Incident Response
How would you track the location of the company asset?
You’ve recently been promoted to the role of a cybersecurity incident manager as part of a new contract with a major media and entertainment company. The company requires its employees, artists, and clients to have wireless and mobile device access to company networks.
Because of the “bring your own device” policy, there has been an increase in the number of cybersecurity incident reports. You realize that you need to increase awareness of security standards. In your security monitoring of the company networks, you use tools that track employee behavior.
You want company leadership to understand the technologies used in wireless networks and mobile device management, and you want those leaders to be educated about the implementation, threats, and safeguards for all devices—including personal units that are used for work-related tasks. You believe that executive leadership needs to incorporate these kinds of safeguards as part of its business strategy. You decide to compile a cybersecurity incident report that you will send to management. You will list the actions, defense, and preventative measures you have taken to address threats and why.
The report will incorporate terminology definitions, information about the cyber kill chain, and impact assessments. Your cyber incident report will need to illustrate the threats you discovered and the resolutions you employed. You want leadership to be confident about the strategy you have used to defend the company’s networks.
Today’s companies face many security challenges to their networks, and a company’s incident manager needs to be ready to respond to potential threats. Some of those threats can occur from the actions of well-intentioned employees who fail to follow security protocols, and others can arise from disgruntled workers who may be able to access accounts on personal devices long after leaving an organization.
Wireless devices and bring your own device (BYOD) computing in the workplace often increase productivity and convenience, but such ease of access to resources can be a significant threat to organizational security, and BYOD computing adds another layer of concern for the incident manager.
Remote management, such as tracking and data swipes, helps to locate devices containing company data and to eliminate any unauthorized viewing of that data. Authentication, access controls, and strong encryption are just some of the security measures that need to be part of a secure wireless network and mobile device management practices in the workplace. However, security will need to evolve in order to protect against employees who may have malicious intent. It will need to include behavior cues as well as effective countermeasures, as the need for greater employee availability drives more wireless computing and BYOD integration in the workplace.
Step 1: Develop a Wireless and BYOD Security Plan
Since the company you work for has instituted a bring your own device (BYOD) policy, security attitudes have been lax, and all sorts of devices, authorized and unauthorized, have been found connected to the company’s wireless infrastructure. In this first step, you will develop a wireless and BYOD security plan for the company.
Use the NIST Guidelines for Securing Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) Special Publication 800-153 to provide an executive summary to answer other security concerns related to BYOD and wireless. Within your cybersecurity incident report, discuss why the security of wireless access points is important. Provide answers to the threat of unauthorized equipment or rogue access points on the company wireless network and the methods to find other rogue access points. Describe how to detect rogue access points and how they can actually connect to the network. Describe how to identify authorized access points within your network.
Within your plan, include how the Cyber Kill Chain framework and approach could be used to improve the incident response times for networks.
Include this at the beginning of your CIR as the basis for all wireless- and BYOD-related problems within the network. Title the section “Wireless and BYOD Security Plan.”
Step 2: Track Suspicious Behavior
You have been notified of an employee exhibiting suspicious behavior. You decide to track the employee’s movements by using available industry tools and techniques. You know the location and time stamps associated with the employee’s mobile device.
How would you track the location of the company asset?
Explain how identity theft could occur and how MAC spoofing could take place in the workplace. How would you protect against both identity theft and MAC spoofing? Address if it is feasible to determine if MAC spoofing and identity theft has taken place in the workplace. Include a whitelist of approved devices for this network. Review materials on the security of wireless access points
Are there any legal issues, problems, or concerns with your actions? What should be conducted before starting this investigation? Were your actions authorized, was the notification valid, or are there any other concerns? Include your responses as part of the CIR with the title “Tracking Suspicious Behavior.” Note that a CIR summary would not include the name of the actual employee; the situation is being used as an example of what to do when something like this occurs.
In the next step, you will explore another workplace scenario, and your responses will help you formulate a continuous improvement plan, which will become another part of your CIR.
Step 3: Develop a Continuous Improvement Plan
You receive a memo for continuous improvement to the wireless network of your company, and you are asked to provide a report on the company’s wireless network. You have been monitoring the activities on WPA2. Provide for your leadership a description of Wi-Fi protected access (WPA) networks and include the pros and cons of each type of wireless network with a focus on WPA2.
Since WPA2 uses encryption to provide secure communications, define the scheme for using preshared keys for encryption. Is this FIPS 140-2 compliant, and if not, what is necessary to attain this? Include this for leadership. Include a list of other wireless protocols, such as Bluetooth, and provide a comparative analysis of four protocols including the pros, cons, and suitability for your company.
Include your responses as part of the CIR with the title “Continuous Improvement Plan.”
In the next step, you will look at yet another workplace scenario, and you will use that incident to show management how remote configuration management works.
Step 4: Develop Remote Configuration Management
You’ve completed the continuous improvement plan portion of the CIR. Now, it’s time to show how your company has implemented remote configuration management.
Start your incident report with a description of remote configuration management and how it is used in maintaining the security posture of your company’s network. Then, consider the following scenario:
An undocumented device is found on the company network. You have determined that the owner of the device should be removed from the network. Implement this and explain how you would remove the employee’s device. How would you show proof that the device was removed?
Include your responses as part of the CIR with the title “Remote Configuration Management.”
Step 5: Investigate Employee Misconduct
In this portion of your CIR report, you will show how you would investigate possible employee misconduct. You have been given a report that an employee has recorded log-ins during unofficial duty hours. The employee has set up access through an ad hoc wireless network. Provide a definition of ad hoc wireless networks and identify how such networks could contribute to the company infrastructure while also detailing the threats and vulnerabilities they bring. Use notional information or actual case data and discuss.
Address self-configuring dynamic networks on open access architecture and the threats and vulnerabilities associated with them, as well as the possible protections that should be implemented. From your position as an incident manager, how would you detect an employee connecting to a self-configuring network or an ad hoc network? Provide this information in the report. How would signal hiding be a countermeasure for wireless networks? What are the countermeasures for signal hiding? How is the service set identifier (SSID) used by cybersecurity professionals on wireless networks? Are these always broadcast, and if not, why not? How would you validate that the user is working outside of business hours?
Include your responses as part of the CIR with the title “Employee Misconduct.”
Deliverables
1)Cybersecurity Incident Report (CIR): Your report should be a minimum 12-page double-spaced Word document with citations in APA format. The page count does not include figures, diagrams, tables, or citations.
2)Executive summary: This is a one-page summary at the beginning of your CIR.
Answer preview How would you track the location of the company asset?
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