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Transcript

The Importance of OpSec: Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe! · CYBR.Signal

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: And hello everybody, happy Cyber Sunday.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Michael Farnum here.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you're doing well.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Want to address the obvious?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, I am not in my truck.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is my wife's vehicle.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Getting some work done on my truck.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Some uh just getting some modifications done on it.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I am in this vehicle today.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: So wanted to head that off if you had any questions.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so today I wanted to talk about OPSEC or operations or operational security.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that essentially is a mindset risk management framework or thought process, however you want to do it, of classifying information within your um organization and kind of making sure some stuff doesn't get out that's classified as important.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not necessarily talking about classification of data as uh even though that could fall within there, which a lot of people would call like a data protection program or data classification or something like that.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: But operation security is not letting vital information about how you do what you do on a daily basis get out.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: So from a security standpoint, extremely important, right?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: You don't necessarily want everybody to know what you're using for security tools, how what your policies are, your processes are, that kind of thing.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: That gets in the wrong hands, can severely compromise you.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: The reason I bring this up is uh a couple three things, and you're looking at them together, it's it's more like maybe personal opse, but one of the things was I posted a funny little picture on my Facebook page.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: I took a picture of somebody who had uh their birthday look like their birthday, I'm assuming it was, on their license plate.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like literally, that was their vanity license plate, look like their birthday from an operation security standpoint.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not the best thing to do.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Could be used if they know who you are.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not hugely risky, but just thought it was funny.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Second thing, a little more serious, had somebody posting stuff on LinkedIn about people just sending them invites and didn't know them and how nobody had any courtesy anymore.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I pointed out that you know, well, I mean, yeah, that's true.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of people who do that, they should let you know why they're reaching out to you, but there's also a lot of bots on there.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So for an and the person didn't know why somebody would be using bots on LinkedIn, and the thought was from my perspective, is that they use them to gather uh a lot of information off of LinkedIn on targets that they're going after, specifically because a lot of people put on LinkedIn what they do, especially in the cybersecurity world or technology world.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I've got experience in this and I've got experience in that, and they'll even do that for current jobs.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, hey, I've got you know this web application firewall that I work on, or I've got this EDR or whatever that is, and that's a lot of really good way of gathering information when the person who's writing their LinkedIn profile is just trying to let people know what they do for future jobs, yada yada yada.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that's another operational security problem.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third one was there was another LinkedIn post that went out, and this was on an information security, like a user group in LinkedIn, which really got me, which everybody they were talking about how the last pass uh has been popped quite frequently here lately, and they literally posted a poll on what password manager are you using, and you know, it had like three or four of the most common ones, and then the other, and I was just flabbergasted that there was all these people in this information security group who were answering what password manager they use, and some people rightly so were like, I'm not posting that here, why would you do that?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just out of my mind, just like how in the world can the user, the group, uh moderators even let that on there.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're just not paying attention, maybe it's not heavily moderated.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: But essentially, all of that, you know, kind of from a more of a lighthearted use case from operational security, a personal kind of perspective, to maybe gathering information on your company of operations and tools that you use, that kind of thing, using LinkedIn or other things, uh, and then something that goes to specifics to a tool that somebody is using to secure their passwords.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Essentially, all I'm saying is that you really need to think about how you're putting information out there on your operations within your company and with your personal self and make sure you're not just sharing those with the world.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: I do I think in the cybersecurity world we don't share enough sometimes.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: There are ways to go about that, there are groups out there that you can do that with and do that in a more of a secure manner where you're not letting the world know everything that's happened, and that way you can help people with their operations and help secure their environments.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: But please think about from an operational operations, however you want to say it.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Some people say operations, some people say operational, but from an opse standpoint, please think about what you're putting out there in the public, whether that be on social media, whether it's just what you're doing on a daily basis, can be very important and can make the difference between you or your organization getting popped.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that's it.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let me know what you think in the comments.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to you next time.