Agencies issue cyber advisory on best practices for network defense

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security today released recommendations to help organizations secure their networks from ongoing cyber threats from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, which recently exploited software updates to the widely used SolarWinds information technology performance-monitoring platform.

“This joint advisory provides analysis of the tactics, techniques and procedures of the adversary and details specific steps to help identify corrupted software updates,” said John Riggi, AHA senior advisor for cybersecurity and risk. “Corrupted updates from ‘trusted’ sources are extremely difficult to defend against, but implementing some of the advisory’s recommendations, such as auditing log files to identify attempts to access privileged certificates and creation of fake identities, will help mitigate the threat.” 

For more on the SolarWinds breach, see the recent AHA and Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Health-ISAC) white paper or contact Riggi at jriggi@aha.org.