Security Awareness - CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 - 5.6

Summary

The script discusses conducting internal phishing campaigns to assess employee vulnerability and educate them on recognizing phishing attempts. It highlights the importance of training, monitoring unusual behaviors, and establishing a clear process for reporting suspicious emails. Automated systems for reporting security metrics and customized training for compliance requirements are emphasized to enhance organizational security.

Takeaways

• 🔍 Conduct a phishing campaign to assess employee vulnerability to email phishing by sending simulated phishing emails and monitoring clicks.
• 🛠 Use automated systems for phishing campaigns to report opens, clicks, and interactions, directing users who click to additional training.
• 🚫 Educate employees to recognize phishing attempts by looking for spelling or grammatical errors, inconsistencies in domain names, and unusual email construction.
• 🔗 Train employees to avoid clicking links or running attachments from emails to prevent potential security breaches.
• 📬 Ensure email filters effectively block phishing attempts before they reach inboxes and establish a clear process for reporting suspected phishing.
• 👀 Implement anomalous behavior recognition to identify risky or unexpected behaviors such as unauthorized system modifications or unusual data transfers.
• 🌐 Monitor for unintentional behaviors like misconfigurations or misplaced devices that could indicate security vulnerabilities.
• 📊 Utilize automated alerts and daily reports to keep the security team informed about phishing click rates, password manager adoption, and other security metrics.
• 👨‍🏫 Address security incidents with user training to raise awareness and prevent recurrence, adjusting security configurations as needed for repeat offenders.
• 👥 Establish a specialized security awareness team within IT to focus on user education and customized training based on job functions and compliance requirements.
• 📈 Use detailed metrics to track the effectiveness of security training and awareness efforts over time, correlating these with overall organizational security.

Q & A

What is a phishing campaign and why would a company run one?

A phishing campaign is a simulated attack where a company sends emails to its users to see who clicks on potentially harmful links. It's done to gauge the vulnerability of employees to phishing attacks and to educate them on recognizing and avoiding such threats.

Can third-party sources assist in running a phishing campaign?

Yes, there are third-party sources that can provide phishing campaigns for a company. They offer automated processes that report opens, clicks, and interactions with the phishing email to a central reporting console.

What happens if a user clicks on a phishing link during a campaign?

If a user clicks on a phishing link, they receive an automated email informing them of their mistake and directing them to additional training, which can be online or in-person at corporate facilities.

What are some indicators that an email might contain a phishing link?

Indicators include spelling or grammatical errors in the message and the link, inconsistencies in the domain name, unusual attachments, requests for personal information or login credentials, and an overall sense that the email is not constructed as expected.

How can a company's email filtering process be tested for effectiveness?

By conducting a phishing campaign, a company can see if their email filtering process is working as expected by checking if phishing attempts are being blocked before reaching a user's inbox.

What is the recommended action for users when they receive an email with a link or attachment?

Users should never click a link or run an attachment from an email without verifying its legitimacy first. It's important to have a process in place for reporting suspected phishing emails to the IT security team.

What is 'Anomalous behavior recognition' and why is it important?

Anomalous behavior recognition involves monitoring for unusual or risky activities on user workstations, such as modifying host files, uploading sensitive files, or logging in from an unexpected location. It's crucial for identifying potential security threats and addressing them promptly.

How can a security team be made aware of issues like human error or misconfigurations?

A security team relies on an automated process that sends alerts and generates daily reports on events like phishing click rates, password manager adoption, and other security metrics. This helps in identifying areas that need attention or additional training.

What role does the security awareness team play in an organization?

The security awareness team is responsible for creating training materials, conducting training sessions, and presenting detailed metrics to the rest of the IT department. They focus on user issues and help in raising overall security awareness within the organization.

How can an organization track the effectiveness of its security training and awareness programs?

By using automated reporting systems to track detailed metrics over time, an organization can assess whether its security efforts are making a difference and identify areas that may require additional emphasis.

What kind of materials and methods does the security awareness team use for training?

The security awareness team uses various methods such as emails, posters, online training, and in-person sessions. They may also create customized training based on job functions or specific compliance requirements.

Outlines

00:00

📧 Phishing Awareness and Corporate Security Measures

This paragraph discusses the importance of conducting phishing campaigns within a company to assess and improve employee awareness of potential security threats. It explains the process of sending simulated phishing emails to employees, monitoring their responses, and providing training to those who fall for the bait. The goal is to educate users on identifying phishing attempts by looking for signs like spelling errors, unusual domain names, and requests for personal information. It also touches on the role of email filters in blocking such threats and the necessity of having a clear reporting process for suspicious emails. The paragraph concludes with an example of a successful email filter that identified a phishing attempt from the IMF, illustrating the effectiveness of such measures.

05:01

🛡️ Security Team's Role in Educating and Monitoring User Behavior

The second paragraph highlights the security team's responsibilities in educating the user community about security issues and monitoring for anomalous behavior. The team may create various materials like emails, posters, and customized training programs to address specific compliance requirements. They use automated reporting systems to track metrics over time, allowing them to assess the effectiveness of their security measures. The security awareness team is also tasked with creating and presenting training materials for IT security and generating detailed metrics to demonstrate the impact of their efforts on the organization's overall security. The paragraph emphasizes the importance of continuous monitoring, reporting, and training to maintain a secure environment and the role of management and stakeholders in supporting these initiatives.

Keywords

💡Phishing

Phishing is a fraudulent activity where attackers send seemingly legitimate emails to trick recipients into providing sensitive information such as login credentials or financial details. In the video's context, it refers to the process of testing employees' susceptibility to such attacks by running a controlled phishing campaign within a corporate environment. An example from the script is the mention of a phishing system that reports clicks to a central console.

💡Phishing Campaign

A phishing campaign is a series of targeted emails designed to deceive recipients into engaging with malicious content. The script discusses running such campaigns to gauge employee awareness and response to potential threats, using either internal systems or third-party services.

💡Automated Process

An automated process refers to a sequence of actions performed without human intervention. In the video, this term is used to describe the reporting of email interactions, such as opens and clicks, to a central system, which aids in analyzing the effectiveness of phishing awareness training.

💡Training

Training in the script refers to educational programs designed to increase employees' ability to recognize and avoid phishing attempts. It includes both online and in-person sessions, as mentioned when discussing the response to a user clicking a phishing link.

💡Domain Name

A domain name is the human-readable address of a website, like 'example.com'. The script emphasizes the importance of examining the domain name for inconsistencies as a method to identify phishing emails, as attackers may imitate legitimate domains.

💡Email Filtering

Email filtering is the process of managing incoming email messages to prevent spam and phishing attempts from reaching users' inboxes. The script discusses the expectation that a proper email filter should block phishing attempts, as illustrated by the Gmail filter identifying a dangerous message from 'United Nation/IMF'.

💡Anomalous Behavior Recognition

This concept involves identifying unusual or unexpected activities that may indicate a security threat. The video describes monitoring for risky behaviors such as unauthorized file modifications or unexpected data transfers, which are part of detecting potential security incidents.

💡Security Metrics

Security metrics are quantitative measures used to assess the effectiveness of security controls and the overall security posture of an organization. The script mentions the use of automated reporting to track metrics like phishing click rates and multifactor authentication use.

💡Security Awareness Team

The security awareness team is a specialized group within an IT department focused on educating users about security best practices. The script describes their role in creating training materials, monitoring security events, and reporting on the organization's security metrics.

💡Multifactor Authentication

Multifactor authentication is a security system that requires users to provide two or more verification factors to gain access to a resource. The video script mentions it as one of the security practices that the automated reporting system tracks.

💡Stakeholders

Stakeholders are individuals or groups with an interest in the outcomes of a project or initiative. In the context of the video, they are managers or others interested in the success of the security awareness program and its impact on the organization's security.

Highlights

Understanding how many employees would click a phishing link can be determined by running a phishing campaign.

Phishing campaigns can be conducted internally or through third-party services that provide automated reporting.

If a user clicks a phishing link, they receive an automated email and may need to undergo additional training.

Training to recognize phishing links includes checking for spelling or grammatical errors and examining domain names.

Users should be cautious of unusual attachments and emails requesting personal information or login credentials.

Effective email filtering can block phishing attempts before they reach users' inboxes.

Anomalous behavior recognition involves monitoring for unusual activities, such as unexpected data transfers or logins from another country.

Human error, like typing the wrong domain name or misplacing a USB drive, can be categorized as unintentional behavior.

Automated monitoring and reporting are essential for identifying and addressing security issues promptly.

Security awareness training can help users understand and avoid risky behaviors, such as clicking phishing links.

Repeated risky behavior may indicate a need for extended training or changes in security configurations.

The security awareness team is responsible for creating and delivering training materials and metrics to improve organizational security.

Customized training can be developed based on job functions and compliance requirements.

Detailed metrics from training efforts help track security improvements and identify areas needing more attention.

The success of security awareness programs is often reported through various means, including classroom training, posters, and detailed metrics.

Transcripts

So let's say you're working for a company,

and you're wondering, how many employees

would click a phishing link inside of a corporate email?

If you're not sure, there is a way to figure this out.

You would run your own phishing campaign.

You would send emails to your user community

and see who clicks on those emails.

This might be a phishing system that you've built internally,

but there are also many third-party sources

who can provide this phishing campaign for you.

This is usually an automated process that reports opens,

clicks, and any interaction with that phishing email

to a central reporting console.

If a user does click a phishing link,

they receive an automated email stating

that they made a mistake when they clicked that link,

and they would need to go to additional training.

This training may be something the user can perform online,

or there may be in-person training

at the corporate facilities.

We want our users to recognize when a phishing link might

be inside of an email.

They should be looking for any spelling or grammatical errors

within the message itself and within the link that they're

clicking.

We want our users to look at the domain name associated

with that link, and they should look

to see if there are inconsistencies in how

this email is constructed.

There might be unusual attachments connected

to the email, which would certainly

be a sign of phishing, and we should

see if the email is requesting any personal information

or login credentials.

If you're receiving these phishing attempts from outside,

this is also a good chance to see if your email filtering

process is working the way you would expect.

Ideally, that filter would be blocking any of these phishing

attempts before they ever made it into a user's inbox.

We should also make sure that our users know

to never click a link inside of an email

and to never run an attachment from inside of an email.

We want to make sure that everyone in the organization

understands what a phishing email looks like and are

able to recognize if they happen to see one in their inbox.

There should also be a well-known process

within your organization for reporting any suspected

phishing emails to the IT security team.

If your email filter is working properly,

then your phishing attempt will probably

look something like this.

This phishing attempt was pulled directly from my spam folder,

and you can see it's from the United Nation slash

IMF, the International Monetary Fund.

You can also see that the email associated with the "United

Nation" is [email protected],

and in this case, the Gmail filter has successfully

identified this as a phishing campaign,

and it clearly says that this message seems dangerous.

Not only are we looking for phishing attempts,

we're also looking for anything that

might be unusual on a user's workstation.

We refer to this as "Anomalous behavior recognition,"

and we can start with looking for any type of risky behavior.

This could include a person or a service

modifying a host file on that device.

Perhaps, it's replacing a core operating system file,

or perhaps, sensitive files may be uploaded from that device.

We're also looking for behavior that would be unexpected.

Someone logging in from another country

is certainly something that's not normal,

and an increase in the amount of data transfers from a device

would certainly be unexpected.

And then, of course, we want to look for any behavior that

may be unintentional.

For example, someone typing in the wrong domain name

would simply be an unintentional mistake.

The same thing might apply to someone who had their USB drive

and now has misplaced where that drive happens to be,

or perhaps, the security settings on a device

have been misconfigured.

All of these are human error and would clearly

be put into the category of unintentional behavior.

A security team is not going to be aware of these issues,

unless they're constantly monitoring and reporting

on these types of events.

This needs to be an automated process, where alerts

are automatically sent to the security team,

and reports are generated automatically, every day.

This might include information about phishing

click rates, password manager adoption, multifactor

authentication use, and other important security metrics.

The first time someone clicks a phishing link

or does some other type of risky behavior,

we can address that with user training.

The goal would be to make the user aware

of this particular issue, so that they don't

have that issue occur again.

And if we're constantly monitoring,

we could see if these particular security events occur again.

This would point us towards users

that need extended training, and we

might want to add or change security configurations

for that particular user.

The process of monitoring, reporting,

and training the users would commonly

be done by the security awareness team.

This would be a specialized team in IT

that focuses on these types of user issues.

The security team is responsible for letting

everyone in the user community know about these security

issues.

So they might create emails, posters,

or some type of training to let people

know where these security problems might be.

They can also create customized training

depending on the job function for that particular individual.

If the organization has a group of mandated compliance

requirements, they can create customized training that

focuses on that specific compliance,

and they can use these automated reporting

systems to create detailed metrics that

can be tracked over time.

That way, they'll know if their efforts are making

a difference in the security of the organization,

or if there's a particular area where they

need to have an extra emphasis.

The security awareness team would

be responsible for creating the training materials for IT

security, and they'll present them online or in person.

They'll also create detailed metrics

that show the rest of IT how our security controls may

be working.

There's usually a group of managers or stakeholders

that are associated with the success of the security

awareness team, and they'll want to know

how these metrics associate back to the overall security

of the organization.

You'll see the results of these efforts

in many office buildings, where you'll

find classroom training, posters, and information

that tells you more about security

concerns for that organization.

And since there are detailed metrics

for all of this information, you'll

be able to correlate your training efforts back

to the overall security of the company.