October 2018 AST 'ASTORS' Finalist Edition Oct 2018 AST Magazine Final (10.16.18) | Page 10

Volume 27 September 2018 Edition For example, in May of 2018 DHS and the FBI issued joint technical alert U.S.-CERT TA18-149A through the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) urging network users and administrators to update patches and security software, and to scan for suspicious email attachments, amonth other steps, and identifjying two types of malware, Joanap & Brambul, linked to the North Korean govern- ment. Entities that find signs of malicious cyber activity should report it to DHS’s National Cyberse- curity and Communiccations Integration Center (NCCIC) or the FBI through CyWatch or its local field offices. attempting to use their personal tab- Develop—and continuously up- let on a DoD network, for example. date—security strategies But they could also be a member of a foreign hacking group, or a bad actor who obtained a DoD em- ployee laptop that may have been erroneously left behind. Most readers will likely already have done this, but it’s certainly worth re- peating. Proactively developing a com- prehensive and sound security Without the proper tools in place, there strategy is an absolute must. may be no way to know, and certainly no way to immediately block the de- This strategy should not simply vice or shut down network access priv- be bullet points in an email, but a well-formulated plan that out- ileges. 8