Neil MacDonald

A member of the Gartner Blog Network

Entries Categorized as 'Beyond Anti-Virus'


Intrusion Prevention Systems? We Need Intrusion Resilient Systems

by Neil MacDonald  |  February 3, 2012  |  1 Comment

I’ve blogged before about advanced threats that easily bypass our traditional protection mechanisms and reside undetected for extended periods of time on our systems. On one of the panels I moderated on APTs, Dave Merkel from Mandiant put it best. “You are compromised, get over it”. Others in the US Government have come to the [...]

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Category: Application Security Beyond Anti-Virus Cloud Cloud Security Next-generation Security Infrastructure Security Intelligence     Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

US Symposium Summary from a Security Perspective

by Neil MacDonald  |  October 24, 2011  |  1 Comment

Last week I attended Gartner’s US Symposium conference in Orlando. With 8,000+ attendees (25% of which were CIOs) and at least 1,000 more analysts, vendors and support staff, you can imagine it was quite a scene. In addition to three presentations, I had more than 30 fantastic one on ones with attendees over the four [...]

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Category: Application Security Beyond Anti-Virus Cloud Cloud Security Information Security Microsoft Security Next-generation Security Infrastructure Virtualization Virtualization Security     Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Does Protecting Desktops Require a Different Vendor/Product than Protecting Servers?

by Neil MacDonald  |  September 29, 2011  |  2 Comments

I’ve made it a point over the past 6 months to ask clients if they are combining their endpoint protection platform contracts across desktops, laptops and servers. In most cases (about 75%), the answer is yes – contracts are being combined in order to reduce complexity and costs. Is protecting a desktop different than a [...]

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Category: Beyond Anti-Virus Endpoint Protection Platform Next-generation Security Infrastructure     Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Windows 8 Raises the Bar for Security

by Neil MacDonald  |  September 28, 2011  |  1 Comment

I’ve been out the past two weeks visiting with clients and have been meaning to summarize my impression of the upcoming Windows 8 (expected mid 2012) from a security point of view. I attended Microsoft’s recent BUILD conference for developers where Windows 8 made its first official appearance. You can see my real-time tweets and [...]

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Category: Beyond Anti-Virus Information Security Microsoft Security Windows 7     Tags: , , , , , , ,

The Single Most Important Way to Improve Endpoint Security

by Neil MacDonald  |  August 23, 2011  |  2 Comments

Run more of your Windows users without administrator rights. I’ve talked about this several times before – including here, here and here. While it may not be feasible to remove administrator rights from all users, it is an absolutely achievable goal to continue to improve the percentage of Windows users running without administrator rights year [...]

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Category: Beyond Anti-Virus Endpoint Protection Platform Microsoft Security Windows 7     Tags: , , , , , ,

Full Drive Encryption is not just for Laptops

by Neil MacDonald  |  August 22, 2011  |  3 Comments

I’ve had two discussions with clients today already on the role of full drive encryption ( FDE technologies such as Microsoft’s BitLocker, McAfee Total Protection, Sophos/Utimaco, Symantec PGP, Check Point, Trend/Mobile Armor etc) for fixed desktops. Full drive encryption should be considered mandatory for laptops and most organizations have implemented this – either with Windows [...]

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Category: Beyond Anti-Virus Endpoint Protection Platform Information Security Windows 7     Tags: , , , ,

Sand Castles and Advanced Persistent Threats

by Neil MacDonald  |  July 11, 2011  |  Comments Off

I’ve been absent from blogging for 2 weeks – first we had the Gartner Information Security Summit in DC and then I took some time off for a much-needed vacation. We spent some time at Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. They’ve got a pretty amazing flat beach where the difference between high tide and [...]

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Category: Beyond Anti-Virus Information Security Next-generation Security Infrastructure     Tags: , , , , , ,

Don’t Trust Your Servers

by Neil MacDonald  |  June 17, 2011  |  3 Comments

One of the toughest problems in information security is addressing advanced intrusions that have bypassed traditional security controls and now reside undetected on enterprise systems. With financially motivated attacks and state-sponsored “advanced persistent threats” both on the rise, intrusions can remain undetectable for extended periods of time. We have reached a point where our systems [...]

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Category: Beyond Anti-Virus Next-generation Security Infrastructure Virtualization Virtualization Security     Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Improving Security by Killing Server and Desktop Workloads

by Neil MacDonald  |  June 16, 2011  |  Comments Off

It sounds counterintuitive, but today’s advanced threat environment requires new approaches to the ongoing security and management of server and desktop workloads. The trouble with Advanced Persistent Threats is that, by definition, they have evaded our traditional network and endpoint security controls and now reside undetected in our IT Systems. How many advanced intrusions will [...]

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Category: Beyond Anti-Virus Next-generation Security Infrastructure Virtualization Virtualization Security     Tags: , , , , , , ,

IT Operations and Security Convergence? Not Really.

by Neil MacDonald  |  May 17, 2011  |  1 Comment

I’m having lots of discussions with clients on Microsoft’s new Forefront Endpoint Protection offering that was released in December of 2010. In addition to recent licensing changes, the biggest change over the pervious release (formerly called Forefront Client Security) is the change out of the management, policy and reporting infrastructure underneath to be based on [...]

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Category: Beyond Anti-Virus Endpoint Protection Platform Information Security     Tags: , , , , , , ,