DOJ Best Practices for Breach Response

Posted on July 14, 2015 by Brent Huston

I stumbled on this great release from the US Department of Justice – a best practices guide to breach response.

Reading it is rather reminiscent of much of what we said in the 80/20 Rule of Information Security years ago. Namely, know your own environment, data flows, trusts and what data matters. Combine that with having a plan, beforehand, and some practice – and you at least get some decent insights into what your team needs and is capable of handling. Knowing those boundaries and when to ask for outside help will take you a long way.

I would also suggest you give our State of Security Podcast a listen. Episode 6, in particular, includes a great conversation about handling major breaches and the long term impacts on teams, careers and lives.

As always, if we can assist you in preparing a breach response process, good policies, performing those network mappings or running table top exercises (or deeper technical red team exercises), let us know. We help companies around the world master these skills and we have plenty of insights we would love to share!

State Of Security Podcast Episode 6

Posted on June 30, 2015 by Brent Huston

The 6th episode of the State Of Security podcast is now available.

This time around, we get one of the most personal episodes yet – a behind the curtain look of what it is like to manage the incident response team in a highly publicized breach, under strict regulation, for 6+ months. The insights here and examinations of the personal and professional impacts are profound. We also close this episode with our new “shorts” segment – this time with an insight from @sempf. Thanks for listening, and as always, let us know what you think on Twitter – @microsolved or @lbhuston. Stay safe out there!

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or via Podbean. You can also listen below.

Join Our Family: MSI Seeks Modern Sales Champion

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Brent Huston

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Do you love social media, blogging, podcasts and digital conversations? Are you an engaging story teller with a talent for clear and concise communication? Can you think on your feet, quickly build rapport and possess a huge sense of curiosity? Do you want to work with friends, in a self-managing, largely autonomous role where you can do come very cool stuff while being treated like a responsible adult? If you answered “YES!” to ALL of these questions, then you just might be the person we are looking for…

MSI is seeking a powerful new client Champion to help us grow. This person will be responsible for using content marketing, digital media and modern sales techniques to help us reach new customers. They will also spend part of their time helping our existing clients identify new opportunities to work with MSI or new problems that MSI can work together with them to solve. Our clients are amazing people with very interesting businesses around the world, so we need a truly incredible person to assist them. If you are interested in building incredible relationships that last decades, then MSI might just be the place for you.

We are seeking local, Central Ohio team members for this position. Some of the day to day focus will be the local market, so we are looking for local candidates with easy access to Columbus.

Want to learn more about the opportunity to join us? Drop us a line at info@microsolved.com or via Twitter (@lbhuston) and let us know what makes you a Champion!

State of Security Podcast Episode 5 Available

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Brent Huston

This is one of my favorite episodes so far! I spend about 45 minutes with Josh Anderson, who riffs on IT and ICS/SCADA security threats, career advice, how he compares his life to characters on TV’s “24” and a whole lot more. Very relaxed, generous in time and content, this interview with one of America’s Premier ICS Security Gurus (I just gave him that title…) is fun and lively.

Special shout out to Kent King for his mentorship in this episode, as well.

Let us know what you think Twitter. Thanks for listening!

Involved in M&A Activity? MSI has a full M&A Practice

Posted on May 21, 2015 by Brent Huston

MSI’s specialized offerings around Mergers & Acquisitions are designed to augment other business practices that are common in this phase of business. In addition to general security consulting and intelligence about a company from a “hacker’s eye view”, we also offer deeply integrated, methodology-driven processes around:

Pre-negotiation intelligence

This offering is designed to help the purchasing organization do recon on their prospect for purchase. Leveraging techniques like passive assessment, restricted individual tracing, supply chain analysis, key stakeholder profiling and history of compromise research, the potential purchasing company can get deep insights into the security posture and intellectual property integrity of the company they are considering for acquisition. All of this can be done passively and prior to a purchasing approach or offer. Insights from this service can be a useful tool in assessing approach and potential valuation.

Pre-integration assessments

Once the ink on the paperwork is dry, the organizations have to learn to live and work together. One of the most critical links, is the joining of the two IT infrastructures. In this service, our experts can perform assessments to analyze the new company’s security posture against the baseline standards of the purchasing organization. A gap analysis and road map for compliance can be provided, and if desired, MSI can serve as oversight for ensuring that the mitigations are completed as a condition for network interconnection and integration. Our team has performed these services across a variety of M&A completions, including multi-national and global Fortune 500 organizations.

Post-purchase threat intelligence

MSI can also create mechanisms post-purchase to identify and respond to potential threats from inside the newly acquired organization. Our counter-intelligence and operational security techniques can help organizations identify potential internal bad actors or disgruntled new employees that could be seeking to damage the acquirer. We have created these solutions across a myriad of verticals and are quite capable of working in international and other highly complex environments.

To learn more about these specific offerings, click on the links above. To discuss these offerings in more detail, please contact your account executive for a free consultation.

Plus, we also just added some new capabilities for asset discovery, network mapping and traffic baselining. Check this out for some amazing new ways we can help you!

Operation Hardened Buckeye

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Brent Huston

MSI is pleased to announce the immediate formation and availability of Operation Hardened Buckeye!

This special program is dedicated to assisting Ohio’s Rural Electrical Cooperatives.

MSI will set up aggregated groups of Electrical Cooperatives and perform services and offer tools to the groups en-masse at discounted rates, as if they were one large company. Essentially, this allows the co-ops to leverage group buying, while still receiving individual reports, software licenses and overall group-level intelligence & metrics.

MSI will offer a package consisting of the following:

External Vulnerability Assessment with aggregated executive level reports/metrics & individual technical detail reports
An aggregated Targeted Threat Intelligence engagement with individual notifications of critical findings and an aggregated intelligence report for the group
3 HoneyPoint Agent licenses and a console license per co-op that participates
Deep discounts to individual co-ops who desire application assessment, internal vulnerability assessments, wireless assessments or other MSI professional services (including MSI::Vigilance & ICS Network Segregation Services)
Deep discounts for ongoing assessments and targeted threat intelligence as a service

Caveats: All assessments will be performed at the same time. Co-ops must each sign onto a common MSA. Each co-op will be billed for the total of the package divided by the number of participating co-ops. Co-ops must provide accurate IP address ranges for their external assessment.

This enables the co-ops to have a security baseline of their security posture performed, including aligning their current status against that of their peers. It also allows for each of the co-ops to deploy a HoneyPoint Agent in their DMZ, business network and control network for detection capabilities. The targeted threat intelligence will provide them with an overall threat assessment, as well as identifying individual targets that have either already been attacked or are likely to provide easy/attention raising targets for future attacks.

We will be holding a webinar for those interested in participating on Thursday, May 21, 2015. You can register for this event here. You can also download the flyer about the program here.

For more information, please contact Allan Bergen via the email below or call (513) 300-0194 today!

Email: sales@microsolved.com

State Of Security Podcast Episode 4

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Brent Huston

We are proud to announce the release of State Of Security, the podcast, Episode 4. This time around I am hosting John Davis, who riffs on policy development for modern users, crowdsourcing policy and process management, rational risk assessment and a bit of history.

Give it a listen and let us know what you think!

Thanks for supporting the podcast!

Patch for MS15-034 RIGHT NOW!

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Brent Huston

If you have exposed IIS servers or internal ones as well, pay attention to MS15-034.

Accelerate this patch to immediate. Don’t wait for patching windows, SLAs or maintenance periods. Test the patch, sure, but get it applied ASAP.

This is a remotely executable vulnerability without authentication. It affects a wide range of Windows systems. It offers trivial denial of service exploitation and the bad guys are hard at work building click and drool tools for remote code execution. The clock is ticking, so please, accelerate this patch if possible.

For any additional information or assistance, please contact your account executive or drop us a line via info@microsolved.com.

Thanks and stay safe out there!

MSI Launches TigerTrax Network Discovery, Mapping & Analysis Service

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Brent Huston

We are proud to announce the immediate availability of an entirely new service offering in our security tool kit, made possible by TigerTrax™.

This service offering leverages the power of MSI’s proprietary TigerTrax analytics platform to parse, correlate and visualize the configurations (and packet logs (if desired)) from the routers, switches and firewalls of your network “en masse”.

Our security and analytics teams then create detailed maps of the network as seen from the eyes of the machines, document the various network segments and their relationships, build a hierarchy of powerful machines and segments, identify hardening techniques that could help your organization better secure your network and provide insights into the gap between your organization’s “common wisdom” versus the real environment.

We can even teach “Close The Gap” sessions to help re-align your team’s “common wisdom” with “machine truth” and to help socialize the new knowledge to other groups.

How it works:

The client delivers the configuration and log files as needed for the service. MSI can assist with this step, if needed, at an additional hourly consulting fee.
The offering uses TigerTrax to perform automated analysis of the configuration and log files as needed – holistically, systemically and “en masse”.
Various data points are delivered to the analysts and security team who then create the documentation, maps and reports. Visualized data is also generated using the TigerTrax platform where appropriate.
Any professional services, such as interviews/questionnaires, gap analysis and training are provided by MSI team members using our proprietary delivery methodologies.
Completely passive, offline analysis is perfect for critical networks.

Three different levels of service are available, as is single – one time engagements (perfect for M&A activities, and new IT management) or ongoing subscriptions that allow organizations to track changes and maintain knowledge over time. The highest level of service also includes 30 days worth of packet analytics to identify overtly compromised hosts and to determine “normal operating conditions”, which is often quite useful for incident response activities in the future.

Give is a call today at (614) 351-1237 or email us at info@microsolved.com to start a conversation about how we can help you know the truth about your network!

State Of Security Podcast Episode 3 is Now Available

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Brent Huston

Episode 3 of the podcast is now available!

In this edition, I sit down with Bill @Sempf to discuss application security, working with development teams and how to get security and dev folks on the same page. Bill goes so far as to recommend a simple 2 step process that you simply have to hear!

Check it out:

And give us feedback on Twitter (@lbhuston) about this and all other episodes or ideas you have about what you would like us to cover. Thanks for listening!

MSI :: State of Security

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