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Big Blue Cyber Security Consulting: Protecting Clients from Cyberattacks

Chris Evans

Old Dominion University

CYSE 494 Entrepreneurship in Cybersecurity

Prof. Akeyla Porcher

June 21, 2023

Big Blue Cyber Security Consulting: Protecting Clients from Cyberattacks

The Problem of Cybersecurity

Currently cybersecurity is a field that is growing exponentially as more people, businesses, and organizations begin using computing devices and creating networks that need to be protected from hacks and attacks.  This requires a competent technical workforce to ensure that the computers and networks we rely on for infrastructure, education, and commerce are secure against disruptions, thefts, and destruction.  However, attacks against computer resources and infrastructure are a real, common, and growing threat that every organization must tackle.  Every year the pace and severity of cyber-attacks and ransomware increases, while financial losses and damages have entered the billions of US dollars to our economy and cybersecurity experts estimate that clobal cybercrime costs have reached three trillion USD in 2015 (Morgan.) Threat actors like hackers and rogue nations pose sever risk to organization that their data will be stolen or leaked, or their computer infrastructure destroyed or held hostage (Mijwil.)   For many companies a loss of computer resources can have catastrophic consequences affecting market reputation, regulatory compliance, and continued operation.  Unfortunately, organizations often lack the resources to devote to in-house cybersecurity teams, or those teams lack expertise in the complex and dynamic threat landscape.  This is where a team of knowledgeable cybersecurity consultants can be incredibly valuable for organizations to help them navigate these challenges.

Old Dominion University’s Cybersecurity program, a recognized National Security Agency National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations. ODU students benefit from a cybersecurity curriculum that is interdisciplinary and rigorous, as only 12 bachelor’s programs across the US have achieved this designation.   Our team members are educated on the current state of cybersecurity and cyber threats as well as best practices on how to protect the networks of our clients.  This broad cybersecurity knowledge base and technical skill informs our team of the multitude of problems organizations can have when they create and use computing resources and networks, and the types of cyber criminals and hackers that exist attempting to take advantage of them.  A testament to the necessity of professional cybersecurity consultant services is the increasing amount of cybercrime and ransomware attacks affecting millions of Americans and costing billions of dollars in lost revenue, regulatory penalties, and infrastructure repair.  Companies without strong cybersecurity policies are in danger of being attacked and compromised by an ever-growing number and severity of cyberattacks (Morgan.) 

Overview of Big Blue Cybersecurity Consultants

My proposal is to create Big Blue Cybersecurity Consultants (BBCC) a cyber security consulting company leveraging the expertise of cybersecurity graduates of Old Dominion University and offering the marketplace the services of, employee security awareness and training, vulnerability assessments, secure network configurations, and network monitoring.  Big Blue Cybersecurity Consultants is a small group of highly educated graduates of Old Dominion University’s Cybersecurity program, a recognized National Security Agency National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations.  With our knowledgeable team of experienced employees and technicians we help organizations keep their computer infrastructure and data available when they need it, confidential and hidden from unauthorized disclosure, and sound and secure from unauthorized modifications.

BBCC stays up to date on the threat landscape, attack techniques, and solutions to keep customers networks secure and operational by monitoring industry vulnerability databases and agency alerts, by reviewing threat researchers’ publications, and cultivating industry connections to leverage shared knowledge of best practices.  Our consultancy addresses the fears that organizations have as they rely on complex computer systems and networks, amass large amounts of data that needs to be kept confidential, and navigate compliance with regulatory frameworks that require experience and technical knowledge.  Our consultancy exists to help and strengthen the cybersecurity of our client customers and keep them safe from attacks and disruptions while regulatorily compliant.  We believe that by providing top notch cybersecurity services to our clients we broadly help our communities as well.  Communities rely on many private organizations to provide their daily services and we are proud at BBCC to help make those services more resilient and secure.  

Background and Why to Choose Big Blue Cybersecurity Consulting

 With cyber threats, ransomware, and legal compliance looming issues looming over many companies and organizations it is imperative to have members of your organization with strong skills in cybersecurity and its related technologies.  BBCC will offer four core services that will help our clients keep their information secure and networks operational while using the best cybersecurity tools available.

Employee Training

Employee training is the process of teaching and preparing employees in organizations to identify, prevent, and respond to cybersecurity threats.  Employees are empowered with knowledge to prevent data breaches and unauthorized network access by learning common security awareness topics like phishing attacks, social engineering attacks, and password security.  Security is the responsibility of all members of the organization and every team member has a part to play. (Beyer.)

Vulnerability Assessments

A vulnerability assessment is a systematic review of a clients computer infrastructure systems and network to discoover weaknesses that could be exploited by attackers.   BBCC discovers problems before the attackers are able to use them to steal data or disrupt or destroy your computer infrastructure and networks.   We will used powerful scanning software such as nessus and rely on databases containing Common vulnerabilities and Exploitations CVE’s.   Once we find the vulnerabilities, we will begin remediation and close those vulnerabilities to attackers and monitor them going forward.  (Mantha.)

Secure Network Configuration

Secure network configuration is for our clients who are just starting to create and structure their networks and want a knowledgeable guide to prevent creating common errors or problems.  We will leverage our industry and academic knowledge to create infrastructure that is resilient and secure and use best practices and guidlenes from industry experts.  We will use multi factor authentication to ensure only authorized employees access your networks, as well as server hardening to close windows and doors for attacks.  We will configure you with protocols that are resistant to attacks and spoofing or eavesdropping and encrypt your network traffic as well as stored data.

Network Monitoring.

Network monitoring is how we watch over customers networks to detect and prevent any activity that may be malicious or that may show a breach has taken place.  Using firewalls to stop attacker commands from coming into the network and to stop large amount of data from leaving the network we can protect your computer infrastructure.  We will use Security Informaiton and Event management (SEIM) software to log activity and audit any unsusial activity on your computer resources searching for not only external threats but internal misuse of company computing resources.  And we can lastly use intrusion detection software (IDS) to compare network activity to the activity of known attacks and viruses and to alert when unsual activity is occurring.  

            This layered defense in depth protects our customers from many of the common top attacks and threats today.

How Cybersecurity Consultancy Relates to the Law and Legal Frameworks

Cybersecurity is a major concern and topic among legislative bodies and various industry leaders today.  As so many government organizations and departments as well as private companies have and rely on computer devices and computer network infrastructure, there is a real incentive to bad actors to steal information or disrupt those computer networks.  Bad actors can include hacktivists who attempt to attack computer networks for ideological reasons often political or moral in attempts to gain their goals.  Other bad actors include industrial espionage where a competing firm will try to steal copyrighted information from a competitor to gain an economic edge or reduce their own research and development costs.  And the most concerning bad actors are advanced persistent threats (APT’s) often backed by nation states sometimes criminal organizations and flush with resources to carry out their attacks.  APT’s often seek to steal information for economic gain or to commit crime, or to disrupt a victim nation (Mijwil).   APT’s backed by government have routinely attacked and harassed rival nations causing security breaches and loss of national security.  A recent example of a nation state using cyberattacks and   disrupting cyber infrastructure is Russia’s cyberattacks of Ukraine’s energy grid control network in the beginning of the war in Ukraine that caused power outages for much of Kiev (Sullivan.)  Private companies and government organization are attractive targets and that is why countries like the United States have developed laws and regulatory bodies to help secure public and private computer data and infrastructure.  Lack of compliance with those laws or regulations can open organizations up for attacks that may compromise customer data, copyrighted material, business plans, and at worse national security.

Because of these concerns lawmakers in the US have created multiple laws and governing bodies on cybersecurity that help private organizations and government departments design and secure their computer infrastructure with best practices and current technology keeping in mind the common threats and vulnerabilities.  This is a broad patchwork of laws, regulations addressing specific issues in the broader field of cybersecurity, and it can be difficult for companies to know what laws are relevant to their operations or industry.  This requires experienced workforce who can navigate and understand multiple regulatory bodies and best practices of rapidly changing technology while keeping abreast of developing threats.   Some of the big laws to be knowledgeable about as companies are the Gramm-Leach Biley Act (GLBA) that requires financial institutions to safeguard consumer data from attacks, the Childrens Online Privacy Act (COPPA) that impose requirements for websites advertising to children, and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that protect client medical records from unauthorized disclosure.  These laws have penalties for violations and can be complex to navigate, but the complexity increases if a company operates in multiple countries as they will have to comply with foreign laws such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that regulates the privacy of personal data and its uses (Kesan.) 

This is all coupled with efforts to increase cybersecurity in the US that create new laws and regulations from regulating federal agencies.  For example, the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA) allows the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to create new binding information security standards.  The White House of the United States is also seeking to increase the nations cybersecurity readiness and creating new policy goals and programs through their White House National Cyber Security Strategy of 2023 that seeks to among many other things, “…expand minimum cybersecurity requirements in critical sectors to ensure national security…”  (WhiteHouse.)

Effective Success According to Big Blue Cybersecurity Consultants

Effective impact to Big Blue Cybersecurity Consultants will rest upon three points, gaining customers and earning their repeated business, successfully defending and securing computers and networks preventing loss to our customers, and creating relationships within the cybersecurity community to raise public knowledge of cybersecurity topics and our team members continued growth and maturation in the industry.  To gain customers and earn their repeated business BBCC must have professional knowledgeable consultants, efficient processes, and the skills to implement solutions for our customers.  The biggest indication we are helping customers solve their cybersecurity problems is their repeated business and growing working relationships we will develop as they trust our expertise and solutions. 

Successfully defending and securing organizations computers and networks is the core of our business.  This relies on our experienced consultants who can understand business needs, technological requirements, and threats and vulnerabilities of those technologies.  Our consultants will be constantly learning new technologies, keeping up to date with threats and vulnerabilities, and well versed in best practices and regulatory frameworks.  When we can fully implement knowledge-based solutions, we can be proud to defend our customers from cyber-attacks and accidents.

Our third point of success is creating relationships within the cybersecurity community to raise public knowledge of cybersecurity topics and our team members continued growth and maturation in the industry.  BBCC wants to create a safer future for us all, and that means being involved in the cybersecurity industry and promoting cybersecurity to society at large.  We hope to educate users in secure computing and protecting themselves and their computer resources from attacks or compromise.  We hope to grow and mature our own consultants with mentorship, continuing education, and building their professional network.  

BBCC is a strong proponent of design thinking as we feel it can better solve many of the problems we face.  Design thinking allows us to tackle our problems and explore new options, and thoughtfully create tailored solutions to our clients’ unique problems.  Through a process of empathizing and understanding the clients’ problems, we define the problem in clear terms, then we ideate different solutions, prototyping them, and then testing them to see if we have the solution that works best for our clients.  We don’t stop until its right. 

What We Need to Turn Innovation to Reality

Barriers we expect to confront include the reluctance of organizations to begin working with a new startup security company, gaining customer trust about our recommendations, and reluctance of organizations to prioritize cybersecurity.  Choosing to work with a new startup is always a gamble and so we hope to gain our customers trust by providing solutions to their problems in a professional, fast, and thorough manner.  We will prove ourselves to be reliable sources of guidance for the problems of our customers as we gain their trust and commit ourselves to growing our consultant’s knowledge experience.   Gaining our customers trust will be critical to retaining them as customers and will be accomplished through BBCC choosing to remain focused on satisfying fewer clients, rather than growing the number of clients early on.  We want every client to know they are not a number but a relationship we hope to build long term.  The remaining big barrier we foresee is organizations being reluctant to commit to prioritizing cybersecurity and spending resources in that direction.  We will overcome this buy educating our clients about the importance of securing their networks and being in regulatory compliance.  Gaining the complete participation of those in control of decisions making in our client’s organizations will be critical to implementing our recommendations and improving their security.

A crucial part of overcoming the barriers we outlined and turning our proposal into reality will be creating a team of ODU Cybersecurity graduates that are knowledgeable and experienced in working on technical projects, communicating and building relationships with clients, and pursuing continuous learning in the broad topics of cybersecurity.   Employees with technical knowledge will help us deliver the solutions clients need for their networking and cybersecurity needs.  We will seek the best students with the strongest academic records and with work experience in building and creating cybersecurity solutions.   Our employees will also need to either be comfortable or trained to be comfortable with communicating with clients and understanding their technology needs or expressing technical concepts in more easily accessible ways.  BBCC staff being able to communicate effectively will build trust with our clients and hopefully relationships that will grow and become more mutually beneficial over time. We will also train our employees with continuing education programs to stay up to date on the newest topics, standards, regulations, and technologies in cybersecurity so we can offer up to date solutions for our customers.  All these goals can be accomplished by mentoring and building up our employees into more capable and knowledgeable professionals.

To accomplish our goals, we will also need to secure some physical resources such as office space, office computers, vulnerability and diagnostic computers, and purchasing various software licenses for things like Security Information Event Management (SIEM), vulnerability scanners, intrusion detection software, digital forensics, and packet analysis tools.  We will need to purchase cloud server architecture to run our client facing website where we can promote our consultancy as well as to run special server instances for our own infrastructure such as SIEM or resources tools. 

Investors will be needed as well for two purposes, The first is to fund the acquisition of the employee team and physical resources.  The second purpose is for the investors to help guide our company and increase its credibility in the marketplace.  We are looking for investors not only with financial resources but also knowledge related directly to cybersecurity or computer infrastructure. 

Summary

Cybersecurity is a difficult field for many companies to navigate and can require vast resources to ensure that companies are meeting legislative requirements as well as properly protecting themselves.  This challenge is unfairly difficult for small organizaitons which lack resources and experienced teams of IT professionals who may just be beginning to become operational.  BBCC is uniquely poised to offer competent technical assistance, to offer customer service beyond competitors and to secure the computer networks of our clients.  Technology changes daily in our field and to keep up with it can be a full-time job.  BBCC consulting allows our clients to focus on their core business mission.   Regulations are thick and burdensome, and with our consultants experience we allow companies to focus only on what legislation is applicable to them, protecting them from overspending.  The threat landscape is also in constant flux as threat actors learn new attacks or discover new vulnerabilities that may not have easy remediation solutions.  BBCC stays up to date with what threats are in the wild and how to protect your data and infrastructure from being a victim.  We do the heavy lifting, and you can reap the benefit of safety.  Our consultant services allow our clients to focus on what they are good at and deliver their products or services with heigh level of dependability and security, while we at BBCC do what we are good at, providing top notch cybersecurity services.  We feel that we have the technical expertise to help our clients improve their cybersecurity and protect their data and infrastructure and keep them regulatorily compliant. 

References

Beyer, R. E., & Brummel, B. (2015). Implementing effective cyber security training for end users of computer networks. Society for Human Resource Management and Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

Kesan, J. P., & Hayes, C. M. (2019). Cybersecurity and Privacy Law In a Nutshell.  (Nutshell series). West Academic Publishing. 

Mantha, B. R., & de Soto, B. G. (2019). Cyber security challenges and vulnerability assessment in the construction industry. In Creative Construction Conference 2019 (pp. 29-37). Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

Mijwil, M., Unogwu, O. J., Filali, Y., Bala, I., & Al-Shahwani, H. (2023). Exploring the Top Five Evolving Threats in Cybersecurity: An In-Depth Overview. Mesopotamian journal of cybersecurity2023, 57-63.

Morgan, Steve. (2020, November 13).  Cybercrime To Cost The World $10.5 Trillion Annually by 2025.  CybersecurityVentures. https://cybersecurityventures.com/hackerpocalypse-cybercrime-report-2016/

Sullivan, J. E., & Kamensky, D. (2017). How cyber-attacks in Ukraine show the vulnerability of the US power grid. The Electricity Journal30(3), 30-35.

Whitehouse National Cybersecurity Strategy 2023.  WhiteHouse. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/02/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-national-cybersecurity-strategy/