Azure and Friends September Event

Teemu kicked off the event, welcoming us, explaining what Azure and Friends is, and so on.

Beyond No Return: Preparing Your Organization for Cyber War by Miska Kytö (Zure)

To get a dashboard of victims hit by ransomware attacks, for example in Finland - ransomware.live/country/fin.

Finland is not a major target because smaller economy. However, 50% of ransomware attacks in 20205 happened against small companies (<50 people).

With AI both the velocity and nature (advanced techniques) of the attacks has increased. It used to take around 1year between when a vulnerability was found and exploited to now, when vulnerabilities are exploited before they are announced.

The CARVER framework provides a targeting mechanism. But this can be used by defenders as well, to figure out what requires more resources.

A walkthrough of a sample real-estate company’s IT followed. It was interesting.

Honeypots are a good way to attract an attacker - so that it trips up our alarms. Defender for identity for example has a feature - honeytokens that does this. Other examples are honeypot services on servers like endlessh.

Sometimes it’s better to just shut up. For example in job listings. When presenting don’t share the full screen for example. Another thing to audit would be thesis workers, especially in big companies.

To summarise, think like an attacker, make your environment a minefield, and pay attention to public info about your IT.

Panel discussion on what customers are buying from Azure in Finland and other things AI

AI, Data and Security, but the general answer is it depends on the company. Public sector - data and VMs, infrastructure stuff. Private sector nothing beyond the AI PoCs. There is app stuff. Looking forward, more app modernisation stuff.

An interesting point around the AI discussion was that now is a great time to learn stuff, because the companies are subsidising it. It will not be the same in the future, so, learn, break stuff, etc.