion of Passwordless

The illusion of going passwordless with Derek Hanson, Vice President Solutions Architecture and Alliances at Yubico. You can read the show notes here.
 
True or False: The concept of passwordless is new. False.
 
This is shocking, we know.
 
Considering the amount of hype around the concept, it certainly can feel like a new concept since the masses are becoming more familiar with it; however, the message is a bit jumbled.
 
For ages, we’ve used things like biometrics (fingerprints or iris scans) and even a PIN to access money on a debit card, but more recently, there has been an increase in misrepresentations about how secure passwordless technology is, simply because there is not a password involved. As cybersecurity practitioners, we know that the simple removal of passwords alone won’t prevent a successful phishing attack, which means multifactor authentication needs to play a role in getting us closer to the Zero Trust concept.
 
Fortunately, we have a guest this week who is well-equipped to help us navigate the ins and outs of passwordless concepts, passkeys, and the split between identification and authentication. Derek Hanson is the Vice President of Solutions Architecture and Alliances at Yubico, who has spent the last 8 years contributing to the shaping of a physical piece of hardware, Yubikeys, designed to improve authentication. Prior to that, he worked at Costco, focusing on identification and IAM. But first, let’s improve your personal security stack…
 
Giveaway - Yubikeys!
If you already have a Yubikey, you already know there is always an opportunity for one more in your stack. If you’re new to Yubico’s offering, this is the perfect time for you to grab your very own YubiKey 5C NFC and gain phishing-resistant MFA. It even works with most password managers, too.
 
To enter, we’ve given you a bunch of options on how you can increase your odds of winning one of two keys. You must be based in the US, though.
 
[**Enter the giveaway here](https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/c9435e741/?).**
We’ll close the giveaway in about two weeks and announce it in our next episode.

Adopting Zero Trust: Philosophy of Prevention with iHeartMedia’s Janet Heins

Season two, episode 13: Cybersecurity prevention on a global scale with Janey Heins, Global CISO for iHeartMedia.
 
At the heart of Zero Trust is the idea of prevention. If you don’t trust anything or any person, you are playing in the same pool as risk avoidance. While total risk avoidance isn’t feasible, Zero Trust gets us closer to reality. Now, map this up to an organization with a global footprint, with significant infrastructure sprawl, and you’ve got one very complex scenario on your hands.
 
This brings us to this week’s guest, Janet Heins, iHeartMedia's Global CISO, who will help us navigate the philosophy of cybersecurity prevention on a global scale.
 
Putting The Conversation Into Context
With more than a decade behind her as a CISO, Heins’ experience stems from working with some massive brands. As a leader, she’s particularly passionate about translating business needs into technology processes or solutions, while at the same time bridging the language barriers that often stem between IT, cybersecurity, and the other adjacent areas.
 
iHeartMedia has over 11,000 employees and a vast physical and digital footprint. With 860 radio stations across the US and 20,000 events annually, the company is part of the emergency broadcast system and has to be ready to respond to threats quickly.
 
At a global level, Heins makes it clear that strong detection and response capabilities, as well as prevention measures, are critical elements of prevention. And while prevention can take many forms, in the context of today’s episode, we dig into security tools, hiring security professionals, and the basics, such as providing security awareness training to employees.
 
One challenge of securing a large organization like iHeartMedia is consolidating the tech stack. iHeartMedia has a blended architecture of OT and IT, with legacy hardware and systems that need to be secured. Heins stresses the importance of communication and collaboration between the IT and OT teams, as well as being open to new tools and automation.

Adopting Zero Trust: Continuous Trust

Over the past two years, we’ve explored the ins and outs of Zero Trust, ranging from the concept as a strategy down to the more technical components, such as how it impacts the physical world as found in IoT devices. However, what is often missed in these conversations, is at what point an organization can actually build trust.
Not just crawling up from the baseline of zero but achieving continuous trust. The short answer? Defense in depth, building security in layers, and ensuring every 1 and 0 is secure at the offset while continuously monitored through automation.
And this is where we get to introduce this week’s guests, who were kind enough to be pulled away from a busy conference. This is also a special episode for us, too, as it’s the first in-person interview we’ve done since launching this series. Live (June 22, 2023) from Drataverse, we have Daniel Marashlian, the co-founder and CTO of Drata, Ty Sbano, the CISO for Vercel and an angel investor at Silicon Valley CISO Investment Group (SVCI), and Matt Hilary, the Vice President of Security and CISO at Drata.
You can read the show notes here.

Adopting Zero Trust: Nonfederated Apps

Last episode, we brought to you a wild story of a victim who was SIM-swapped four times, and this week we’re back to basics with some fresh research and a closer look at a critical piece of Zero Trust: Non-federated applications.
 
Cerby’s Chief Trust Officer, Matt Chiodi, was kind enough to add a bit of color to a research report they released at RSA that helps validate what they’ve been building the past 3 years. Before we get to that, it’s worthwhile to define what nonfederated applications are, as, like many cybersecurity concepts, it’s going through an identity crisis.
 
Nonfederated applications are essentially the opposite of how organizations should be inventorying, tracking, and providing access to applications (SaaS platforms are a good example). To align with Zero Trust, or really any modern cybersecurity strategy, SSO, SAML, and other solutions designed to scale are necessary so IT and security teams can properly manage access. However, there are always outliers, which the business still needs access to, such as managing admin access to a social media profile.
 
This brings us back to Matt and the Ponemon Institute, who produced the recent research report: The Hidden Cybersecurity Threat in Organizations: Nonfederated Applications.

Adopting Zero Trust: SIM Swapped

Taking a break from our usual format, this week we chat with a victim-turned-CEO who was hit by SIM-swapping attacks. However, not all harsh starts have to end that way, and Haseeb Awan made the best of a bad situation. After being compromised not once… nor twice, but four times, Haseeb eventually took matters into his own hands and developed a new solution and company, Efani.
Haseeb was kind enough to share his personal experience of being SIM swapped where he describes the fear and anxiety felt as a result of the attacks and explained how easy it is to compromise a phone number.

Adopting Zero Trust with Bloomberg: Implemented

Season two, episode nine: Featuring Bloomberg’s Head of Information Security Architecture and the Information Security Program, Phil Vachon.
 
Catch this episode on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or Google. You can read the show notes here.
 
What does implementing a Zero Trust strategy actually look like in an organization? Nearly a year into our podcast’s journey covering how practitioners view, define, and apply zero trust, it’s time to look under the hood at how a notable organization put its strategy into motion. This week we chat with Bloomberg’s Head of Information Security Architecture and the Information Security Program, Phil Vachon, about how they transformed their security organization with Zero Trust.
 
Most interestingly though, while many organizations are just now exploring how they will start their zero trust journey, Bloomberg was ahead of the curve even before covid thrust the concept into the limelight.
“I will always say it is continuing to be a journey. It's not a destination,” said Vachon.
Key Takeaways
Zero Trust Principles
Zero trust is not a new concept but has been repackaged and branded as a solid ideology.
Zero trust involves three principles: trust but verify, assume compromise, and strong posture.
Zero Trust Journey
Zero trust is a continuing journey, not a destination.
Zero trust requires a good mindset about how to implement controls and how to reason about security architecture.
Zero trust is not just about securing the corporate IT estate but also about securing the data center estate and the communications between components.
Challenges in Implementing Zero Trust
Balancing security with usability is a challenge that must be addressed to enable a high-collaboration, low-friction workflow.
Bloomberg leverages many SaaS services for collaboration, but they also have their own core services that are still on-premises. They focus heavily on their offerings on-premises and have a big drink-your-own champagne culture around them.

Adopting Zero Trust with Bitwarden: The Mighty Password

There’s no avoiding it, the headlines have not been kind to the ways we access systems today. Users are still using 1234, password, and even their dog's name. Not just using these weak passwords but also reusing them across multiple platforms, making it incredibly easy to breach someone once they’ve been caught up in a previous breach. On the vendor side, well we all know what’s happened there in the past 12 months, and now more than ever, password management platforms have growing targets on their back as high-value assets.
 
But we are not here to throw rocks in the glass house nor try to dissect what goes well or goes wrong in these situations; however, we should all focus on what we can take away from them and ensure they are not repeated. This concept aligns well with Zero Trust, where we should assume systems are already breached, that your users - be it intentionally to shitpost in a discord channel or accidentally fall for a phishing lure- and we should remove as much implicit, unchecked trust as possible. At least until Skynet takes us all out, but we have a few good years ahead. 
 
Jokes aside, we have a great episode for you and appreciate Bitwarden lending us two of their C-suite members who cover a range of topics, including how they navigate these challenges. This week we chat with Bitwarden’s CEO Michael Crandell and Chief Customer Officer Gary Orenstein. Bitwarden offers an integrated open-source password management solution for individuals, teams, and business organizations. It also offers a self-hosted solution, which appeals to those who want greater control over their secrets.
Key Takeaways
The use of a Zero Knowledge architecture means that the company, whether cloud-hosted or self-hosted, should not be able to access sensitive information without the user's permission.
Open-sourced solutions offer additional layers of trust as there are more eyes are on the product and can vet it for security
Passwordless authentication is the future