Enterprise Security | Branden R. Williams, Business Security Specialist

Craking as a Service (Caas)? standard

This is not a new concept, and has even been discussed here before. PC World is reporting that a new service is available for all of us. Have a WPA PSK you want to crack? It will cost you $34 and about 20 minutes. WPA Cracker is a new service launched by the same researcher that has spent time attacking SSL/TLS over the last few years. While the price may be a little high, it certainly represents an interesting shift in activities typically reserved for botnets or universities with large computing resources. Where else could we take this? Rainbow tables for most hash types are readily available through Bit Torrent, or can be generated with simple scripts and a chunk ...

SIEM and VOIP standard

What in the world are those two topics doing in the same post? Well, I’ve got a small roll-up for you. Here are two blog posts you should read. Both are short and relevant, exactly what most of us like! The first is a post from my co-author Anton Chuvakin entitled Log Management + SIEM = ?, a post that lays out four scenarios where SIEM and LM can be combined as part of the technology deployment of a security strategy. This field is something that I’m enjoying watching grow, and in fact my new employer plays in the space. Log management and SIEM are both critical functions to any security environment. While mature installations may not be able to ...

Consider Outsourcing Cashless Payments standard

One of the things that baffles me every time I walk into a retailer struggling with PCI compliance is why management doesn’t consider completely outsourcing all of their cashless payment processing. I know how we ended up in this situation, but who takes the blame for continuing to push this paradigm forward? Let’s take payments off the table and re-focus on the information we store. Information today is the lifeblood of business. The value of information is in the process of distilling petabytes of information into actionable tasks that create competitive advantage. Because information is perceived as highly valuable, the general position of information managers is “store or get access to every piece you can, then we’ll figure out how ...

The Gobble-Gobble of Public Networks standard

Here in the US we celebrate and give thanks for the harvest on the fourth Thursday of November, one month after our Canadian brethren did. Does security stop just because most companies in the US are closed? Nope, in fact, I’d like to give a shout out to all of you folks taking the overtime pay to spend time babysitting your networks. For you, I am thankful. The PCI Europe meeting has been the topic of several blog posts recently, and here’s yet another one inspired by the Q/A session at that meeting. The Technical Working Group (TWG) must cringe when the definition of public networks is asked in a crowd. I believe that this was one of those phrases ...

Multi-Function Service Providers, What To Do? standard

Service providers have dealt with compliance-driven information security mandates for much longer than merchant’s have. The catalyst for Visa’s CISP program was reportedly service providers, but enforcement ultimately expanded to all stakeholders. Regardless of its origins, a certain class of service provider has significant challenges complying with these requirements without shuttering portions of their business. Let’s say that a financial service provider is processing credit card transactions as an acqurier, as well as doing issuer processing for other third-party banks. How can the business comply with PCI if they also must store prohibited data in order to process on behalf of their issuer customers? That, my friends, is one of the big questions in the industry today. Attendees from both ...

Herding Cats November: got sprintf()? standard

Ahh, everyone loves some good programming humor, right? RIGHT?!? Yeah, that’s what I thought. This month I talk about one of the hardest tech jobs out there… the Application Developer. I used to be one, and I remember the stress of getting projects completed on time, under budget, and with minimal bugs. It’s a thankless job. So go check out this month’s edition of Herding Cats here! Possibly Related Posts: Selective Domain Filtering with Postfix and a SPAM Filtering Service Preventing Account Takeover, Enable MFA! Proofpoint Patches URL Sandbox Bypass Bug Improve Outbound Email with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC Life after G-Suite/Postini

Too Much Process, the Corporate Lobotomy standard

Process is a good thing. Some corporate citizens might disagree with that basic statement based on conversations like the following: “You mean I have to go to some website to enter a request for paper clips, and then someone in another office can just reject it because they want to?” Sometimes it doesn’t work. When you are in situations like this, remember this little saying from a very wise man: “Don’t confuse logic with the process.” Process in other examples can be a really good thing. Consider the actions you might take to promote code from a test or Q/A environment into production. The steps you take to do this should be the same every time, and any deviation from ...

Will PCI Mandate the Use of Data Discovery Tools? standard

The PCI Europe Community meeting was set in the beautiful Marriott in Old Town Prague last week, and even though there were fewer attendees than the meeting in Vegas, there was no shortness of intensity and well researched questions. One individual asked about the use of Data Discovery tools as a mandate to assist in the scoping of PCI assessments. Imagine as a QSA walking into a customer, running a tool, and knowing EXACTLY the scope of the PCI assessment you need to perform! There would be little chance that you under- or over-scoped it, and all those little nooks and crannies that scare the bejeebus out of a QSA would be documented right there for review. If you are ...

The Madness of Sampling standard

The PCI DSS instructs assessors to sample certain parts of the population when validating compliance. According to the PCI DSS, the sample “must be a representative selection of all of the types and locations of business facilities as well as types of system components, and must be sufficiently large to provide the assessor with assurance that controls are implemented as expected.” That often leads to the next two questions—the answers to which tend to vary among assessors: What do you mean by representative selection (or how many is representative)? What do you consider sufficiently large to gain assurance? In the audit world, internal auditors that review IT systems will look to statistically valid samples as a method to determine how ...

Categories ArchivesEnterprise Security