“What do you mean the backups don’t work? I thought you said backups would save us from a Ransomware incident?” Good backups are the #1 recommendation you will see in all “Ransomware Defence” guides. We have a problem in the industry. These “ransomware guides” are written by people who have never lived through a major Read More
Category: Security, Resiliency, and Scaling
US Warns Ransomware Threats during Holidays – Whoops! Too Late
If you are reading about potential ransomware threats during the holidays, just know it is too late. By the time you get a call waking you up on a labor day holiday break, it would be too late to stop the ransomware threat. People forget that ransomware is the monetization network break-in. The THREAT is Read More
“Security” is always an afterthought in the C-suite
Get around “security is an afterthought” by rethinking security as part of the business resiliency architecture. Read More
BGP Security Workshop – Safeguarding the Internet’s Glue
BGP and DNS are the two critical protocols that glue the entire global network (the Internet). Without them, the Internet falls apart. The security, resiliency, and integrity Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) holds up the routing of packets end-to-end across the Internet. Threats to BGP systems are life-threatening, disrupting critical infrastructure people depend on for their
Executive Security Leadership – It is Not Hard!
Security Leadership is not hard. CxOs stress over the security threats to their business. A lot of that stress is generated by the press. Common sense Executive practices and leadership principles have guided organizations through extreme security-related business pressures. What guides the organization is obvious, clear the path for the team, trust the team, pull
Open SMTP (Email) Servers on Your Network
Do you know if you have open SMTP servers on your network? In May, Qualys released 21 vulnerabilities to Exim (see Qualys Security Advisory 21Nails: Multiple vulnerabilities in Exim). Exim is a popular Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) available on Unix operating systems and comes pre-installed on Linux distributions. The easy access and wide SMTP/Exim MTAs use Read More
Meaningful Security Conversations with your Vendors: Can vendors ever provide secure solutions?
It is critical to have meaningful security conversations with your vendors. Operators depend on their vendors to supply products and solutions that are secure. As all operators have experienced, “secure products” is almost always a vendor afterthought. This leads to an operational risk that in some cases turns deadly. In this session, we will explore
Protecting your Domain Names: Taking the First Steps
Protecting your domain names is often overlooked, ignored, and neglected. Everyone and everything on the Internet depends on the Domain Name System (DNS) being functional. The DNS has been a common vector for attacks in recent years. Attacking DNS will continue in the future. The 2019 DNSpionage Campaign and Sea Turtle attacks were wake calls
DNS is Under Attack – the Miscreant’s Offensive Playbook with a Defensive Counter
Our DNS is Under Attack is not something anyone wants to hear. DNS’s critical role known to the miscreants, DDoS Extortionist, DDoS Attackers, and other threat attackers. Taking out DNS is easier than trying to take down a website. Smart miscreants have a playbook of offensive DNS attack techniques that they can use against any
Realities of Today’s DDoS Security Risk
Focusing on the lessons from the 2020 – 2021 DDoS Extortion Campaigns DDoS Extortion will not go away. It is a cyclical International crime that can only be stopped with the DDoS Extortionist are arrested. In 2020, organizations woke up to a new wave of DDoS Extortion activities. These attacks caught organizations with the DDoS