Category: Senrio Products

Fundamentals of Security: Why Is Asset Management Important?

12/4/2018

We’re drawing on our security knowledge to provide a series on the fundamentals of securing devices and networks. The first item in our series was an introduction to how devices keep time, and which best practices ensure the security of this process. In this segment, we focus on why network audits are an essential element of securing a network.

Computers and devices need to be kept updated and maintained throughout their lifecycle. Neglecting software updates and leaving default passwords in place make them easy targets for intruders who can disable, or take over, vulnerable machines.

Cyberdefense: A Toolbox, Not Just a Hammer

10/9/2018

There is an old proverb (are there any other kind?) that goes something along the lines of:

If you wait by the river long enough, you’ll see the bodies of your enemies float by.

The accuracy of the translation may be questionable, but the general idea that you’ll see all sorts of things if you stick around holds true. This is particularly true when it comes to the discussion on which cyber defense methodology should have primacy over the other: network-based defense or endpoint-based defense.

How Do I Find Other Devices Like This?

10/4/2018

Cybersecurity 101: Know what you’re defending. Easier said than done in a lot of environments. Homogeneous environments should ostensibly make a sysadmin's work easier in this regard; you bought 1,000 PCs, you should be able to see 1,000 PCs in use. Heterogeneous environments, those that are more liberal with their bandwidth (BYOD), and those that don’t enforce strict policies (rogue IT), make the job more difficult.

Customers frequently ask us to help identify all the devices of a particular type or class in their environments. A small sample of the varied reasons:

No Business Is Too Small to Attack

9/25/2018

Cyber threats don’t discriminate. The presence of a CPU - any type or size - is enough to make one a target. Yet, if you’ve been a security practitioner for any length of time, you have probably heard this phrase from a prospective customer more than once:

“We’re too small/unimportant to be a target.”

You know this is the point in the conversation where you smile politely, get up, and thank them for their time while they go back to their business, and you go on to your next meeting. Anyone who has it in their head that they don’t have at least one red laser dot on their forehead is not going to be convinced by your war stories, statistics, or reams of counter-examples.

Like so many important life lessons, they will almost certainly learn the hard way.

Meet Your IoT Security Solution: Same as Your IT Security Solution

9/18/2018

With the spread of the Internet of Things, and the increasing dangers associated with same, the likelihood that we’re going to be faced with a deluge of new “solutions” is high. It will not be long before someone comes out with an “IoT firewall” or “IoT IDS” because the projected IoT security spend is $1.5 Billion this year alone and, well, that money isn’t going to spend itself.

The problem is that you already spend a lot on IT security. At least that’s what the C-suite thinks. You take their money, you complain it's not enough, and then bad things still happen (requiring you to ask for more money). And now you’ve got to go asking for funds to secure the IoT in your enterprise? That’s not going to go over very well.

Tag: You're It! The Power of Device Identification

9/13/2018

Knowing what you’re protecting is a core tenet of cybersecurity, not to mention a fundamental requirement for many IT standard’s bodies like NIST, COBIT, etc., which is why device identification is one of the three primary features of Senrio Insight. We accomplish this by extracting data about all connected devices based on their network traffic, and labeling or “tagging” each device accordingly in our UI.

Senrio uses two types of tags: system tags, and user tags. System tags are automatically generated by Insight based on our massive IT/IoT device data store. If we’ve seen it before (and we probably have) we’ll automatically tag a device accordingly. In very short order you’ll know exactly how many systems in your enterprise are running Windows, Linux, OS X, iOS, Android, etc. Which version of those OSes are in use, and many other details about make, model, etc.

Unknown Unknowns

9/11/2018

Know what you are protecting. Its a basic tenet of cybersecurity, and one that too many organizations struggle to achieve. It can be overwhelming to deal with the issues you know about, but what happens when your solution to the awareness problem isn’t any better informed than you are?

For those of you were old enough to watch the news in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, you probably remember a seemingly nonsensical statement made by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about intelligence relative to the issue of Iraq and weapons of mass destruction:

“...there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some thing we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns; the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Combatting Cryptocurrency Mining

8/29/2018

There was a time when the nature of your business is what made you a target for malicious actors. Banks, credit card companies, and so on were where the bad guys went because, to coin a phrase, that’s where the money was.

Today, the mere fact that you have computing resources of any type means you’re a target. Your perception that the size or nature of your business makes you an unattractive target for cyber criminals is just that: your perception, not how the bad guys think. That you don’t deal with money or billion-dollar trade secrets arguably makes you a better target because you’re probably not paying attention to the risk like banks or a fortune 500 company. Today anyone with any computing resources is at risk. Why? Cryptocurrency mining.

You Can't Control Vulnerabilities, But You Can Control Devices

8/29/2018

Did you read about the Android mobile phones that had firmware vulnerabilities? Do you know how many iOS vulnerabilities there are? If you have a BYOD policy that let’s employees access company networks and data with their phones, do you have any visibility into the make, model, OS, firmware, or data on other software that might be running on those handsets?

More importantly: do you have the authority to manage or patch all the vulnerable devices that employees use to connect to your network? Tell employees what handsets to buy? Tell Alice she can or Bob he can’t connect to the network at any given point in time?

That you’re shaking your head ruefully speaks volumes.

Got AWS? Then You've Got Asset Management Licked

8/15/2018

We talk a lot about what Senrio Insight can do, but while the installation of Insight might be push-button simple, there are practical matters that must be addressed when it comes to installing enterprise software. Those hoops are there for a good reason: you don’t want just anyone installing whatever they want without first having some understanding of the impact it might have on other systems.

However, If you’re running AWS, you can have the power of Senrio via the AWS marketplace. Install and configure a Senrio Insight backend in a few minutes using a service you’re already familiar with and rely on; Install a Senrio Insight software sensor in your network in just a few more. Know what your enterprise is really made of so that you can better manage and defend it.

What are the benefits of deploying Senrio via AWS marketplace?

Ease and speed of deployment. Add ‘Senrio’ to your AWS management console to get your Senrio backend up and running and ready to process data, identify devices, and detect anomalies.
Financial. Paying for the benefits of Senrio isn’t a separate check, or waiting for the procurement process to do its thing, etc., it’s a line-item in your AWS bill.
Trust. If we’re strangers to you, us telling you about our reputation isn’t helpful; showing you we work seamlessly with one of the world’s most trusted companies is.

To learn how to deploy Senrio via AWS Marketplace and understand the benefits of Senrio Insight can provide, drop us a line and we’ll set up an appointment to explain how it all works.

Know What 'Mean Time' Really Means to Your Devices

8/13/2018

During conversations with CIOs, CISOs, and IT Managers, they often bring up an issue we as security practitioners don’t normally think about, and that’s maintenance. When we think of most commodity IT today, reliability is not really an issue, and when it is, replacement is much faster and cheaper than having a technician show up to troubleshoot a problem.

But that’s not necessarily the case when we’re talking about IoT devices. Many devices have some mechanical component to them: a pump, a solenoid, or a relay. Anything not purely solid-state is going to have a greater need for maintenance.

The Importance of Awareness

7/26/2018

You have a pretty good idea of what your major personal possessions are. Your house, your car(s), your TV(s), your furniture.

You know what your wardrobe consists of, both the things you wear regularly, as well as your old uniform or letter jacket, and that Christmas sweater you wear as a courtesy to Aunt Mabel who spent all summer in ‘92 knitting it.

Contrast this with your situation at work, in which you know what you bought - servers, PCs, VOIP phones, printers - because you have invoices to prove it. What you don’t have is a comprehensive picture of what’s actually hanging off of your network. Why is that?

What you bought and what actually gets deployed can be two different things. Maybe Alice didn’t need a new system, or is loathe to upgrade, so what you bought is sitting in a closet.
The company allows people to connect their own devices to the network as a means of boosting productivity (and reducing costs). That’s 10s/100s/1000s of devices that you know very little about and don’t control.
The company allows certain senior people like Bob to use his budget to buy IT if it helps him get the job done, and he doesn’t have to tell you about it.

But look, you know what you’re responsible for and you’ve taken steps to protect those devices and the data they process. You’ve got endpoint protection, and a network monitoring solution, and all the usual mechanisms in place. Why worry?

More IoT Means More Value, But Also Greater Risk

6/27/2018

According to media reports Amazon.com:

“has contemplated offering home insurance as an offshoot of its development work on robots and other connected devices for the home...The idea is that robots and other smart devices can be used to monitor for threats.”

This is great news in that it would get real, unfiltered, unbiased data, from a large data set, that can be used to build actuarial tables to help quantify risk with more granularity and accuracy than is possible today.

Real Growth Will be Measured in Devices, Not Customers

5/17/2018

If you are a managed service provider, how do you grow?

There is always another company to sign up, but there are only so many potential customers. No, the real issue around growth is not clients, its devices. Having said that, the footprint of commodity IT devices that will need protection is shrinking over time, while IoT devices are on track for hockey-stick-like growth.

Introducing: Senrio Discovery (Update)

5/16/2018

Simple, Fast, Accurate IT & IoT Asset Identification

/* OS-specific installers - Windows, Linux, OS X - are now available in the store. */

The most fundamental aspect of IT or IoT system administration and security is understanding what is in your enterprise. You cannot manage or secure what you do not know you have. Whether your concern is security and preventing surprise, or definitive knowledge to support compliance, licensing, or service agreements, it all starts with a comprehensive understanding of what is using your bandwidth.

Senrio Discovery is a lightweight version of our flagship product, Senrio Insight. It quickly identifies devices that are connected to your network: what you bought, what people bring (BYOD), and what you don’t know about (Shadow IT). Our extensive database of connected devices and adaptive learning technology enables us to rapidly identify known and previously unknown devices. Export that device data in .csv format for ingest into your preferred asset management or other administrative, visualization, or security tools.

Side Effects

5/8/2018

As security people we’ve always got an eye out for solutions that address very pressing, substantial, dare we say ‘sexy’ problems. But if we’re being honest, you get the greatest return on investment focusing on fundamentals - blocking and tackling - than you do fancy stuff that addresses edge cases. Not that you don’t need the latter, but absent the former you’re wasting time, energy, and money.

Case in point: IT Asset Management. Basically, keeping track of all the things. Easy, right? Well, there is what you bought (because procurement has the invoice to prove it), there is what you see (because some script or scan and says so), there is what you don’t know (because Alice in Logistics has purchase authority up to $10,000 and sometimes she buys IT without telling you)...and so on. What you think you have an what you actually have can be two entirely different things. That’s a problem on several levels.

Lateral Attacks Between IoT Devices: The Technical Details

4/19/2018

We all know by now that IoT is vulnerable, and after our survey of vulnerable remote configuration services last year, we began to pursue the actual repercussions of those vulnerabilities. After we published Devil’s Ivy and CVE-2017-9466 last summer, we decided to tackle the problem of “then what?” After an attacker compromises a camera or gains control of a router, what happens next? If a company’s valuable data is in a secure location, does it matter if an attacker compromises its Nest thermostat?

As previously noted, attacks that take over a network, device by device, has remained largely within the sphere of pundits and hypothetical discussions. So we have tended to think about lateral attacks as being solely within the realm of sophisticated attackers, but as we explored this project in more depth, we came to realize that this kind of attack requires very little technical knowledge.
While we are not aware of publicly available exploits for the vulnerabilities we discovered, products like Metasploit allow those with a basic knowledge of networking and the Linux command line to do some damage without writing a single line of code. After exploiting a first device, an attacker can use the additional access to take over the rest of the network, exploiting device after device.

A Little Slack(ing) Off is a Good Thing

3/23/2018

Does your team use Slack to collaborate? If so, we've released a thing that you might like ;-) A few days ago, we announced a new feature of our web interface that allows you to chat directly with Senrio support engineers.

But today, we are announcing that in addition to existing integrations with Splunk, RSA, SEIMs, all major firewalls, and familiar dashboards, now you can ask Senrio Insight questions about your network directly from Slack! Any question. Don't know what an asset is, and only have a piece of the story? Ask Senrio with the piece you have, and get back the whole story. It's like the asset "search engine" for your network.

Check out the video below to see what we mean.

Senrio Support Chat

3/19/2018

If you follow our blog here, you've periodically seen our "Product Release Notes" blogpost category, but instead of bury this latest update in a list of the other awesome other features we've added , we wanted to share this one on its own...

You can now get support for Senrio live (in real-time) via the chat client. To date, only integration partners and OEM customers have been given dedicated chat channels to communicate, fileshare, and collaborate with our team, but now we can offer this to all Senrio users!

Watch below to see how a Senrio user gets support directly from the webui...

And of course, if you aren't a current Senrio customer and you want to try it out. Drop us a line: http://iot.security/signup

Why Are My IoT Devices Surfing the Web?

2/9/2018

The ingenuity and audacity of attackers should never be underestimated. In the summer of 2016, hackers used tweets to control malware. This past summer, after Twitter worked to eliminate this capability, hackers switched to posting Instagram comments to send commands to victim systems.

We decided to see if Senrio Insight could detect this “hiding in plain sight” tactic. Without proper context, it can be difficult to separate malicious traffic from ordinary operations. IoT devices may connect to the Internet, but they shouldn’t browse social media.

RSA Partners with Senrio to Bring Visibility to the Blind spot of IOT Devices

1/30/2018

January 30th – Portland, OR – Senrio, Inc., provider of the leading IoT visibility and security solution has announced an interoperability with the RSA NetWitness® Suite to enable users to detect and respond to threats to IoT devices.

The RSA NetWitness and Senrio Insight interoperability helps ensure that critical data about the status and operation of both IoT devices as well as traditional endpoints and assets is sent to the RSA NetWitness Suite from the Senrio platform, which uses predictive analytics and expert input to determine normal behavior, and trigger alerts when abnormal behavior is detected.

Senrio Founder Stephen Ridley said, “IoT is a blind spot in most enterprises. Most aren’t sure what devices they have, much less if they’re compromised or otherwise pose a risk to people or operations. By integrating Senrio Insight data in the RSA NetWitness Suite, organizations will gain unprecedented visibility into the IoT devices in their enterprise and more effectively deal with safety or security concerns.”

This interoperability allows organizations to quickly identify all connected devices in their enterprise, and build profiles of device behavior. This knowledge enables IT administration and security teams the ability to build trust with devices by understanding typical device behavior, and rapidly respond when atypical patterns of behaviors are detected by Senrio’s self-learning technology.

Senrio Insight was designed specifically for the challenges of an IoT-rich enterprise. Designed to be lightweight, it puts no burden on your network, does not impact data privacy, and is up and running in minutes.

About Senrio

Senrio is an IoT security company that was founded on the belief that, with the right mindset and proper tools, we can bridge the gap between legacy security approaches and the new reality of the IoT. Our mission is to provide the visibility and actionable insights essential to ensuring the security and safety of all connected devices. We envision a world where our trust in the IoT matches the benefits it brings to our lives. Senrio is a trusted partner of global technology companies and government agencies. To see Senrio Insight in action visit: http://iot.security/.

Senrio's Cool, Cool Summer!

8/15/2017

We've had quite a summer thus far. Here seven quick updates:
(cue the Bananarama "Cruel Summer" instrumental)

1. We Released "Devil's Ivy"

Click the image above to see some of the coverage.

2. Senrio Was the Exclusive Monitoring Tool of Defcon's IoT Hacking Village!

Be sure to check out our photo gallery of the IoT Hacking Village event!

Senrio Insight August Release Notes

8/14/2017

Our release notes for Senrio Insight for the month of August 2017 include numerous new and powerful features:

Support for traffic flows now supports a full flow list and summaries by time.
1. Traffic can be filtered on inbound or outbound, as well as TCP or UDP.
2. We now aggregate remote IP and destination port data
3. You can also search for traffic by port or host
We’ve refactored our anomaly detection to use traffic flows as the base data. This improves the ability for Insight to identify new anomalous inbound and outbound connections and ties. This change also integrates DNS information into the detection.
Automatic router detection. Senrio Insight will now detect which IoT devices on the network are routers and hide them from the normal device view.
Support for hidden devices (e.g. devices you don’t want to see, like routers).
We re-worked how we do Notifications
1. You can now filter notifications based on device info
2. We have included support for 3rd party integrations (e.g. Splunk)
Linux client updates includes
1. Scripts to support system devices (systemd)
2. Support for automatic updates using APT (greatly simplifies the deployment process)
3. Numerous bug fixes and improvements.
Numerous UI improvements (Sign up for a demo to check it all out)

We are always looking for your feedback and welcome all suggestions for how we can make Insight more valuable to you.

BYOD? BYOoooh boy! Are my devices infected with spyware?

8/14/2017

This last week a debate flared up between a security company Kryptowire, and a cell phone manufacturer BLU, over the possible inclusion of spyware (ADUPS) in BLU phones. Kryptowire initially made their claim in November, then reiterated it last week with more detailed findings. At one point last week, Amazon halted sales of the BLU phones, then re-listed them after BLU issued a statement saying the ADUPS software was normal and wasn’t capturing any sensitive data.

We here at Senrio, didn’t reverse engineer any of the firmware, so I can’t say for sure whether the ADUPS software is sending private information to it’s servers. But, we wanted to show you how you can leverage Senrio Insight to determine if any of the phones in question connected to your network, and if it was communicating to one of the published domains listed in the Kryptowire report.

You can ask Senrio questions, and it will give you answers. You can ask it: "Are there any jailbroken phones on my network?" and in seconds, you'll know!

Imagine for a moment you have a BYOD enterprise, where you allow your employees to bring any device into the office and use that device for corporate emails, texts, etc. How would you know if an employee had a BLU phone? Senrio Insight can help.

The first step is to see what android devices you have on you network. With Senrio, this is easy. Senrio is a "Device Intelligence" platform that you can ask questions. You can ask it if there are any Android phones on your network or even if there are any Jailbroken phones on your network.... For our case, we can simply log in and search for “Android” to view our identification and behavior tags to see all Android devices

Powerful search/filtering based on Senrio proprietary identification "tagging".

The Senrio tag system uses many heuristics and other techniques to identify devices, and as you can see we have several devices on the network that match our search term. But in this case, we are looking for a BLU phone, and we have a very easy way to track that down. We can search for the manufacture “BLU”. It turns out we have one matching phone. The Senrio engine detected this automatically and tagged it accordingly, there was no user-input required.

Senrio Tagging at work, identifies our target device. No more searching through logs or actively port scanning your network!

Ok - so we do have a BLU phone on the network. I wonder if it’s making connections out to any of the domains in question. The Kryptowire report claims several domains are used for both C&C and data exfiltration. One of the first domains in question is adups.com. Let's see if we can find it.

The first thing we do is select the phone and look at the device details. One of the best features in the device details is the “Flow” view. This provides a net-flow like view of all the connections both inbound and outbound for the selected device.

See everything! Complete device behavior visibility!

While I could scroll through the list, it’s much easier to look at the “Summaries” which provide an aggregated view of all the connections. I can pull that up and search for adups.com

Want to know if a device on your network has ever communicated with a malware C&C or malicious domain? Search in seconds.

Yes, we have a match! That phone is connecting out to one of the domains listed by Kryptowire. Now, you might be a little worried that maybe more devices on our network are inflicted. Let's see if we have any other phones connecting to that domain. Senrio Insight has a search capability that allows us to search for all outbound connections. Lets enter that dns name and see what we find.

Search for more context in seconds! Complete device visibility. Complete device intelligence.

PHEW! Thankfully, in our case this phone is the only one connecting to this host. And as you can see from the first line, a decent amount of data was exchanged during one of the initial connections. It appears that this application is programmed to connect out to the "adups" server everyday at around 12:15 pm.

Conclusions...

Senrio Insight makes it very easy to gain visibility into what’s on your network and what it’s doing. In just a few minutes time we can see the devices Senrio automatically identified as Android devices, and even pick out individual manufacturers. From there we can quickly search through traffic history and identify the network connections in question. With Senrio as our device intelligence platform, in seconds, we have complete device visibility and awareness! Thus alleviating our anxieties.

So how can YOU answer questions about devices on your network? Is it this easy? If not, reach out to learn how we can help.

July Release Notes

7/11/2017

Our release notes for Senrio Insight for the month of July 2017 include numerous new and powerful features:

Support for traffic flows now supports a full flow list and summaries by time.
1. Traffic can be filtered on inbound or outbound, as well as TCP or UDP.
2. We now aggregate remote IP and destination port data
3. You can also search for traffic by port or host
We’ve refactored our anomaly detection to use traffic flows as the base data. This improves the ability for Senrio to identify new anomalous inbound and outbound connections and ties. This change also integrates DNS information into the detection.
Automatic router detection. Senrio Insight will now detect which IoT devices on the network are routers and hide them from the normal device view.
Support for hidden devices (e.g. devices you don’t want to see, like routers).
We re-worked how we do Notifications
1. You can now filter notifications based on device info
2. We have included support for 3rd party integrations (e.g. Splunk)
Linux client updates includes
1. Scripts to support system devices (systemd)
2. Support for automatic updates using APT (greatly simplifies the deployment process)
3. Numerous bug fixes and improvements.
Numerous UI improvements.

We are always looking for your feedback and welcome all suggestions for how we can make Insight more valuable to you.

<<Previous

Fundamentals of Security: Why Is Asset Management Important?

Cyberdefense: A Toolbox, Not Just a Hammer

How Do I Find Other Devices Like This?

No Business Is Too Small to Attack

Meet Your IoT Security Solution: Same as Your IT Security Solution

Tag: You're It! The Power of Device Identification

Unknown Unknowns

Combatting Cryptocurrency Mining

You Can't Control Vulnerabilities, But You Can Control Devices

Got AWS? Then You've Got Asset Management Licked

Know What 'Mean Time' Really Means to Your Devices

The Importance of Awareness

More IoT Means More Value, But Also Greater Risk

Real Growth Will be Measured in Devices, Not Customers

Introducing: Senrio Discovery (Update)

Side Effects

Lateral Attacks Between IoT Devices: The Technical Details

A Little Slack(ing) Off is a Good Thing

Senrio Support Chat

Why Are My IoT Devices Surfing the Web?

RSA Partners with Senrio to Bring Visibility to the Blind spot of IOT Devices

Senrio's Cool, Cool Summer!

1. We Released "Devil's Ivy"

2. Senrio Was the Exclusive Monitoring Tool of Defcon's IoT Hacking Village!

Senrio Insight August Release Notes

BYOD? BYOoooh boy! Are my devices infected with spyware?

Conclusions...

July Release Notes

Trending:

Recent Posts:

IoT Hacking comic book!

Watch!

Upcoming Trainings by our Team!

Blog Subjects

1. We Released "Devil's Ivy"

2. Senrio Was the Exclusive Monitoring Tool of Defcon's IoT Hacking Village!

Conclusions...

Trending:

Recent Posts:

IoT Hacking comic book!

Watch!

Upcoming Trainings by our Team!

Blog Subjects

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