In a previous blog post, we discussed how to calculate your SPRS (Supplier Performance Risk System) score in support of your CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification) efforts. In that same blog, we also provided a free tool to help you calculate your SPRS score automatically.
The day after Thanksgiving, widely referred to as Black Friday, has marked the start of the Christmas shopping season since 1952. Surprisingly, it wasn’t until 2012 that the Black Friday buzz was adapted to further stoke the shopping fire by promoting Cyber Monday. Whether shoppers choose to chase the deals in person or from the privacy of their own homes, personal information is being shared in the form of email addresses, home addresses, and credit card numbers. As the stores are preparing by stocking shelves and bulking up employee headcount, cyber criminals are also preparing to capitalize on the shopping frenzy, hoping to catch consumers with their guards down.
This month’s release of the much-anticipated CMMC 2.0 left many of us in the world of cybersecurity shaking our heads. We have been working diligently with the defense industrial base for several years now, even before the CMMC was created, to stop the bleeding of our defense secrets to our adversaries. As a veteran and a Patriot, I, along with many other Americans, take this very serious problem personally.
One of the great “must reads” for us cybersecurity wonks is the annual DBIR (Data Breach and Incident Response), issued by Verizon every year since 2008. While never dull, the DBIR is not a light read and comes in at a meaty 115 pages this year. While we at Appalachia are delighted to stuff our horns with popcorn and study every last page, we realize that not everyone can make the time to fully digest this comprehensive treatise. To that end, we have taken the time to write an executive summary of the DBIR for readers of our blog – because we care, and we don’t want you missing reruns or tee time.
We are extremely proud of the men and women in our organization who have served our country. Coming from the Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Army, these members have taken their experiences in the military and applied it to their civilian careers. To honor the veterans on our staff, I asked them to share - what they learned, their greatest achievement, their greatest challenge, and how we can step up to support our veterans. Thank you, Mike, Nathalie, Jason, Derek, Joel, and Jason!
I started writing SSP’s (System Security Plans) well before the original Executive Order mandated deadline of December 31st 2017 and have since written at least 50 SSP’s for defense contractors of every imaginable type and size. There wasn’t a lot of guidance on how to do this at that time, other than to have a very thorough and complete understanding of the nearly 500-page NIST 800-53 framework.
The Netflix docudrama film The Social Dilemma describes Facebook as “The problem beneath all other problems.” As this is a security/technical blog we are not in the business of bashing or praising social media, but it goes without saying that Facebook has become omnipresent in the daily lives of literally billions of people. The same is also true of Instagram and WhatsApp, two other massive social media properties which were also unavailable for about six hours on October 4th. When something that big falls that hard, there are always unforeseen and unintended consequences.
