Creating a Personal Security Awareness Culture

My team and I decided it would be a great opportunity to hold a contest that would showcase whether corporate Companies is vulnerable to this attack vector (responding to a “contest”). We organized the contest by having interested people sign up to take part in two stages of social engineering :information gathering and active attacks.

To keep the contest legal and moral we did n ot want any person victimized, and no Social Security numbers, credit cards, and no personal identifying information would be gathered. Our goal was not to get any of these people fired. In addition our goal was not to embarrass any particular company, so we decided also no passwords or other personal security–related information from the companies. Instead we developed a list of about 25–30 “flags” that ranged from whether the company had an internal cafeteria, to who handles its trash disposal, to what browser it uses, and to what software it uses to open PDFs. Finally, we chose target companies from all sectors of business in corporate America: gas companies, tech companies, manufacturers, retail, and everything in between.

Each contestant was assigned one target company in secret, on which he had two weeks to do passive information gathering. That meant contestants were not allowed to contact the company, send it emails, or in any way try to social engineer information out of it. Instead they had to use the web, Maltego, and other tools to gather as much information as possible and enter all they found into a professional-looking report.

From the information gathered we wanted contestants to develop a couple of plausible attack vectors that they thought would work in the real world.

Then contestants had to come to our area, sit in a soundproof booth, and make a 25-minute phone call to their target to implement their attack vector and see what information they could obtain.

I could spend the next 20–30 pages telling you what happened at that contest and what the outcome was, but one thing we found was this: Every contestant obtained enough information out of the targets that the company would have failed a security audit. Regardless of the experience level of the contestant and the pretext, the contestants were successful in accomplishing their goals.

Now on to what applies here—security awareness. Corporations that care about security have programs where they train their employees how to be aware of potential security risks via phone, Internet, or in person. What we found was that security awareness in those companies was at failure stage.

Why? How could it be that these Fortune 500 companies that spend millions or more on security, training, education, and services designed to protect their employees could be failing at security awareness?

In reviewing much of the material and methods available for so-called security awareness, what I have found is that it is boring, silly, and not geared to make the participant interact or think. Short DVD presentations that cover a ton of things in a shotgun approach that blasts the participant with a lot of tiny little facts are not designed to sink in too deep.

What I challenge you to do as a company or even as an individual is to create a program that engages, interacts, and dives deep into security awareness. Instead of just telling your employees why having long and complex passwords is a good idea, show them how quickly one can crack an easy password. When I am asked to help perform security awareness training for a client, sometimes I ask an employee to come up to my computer and type in a password that she feels is secure. I do this before I release any information about passwords. Then as I start my presentation on that section I start a cracker against that password. Usually within a minute or two the password is cracked and I reveal to the room the password that was secretly typed into my computer. The immediate and drastic effect it has on each person has an extreme impact. But after numerous demonstrations like that employees will comment on how they now understand how serious having a good password is.

When I discuss the topic of malicious attachments in email, I do not have to show employees how to craft a malicious PDF but I do show them what it looks like from both the victim’s and the attacker’s computers when a malicious PDF is opened. This helps them understand that a simple crash can lead to devastation.

Of course, this teaching method produces a lot of fear, and although that is not the goal, it is not a terrible side product, because employees will remember it better. But the goal is to make them think not just about what they do not only at work and with their office computers, but also their own bank accounts, home computers, and how they treat security on a personal level.

I want each person who hears a security presentation or reads this tutorial to review how he interacts with the Internet as a whole and make serious changes to reusing passwords, storing passwords or personal information in non-secure locations, and to where they connect to the Internet. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen a person sitting in the center of Starbucks on her free Wi-Fi checking a bank account or making an online purchase. As much as I want to go up and yell at that person and tell her how quickly her whole life can be turned upside down if the wrong person is sitting on that same network with her, I don’t.

I want people who read this to also think of how they give out information over the phone. Con men and scam artists use many avenues to steal from the elderly, those having hard economic times, and everyone else. The phone still remains a very powerful way to do this. Being aware of the vendors’, banks’, or suppliers’ policies on what they will and will not ask for over the phone can help you avoid many of the pitfalls. For example, many banks list in their policies that they will never call and ask from a Social Security number or bank account number. Knowing this can safeguard you for falling for a scam that can empty your life savings.

Calling security awareness a “program” indicates that it is something ongoing. A program means you schedule time to continually educate yourself. After you obtain all this useful information, then you can use it to develop a program that will help you to stay secure.