• 15 Dec 2011

    Going green’s tie-in with infosec

    If you've been following my blog and my principles for even a short period of time you've probably figured out that I pull no punches when it comes to personal responsibility and limited government. There's hardly anywhere I'm more passionate in this regard than the marketing smoke and mirrors of "Going Green" and the religion of "global warming". I should say "climate change"; that covers warming and cooling for the ...

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  • 12 Dec 2011

    Why uninterruptible power supplies have higher quality than Web apps

    I recently purchased an APC uninterruptible power supply for my office and noticed something peculiar in the packaging. It was a small piece of paper that says "QUALITY ASSURANCE TEST". It has the time, date, operator ID and other identifying information for the specific piece of hardware.As you can see in the image, this QA test sheet has 33 unique tests that were performed on the unit presumably before it ...

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  • 11 Dec 2011

    Windows security exploits, all over again

    There's a good bit brewing in the Windows world regarding security and I suspect 2012 will make for an interesting year...Here are some new pieces I've written for TechTarget along these lines where I cover Windows 8 and SharePoint security, using Metasploit to exploit flaws as well as some Windows security oversights I see in practically every internal security assessment I do. Enjoy!Patching and continuous availability in Windows Server 8SharePoint ...

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  • 09 Dec 2011

    Reactive security at its finest

    I've been hearing on the news about Georgia State University (@GeorgiaStateU) installing 50 new security cameras. No doubt, universities in downtown Atlanta (one of the highest-crime cities in the nation) are not fairing so well with security these days so somebody needs to do something, no?Well, Georgia State's solutions was to install more security cameras. Is this security theater at it's finest? Not totally, but it is security theater like ...

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  • 08 Dec 2011

    Are CIOs not doing their jobs?

    In the past week I've come across three different articles on how CFOs are getting more involved in IT. For example, in last week's Atlanta Business Chronicle feature CFOs take on increasing roles in IT department stated: "CFO involvement with IT has been largely driving by the need to upgrade reporting functions and the general inability of many legacy systems to provide the kind of data the C-suite needs." According ...

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  • 07 Dec 2011

    BitLocker, Passware…heads in sand everywhere!

    Three times in the past three weeks. That's how many conversations I've had people who have blown off any sort of technical or operational weaknesses associated with Microsoft BitLocker when using it as an enterprise full disk encryption solution. They're well-documented. I highlighted these issues in my recent whitepaper The Hidden Costs of Microsoft BitLocker as well.I've said it before and I'll continue saying it: I've sung the praises of ...

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  • 07 Dec 2011

    Information security quote

    Don't expect short-term perfection in your security program. Instead, aim for incremental improvements over time. -KB...

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  • 07 Dec 2011

    Join me live online today with TechTarget & ISACA

    Today is our live virtual seminar Making the Case for the Cloud: The Next Steps. Join me, Urs Fischer, Dave Shackleford, Andrew Baer and Diana Kelley to hear about various aspects of cloud computing you may not have thought about.Starting at 11:15am ET, I'll be presenting on Incident Response in Cloud Computing. I'll talk about common incident response weaknesses I see in my work, questions you must ask your cloud ...

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  • 06 Dec 2011

    School staff members and porn – Why you should care

    Here's an interesting read on government employees trying to make an extra buck by serving up pornography on their high school-issued computers. What a lovely story.Don't think this kind of behavior is random. I've seen this very thing at the university level during a security assessment I did early on in my information security consulting venture.You see, one thing I do during my internal security assessments is connect a network ...

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  • 05 Dec 2011

    What happens when third-party patches are ignored

    The majority of people I speak with claim they have no means for patching third-party software. As Kelly Jackson Higgins mentions in her recent Dark Reading blog post regarding the rash of Java exploitations, when third-party software goes unmanaged, bad things can happen.It's great that Metasploit has a a module for Java exploitation - something that'll not only benefit me in my security assessments but will also help bring to ...

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