RiskXtraSeptember2018

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RISKXtra
CTI: Keeping UK Citizens Safe in 2018
operational challenge facing their organisation.
How, then, can Government organisations
embrace digital transformation while also
ensuring that their systems – and, critically,
citizens’ data – is kept safe?
You know you’re
facing an area of grave
concern when experts
at the World Economic
Forum signpost ‘cyber
attack’ as one of the
Top Three most
probable global risks
of 2018. The threat of
such an attack has
been put up there with
extreme weather
events and natural
disasters as one of the
events most likely to
cause problems on a
worldwide scale this
year and into the
future. Paul McEvatt
addresses the issue
For the public sector, the threat is even more
acute. Cyber security has stormed its way
on to the political agenda of late as
allegations of election tampering, breaches of
Government agencies and departments and
industrial sabotage have dominated the news
headlines. Malignant actors have targeted
Government and political organisations with
forms of sabotage since Government has
existed, of course, but the difference now is
that hacking into a Government body by digital
means can be done remotely by an unidentified
actor and can happen remarkably quickly.
Government bodies often hold a variety of
sensitive information – whether that’s medical
data, criminal records or confidential Civil
Service plans – that can be used by others for
financial or other forms of gain. For a malignant
hacker, the possibilities here are endless and
mouth-watering in equal measure.
The UK’s public sector is fast embracing
digital technology. When conducting our own
research, we found that 76.7% of public sector
organisations said that they were undergoing
digital transformation – the highest percentage
of any sector we surveyed. This is largely a
positive thing, with a view towards making sure
Government works more efficiently and delivers
better services.
However, the adoption of digital can
sometimes create more angles of attack for
hackers. In fact, almost half of all civil servants
state that cyber security is the biggest
Going back to fundamentals
With the public sector fast adopting new ways
of doing things in the sphere of IT, it’s
important to maintain some of the
fundamentals of security. In 2017, the headlinegrabbing
Petya and WannaCry ransomware
outbreaks exploited a vulnerability to software
propagation that was known months before the
attack. What could have prevented the
vulnerability? Patching.
It’s easy to repeat the mantra “Thou shalt
patch whenever necessary” from afar, but
business reality dictates that this is sometimes
not the right move depending on the context.
For example, you might choose not to patch a
critical vulnerability in a financial system if it’s
the day before the end of the financial year for
fear of breaking that system.
One of the ways in which public sector
organisations can mitigate risk is through Cyber
Threat Intelligence (CTI). This can function as
an early warning mechanism, guiding security
professionals on which vulnerabilities are most
open to exploitation and should, therefore, be a
patching priority.
CTI is often simply referred to as a threat
feed. However, faced with the kind of ‘savvy’
and aggressive attackers that have the audacity
to go after public sector organisations, the
system shouldn’t just express the severity of
the vulnerability as a technical risk. Given the
vital work that public sector organisations
transact, it should also communicate this risk in
financial, business and, indeed, human terms.
At its core, effective CTI provides strategic
direction that cuts through the complexity of
patch management, subsequently indicating
where attention is most needed. For example, a
threat advisory that addresses a vulnerability
early on can protect an organisation months
before hackers begin developing a ransomware
variant to take advantage of that vulnerability.
Automating the guard dogs
The public sector is increasingly embracing the
power of data. Collecting and analysing large
volumes of data about how we live, how our
businesses operate and even how the public
sector itself runs can be beneficial on several
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