Re: SOP for Managing Phishing/Ransomware Attempts

[Theresa Semmens <theresa.semmens () NDSU EDU>]

Ditto for NDSU!

Theresa Semmens, CISA
NDSU Chief Information Security Officer
Director, Records Management
Office: 210D Quentin Burdick Building
Mail: NDSU Dept 4500
PO Box 6050
Fargo, ND 58108-6050
P: 701-231-5870
F: 701-231-8541
E: Theresa.Semmens () ndsu edu<mailto:Theresa.Semmens () ndsu edu>
www.ndsu.edu/its/security

From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Ben Woelk
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2016 10:46 AM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] SOP for Managing Phishing/Ransomware Attempts

We would be interested in the webcast.
Thanks,
Ben Woelk CISSP
Member, Awareness and Training Working Group
Higher Education Information Security Council
http://www.educause.edu/heisc

ISO Program Manager
Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester, New York 14623
585.475.4122
ben.woelk () rit edu<mailto:ben.woelk () rit edu>
http://security.rit.edu/dsd.html

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From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Keith 
Hartranft
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2016 1:22 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU<mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU>
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] SOP for Managing Phishing/Ransomware Attempts

Hi all,

I've been asked by some folks to share our flow processes for anti-phishing and please know I'm happy to do so. If 
there is sufficient interest I'd also be happy to arrange a Webcast of some sort to do a walk through of the process.

Thanks,

Keith

On Sat, Aug 13, 2016 at 12:11 PM, Joel Anderson <joela () umn edu<mailto:joela () umn edu>> wrote:
FWIW, I describe a lot of what we've been doing in a SANS paper, including using "honeypeeps" to identify phisher's 
source IP addresses.  We also maintain a blog (phishing.it.umn.edu<http://phishing.it.umn.edu>) to highlight phishing 
campaigns and post advisories.

Reducing the Catch: Fighting Spear-Phishing in a Large Organization
https://www.sans.org/reading-room/whitepapers/forensics/reducing-catch-fighting-spear-phishing-large-organization-35547

On Thu, Aug 11, 2016 at 8:39 AM, Keith Hartranft <kkh288 () lehigh edu<mailto:kkh288 () lehigh edu>> wrote:
Hello all,

We do have a somewhat formalized process for Phishing emails and it has been flowcharted. I'd be happy to share these 
with RI folks and we've talked about (Doug help please?) a central place/wiki for that.

I will say the process is specific to how our systems are structured but I think there are some things that all 
organizations might find useful in our process.

A few things to note:


  *   We have not "pulled" phishing emails from mailboxes. We do however note particularly good ones, note who has 
"opened" them, and watch for suspicious logons from those users with our SIEM dashes. Particularly good phishes we also 
"seed" with peep accounts and then monitor those locations more closely
  *   We run our own DNS block (Malwaredomains) which helps mitigate on campus access. You may get that feed as well 
..... in a variety of ways. We also report to Google Safebrowsing, Phishtank, Symantec, ThreatStream via HiTrust .... 
which gets links into Browser and many AV Browser/reputation blocks VERY quickly.
  *   We use GMail content filters to protect many users from common phishes that would have gotten through in the 
past. We react with new rules when new "more inventive?" phishes occur. I think this has had significant impact on 
phish reduction ...... but with the semester about to begin, we'll see for certain.
  *   We post phishes to our Help pages and warnings. If the phish is particular good or generates a high level of 
calls or response .... we send a campus notification. (As we had last year with a "Terror Threat Email") It should be 
noted that a second round of "Terror Threat" attempts was almost totally mitigated by the content compliance filters.
  *   We do some limited data mining via Vault for new phishes that miss the content compliance net and respond 
accordingly.
  *   We notify senders of possible account compromise if in the edu or gov spaces. We sometimes notify hosts if they 
are particularly responsive (Formcrafts you can 404 the site by reporting)
I think those are the highlights. Any questions ...... fire away!

Thanks,

Keith

On Thu, Aug 11, 2016 at 1:46 AM, Steven Alexander <steven.alexander () kccd edu<mailto:steven.alexander () kccd edu>> 
wrote:
I'm new to my role so I don't know if we've had objections in the past, but we do pull phishing/malicious emails from 
our user's inboxes.  Once we've identified that the content is dangerous, the safest option is to remove it.  Simply 
alerting people that the content is dangerous might reduce click rates substantially, but it won't reduce them to zero. 
 I'd rather have to defend the decision to pull than deal with a breach or a ransomware infection.

I think the best approach is to be up front set clear ground rules for when this capability can be used.  If it's only 
used to pull emails with malicious attachments and phishing links, there shouldn't be many objections.  If it's used to 
stifle a discussion, even once, it will be hard to regain the trust of your faculty and other users.

Steven Alexander
Director of IT Security
Kern Community College District

________________________________
From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv [SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU<mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV 
EDUCAUSE EDU>] on behalf of James Valente [jvalente () SALEMSTATE EDU<mailto:jvalente () SALEMSTATE EDU>]
Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2016 3:31 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU<mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU>
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] SOP for Managing Phishing/Ransomware Attempts

<snip>

Also, RE: Removing malicious messages. I know this has come up in other discussions amongst schools and a few people 
have mentioned that there have been members of the faculty who get very upset if messages are deleted. We haven't tried 
to pull or delete messages here, however.

Thanks,
James Valente
Associate Director of Information Security
Salem State University



--
Keith K Hartranft, CISSP, CISM, PCI-DSS ISA & PCIP
Chief Information Security Officer
Lehigh University
610-758-3994<tel:610-758-3994>



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"Email is the thermal exhaust port on the Death Star
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--
Keith K Hartranft, CISSP, CISM, PCI-DSS ISA & PCIP
Chief Information Security Officer
Lehigh University
610-758-3994