Change Management 101

Managing Change (and releases)

This is an area that I think some might be interested in. I have worked with orgs of all shapes and sizes and one central area I find people struggle with is change management. I am not talking about organisational change management (that is another) but I am talking about the change of information systems or security controls.

Now you might be familiar with ITILv3/2011 and the PROCESS of change management or you might be in the new practise world of ITIL4 where it is called change enablement, or you might have no idea what I am rabbiting on about. That is ok that is why we are here!

The purpose of change management is (according to ITIL) to help minimise the risk of change for IT services.

Defense

Routine Security Governance and Management Activities you should plan…

Security Planning 101

I have been thinking about how organisations manage (or do not manage) their security postures from both a governance and management point of view. To help organisations that are just starting on their security improvement journey I thought I have put together a list of activities they may want to have in a forward schedule document (you could even call it a roadmap). It is not going to be all things to all people and different organisations and markets will have different requirements.

Defense

New Year , New You! Securing Active Directory

By default, a ‘domain user’ can read mostly everything in active directory. I’m not sure every sysadmin knows this as I often find passwords stored in the description filed (see the example screenshot, this was from a domain user with no third-party tools leveraged). Read more “New Year , New You! Securing Active Directory” →

Defense

Things to try & keep an environment safe

I chose these words on purpose, I don’t think keeping environments secure and working is easy. I don’t think anyone has all the answers, even with massive budgets large organisations fail to keep their data and systems secure. But I do know that by doing these activities we can massively change the game when compared to the security posture of an organisation compared to organisations that don’t do this! So, I thought I’d share some of the things I do to try and keep on top of environments cyber heigine. But to start let’s think about the kind of questions are we looking to answer:

Defense

Internet Presence Technology and Security Management

Living on the internet in the digital age

I have watched enough technology deployments occur over the last 20 years to have learnt a thing or two. One constant I find is the perception that deploying and technology in a business environment is ‘simple and easy’. However, history and experience teach us that this simply isn’t the case. Whilst working on a project recently I thought I would try and show this in terms of looking at foundational technology and security management capabilities regarding internet presence. In this post I’m going to outline a look at foundational capabilities for Domain Registrar, DNS and internet preens management. Read more “Internet Presence Technology and Security Management” →

Defense

Active Directory Security: Securing the crown jewels with PingCastle…

Securing the crown jewels

At the heart of most organisations are a Windows server active directory domain (or multiple of these), yet one of the most common findings when we review organisations security postures are there are significant weaknesses in their active directory deployments, both from an architectural, operational and security perspectives.

Active directory provides a range of functionality to organisations, from authentication, authorisation as well as supporting services such as printer and share listing, DNS, people/information lookups and integration for 3^rd party services. It’s the very hub that links most modern networked systems together and now it’s expanded beyond the corporate walls into the cloud with integration into Azure Directory Services as part of Azure or Office 365.

Essentially Active Directory can be considered a castle whereby crown jewels are held! This may be in the form of credentials/identity or by nature of granting access to business systems that hold sensitive data (such as using AD integration to log into an HR or Finance system). Read more “Active Directory Security: Securing the crown jewels with PingCastle 2.8.0.0” →

CTF

Try Hack Me: Part 5 – Game Zone

Getting my agent on!

Today we look at a vulnerable web application room based upon the Hitman series!

https://tryhackme.com/room/gamezone

This is a fun room where we see an old but common vulnerability in untrusted user input lead to sensitive information disclosure (hashed credentials) which results in a threat actor gaining initial access. From here we then discover there is a weak security configuration (in effective network segmentation) and a vulnerable unpatched service. This chain leads to total system compromise. Read more “Try Hack Me: Part 5 – Game Zone” →

Threat Intel

Welcome to Threat Week!

Welcome to the first instalment of threat week, the concept of threat week is to provide regular updates on threats, vulnerabilities, security news to provide you with a service that cuts through the noise and enables you to improve the security of your organisation.

To give people an idea of the content we will be producing we’ve published the following below. The concept is to tailor the content to your specific organisation as we’ve been doing with our customers. To start this process, after your subscribe one of the team will be in touch to discuss your specific requirements.

Vulnerabilities

Vmware releases patches for ESXi, Fusion and Workstation to remove data leakage vulnerabilities!

https://www.vmware.com/uk/security/advisories/VMSA-2018-0016.html

Hackers are targeting CISCO CVE-2018-0296

https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20180606-asaftd

Threat Trends

Threat Trend – Ransomware declines whilst Crypto mining malware becomes king of the hill for attackers

http://www.newsweek.com/crypto-mining-malware-outbreak-infected-500000-computers-single-day-836145

Security News

Ticketmaster breach – Most of you will be aware that Ticketmaster was involved in a cyber incident. The NCSC has published guidance for customers who suspect their account have been compromised.

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/ncsc-advice-ticketmaster-customers

Read more “Welcome to Threat Week!” →