Tuesday, July 24, 2018

SingHealth cyberattack: Private hospitals take steps to boost cybersecurity
Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singhealth-cyberattack-private-hospitals-take-steps-to-boost-10558536

 (Updated: )

Ricky Lim
Patient data at Parkway Pantai is guarded by network segregation, multi-layer firewalls and continuous security monitoring, he said, adding that as part of ongoing cybersecurity efforts, access to all external storage devices has been removed.
Internet access has been restricted to work-related websites “since some time ago”, he added.

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Posted on:- 20 Jul 2018

Ricky Lim
Protecting IT resources to minimise hacking are not that scary.
1. IT design to segregate back-end oob (out of band) mgt from front end internet fronting (in band) will definitely minimise internet hacking attack of such scale. The reason being, front end (in-band) is internet facing, out-of-band (back end) is segregated from front-end (inband) - and when hackers attack from front-end (in-band) - it cannot get into the back end (out-of-band) as the front end network is separated from back-end network. Breaching the front probably may get access to one or the most a few transactions --- but will not be able to do a mass copy of data - using backend admin with powerful rights.

2. Proactive security incidents and event management of all critical information infrastructure online real-time will trigger alarms and alerts the moment when stealth hacking occurs. Even stealth reconnaissance, the beginning of hacking by probing through network discovery, tcp port scanning, icmp ping, traceroute etc will be picked up.

3. APT advanced persistence threat or maybe dlp (data loss protection) protection can be put in place to filter known, unknown, zero day attack, virtual patching and sandbox unknown but anomaly threat.

4. 2 FA authentication for administrator to be installed for login before allowing management of network device, software, database. Hackers may be able to steal the admin id and password, but without 2FA, hackers cannot administer and manage network device, edit software, access data in database.

5. Remove all remote access by hardening and removing or shutting down all remote access capability to all network devices, software and database. Lockdown and identify dedicated jump host to administer all network devices, software, database by local access workstation or virtual machine that are securely protected. Any other workstation that are not identified as jump host for administration are not allowed to manage and administer supervisor function over the network devices, software and database. Remote management must be disallowed. By doing so, hacker compromising a weak front end workstation will not be able to mass copy the database - as it is not a dedicated jump host and will not be allowed to do so - also a security alarm and alert will be triggered to the sms and email to administrator that can quickly respond to the hacking.

6. Encryption of data storage, encryption key management and encryption of database maybe required. This ensure that even when the data is mass copied by the hackers, the data are encrypted and hackers will take a hard time to decrypt the data.

The above measures are recommended on top and above the below:-
(Assuming that all traditional security measures are put in place like firewall, segregration of web, apps, database, network IPS, host IPS, WAF - web application firewall, vpn ipsec, digital cert, encryption, authentication, directory service, desktop security features like personal firewall, anti-virus, latest security patches etc that have undergone security posture assessment such as BYOD, port authentication, secured shell for admin management, ssl etc have been put in place).

All these will prevent the singhealth APT hacking.
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Ricky Lim
Most important, ensure that in-band (front-end) network must not be routable to the out-of-band (back-end) network.

Ensure this mistake must not be made - else 佛都保不到你。。。。。
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Freddy Chin
Ricky Lim, those points which you have mentioned are known to cybersecurity professionals. You must agreed with me that it is usually the senior management who is reluctant to invest thinking that Singapore is safe and there is no precedence . This incidence might be a good wake up call to all companies that cybersecurity is no joke.
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Ricky Lim
Freddy Chin - I don't speak on behalf of the cybersecurity professionals nor for the senior management.

To implement those security gadgets will easily cause a bomb - if individually built.

There is a need to aggregate resources to bring down the cost.

Also you will need talents with an overview of the full spectrum of the IT needs - not everyone have the knowledge of the full spectrum.

By benchmarking the corporate security deployment versus what is stated here - will know that many will have fall short.


Those mentioned above is not all encompassing, as there could be some specific security needs that some will need and some don't.
eg. those with proliferation of mobile devices - will require different ways of securing mobile access.

eg. those with proliferation of wireless - will need wireless security

eg. those who are using cloud - will require cloud security

eg. those who use mainly remote access - will require remote access security

eg. those who use Voice Over IP, IP telephony - will require Voip security.

eg. those who use video conferencing - will require VC security.

eg. those who use email - will require email security.

etc etc etc ...... endless ...... seriously can cover so many things ?????????
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Ricky Lim
Eg. briefly
(1) Mobile device security - will have talk about MDM (mobile device management), BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), Port authentication, Device posture assessment, authenticated VLANs, Quarantine VLANs, Captive Web Portal etc.

(2) Wireless LAN security - will talk about 802.1x port authentication, EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol), IEEE802.11i, WPA (Wireless Protected Access), AES, 3DES encryption, SSID, WLAN controller etc...

(3) Remote access security - will have talk about SSL VPN or IPSec VPN gateway and SSL VPN clients.

(4) VoIP, IT telephone - will have to talk about securing VoIP protocols such as SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) - encryption between Call Manager and end phones, voice vlan segregated from data vlan.

etc.

All these are not mention in the above infrastructure security.

So do we have talents to cover so many things .... and i have not mention cloud security that will have secured VM (virtual machines), bare metal, cloud firewall, cloud load balancers etc.
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