Sam Sam Ransomware Attack Leads To Indictment Of Two Iranian Nationals

The SynAckFinAck Podcast

In this episode of the podcast I chat with Robert Renzulli, the CISO for the Port of San Diego.

Because of where it is located, they have some unique challenges. They are on an international border, connected to an international airport, a military base, where the Navy SEALs train, and various other things.

They are also a public entity in a state with some unique privacy laws and concerns. We discuss a number of topics including a recent Sam Sam ransomware incident they had that was disclosed to the public and led to an indictment of two Iranian Nationals.

He basically gave a master class on incident response from technical to communication to legal and many of the other things that people don't often take into consideration during an incident.

Some things I took away:

• When dealing with an incident, first call your General Counsel, then your Cyber Insurance company.
• The port used the NIMS Fema Incident Management System.
• Communication is a really big issue during an incident, especially if it is publicly disclosed:

"Cyber always somehow focuses on technical and it's so much more than that."

We discussed hiring, internships, and where Robert finds people to work in security:

"I've found a lot of my best analysts were baristas at Starbucks, or worked as bouncers. It doesn't matter the background, it's the drive, it's the motivation, it's the constantly wanting to learn"

We end up talking about what technology will be key and understanding that it's not necessarily the tech, but the DATA that is critical and how important it is to understand your data, what it is, and how to manage and secure it.

"Emerging technology is going to be all about how you move the data around, how do you protect the data, and how do you control who has access to the data, and what device the data actually lands on."

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