Improving Return on Security Investment: Threat Modeling & Open FAIR

For most, Security is a cost. Therefore, it is important to get just the right amount of it, and no more. But how do you decide when you have enough Security, and what do you do to get it? That’s an entirely different matter. This is the first post of a series on how to Improve the Return on your Security Investment with Threat Modeling and Open FAIR.

Announcing Version 1.2 of the Open Trusted Technology Provider™ Standard (O-TTPS)

By John Linford, Forum Director, The Open Group, Security & Open Trusted Technology (OTTF)

The Open Group Open Trusted Technology Forum (OTTF) is pleased to announce the publication of Version 1.2 of the Open Trusted Technology Provider™ Standard (O-TTPS). The movement from Version 1.1.1 to Version 1.2 represents a deliberate review of the O-TTPS to ensure the requirements in it remain up to date and reflect learnings from industry and government.

The Open Group Virtual Event Celebrates 25 Years of Open Technology Standards October 25-27, 2021- Highlights

Last week, The Open Group Open Digital Standards October 2021 brought together organizations and speakers from across the world to discuss how the cross-industry development of open standards is helping businesses become digital-first. The global event was hosted in Brazil, China, India, Japan, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States. The event commemorated The Open Group 25th anniversary – acknowledging and reminiscing the remarkable achievements in the technology standards arena. Over 2,600 attendees from more than 100 countries gathered virtually to to share in the celebration and learn more about open technology standards.

The Open Group and the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity

On May 12, 2021, President Joe Biden issued the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity. This EO enumerates that “…the prevention, detection, assessment, and remediation of cyber incidents is a top priority and essential to national and economic security.” The EO contains a significant level of detail regarding areas of improvement for federal IT systems, as well as policy responses to be implemented by the government in support of greater security for private and public IT systems. The EO mentions in some detail the shift to zero trust security as a part of what is needed to combat cyber threats, as well as increased reliance on enhanced supply chain security.

Solorigate: A case study for why supply chain security is critical for governments and businesses

By Jim Hietala (VP, BD and Security), Andras Szakal (VP and CTO), John Linford Security and OTTF Forum Director) – The Open Group

In potentially the most damaging cyber-supply chain attack ever, a leading IT systems management vendor became the latest hi-tech company to suffer a major cybersecurity breach with wide-reaching consequences. The malware that caused the attack has been dubbed SUNBURST by Microsoft and code-named Solorigate by FireEye, the security consulting firm that uncovered the breach after falling victim to it late last year.

After successfully infiltrating the development environment, attackers were able to observe and learn how to subvert the vendor’s development and operations pipeline. Hackers were then able to maliciously taint the vendor’s product by planting a sophisticated trojan. Once the software, which required broad systems access, was installed in customers’ environments, the attackers were able to leverage the tainted software to exfiltrate sensitive information from within an organization’s network.

Updates to the Open FAIR™ Body of Knowledge, Part 3

The Open Group Security Forum is thrilled to announce the publication of an update to the Open FAIR™ Body of Knowledge (BoK). The Open FAIR BoK is comprised of The Open Group Risk Taxonomy (O-RT) Standard and The Open Group Risk Analysis (O-RA) Standard. The Open Group initiated a standards effort regarding FAIR ~10 years ago, and these standards define the official, open, vendor-neutral and consensus-developed definition of FAIR.

This blog post is the third of three in a series to describe updates to the Open FAIR™ Body of Knowledge. It will describe specific updates to O-RT to bring it to Version 3.0. The first post described revisions made to both O-RA and O-RT for consistency between the documents; the second post described specific updates to O-RA to bring it to Version 2.0.

Relying on backups to protect you against ransomware? Think again

I’ve heard a few people in different organisations mention that they weren’t worried about ransomware because they could just restore from backup. If only it were that easy! CERT NZ and the US Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency have recently warned about increases in cases of the RYUK ransomware (specifically affecting the healthcare industry).  This […]