As part of our effort to inform our clients about potential and serious cybersecurity issues, MCP provides advisories about vulnerabilities and exploits that could threaten the operations of their critical communications networks. Sign up to receive these advisories in your inbox as soon as they are released.
Last week the 911 community received some bad news.
The House recommended just $500 million for Next Generation 911 implementations, a fraction of the $10 billion that it originally recommended. (See the Urgent Communications story.)
We know that $500 million isn’t going to stretch very far. We also know that the $10 billion is right in line with the Next Generation 911 Cost Study that Congress requested in 2012. Three years ago, the National 911 Program published the Cost Study, with support from Mission Critical Partners. Congress had requested a comprehensive investigation into the cost of deploying NG911 service nationwide. It did so in the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 — the same legislation that authorized the nationwide public safety broadband network (NPSBN) being implemented under the auspices of the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) and provided $7 billion in seed money.
Imagine that you're a fisherman, and you need to catch a large volume and wide variety of fish. Now imagine that the fish scatter amongst numerous rivers and streams, a situation that makes your task far more time-consuming and difficult. Moreover, you risk missing some types of fish you need to catch to fulfill your mission, either because you can't find them or you run out of time.
This metaphor describes the environment in which public safety and justice organizations are working today. Many systems exist that generate or store information vital to investigators, prosecutors, judges, and corrections officials. However, many are unable to access the information when they need to do so. That's because siloes exist in these systems, making it incredibly challenging for the individual entities that comprise the public safety and justice ecosystem — the 911 community, law enforcement, prosecutors, the courts, and jails/prisons — to exchange data. Siloed systems are analogous to the rivers and streams in our metaphor.
As part of our effort to inform our clients about potential and serious cybersecurity issues, MCP provides advisories about vulnerabilities and exploits that could threaten the operations of their critical communications networks. Sign up to receive these advisories in your inbox as soon as they are released.
Cyberattacks pose to organizations in the public safety and justice sectors. This post offers a primer on the most prevalent attack vectors.
Ransomware — This is a specific type of malware that enables cyberattackers to encrypt the targeted organization’s files. Only when the organization agrees to pay a ransom—hence the name—does the cyberattacker decrypt the files. In the current environment, this is one of the most prevalent cyber attacks and is increasing in frequency.
Topics: Cybersecurity, Network Management
A radio system implementation is an enormous undertaking that requires months, sometime years, of planning followed by years of deployment. The process starts with development of technical specifications and creation of procurement documents, usually in the form of a request for proposals. Vendor responses then must be scored and evaluated. A vendor must be selected, and a contract negotiated, including performance requirements. The system then must be designed, staged, built, and tested to ensure that it is performing as designed. Finally, the system goes live.
And that’s when the real work begins.
Once the new system is operating, it must be managed and maintained, which requires a considerable time investment and an equally considerable amount of expertise and experience. Mission Critical Partners has developed a checklist of 67 tasks that must be performed to effectively manage and maintain a radio system, with most of these tasks falling to the agency to perform.
Previous blogs presented an overview of the grave threat cyberattacks present to the justice community and essential strategies and tactics for preventing them. This blog offers intermediate and advanced strategies and tactics suggested by the Joint Technology Committee in its resource bulletin, “Cybersecurity Basics for Courts.” The committee is a joint effort of the Conference of State Court Administrators, the National Association for Court Management, and the National Center for State Courts.
Topics: Cybersecurity, Criminal Justice
As part of our effort to inform our clients about potential and serious cybersecurity issues, MCP provides advisories about vulnerabilities and exploits that could threaten the operations of their critical communications networks. Sign up to receive these advisories in your inbox as soon as they are released.
Topics: Cybersecurity, Network Management
MCP’s website is updated regularly with content pertaining to cybersecurity. So far, all of it has been focused on helping our clients prevent cyberattacks, or at least reducing their likelihood by the greatest extent possible. Of particular importance are the threat assessments that we regularly issue, and the “cyber chats” conducted each month by Mike Beagles, MCP’s director of technology and cybersecurity services, who is a certified Cisco CyberOps associate.
One of our clients recently suffered a significant cybersecurity breach that caused extensive damage to its networks and systems. (It’s important to note at this juncture that MCP is providing numerous services to this client, but none related to cybersecurity.) The city only discovered that it had been hacked when Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents visited its information technology (IT) department.
The FBI had been monitoring the dark web and found numerous indicators that something nefarious was happening. Digging further, aided by a white-hat hacker firm, they discovered that the cyberattacker not only had wormed his or her way into the city’s network infrastructure but also had been there for some time and had infiltrated many aspects of the city’s network. It was a very sophisticated attack that affected numerous organizations.
At Mission Critical Partners, our people are the heart and soul of our organization. Every professional’s experience with MCP begins the moment they visit our website’s careers page and initiate their search for a potential role with our organization.
We look to build long-lasting relationships with A-players looking to join our organization. Your first question might be, “how does MCP define an A-player?” We seek exceptional candidates who are among the top 10 percent of professionals in their chosen field and who exhibit the firm’s core values—persistence, integrity, trust, accountability, and prudence.
Topics: Life at MCP
As part of our effort to inform our clients about potential and serious cybersecurity issues, MCP provides advisories about vulnerabilities and exploits that could threaten the operations of their critical communications networks. Sign up to receive these advisories in your inbox as soon as they are released.
Today there is a new critical alert that requires the mission-critical community’s immediate attention.
Security researchers have discovered recent attempts by cyberattackers to infect machines with malicious Microsoft Word documents containing VBA macros and JavaScript — their goal is to plant a backdoor and create persistence. These documents are disguised as documentation or information related to the new Windows 11 Alpha release to entice users into interacting. The key recommendation to remediate the threat is to block the indicators of compromise (IOCs) identified in this advisory.
Microsoft released a mitigation for a vulnerability that exists in the Windows 10 operating system that can be exploited against Office 365 and Office 2019. Identified as CVE-2021-40444, this vulnerability could allow attackers to execute arbitrary code on a device if exploited. Because Microsoft Office is used and trusted by millions worldwide, attackers potentially could launch very-large-scale attacks; accordingly, this vulnerability has a severity rating of 8.8 out of 10. Recommendations from Mission Critical Partners to prevent devices from becoming susceptible to this vulnerability are below.
Topics: Cybersecurity
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