I have been part of 5 different startups, not including my own, over the last 15 years. Every one of them has sold, or attempted to sell, enterprise software. So it is not surprising that when I provide security advice, by default it is geared toward an enterprise audience. And oddly, when it comes to security, large enterprises are a little further ahead of the curve. They have more resources and people dedicated to the subject than small and medium sized businesses, and their coverage is much…
Now that we’ve described the Pragmatic Data Security Cycle, it’s time to dig into the phases. As we roll through each of these I’m going to break it into three parts: the process, the technologies, and a case study. For the case study we’re going to follow a fictional organization through the entire process. Instead of showing you every single data protection option at each phase, we’ll focus on a narrow project that better represents what you will likely experience.
Good Morning:
Maybe it’s the hard-wired pessimist in me, but I never thought I’d live a long life. I know that’s kind of weird to think about, but with my family history of health badness (lots of the Big C), I didn’t give myself much of a chance.
After writing up the Advanced Persistent Threat in this week’s FireStarter, a few people started asking for suggestions on managing the problem.
There’s been a lot of talk on the Interwebs recently about the whole Google/China thing. While there are a few bright spots (like anything from the keyboard of Richard Bejtlich), most of it’s pretty bad.
To wrap up my low hanging fruit series (I believe Rich and Adrian will be doing their own takes), let’s talk about security management. Yes, there were lots of components of each in the previous LHF posts (network security & endpoint security) that had “management” components, but now let’s talk about the discipline of management, not necessarily the tools.
Now, all of that said, the world isn’t coming to an end. Just because we can’t eliminate a threat doesn’t mean we can’t contain it. The following strategies aren’t specific to any point technology, but can help reduce the impact when your organization is targeted:
Back when I was the resident security management expert over at TechTarget (a position since occupied by Mort), it was amazing how many questions I got about the value of certifications. Mort confirms nothing has changed.
One of the most common criticisms of analysts is that, since they are no longer practitioners, they lose their technical skills and even sometimes their ability to understand technology.
Getting back to the Low Hanging Fruit series, let’s take a look at the endpoint and see what kinds of stuff we can do to increase security with a minimum of pain and (hopefully) minor expense. To be sure we are consistent from a semantic standpoint, I’m generally considering computing devices used by end users as “endpoints.” They come in desktop and laptop varieties and run some variant of Windows. If we had all Mac endpoints, I’d have a lot less to do, eh?