Find, Fix, Finish…Tracking the Real Bad Guys in Cyberspace

Cyber threats to security have been a problem for security practitioners for as long as there has been a need for confidentiality. The need to identify and proactively isolate likely indications of threat activity and usable threat vectors has become more and more paramount for security today as entire national data stores and the intellectual property of generations to come has become digitized and secreted online to reside in “the cloud”. Unfortunately, the methods and tools that are used to thwart malicious actions are based on analytics that focus on “real time” or current anomalous actions. There are historically little, if any, technologies or practices that seek to combine technical precursors or anomalous actions with overt open source indicators in order to identify and isolate threat vectors before they conduct a malicious action. In this presentation the speaker will discuss and detail methods and techniques that can be used to systematically and scientifically identify and isolate those outside attack vectors that are most likely precursors to a malicious threat activity or campaign, the speaker will also detail how organizations can leverage those assets to proactively intercept the attacker.

Dr. Chase Cunningham (CPO USN Ret.) proactively seeks out cyber threat tactics and technical indicators of various threat groups. He is regularly cited as an expert on cyber security and contributes to white papers and other publications. He is also the co-author of The Cynja, a comic designed to educate children about security threats and online best practices.

Prior to joining Armor, Dr. Cunningham was the chief of cyber analytics for Decisive Analytics Corporation in Arlington, VA, where he acted as the principal lead on several research and development efforts. In this role, he led the authoring of a comprehensive paper on cyber workforce framework implementation that has been adopted by a partner nation as its cornerstone cyber future framework initiative. Dr. Cunningham also was the lead computer network exploitation expert for the U.S. Joint Cryptologic Analysis Course in Pensacola, FL. His work was critical in developing the newly founded cyber training curriculum now used by the Department of Defense and different intelligence agencies’ military subcomponents.

Dr. Cunningham medically retired from the U.S. Navy in 2011. His time in the military was spent in direct operational support of U.S. Intelligence agency operations abroad. In his last assignments as a chief cryptologic technician, Dr. Cunningham managed all research and development of cyber entities to assess threat vectors, network forensics, and methodologies of cyber actors across the intelligence community. Dr. Cunningham also acted as the senior cyber/Digital Network Intelligence (DNI) analyst for many new mission threads. He handled all DNI reporting, analytics, coordination, and research. His analysis prompted action from various intelligence community agencies, including Federal Bureau of Investigation, Treasury, Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Office of Naval Intelligence, Transportation Security Administration, Department of Homeland Security, and the National Security Agency.