US Leading Cybersecurity Firm, FireEye, Says It Was Hacked by a Nation-State — What’s Next for The World of Cybersecurity?
The Silicon Valley company, FireEye, says it’s been hacked by a state-sponsored attacker.
I’d like to state here that, I do not want to go into whether it was a political stunt, hoax, or act. The US state of affairs in current times is a sensitive topic to discuss but the main focus here is that there has been a compromise in the firm’s cybersecurity tools which they called the Red Team tools, which it uses to test customer security and find vulnerabilities.
FireEye is a publicly-traded cybersecurity company headquartered in Milpitas, California, it has been involved in the detection and prevention of major cyber-attacks. It provides hardware, software, and services to investigate cybersecurity attacks, protect against malicious software, and analyze IT security risks and it was founded in 2004.
Just to bring to your notice, some notable accomplishments of FireEye, USAToday says FireEye “has been called in to investigate high-profile attacks against Target, JP Morgan Chase, Sony Pictures, Anthem, and others”. Yahoo Finance says FireEye is again the fastest-growing cybersecurity firm, according to Deloitte.
According to FireEye, recently, they were attacked by a highly sophisticated threat actor, one whose discipline, operational security, and techniques lead us to believe it was a state-sponsored attack. The last phrase, again is not why I’m writing this article. What does this event mean for the cybersecurity community?
As a cybersecurity firm that other cybersecurity firms look up to, isn’t it rather disappointing that they were attacked by some team whom they claimed is highly sophisticated, highly trained in operational security and they executed their attack with discipline and focus, and using methods that counter security tools and forensic examination? they said and I quote
They used a novel combination of techniques not witnessed by us or our partners in the past.
So, I have questions.
What does this mean for the community of cybersecurity, businesses, cloud storage, and for our local cyber experts?
We now live in a world where even financial institutions amongst others are now leveraging the advancement of the internet and almost rapidly doing away with physical transactions. Everyone is gradually embracing and relying on the internet for storage, evolution, and development. This question and more were discussed during my session with a passionate cybersecurity expert from Nigeria.
One-on-One with Jovworie Tanshi
I had quality time with my first guest on my one-on-one session. Jovworie is a Cybersecurity expert, fraud analyst, co-founder of SmartCoop, and the author of “Decoding Cybercrime” where he reveals myths and misconceptions about cybersecurity and the failure of internet users to properly get informed about the security of their data while using the internet.
I’m not a cybersecurity expert, so I asked my questions in the best way a non-expert would possibly ask them.
How is it possible for a company as exalted as FireEye to get hacked?
It’s not surprising. The bigger a company gets, the higher the potential of getting compromised. No matter how smart their employees appear to be, there will always be one less informed person that can be used as a weak link to get into their information system. Over 95% of these cases could be just one slight mistake made by one employee.
On a general note, not everyone that has access to critical data in a cybersecurity firm is necessarily a cybersecurity expert. Even some cybersecurity experts don’t have good “data hygiene”. We put these cybersecurity guys too much on a pedestal. Most programmers are just advanced tech-savvy people. They‘re not inclined.
How would you pass this information to the average internet that “trusts” the level of security of their service provider?
Consumers are not to blame. Most of these industries using tech don’t understand the threat landscape; FinTech, Agro Tech Legal Tech, Insure Tech etc. We have more tech-savvy people than tech inclined people. Imagine a bank that allows its users to enable fingerprint for login and transaction authorization having the latter serving as two-factor authentication because the action was carried outdone twice.
What do you think is the future of cybersecurity?
The demand for cybersecurity experts will increase. But unfortunately, there will be very few genuine experts. But ironically, employers will not know the difference. They’ll hire the guy that can speak the best grammar because, at the bidding level, Cybersecurity is all about the terminologies, due to its semi-abstract nature.
What you should know is that over 95% of the compromises that occur are related to human errors. Humans are the ones interacting with these systems. The surest way to always gain access is to interact with one who has access. So, no matter how secure the system is, there will always be gullible humans. We project that there will be more occurrences. Less than 1% of internet users genuinely know how the internet and information systems work and that’s what Cybercrime thrives on. You should read my article on Cybercrime in Nigeria. Where did we get it wrong? More than 50% of the service providers (if I am not mistaken) are not doing a very good job. That’s why consumers are most times easily attacked.
Do you think we consumers have a major part to play in securing our data or it majorly depends on the service providers?
Like I said earlier, more than 50% of the service providers are not doing a good job… it’s good for a subject like cybersecurity to be taught in schools to properly educate the public on the benefits and dangers around the use of the internet.
Conclusion
FireEye has developed more than 300 countermeasures for their customers, and the community at large, to use to minimize the potential impact of the theft of their tools. And they said, “We are sharing these countermeasures with our colleagues in the security community so that they can update their security tools.”
I believe that the internet is here to stay. We have only just begun its use. There could be more than 300 countermeasures for future unforetold cases but if there’s no awareness, preparedness, training, and the technical know-how to use these measures, it will all still be counterproductive. But looking on the bright side, for the sake of Africa and the cybersecurity community, there’s still much work to be done.
If sufficient and proper education on this subject is done at least from the mid-level of education to possibly the highest level, we will have more African skilled cybersecurity experts in the field and we will be more confident to use the internet with a better understanding of the risks it comes with and know how to handle the challenges when it arises.
Want to be a guest on my One-on-One session? Be my guest let’s build a sustainable Africa, using the future today.
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