We (the Internet) are about 48 hours into the active response of the OpenSSL HeartBleed vulnerability (CVE-2014-0160). While there has been a lot of news on the topic and a few limited discussions on dealing with the threat, only a handful of articles are approaching the discussion on how to prioritize the threat posed by… Read more »

We are almost to the end of another year, and it has been a busy one for us here at DirectDefense.  In addition to performing our normal engagements, such as performing network and application penetration tests, we have also enjoyed a lot of positive feedback from our presentation series – Catch me if you Can. During… Read more »

From time to time, application developers implement strong security controls. A “strong control” might not capture exactly what we will be talking about today, but it does pose a huge problem for most application scanners. We have all seen a wide usage of one-time tokens in applications (aka nonce values) that are used to deter… Read more »

So the topic of your password policy is still weak is nothing new. Just doing a quick search for the phrase “your password policy is stupid” or “your password policy sucks” will result in numerous presentations and articles on the subject. While each of these articles and presentations have their merits, they all seem to… Read more »

Hi There – First, apologies for the lack of updates as of late. We have been swamped, but I saw this news article last week about the new FDA recommendations for Cybersecurity for Medical Devices and Hospital Networks, and could not let this go. If you read my last blog entry – Top Five Security Threats to… Read more »

Last month a new omnibus HIPAA privacy and security rule was released that increased the number of items to be audited as well as the potential penalties if compliance is not adhered to. You can read the new rules here – http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2013pres/01/20130117b.html What is interesting to note is while the requirements or things to audit for… Read more »

So like many, it is that time of year to look back on the year’s events and reflect on things, while looking forward to the coming new year. What is interesting in our industry is the fact this is the time of year that everyone does their “Top 5,10,15, 20” events/gadgets/moments blogs/news articles about security… Read more »

So I was approached by several friends in the managed services and security operations services fields, last year, with questions about discovering an attacker that is already inside a corporate network. Specifically, both had recently had clients go through internal penetration tests and only had limited success in identifying the hacking attempts. After talking with… Read more »

For those of you that know me, or have heard me speak before at an event, you know then how I like to tell stories to relay messages. One of the stories that I often tell is one about a client that I like to call my Model Client. The story dates back a good ten… Read more »

So in Part 1, we covered solutions for preventing hacking attempts, as they are considered one of the top two reasons for successful security breaches.  In this article, we will cover some common sense approaches to preventing and identifying malware breaches.  The Problem: So one of the questions we pose to our audience in our… Read more »