Entries Tagged as 'Security No-Brainer'
by Neil MacDonald | January 9, 2012 | 6 Comments
I called this a “security no brainer” years ago and the advice is absolutely still relevant today. In Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant for Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) solutions for clients, one of the evaluation criteria we looked at was whether or not the vulnerability knowledge of the DAST solution could be exported and used [...]
Category: Application Security Security Intelligence Tags: Application Security, application security testing tools, Best Practices, Security No-Brainer
by Neil MacDonald | October 11, 2011 | 1 Comment
Traditional data loss prevention has been focused on looking for signatures and patterns of sensitive data at rest within the organization and as it moves throughout the organization, including to destinations outside of the enterprise (the latter is where most organizations have started). <digress> You noticed I didn’t use the term “DLP”. That’s because I [...]
Category: Information Security Next-generation Security Infrastructure Security Intelligence Tags: Defense-in-Depth, Information Security, Next-generation Security Infrastructure, Security No-Brainer
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 [...]
Category: Beyond Anti-Virus Endpoint Protection Platform Microsoft Security Windows 7 Tags: Best Practices, Beyond Anti-Virus, Endpoint Protection Platform, Lockdown, Microsoft Security, Security No-Brainer, Windows
by Neil MacDonald | January 6, 2011 | Comments Off
In my previous post, I kicked off 2011 with a recommendation for improving your “security bang for the buck” or quick wins for information security in 2011 – increasing patching breadth and depth. Here’s a few more to consider in 2011: In a response to this post on the value (or lack thereof) of antivirus [...]
Category: Beyond Anti-Virus Cloud Security Endpoint Protection Platform Windows 7 Tags: Best Practices, Beyond Anti-Virus, Cloud Security, Endpoint Protection Platform, Information Security, Lockdown, Reducing Cost, Security No-Brainer, Windows
by Neil MacDonald | January 4, 2011 | Comments Off
I am back from the holidays and was responding to some comments on my previous blog post on antivirus technologies and the shift to endpoint protection platforms where one of the readers had recommended disabling autorun on removable media for a quick win for information security. There are several things in information security that we [...]
Category: Application Security Beyond Anti-Virus Endpoint Protection Platform Information Security Tags: Apple, Best Practices, Defense-in-Depth, Endpoint Protection Platform, Information Security, Security No-Brainer, Windows
by Neil MacDonald | April 1, 2010 | Comments Off
One of the constant recommendations in my research is to reduce your exposure to malware by running more users as standard user. I’ve talked about this issue here, here and here. There are several possible approaches to help here. Microsoft’s User Account Control in Windows Vista and Windows 7 is an approach, but suffers from [...]
Category: Endpoint Protection Platform Information Security Tags: Best Practices, Endpoint Protection Platform, Lockdown, Microsoft, Microsoft Security, Security No-Brainer, Windows
by Neil MacDonald | January 18, 2010 | 6 Comments
We’ve got a team of analysts working on a broader event research note that will be published shortly. What I wanted to discuss here is “so what do I do if my organization is using IE?”. Longer term, there are three key takeaways from the recent events: Lesson #1 – Run more users as standard [...]
Category: Application Security Endpoint Protection Platform Microsoft Security Tags: Best Practices, Beyond Anti-Virus, Defense-in-Depth, Endpoint Protection Platform, Microsoft, Microsoft Security, Security No-Brainer, Windows
by Neil MacDonald | January 14, 2010 | 6 Comments
I’ve written before about OWASP and the guidance they provide to organizations looking to improve application security. One of the best practices for improving application security is to ensure that any code we produce or procure is more secure right from the beginning. Many of the clients I talk with are highly focused on the [...]
Category: Application Security Information Security Tags: Application Security, Best Practices, Information Security, Security No-Brainer
by Neil MacDonald | August 19, 2009 | 27 Comments
If a web application security testing tool tells me I have a vulnerability in an application, what do I do? “Fix it” is the right answer, but not always so easy if my development organization is backlogged or, worse, I don’t have access to the source code. Another answer is to shield the application from [...]
Category: Application Security Next-generation Security Infrastructure Tags: Application Security, application security testing tools, Security No-Brainer
by Neil MacDonald | August 13, 2009 | 3 Comments
Mostly for legacy reasons, many of us continue to run users with administrative privileges on their Windows workstations. Running as standard user reduces exposure to malware by preventing users from updating protected parts of the file system and registry or accessing sensitive Windows operations. An analysis by BeyondTrust showed that 92% of the critical Windows [...]
Category: Beyond Anti-Virus Endpoint Protection Platform Tags: Beyond Anti-Virus, Microsoft, Microsoft Security, Security No-Brainer
