Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Podcast Series

Cyber Intelligence is a rapidly changing field, and many organizations do not have the people, time, and funding in place to build a cyber intelligence team, according to a report on cyber intelligence released in late May by researchers in the SEI's Emerging Technology Center. As this podcast details, the report provides a snapshot of best practices and biggest challenges along with three guides for implementing cyber intelligence with artificial intelligence, the internet of things, and public cyber threat frameworks. Lead author Jared Ettinger discusses the findings of the report, which the SEI conducted on behalf of the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Simulation environments allow people to practice skills such as setting up and defending networks. If we can record informative traces of activity in these online environments and draw accurate inferences about trainee capabilities, then we can provide evidence-based guidance on performance, assess mission readiness, optimize training schedules, and refine training modules. April Galyardt, a machine learning research scientist with Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute, discusses efforts to develop a new approach to assessing the skills of the cybersecurity workforce.

Highly regulated environments (HREs), such as finance and healthcare, are mandated by policies for various reasons, most often general security and protection of intellectual property. These policies make the sharing and open access principles of DevOps that much harder to apply. In this podcast, SEI researchers Hasan Yasar and Jose Morales discuss the process, challenges, approaches, and lessons learned in implementing DevOps in the software development lifecycle in HREs.

Dr. Paul Nielsen discusses his involvement on a Defense Science Board Task Force that concluded that the software factory should be a key player in the acquisition and sustainment of software for defense. "This is one case where the military or the government can learn from industry, sort of a spin-in to the government. The government has traditionally followed other approaches that were very requirements-based. They have perfected requirements engineering. What we have found is that in many cases with software systems, we really don't know the requirements when we start, not completely, and they evolve with time as users start to experience the software."

Operation Wire Wire, a coordinated law enforcement effort by the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of the Treasury, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, was conducted over a six-month period and resulted in 74 arrests in the United States and overseas, including 29 in Nigeria and 3 in Canada, Mauritius, and Poland. The operation also resulted in the seizure of nearly $2.4 million and the disruption and recovery of approximately $14 million in fraudulent wire transfers. In this podcast, Anne Connell, a researcher in the SEI's CERT Division, discusses recent business email compromise (BEC) attacks, including the one at the center of Operation Wire Wire and another attack involving a Texas energy company. Connell also offers guidance on how individuals and organizations can protect themselves from these sophisticated new modes of attack.

Technical debt communicates the tradeoff between the short-term benefits of rapid delivery and the long-term value of developing a software system that is easy to evolve, modify, repair, and sustain. In this SEI Podcast, Rod Nord and Ipek Ozkaya discuss the SEI's current work in technical debt including the development of analysis techniques to help software engineers and decision makers manage the effect of technical debt on their software projects.

Tom Longstaff, who in 2018 was hired as the SEI's chief technology officer, discusses the challenges of leading a technical organization in the age of artificial intelligence.

In today's operational climate, threats and attacks against network infrastructures have become far too common. Researchers in the SEI's CERT Division work with organizations and large enterprises, many of whom analyze their network traffic data for ongoing status, attacks, or potential attacks. Through this work we have observed both challenges and best practices as these network traffic analysts analyze incoming contacts to the network, including packets traces or flows. In this SEI Podcast, Tim Shimeall and Timur Snoke, both researchers in the SEI's CERT Division, highlight some best practices (and application of these practices) that they have observed in network traffic analysis.

Bugs and weaknesses in software are common: 84 percent of system breaches exploit vulnerabilities at the application layer. The prevalence of software-related problems is a key motivation for using application security testing tools. With a growing number of application security testing tools available, it can be confusing for leaders, developers, and engineers to know which tools address which issues. In this podcast, Thomas Scanlon, a researcher in the SEI's CERT Division, discusses the different types of application security testing tools and provides guidance on how and when to use each tool.

Static analysis tools used to identify potential vulnerabilities in source code produce a large number of alerts with high false-positive rates that engineers must painstakingly examine to find legitimate flaws. Researchers in the SEI's CERT Division have developed the SCALe (Source Code Analysis Laboratory) tool to help analysts be more efficient and effective at auditing static analysis alerts. In this podcast, CERT researchers Lori Flynn and Zach Kurtz discuss ongoing research using test suites as a source of labeled training data to create classifiers for static analysis alerts.

Beyond its financial hype, researchers are exploring and understanding the promise of Blockchain technologies. In this SEI Podcast, Eliezer Kanal and Eugene Leventhal discuss blockchain research at Carnegie Mellon University and beyond.

Tom Longstaff, who in 2018 was hired as the SEI's chief technology officer, discusses the challenges of leading a technical organization in the age of artificial intelligence.

Peter Feiler discusses the cost savings (26.1 percent) realized when using the System Architecture Virtual Integration approach on the development of software-reliant systems for aircraft. "If you discover [software defects] at system integration test, the cost of fixing a problem is 300 to 1,000 times higher than doing it upfront. So if upfront, you spent $10,000 fixing it, it's between $3 and $10 million on the backend that you are saving by the way."

Roberta "Bobbie" Stempfley, who was appointed director of the SEI's CERT Division in June 2017, discusses a technical strategy for cybersecurity. "There is never enough time, money, power, resources—whatever it is—and we make design tradeoffs. Adversaries are looking at what opportunities that creates. They are looking at failures in implementation."

Don Faatz and Tim Morrow, researchers with the SEI's CERT Division, outline best practices that organizations should use to address the vulnerabilities and risks in moving applications and data to cloud services.

Tim Morrow and Donald Faatz outline the risks, threats, and vulnerabilities that organizations face when moving applications or data to the cloud. "If you look at large organizations like the DoD, they have embraced this. They are looking to buy infrastructures as a service and even moving office automation to the cloud. For smaller organizations, though, it is something of a challenge, so we wanted to look at and give people some ideas about the challenges they will face when they do this."

Tim Shimeall and Timur Snoke, researchers in the SEI's CERT Division, examine the role of the network traffic analyst in capturing and evaluating ever-increasing volumes of network data. "Part of it is the ability to use a wide variety of tools to answer questions about what is happening on the network and to figure out ways to go past inference and supposition and to get facts that can actually provide support for the hypothesis that you're coming up with.

Tracy Cassidy and Carrie Gardner, researchers with the CERT National Insider Threat Center, discuss research on using technology to detect an employee's intent to cause physical harm. "A chronology naturally fell out that gave a temporal description of how a particular incident unfolded. So we can see precursor events that foreshadowed the event or the escalation of events that were to

To contain costs, it is essential to understand which factors drive costs over the longer term and can be controlled. In studies of software development, as a research community, we have not done an adequate job of differentiating causal influences from noncausal statistical correlations. In this podcast, Mike Konrad and Bob Stoddard discuss the use of an approach known as causal learning that can help the Department of Defense identify which factors cause software costs to escalate and, therefore, serve as a better basis for guidance on how to intervene to better control costs.

In this podcast, Dr. Carol Woody discusses opportunities and risks in cybersecurity engineering, software assurance, and the resulting CERT Cybersecurity Engineering and Software Assurance Professional Certificate. The courses for this certificate program focus on software-reliant systems engineering and acquisition activities. The goal of the program is to infuse an awareness of cybersecurity (and an approach to identifying security requirements, engineering risk, and supply chain risk) early in the lifecycle. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

In the SEI's examination of the software sustainment phase of the Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition lifecycle, we have noted that the best descriptor for sustainment efforts for software is "continuous engineering." Typically, during this phase, the hardware elements are repaired or have some structural modifications to carry new weapons or sensors. Software, on the other hand, continues to evolve in response to new security threats, new safety approaches, or new functionality provided within the system of systems. In this podcast, Mike Phillips and Harry Levinson will examine the intersection of three themes—product line practices, software sustainment, and public-private partnerships—that emerged during our work with one government program. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

The SEI Emerging Technology Center is conducting a study sponsored by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence to understand cyber intelligence best practices, common challenges, and future technologies that we will culminate in a published report. Through interviews with U.S.-based organizations from a variety of sectors, researchers are identifying tools, practices, and resources that help those organizations make informed decisions that protect their information and assets. In this podcast, Jared Ettinger describes preliminary findings from the interviews including best practices in cyber intelligence. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

In today's global business environment, risk management must be aligned to business strategy. As companies continue to shift their business models, strategies change and risk management becomes even more important. A company must find the right balance between risk resiliency and risk agility. The chief risk officer (CRO) role is an important catalyst to make that happen, so a company's long term strategic objectives may be realized. The CRO Certificate Program is developed and delivered by Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, and the CERT Division of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). In this podcast, Summer Fowler and Ari Lightman discuss the evolving role of the chief risk officer and a Chief Risk Officer Program. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and other agencies are expressing significant interest in blockchain technology because it promises inherent transparency, resiliency, forgery-resistance, and nonrepudiation, which can be used to protect sensitive infrastructure. At the same time, numerous high-profile incidents of blockchain coding errors that cause major damage to organizations have raised serious concerns about blockchain adoption. In this podcast, Eliezer Kanal and Michael Coblenz discuss the creation of Obsidian, a novel programming language specifically tailored to secure blockchain software development that significantly reduces the risk of such coding errors. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

DevOps breaks down software development silos to encourage free communication and constant collaboration. Agile, an iterative approach to development, emphasizes frequent deliveries of software. In this podcast, Eileen Wrubel, technical lead for the SEI's Agile-in-Government program, and Hasan Yasar, technical manager of the Secure Lifecycle Solutions Group in the SEI's CERT Division, discuss how Agile and DevOps can be deployed together to meet organizational needs. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

This series of podcasts presents excerpts from a recent SEI virtual event, Is Software Spoiling Us? Jeff Boleng, acting chief technical officer, moderated the discussion, which featured a panel of SEI researchers: Grace Lewis, Eliezer Kanal, Joseph Yankel, and Satya Venneti. In this segment, the panel discusses technical innovations that can be applied to the Department of Defense including improved situational awareness, human-machine interactions, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data, and continuous integration and deployments. The panel also discusses barriers to implementing these technologies. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

This series of podcasts presents excerpts from a recent SEI virtual event, Is Software Spoiling Us. Jeff Boleng, acting chief technical officer, moderated the discussion, which featured a panel of SEI researchers: Grace Lewis, Eliezer Kanal, Joseph Yankel, and Satya Venneti. In this podcast, the panel discusses awesome innovations in daily life that are made possible because of software. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

DevOps, which breaks down software development silos to encourage free communication and constant collaboration, reinforces many Agile methodologies. Equally important, the Risk Management Framework, provides a clearly defined framework that helps program managers incorporate security and risk management activities into the software and systems development life cycle. In this podcast, Eileen Wrubel, technical lead for the SEI's Agile-in-Government program leads a roundtable discussion into how Agile, DevOps, and the Risk Management Framework can work together. The panelists include Tim Chick, Will Hayes, and Hasan Yasar. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

Insider threat continues to be a problem with approximately 50 percent of organizations experiencing at least one malicious insider incident per year, according to the 2017 U.S. State of Cybercrime Survey. Although the attack methods vary depending on the industry, the primary types of attacks identified by researchers at the CERT Insider Threat Center—theft of intellectual property, sabotage, fraud, and espionage—continue to hold true. In our work with public and private industry, we continue to see that insider threats are influenced by a combination of technical, behavioral, and organizational issues. In this podcast Randy Trzeciak, technical manager of the CERT National Insider Threat Center, discusses the fifth edition of the Common Sense Guide to Mitigating Insider Threats, which highlights policies, procedures, and technologies to mitigate insider threats in all areas of an organization. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

Pharos was created by the SEI CERT Division to automate the reverse engineering of binaries, with a focus on malicious code analysis. Pharos, which was recently released on Github, builds upon the ROSE compiler infrastructure developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for disassembly, control flow analysis, instruction semantics, and more. In this podcast, the SEI CERT Division's Jeff Gennari discusses updates to the Pharos framework including new tools, improvements, and bug fixes. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

In the 2016 Cyber Security Intelligence Index, IBM found that 60 percent of all cyber attacks were carried out by insiders. One reason that insider threat remains so problematic is that organizations typically respond to these threats with negative technical incentives, such as practices that monitor and constrain employee behavior, detect and punish misbehavior, and otherwise try to force employees to act in the best interest of the organization. In this podcast, Andrew Moore and Dan Bauer highlight results from our recent research that suggests organizations need to take a more holistic approach to mitigating insider threat: one that considers the impact of organizational behavior on insider motivations. In particular, positive incentives can complement traditional practices for insider threat defense in a way that can improve employee worklife as well as more effectively reduce insider risk. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

Dr. Andrew Moore, who is the Dean of the School of Computer Science at CMU, predicted that 2016 would be a watershed year for machine emotional intelligence. Evidence of this can be seen in the Department of Defense, which increasingly relies on biometric data, such as iris scans, gait recognition, and heart-rate monitoring to protect against both cyber and physical attacks. Current state-of-the-art approaches do not make it possible to gather biometric data in real-world settings, such as border and airport security checkpoints, where people are in motion. In this podcast, Satya Venneti presents exploratory research undertaken by the SEI's Emerging Technology Center to design algorithms to extract heart rate from video capture of non-stationary subjects in real-time. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

In today's increasingly interconnected world, the information security community must be prepared to address emerging vulnerabilities that may arise from new technology domains. Understanding trends and emerging technologies can help information security professionals, leaders of organizations, and others interested in information security to anticipate and prepare for such vulnerabilities. In this podcast, CERT vulnerability analyst Dan Klinedinst discusses research aimed at helping the Department of Homeland Security United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) understand future technologies and their risks. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

For some time now, the cyber world has been under attack by a diffused set of enemies who improvise their own tools in many different varieties and hide them where they can do much damage. In this podcast, CERT researcher Vijay Sarvepalli explores Domain Name System or DNS Blocking, the idea of disrupting communications from malicious code such as ransomware that is used to lock up your digital assets, or data-exfiltration software that is used to steal your digital data. DNS blocking ensures a wide impact while avoiding the complexity of having to install or instrument every device in your enterprise. The key takeaway is to target a break in the chain of malware to minimize its effectiveness and the malicious code developer's intended success. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

When it comes to network traffic, it's important to establish a filtering process that identifies and blocks potential cyberattacks, such as worms spreading ransomware and intruders exploiting vulnerabilities, while permitting the flow of legitimate traffic. In this podcast, the latest in a series on best practices for network security, Rachel Kartch explores best practices for network border protection at the Internet router and firewall. It is important to note that these recommendations are geared toward large organizations and government agencies and would not likely be appropriate for a home network or very small business network. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

Since its debut on Jeopardy in 2011, IBM's Watson has generated a lot of interest in potential applications across many industries. As detailed in this podcast, Mark Sherman recently led a research team investigating whether the Department of Defense could use Watson to improve software assurance and help acquisition professionals assemble and review relevant evidence from documents. Specifically, Sherman and his team examined whether typical developers could build an IBM Watson application to support an assurance review. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

Software is a growing component of modern business- and mission-critical systems. As organizations become more dependent on software, security-related risks to their organizational missions also increase. Traditional security-engineering approaches rely on addressing security risks during the operation and maintenance of software-reliant systems. The costs required to control security risks increase significantly when organizations wait until systems are deployed to address those risks. Field experiences of technical staff at the SEI indicate that few programs currently implement effective cybersecurity practices early in the acquisition lifecycle. Recent Department of Defense directives are beginning to shift programs' priorities regarding cybersecurity. As a result, researchers from the CERT Division of the SEI have started cataloging the cybersecurity practices needed to acquire, engineer, and field software-reliant systems that are acceptably secure. In this podcast, Carol Woody and Christopher Alberts introduce the prototype Software Assurance Framework (SAF), a collection of cybersecurity practices that programs can apply across the acquisition lifecycle and supply chain. The SAF can be used to assess an acquisition program's current cybersecurity practices and chart a course for improvement, ultimately reducing the cybersecurity risk of deployed software-reliant systems. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

All major defense contractors in the market can tell you about their approaches to implementing the values and principles found in the Agile Manifesto. Published frameworks and methodologies are rapidly maturing, and a wave of associated terminology is part of the modern lexicon. We are seeing consultants feuding on Internet forums as well, each claiming to have the "true" answer for what Agile is and how to make it work in your organization. The challenge now is to scale Agile to work in complex settings with larger teams, larger systems, longer timelines, diverse operating environments, and multiple engineering disciplines. In this podcast, Will Hayes and Eileen Wrubel present five perspectives on scaling Agile from leading thinkers in the field, including Scott Ambler, Steve Messenger, Craig Larman, Jeff Sutherland, and Dean Leffingwell. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

On May 12, 2017, in the course of a day, the WannaCry ransomware attack infected nearly a quarter million computers. WannaCry is the latest in a growing number of ransomware attacks where, instead of stealing data, cyber criminals hold data hostage and demand a ransom payment. WannaCry was perhaps the largest ransomware attack to date, taking over a wide swath of global computers from FedEx in the United States to the systems that power Britain's healthcare system to systems across Asia, according to the New York Times. In this podcast, CERT researchers spell out several best practices for prevention and response to a ransomware attack. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

The term "software security" often evokes negative feelings among software developers because it is associated with additional programming effort, uncertainty, and road blocks to fast development and release. To secure software, developers must follow numerous guidelines that, while intended to satisfy some regulation or other, can be very restrictive and hard to understand. As a result, a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt can surround software security. In this podcast, Hasan Yasar discusses how the Secure DevOps movement attempts to combat the toxic environment surrounding software security by shifting the paradigm from following rules and guidelines to creatively determining solutions for tough security problems. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

The position of SEI Fellow is awarded to people who have made an outstanding contribution of the work of the SEI and from home the SEI leadership may expect valuable advice for continued success in the institute's mission. Peter Feiler was named an SEI Fellow in August 2016. This podcast is the second in a series highlighting interviews with SEI Fellows Listen on Apple Podcasts.

The network time protocol (NTP) synchronizes the time of a computer client or server to another server or within a few milliseconds of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). NTP servers, long considered a foundational service of the Internet, have more recently been used to amplify large-scale Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. While 2016 did not see a noticeable uptick in the frequency of DDoS attacks, the last 12 months have witnessed some of the largest DDoS attacks, according to Akamai's State of the Internet/Security report. One issue that attackers have exploited is abusable NTP servers. In 2014, there were over seven million abusable NTP servers. As a result of software upgrades, repaired configuration files, or the simple fact that ISPs and IXPs have decided to block NTP traffic, the number of abusable servers dropped by almost 99 percent in a matter months, according to a January 2015 article in ACM Queue. But there is still work to be done. It only takes 5,000 abusable NTP servers to generate a DDoS attack in the range of 50-400 Gbps. In this podcast, Timur Snoke explores the challenges of NTP and prescribes some best practices for securing accurate time with this protocol. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

First responders, search-and-rescue teams, and military personnel often work in "tactical edge" environments defined by limited computing resources, rapidly changing mission requirements, high levels of stress, and limited connectivity. In these tactical edge environments, software applications that enable tasks such as face recognition, language translation, decision support, and mission planning and execution are critical due to computing and battery limitations on mobile devices. Our work on tactical cloudlets addresses some of these challenges by providing a forward-deployed platform for computation offload and data staging. When establishing communication between two nodes, such as a mobile device and a tactical cloudlet in the field, identification, authentication, and authorization provide the information and assurances necessary for the nodes to trust each other (i.e., mutual trust). A common solution for establishing trust is to create and share credentials in advance and then use an online trusted authority to validate the credentials of the nodes. The tactical environments in which first responders, search-and-rescue, and military personnel operate, however, do not consistently provide access to that online authority or certificate repository because they are disconnected, intermittent, limited (DIL). In this podcast, Grace Lewis presents a solution for establishing trusted identities in disconnected environments based on secure key generation and exchange in the field, as well as an evaluation and implementation of the solution. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

In 2014-2015, a group of researchers across various disciplines gathered at the Caltech Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) to explore whether recent advances in multifunctional, reconfigurable, and adaptive structures could enable a microenvironment control to support space exploration in extreme environments. The workshop series spawned multiple working groups and project ideas for pushing the state-of-the-art in space exploration, colonization and infrastructure. One such project, called the Multi-planetary Smart Tile, explores the possibility of creating a multi-functional power grid for the solar system that is capable of distributed computation, renewable power generation, and power beaming to remote locations. In this podcast, Dr. James Edmondson discusses his work to bring distributed artificial intelligence to a next generation, renewable power grid in space. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

Making sure government and privately owned drones share international air space safely and effectively is a top priority for government officials. Distributed Adaptive Real-Time (DART) systems are key to many areas of Department of Defense (DoD) capability, including the safe execution of autonomous, multi-unmanned aerial systems missions having civilian benefits. DART systems promise to revolutionize several such areas of mutual civilian-DoD interest, such as robotics, transportation, energy, and health care. To fully realize the potential of DART systems, however, the software controlling them must be engineered for high-assurance and certified to operate safely and effectively. In short, these systems must satisfy guaranteed and highly-critical safety requirements (e.g., collision avoidance) while adapting smartly to achieve application requirements, such as protection coverage, while operating in dynamic and uncertain environments. In this podcast, James Edmondson and Sagar Chaki describe an architecture and approach to engineering high-assurance software for DART systems. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

In today's increasingly interconnected world, the information security community must be prepared to address vulnerabilities that may arise from new technologies. Understanding trends in emerging technologies can help information security professionals, leaders of organizations, and others interested in information security identify areas for further study. Researchers in the SEI's CERT Division recently examined the security of a large swath of technology domains being developed in industry and maturing over the next five years. This podcast highlights our current understanding of future technologies and identified domains that not only impacted cybersecurity but also finance, personal health, and safety. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

As software developers deal with issues such as legacy modernization, agile adoption, and architecture, they need to be able to articulate the tradeoffs of design and business decisions. In this podcast, Ipek Ozkaya talks about managing technical debt as a core software engineering practice and its importance in the education of future software engineers. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

The Domain Name System (DNS) is an essential component of the Internet, a virtual phone book of names and numbers, but we rarely think about it until something goes wrong. DNS also serves as the backbone for other services critical to organizations including email, external web access, file sharing and voice over IP (VoIP). There are steps, however, that network administrators can take to ensure the security and resilience of their DNS infrastructure and avoid security pitfalls. In this podcast, Mark Langston discusses best practices for designing a secure, reliable DNS infrastructure. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

As a software system moves through its lifecycle, each phase calls for the architect to use a different mix of skills. This podcast explores three roles and three failure patterns of software architects that he has observed working with industry and government software projects. This blog post by John Klein is read by Bill Thomas. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

Recent research indicates that security is no longer only a matter of code and is tightly linked to software architecture. SEI researchers have created security-focused modeling tools that capture vulnerabilities and their propagation paths in an architecture. These security-focused modeling tools help security analysts and researchers improve system and software analysis. In this podcast, Julien Delange discusses the motivation for the work, the available tools, and how to use them. Listen on Apple Podcasts.