Defense
This is not meant to be an essay, but simply a rapid-fire view of things that I see that are major challenges with digital security in today’s age. So, without any further delay let us hit it:
Read more “5 Major Challenges with Business Digital Security”
Defense
I have been thinking about how organisations manage (or do not manage) their security postures from both a governance and management point of view. To help organisations that are just starting on their security improvement journey I thought I have put together a list of activities they may want to have in a forward schedule document (you could even call it a roadmap). It is not going to be all things to all people and different organisations and markets will have different requirements.
Read more “Routine Security Governance and Management Activities you should plan for”
Defense
I chose these words on purpose, I don’t think keeping environments secure and working is easy. I don’t think anyone has all the answers, even with massive budgets large organisations fail to keep their data and systems secure. But I do know that by doing these activities we can massively change the game when compared to the security posture of an organisation compared to organisations that don’t do this! So, I thought I’d share some of the things I do to try and keep on top of environments cyber heigine. But to start let’s think about the kind of questions are we looking to answer:
Read more “Things to try & keep an environment safe”
Defense
I’ve worked with hundreds of companies over the years and one area I consistently see them struggle with is incident response drills. Sure I see some board level table top simulations but nothing says i’m ready more than practising actual responses.
In table tops people mainly assume the log files exist, they assume the resources are there, they assume the best. I’m not a pessimist but I assume breach and assume things will go wrong (even with preperation).
So to help people I put together an Incident Response planning toolkit workbook. This excel document is a rough guide of different types of incidents and different horror levels (there’s a cool D00M flavoured easter egg in there too). Now one thing, you will need to tailor this. BEC for example can be very simple to repel and remediate, however the cost and impact of BEC can be huge (even if it’s a single mailbox) so take the numbers in here with a pinch of salt and tailor it to suit your needs.
Failing to plan for a cyber incident both large or small is a sure fire way to ensure you are planning to fail! So with this in mind we thought we’d share a quick workbook to try and kick start your mind into NOT planning to fail!
Read more “Cyber Incident Response – Have you planned to fail?”
Defense
I have watched enough technology deployments occur over the last 20 years to have learnt a thing or two. One constant I find is the perception that deploying and technology in a business environment is ‘simple and easy’. However, history and experience teach us that this simply isn’t the case. Whilst working on a project recently I thought I would try and show this in terms of looking at foundational technology and security management capabilities regarding internet presence. In this post I’m going to outline a look at foundational capabilities for Domain Registrar, DNS and internet preens management. Read more “Internet Presence Technology and Security Management”
Defense
At the heart of most organisations are a Windows server active directory domain (or multiple of these), yet one of the most common findings when we review organisations security postures are there are significant weaknesses in their active directory deployments, both from an architectural, operational and security perspectives.
Active directory provides a range of functionality to organisations, from authentication, authorisation as well as supporting services such as printer and share listing, DNS, people/information lookups and integration for 3rd party services. It’s the very hub that links most modern networked systems together and now it’s expanded beyond the corporate walls into the cloud with integration into Azure Directory Services as part of Azure or Office 365.
Essentially Active Directory can be considered a castle whereby crown jewels are held! This may be in the form of credentials/identity or by nature of granting access to business systems that hold sensitive data (such as using AD integration to log into an HR or Finance system). Read more “Active Directory Security: Securing the crown jewels with PingCastle 2.8.0.0”
CTF
Today we look at a vulnerable web application room based upon the Hitman series!
https://tryhackme.com/room/gamezone
This is a fun room where we see an old but common vulnerability in untrusted user input lead to sensitive information disclosure (hashed credentials) which results in a threat actor gaining initial access. From here we then discover there is a weak security configuration (in effective network segmentation) and a vulnerable unpatched service. This chain leads to total system compromise. Read more “Try Hack Me: Part 5 – Game Zone”