So I’m turning 39 in a couple of weeks. Not that 39 is one of those milestone birthdays, but it leaves me with only 365 days until I can not only no longer trust myself (as happened when I turned 30), but I supposedly can’t even trust my bladder anymore.
Come on, admit it. Unless you have Duke Blue Devil blood running through your veins (and a very expensive diploma on the wall) or had Duke in your tournament bracket with money on the line, you were pulling for the Butler Bulldogs to prevail in Monday night’s NCAA Men’s Basketball final. Of course you were – everyone loves the underdog.
One of the hardest things to do in security is to discover what really works. It’s especially hard on the endpoint, given the explosion of malware and the growth of social-engineering driven attack vectors. Organizations like ICSA Labs, av-test.org, and VirusBulletin have been testing anti-malware suites for years, though I don’t think most folks put much stock in those results. Why? Most of the tests yield similar findings, which means all the products are equally good. Or more likely, equally…
Running old software is bad. Bad like putting a new iPad in a blender. Bad because all software is vulnerable software, and with old software even unsophisticated bad guys have weaponized exploits to compromise the software. So the first of the Endpoint Security Fundamentals technical controls is to make sure you run updated software.
Today I read two very different posts on what to look for when hiring, and how to get started in the security field. Each clearly reflects the author’s experiences, and since I get asked both sides of this question a lot, I thought I’d toss my two cents in.
When you think of database virtualization, do you think this term means:
a) Abstracting the database installation/engine from the application and storage layers.
b) Abstracting the database instance across multiple database installations or engines.
c) Abstracting the data and tables from a specific database engine/type, to make the dependent application interfaces more generic.
d) Abstracting the data and tables across multiple database installations/engines.
e) Moving your database to the…
As we discussed in the last ESF post on prioritizing the most significant risks, the next step is to build, communicate, and execute on a triage plan to fix those leaky buckets. The plan consists of the following sections: Risk Confirmation, Remediation Plan, Quick Wins, and Communication
As we start to dig into the Endpoint Security Fundamentals series, the first step is always to figure out where you are. Since hope is not a strategy, you can’t just make assumptions about what’s installed, what’s configured correctly, and what the end users actually know. So we’ve got to figure that out, which involves using some of the same tactics our adversaries use.
It’s the new frontier. It’s like the “Wild West” meets the “Barbary Coast”, with hostile Indians and pirates all rolled into one. And like those places, lawless entrepreneurialism a major part of the economy. That was the impression I got reading Robert Mullins’ The biggest cloud on the planet is owned by … the crooks. He examines the resources under the control of Conficker-based worms and compares them to the legitimate cloud providers. I liked his post, as considering botnets in terms of…
It’s tough for me to write a universal quick configuration management guide for databases, because the steps you take will be based upon the size, number, and complexity of the databases you manage. Every DBA works in a slightly different environment, and configuration settings get pretty specific. Further, when I got started in this industry, the cost of the database server and the cost of the database software were more than a DBA’s yearly salary. It was fairly common to see one database…