Author: Terry Kurzynski, ISO 27001 Auditor, CISSP, CISA, PCI QSA As we rang in the New Year, the transition year for PCI v3.0 compliance came to a close. All businesses are now required to be compliant with version three of the PCI Data Security Standard (DSS). But did you know that a handful of the requirements […]
Author: Terry Kurzynski, ISO 27001 Auditor, CISSP, CISA, PCI QSA The information security community is abuzz with the news of Code Spaces closing its doors after having all of its client’s data erased by an attacker who gained access to their environment. Code Spaces offered their clients a “code repository” service – think Subversion-as-a-Service – and […]
The Target® Breach in November 2013 lives infamously in our memories and has served as a pivot point for all businesses with regard to third party vendor management (TPRM). After all, who could have imagined that the giant retailer would have been breached through a seemingly insignificant third party that didn’t seem to have direct […]
Last month the IP Commission Report was published by The National Bureau of Asian Research. This report chronicles the theft of American Intellectual Property and is a great read. The world of InfoSec tends to focus on vulnerabilities and infamous hacks.
Social engineering is the art of manipulating people into performing actions or exposing confidential information in order to gather information for fraudulent purposes or gain unlawful access to computer systems – this deals with data and assets of a dead person and the struggle ‘over my dead body.’
Perfect security is not possible, feasible nor required by law. In fact, information security laws and regulations require that we provide “reasonable and appropriate” security through a well-defined risk management process. Without a risk-based approach, organizations attempt to address information security requirements by either attempting to comply with a long list of security controls, or […]
Log and Security Event Information Management (SEIM) are two of the 20 Controls that SANS lists for network security. They are also some of the more controversial ones. Logs are very much like digital fingerprints for one’s network and applications. It has great value for both noticing exploits (visibility) and forensically investigating those which have already […]
Network Chatter from China Imagine one hundred container ships full of the most valuable U.S. assets heading to China every day. Diamonds, gold, oil, John Deere Tractors, priceless artwork, Chevy Corvettes, life-saving artificial hearts, books from our historic libraries, soybeans, the latest Intel® processors, Redwood trees, the genuine Constitution of the United States of America, […]
Just this month, HALOCK saw its first incident of a high school that fell victim to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. Existing internet users inside the school could continue to work, but the outbound internet pipe became so clogged that no new browser sessions could be opened, impacting productivity of students and staff […]
HALOCK Investigates. An all-too-common cyber-crime today is spoofing, which is the practice of deceiving people into believing an email or website originates from a source that it does not. In a recent case we are investigating, the perpetrator substituted a number in the URL to mimic the actual URL with the hopes that the recipient wouldn’t notice […]