Rejects v1

As many of you know, I regularly contribute to SANS NewsBites.  It's an outstanding email newsletter that normally is published twice weekly.  Not everything I contribute gets published though.  Sometimes things get chopped by the editors.  I have a pretty good idea of what doesn't follow SANS' editorial guidelines and try not to contribute those thoughts.  For the rest of it though, I decided I'm letting a lot of good content I've already written go to waste and decided I'd start publishing them here under the heading "rejects."  This blog series is not affiliated with SANS in any way and does not reflect their views.  Also, I am not in any way knocking NewsBites for not publishing everything I send in.  It's a tremendously valuable newsletter - one that I used myself throughout the years and I'm honored to be a contributor now.

Regarding a story about how the number of claims against cyber insurance are on the rise:

In my practice, I work with a number of organizations that have great confusion about what is an isn't covered by their cyber insurance policies.  Don't assume anything here, the stakes are far too high.  I always recommend organizations perform tabletop exercises to determine if their coverage would be sufficient for events reported in the media and adjust their risk models (and perhaps coverage) to suit.

Regarding a story about how the US military "was almost brought to its knees" by Russian hackers:

The media has blown this out of proportion, saying that it could "bring the US military to its knees."  Those who understand the intel gain/loss model know that no such action is likely.  Russia could use this access to continue to gather information indefinitely until detected or perform a very temporary disruptive event.  Attackers most often have far more capability than they exercise during an intrusion.

That's all I have for this week.  Hopefully this adds value in some way.