Enterprise Security | Branden R. Williams, Business Security Specialist

Healthcare Letter Follow Up standard

Frequent readers may remember that I sent a letter to a healthcare provider (who is anonymously referred to as Dr. Leo Spaceman) because he used a four digit, numeric PIN to access all of my medical records (assuming that he would also be using that same one for ANY patient). Well, Dr. Spaceman responded. OK, I’m sure his admin responded, not personally him. But the response is a classic example of someone who has been asked a question like this before and had a pre-canned answer prepped. I don’t think I’m the only person to observe Dr. Spaceman doing this. Dear Resident ((No, he didn’t say resident, but I think it would be funny and fitting if he did)): I ...

Compliance, Easier than Security! standard

My undergrad is in Marketing. I sometimes call myself a marketing guy, but only right before I rip on one that hypothetically might do something causing a technical guy to lose his weekend. One of my favorite marketing guys is Seth Godin, and every once in a while he posts something that works not only in the Marketing world, but in our world. On Friday, his post “It’s easier to teach compliance than initiative” reminds me of how our business works. Isn’t it WAY easier to talk about some kind of security-related compliance versus actually talking about security? Think about your past interactions with information security. Did you have a chance to create a 3-5 year plan detailing how you ...

Think Blackberry is Safe? Think again! standard

Chris Eng at Veracode put together a pretty sweet little presentation based on a tool Tyler Shields created to infiltrate Blackberry Smartphones called BBSpy. Blackberry’s seem to be viewed as a more secure mobile platform for a smartphone or PDA than any other, to the point of speculation about the existence and future of President Obama’s Blackberry. When I first got a Blackberry smartphone, not only did my ability to separate my personal and professional life change, but I remember as a security professional liking some of the features provided. Remote wiping, encryption, and a password attempt bomb made me feel that should I lose my Blackberry, I would be able to prevent any sensitive data on it from falling ...

Satellite Hacking, Not Just for Pros! standard

I found a great article by Stan Shyshkin last week on hacking internet satellites. Satellite networking has always interested me, especially when it comes to learning how to take advantage of foolishly trusted links. Most of these links manifest as a form of a “carrier grade” link such as MPLS or Frame Relay. These links are inherently considered private, even though they typically do not take advantage of encapsulated encryption. Fifteen years ago we extended our network footprint through private network links. Companies extended their WAN in the form of a frame relay in 64-Kbit increments ((Yes I know there were 56-Kbit links too—I managed one back in the day.)). These links were rarely (if ever) encrypted partly due to ...

Healthcare Security, the New Front standard

HIPAA tried to address it, HITRUST and HITECH are the newest entrants into the mix, but health care is just he latest example of an industry’s information technology significantly outpacing its ability to secure it. If you’ve heard me speak on where I think the next big area that hackers will go after, you’ve heard some stories about what I would do if I were the bad guy. Last week I had a routine doctor checkup, and I watched my doctor type in a four digit password to access all of my records (and presumably any record in the practice). Any security professional reading this has had a similar experience with someone in authority accessing data with weak credentials, and ...

New Ponemon Study (and other fun metrics) standard

The Ponemon Institute released its latest analysis on the cost of data breaches, and this year they posit that the cost of breaches is still on the rise. While new legislation and increased savvy and persistence from attackers is continuing to drive the cost of breaches up, I also believe that this very same legislation is forcing more breaches to be reported. If anything, managers should take this information as a sobering reminder that the bad guys are out there and they still want your data. I’ve discussed these studies in the past, and I’m not terribly supportive of one of the key metrics that Ponemon analyzes: the cost per breached record. Non-security managers (and unfortunately some new security managers) ...

Don’t run IT as a business, run it as a business? standard

That’s what I felt like the theme of Bob Lewis’s article entitled “Run IT as a business—why that’s a train wreck waiting to happen.” I understand that having people on different sides of an issue can lead to a more productive result, so this perspective is entertaining if nothing else. At a minimum, reading the article will expose a key problem IT organizations face, but the solution is no different than what vendors propose every single day. Have you noticed the push to “solutions” and “solution-based selling” over the last few years in the IT space? CIOs don’t give a rip about some fancy whiz-bang technology. What they do care is if you can solve a (business) problem for them. ...

The Power of Service standard

There is a book called The Ultimate Question by Fred Reichheld that discusses how all customer satisfaction can be boiled down to one question: How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague? Using the data received from a survey of your customers a metric called the Net Promoter Score (NPS) is created, measuring your customer satisfaction. This book was a hit last year, and I even saw the NPS formula used in a kickoff presentation last week. I spent the day yesterday on the road, and had an interesting conversation when I returned my rental car. Interesting only because I have never been asked the following question before, the topic was fresh on ...

The Yes/No PCI Assessment standard

Chris Mark over at the PCI Answers blog wrote a fantastic post on The Rise of the Defensive PCI Assessment toward the end of last year. I read it right after he posted it, and knew that I wanted to add to his thoughts. It’s taken me about this long to get my thoughts together. I’ve been busy! I totally agree with his assessment, and I have run into some situations where this has come up with other QSAs. Some QSAs have altered their interpretations (or made them more literal, I should say) because they realized that they were interpreting the standard incorrectly, or they priced the assessments so low to get the business that they can’t afford to understand ...

4th of January, 2010
In: Enterprise Security, Headlines, RSAC
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Kicking Off 2010! standard

Greetings everyone! 2010 is going to be a pretty interesting year if we can keep this economic momentum going. Here are a few things to start your year off! Check out my new article “Will End to End Encryption Save Us All?” where I attempt to define various forms of End to End Encryption (E2EE) and figure out how they could be used to secure PCI DSS related data. EMC/RSA buys Archer. This one is a game changer, folks. The January issue of Herding Cats is also available! “Corned-Beef PCI DSS” expands and refines a blog post I did here about using hashing as a data protection method, specifically as it relates to PCI DSS (PCI DSS is the focus ...

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