Pages

Monday, September 11, 2017

The Equifax breach - Now what?

By now we’re all probably very aware of the massive Equifax hack that exposed 143 million American's social security numbers, birth dates, addresses and drivers’ licenses. There was also a small subset of credit cards and personal identifying documents released with limited personal information to an uncertain amount of Canadian and UK citizens being accessed as well. According to a statement released by Equifax the breach occurred from mid-May through July 2017. They discovered the breach on July 29th, which means attackers were actively working well over a month, if not more, at exhilarating this treasure trove of data. Equifax also stated that criminals exploited a vulnerability in their web application to gain access to sensitive data as the means of compromising their site

Here are a few of my thoughts on the Equifax breach: https://www.ccsinet.com/blog/equifax-breach-what-now/

Also, here's my bald head on CBS news talking about it: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/09/08/equifax-breach-fallout/amp/


Thursday, September 7, 2017

How do network management systems simplify security?

Today, many network management systems aim to increase visibility into the network and focus more on security. Since security is often left to the administrators of each department, having additional security built in to tools is becoming common.

Network management systems that provide security insight are useful tools for your networking team. However, there are a few things to consider before implementing one.

From a security perspective, monitoring a network is important because, as all data has to run through it, it's a good place to look for anomalies and incidents. There has also been a shift in the security field to make behavior analysis the norm when monitoring for malicious activity.

There are other things to look for in network management systems that help administrators detect threats within the data, and that's with performance. If you're able to gauge the performance of your equipment or applications, then you're more able to detect incidents that cause loads on the systems based off the thresholds for which they're configured. This would also include the bandwidth usage of systems that might experience slowdowns due to distributed denial-of-service attacks or a worm outbreak within the network. Read more of my article at the link below:

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/answer/How-do-network-management-systems-simplify-security

How can enterprises secure encrypted traffic from cloud applications?

With many applications being utilized in a SaaS model, it's important to encrypt the traffic between end users and applications. When personal and sensitive data is transferred, processed or stored off local premises, the connections between these points need to be secured.

Many large websites default to SSL/TLS, increasing the encrypted traffic on the internet. This is a plus for data security, but malicious actors can and do take advantage of this encryption with their malware, spoofing and C2 servers. With organizations like Let's Encrypt and Amazon Web Services, attackers use these flexible, well-designed and inexpensive technologies for malicious purposes. It's for this reason that enterprises need to make monitoring of encrypted traffic and decryption appliances mandatory in networks.

The recent increase in SSL/TLS traffic within networks is cause for both delight and concern. The security community has seen the need for encryption, but so have malicious actors. From a network security standpoint, it's important to be cautious when dealing with encrypted traffic. Its use is only going to grow from here, and the majority of internet traffic will move toward end-to-end encryption. Read more of my article at the below link:

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/answer/How-can-enterprises-secure-encrypted-traffic-from-cloud-applications

Should an enterprise BYOD strategy allow the use of Gmail?

Creating separate accounts for business use on a third-party platform can be risky, but it depends on the context.

Google offers organizations the ability to host their mail on its platform, and it also offers additional features to manage these accounts -- though these features are not part of Google's free service. There are privacy concerns regarding enterprise use of Google business accounts, but organizations that have their employees use personal Gmail accounts for business purposes is a separate matter.

This enterprise BYOD strategy is a risky idea. Using a free service outside of the organization's control and making it the recommended communication method is dangerous. The organization will have no control over the data being sent or the security policy wrapped around the communications. There is no data loss prevention applied to what's being sent, there's no web filtering or antiphishing protection, and the forensic data and logging of the email are lost.

Essentially, creating a separate personal account as part of an enterprise BYOD strategy actually severely limits BYOD security, and organizations should avoid doing it.

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/answer/Should-an-enterprise-BYOD-strategy-allow-the-use-of-Gmail

What should you do when third-party compliance is failing?

The security of your data being held, processed or transmitted by a third party is always a security risk. Essentially, you have to trust an organization other than your own with the security and care of your data.

The third party or business partner could perform security up to or even beyond your standards, but there's always the possibility for negligence. If there's even the slightest concern that a third party is being careless with the security of your organization's data, you should act immediately.

Before giving your data to a third party or business partner, there should be a thorough review of the partner and how it performs security. This can include security questionnaires, on-site visits, audits of the third party's environment and a review of its regulatory certifications. Vendor management has become one of the largest areas of concern when it comes to data governance, and it's a growing risk if due diligence isn't done upfront. Read more of my article at the link below:

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/answer/What-should-you-do-when-third-party-compliance-is-failing

Friday, September 1, 2017

Security Researchers and Responsible Vulnerability Disclosure

I was asked to comment on the following article regarding responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities by security researchers. This is a debate that's recently been resurrected over the past couple months. In my opinion there's work to be done on both sides. Below is article I was quoted on regarding the subject:

https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-data-protection/security-researchers-protect-organizations-means-necessary/