December 15, 2023 at 11:49AM
In January 2023, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) conducted a Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (RVA) for a Healthcare and Public Health (HPH) organization. The RVA included web application, phishing, penetration, database, and wireless assessments. While no significant external vulnerabilities were identified, the internal testing revealed multiple misconfigurations and weak passwords, leading to domain compromise. CISA released a Cybersecurity Advisory with recommendations for organizations to improve their cyber posture. The assessment team also mapped their findings to the MITRE ATT&CK for Enterprise framework and provided specific mitigation recommendations for both network defenders and software manufacturers. The full report can be accessed on CISA’s website.
Based on the meeting notes, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) conducted a two-week Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (RVA) at the request of a Healthcare and Public Health (HPH) sector organization in January 2023. The assessment included external and internal testing, which revealed several vulnerabilities and weak points in the organization’s security.
The CISA team released a Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) detailing their activities and key findings to provide network defenders and software manufacturers with recommendations for improving their organizations’ and customers’ cyber posture. The CSA includes specific mitigations for the identified issues and recommendations for both network defenders and software manufacturers. Additionally, the CSA uses the MITRE ATT&CK for Enterprise framework, version 14, to map the threat actors’ activity to tactics and techniques, providing corresponding mitigation and detection recommendations. It also provides guidance on mapping malicious cyber activity to the MITRE ATT&CK framework and using CISA’s Decider Tool.
The CSA advises the HPH sector and other critical infrastructure organizations deploying on-premises software, as well as software manufacturers, to apply the recommended mitigations to harden networks against malicious activity and reduce the likelihood of domain compromise. Furthermore, it suggests validating security controls by testing against the ATT&CK techniques described in the advisory.
The CISA team encourages the implementation of strategies for asset management and security, identity management and device security, and vulnerability, patch, and configuration management to mitigate known vulnerabilities and ensure secure configuration baselines.
The report also highlights the strengths of the organization’s security posture, such as effective antivirus software, endpoint detection and response capabilities, good policies and best practices for protecting users from malicious files, minimal external attack surface, strong wireless protocols, and network segmentation.
To address the weaknesses identified, CISA recommends that software manufacturers embed security into product architecture throughout the entire software development lifecycle, eliminate default passwords, create secure configuration templates, and design products in a way that prevents the compromise of the entire system if a single security control is breached.
Overall, the CSA provides detailed insights from the RVA and comprehensive recommendations for improving cybersecurity posture, reflecting CISA’s dedication to enhancing cyber resilience.
Feel free to ask if you need more specific information from the meeting notes or if there are any further details required.