Skip to main content

Article recommendation

One of the blogs I have been following recently is being written in part by someone who I've worked with in the past, and has a great perspective on the in's and out's of Information Security.

Most recent article I really enjoyed the perspective Will has and this article is something that many experienced Information Security professionals feel.

First you have a feeling of satisfaction on a job well done (it's always invigorating to give a good presentation to a good audience).

Next you get a creeping sensation that maybe this was a big eye opener for the company or for these people in particular, that maybe until now they didn't realize that in today's very connected and on-line world there are many ways to compromise your security and many different motivations for groups and individuals to do this. It isn't just about the hacker who wants to show off for his friends, now it's more about the money that he can get from selling the data he mined from your compromised system.

Awareness of all varieties (specific situational awareness for executives or management in the time of an incident, more general preventative awareness for staff, IT folks, and executives, and more of these general awareness training sessions) should be part of your Information Security program.

That being said, don't fall into the trap that you expect awareness to replace controls, that way lies pain.

->Pierre

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Requirements for Information Security

If you want to get into Information Security you HAVE to be a/have this skill... Why this is total BS. Almost daily I see someone posting on twitter, trying to be helpful to folks who are looking to get into InfoSec. Often I see "If you want to be in Information Security (Cyber Security) then you HAVE to be a programmer" or "If you want to be successful you have to be a hacker/have a criminal record/have abused systems without permission" etc. While having technical capabilities (such as programming) and having the ability to compromise a system shows a specific skillset neither are required. When talking to people who are interested in Information Security I often refer to it as a cake, there are tons of slices, many flavors, many pieces and parts you can sample, choose to focus on, will be expected to know something about, etc. Incident Response and Forensics (my current focus) is not the only part of Information Security, and certainly not the only part tha...

Privacy considerations for home users

In light of the recent new stories regarding the recently signed legislation allowing ISP's to be able to sell your data http://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/3/29/15107110/republican-isp-data-privacy Here are a couple ideas and tips about privacy in general. Don't panic - a lot of the info was already being gathered, this isn't that large of a change regarding scope, it's more of a change to who can profit or sell it (which is a shift for sure). Remember a lot of the services you use today already gather your browser, activity, and search info (google, bing, yahoo, facebook, etc.). ISP's haven't implemented this yet, expect to see new terms of service in an upcoming bill, or an email sent to you, etc. If you would like to take some steps to try to preserve your privacy, here are some ideas and examples: VPN (Virtual Private Network) - this in essence creates an encrypted tunnel between two points on the Internet. One point being your system...
Weekly recap and why you should be concerned about "attackers" even if you have "nothing to hide" Why you should be aware of, defend against, and prevent attackers... even at home: I often hear from future victims "well I don't have anything to hide/anything of value/why would they target me!?" It's really not about you, usually the attackers aren't looking for your data (if they get it, or have easy access to it, they may try to profit from it, but the people doing the compromising aren't usually the same folks that monetize). What the attackers want are compromised systems they can use to do what they want at scale. So if they can compromise 50 systems, they can send 50X the amount of SPAM... 100 systems, 100X, etc. Some operations get paid based on the number of emails they can send per day. Of course the email will likely not just be SPAM, but may also be malicious (ransomware, etc.). http://thehackernews.com/2017/09/linux-ma...