by Jesper Kråkhede, Sweden
Posted in Business, Security Architecture on Jun 19th, 2020
Something I have noticed during this spring is that the incidents I work on cost more than they used to. Not only because the attackers ask for more money, although they do, but because everything around the incident has become harder. When everyone works from home it takes longer to gather the right people. Laptops […]
Posted in Business, Security Architecture on May 23rd, 2020
In the previous post I went through the numbers on VPN and remote access attacks this spring. Here is what I think management should take away from them. First, the attackers move faster than our change processes. A VPN patch that waits for the next quarterly maintenance window is a patch that comes too late. […]
Posted in Business, Security Architecture on Apr 27th, 2020
In my previous post I wrote about measuring security posture. This one is for management. What should the board actually look at? Not the number of blocked attacks. Every vendor will happily show you millions of blocked spam mails and scans. It looks impressive and tells you nothing about your risk. The board needs a […]
Posted in Business, Security Architecture on Mar 25th, 2020
In a few days a large part of Sweden has moved home. Management teams all over the country are working on keeping the business running, and rightly so. But in the rush I see a lot of security decisions being made without anybody noticing that they are security decisions. ‘Let people use their own computers.’ […]
Posted in Business, Speaker, Technology on Feb 15th, 2020
I have just spent a week in Rome at a Microsoft training on security architecture. Good food, good company and, believe it or not, a lot of good discussions on the difference between architecture and engineering. One discussion stuck with me. A colleague asked why so many customers have excellent engineers but still end up […]
Posted in Business, Security Architecture on Jan 19th, 2020
Just before New Year a large currency exchange company was hit by ransomware and is still struggling to get its services back. When I read about cases like that my first question is always the same: Could they restore? For management, backup has been an IT topic for decades. Something that costs money and that […]
Posted in Business on Dec 31st, 2019
It is New Year´s Eve again. The family is getting ready, the champagne is cooling and the security architect is writing a blog post. Some things never change. What did 2019 teach management? For me it was the year when the supply chain became the attack surface. Outsourcing providers were used as a way into […]
Posted in Business, Security Architecture on Dec 19th, 2019
On the 4th of November one of Spain´s largest IT consultancies was hit by ransomware. The employees were told to keep their computers turned off and the company disconnected the network to its clients. Some of their customers cut the connections from their side as well, just to be on the safe side. Imagine being […]
Posted in Business, Methodology on Nov 19th, 2019
One of the most common misunderstandings I meet in board rooms is that moving to the cloud means moving the security responsibility as well. ‘Microsoft takes care of that now.’ Well, partly. The cloud provider takes care of the physical datacenter, the hardware and, depending on the service, a good part of the platform. That […]
Posted in Security Architecture on Nov 19th, 2019
After my posts about Zero Trust I have got a few questions from managers along the lines of: ‘Sounds great, what does it cost?’ Fair question. The answer is that it depends on where you start, but probably less than you think. Zero Trust is not a product you buy. It is a way of […]