What Comes After the FireEye Attack
By now it’s common knowledge that FireEye has disclosed they were the victims of an attack by a nation-state seeking government information. If you aren’t aware of the particulars of this attack, I strongly encourage you to take a few minutes and read the blog posted by the FireEye team. It includes details about the attack and what was compromised, as well as how the company plans to address the situation.
In the next few days, we will face a barrage of messages from vendors seeking to re…
South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) Compliance
Following in the footsteps of GDPR, CCPA, and LGPD, South Africa’s data privacy law, Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), took effect on July 1st, 2020, with an effective date for enforcement of July 1st, 2021. What this means is that affected organizations have a year to prepare and should take advantage of the grace period to stay ahead of requirements.
POPIA is modeled after the EU’s GDPR, as many recent data privacy laws and frameworks have been. By doing so POPIA grants use…
How to Create and Mount NFS Exports on CentOS Linux
NFS, the Network File System, is a common method for sharing files over a network from a Unix host. In this blog, we’ll go over how to create NFS exports (i.e., shares) on a CentOS 8 host, as well as how to mount those exports from a Linux client.
NFS exports are supported on most Linux distributions, although the specific required packages may differ per your distro (e.g., CentOS/RHEL, Ubuntu, etc.). However, the overall workflow and methodology will be the same.
To start, you need a L…
Malware’s Growth During the COVID-19 Pandemic
If recent years have taught us anything about the intent of threat actors, it’s that no victim or circumstance is off limit when there’s a profit to be made. Throughout the year attackers have used COVID-19 to take advantage of victims’ fears of the virus, exploited new attack surfaces resulting from the increase in remote work, and even attempted to steal vaccine research.
Earlier this year, it was reported that the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has seen reports in cybercrim…
Authentication, Authorization, Single Sign-On, & Federated Identity Explained
Identity and access management (IAM) is a major part of day-to-day enterprise workflows, and with that often comes confusion around authentication, authorization, single sign-on, and federated identity. Let’s break each down in simple terms, which also apply to consumer workflows in addition professional environments.
Authentication (AuthN) vs. Authorization (AuthZ)
Authentication is confirming a user is who they say they are, when logging-in to an account, service, website, application…
What Active Directory Groups Am I In?
It’s often helpful to know which Active Directory groups your current user is a member of when joined to a domain. That information is typically easy to obtain, however you need to know where to look.
For many, having a graphical UI is helpful for any task. While this isn’t the quickest way to locate your AD group membership, it’s the best way if you want to avoid the command line (i.e. PowerShell or Command Prompt).
Let’s discuss several methods to achieve our goal, including via the U…
What is the Difference Between an O365 E5 and an E3 License with Respect to Security Features?
Microsoft’s licensing can be a little confusing when it comes to figuring out exactly how many E5/E3 licenses you will need to actually leverage the security features associated with a given license. This blog is written with the assumption that you know what features you are interested in buying and/or at have a basic understanding of the O365 E3/E5 license suites security features.
One of the main reasons I looked into this in the first place was to figure out how features which require …
PostgreSQL Server Security Primer
PostgreSQL or simply referred to as Postgres has had a very colorful history. It began in 1986 as a POSTGRES project led by Professor Michael Stonebraker, which was sponsored by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Army Research Office (ARO), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and ESL, Inc. Postgres95 was released in 1994 for general use on the web which included support for SQL language interpretation. In 1996, Postgres95 was officially renamed t…
Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados Pessoais (LGPD Compliance) – What You Need to Know About Brazil’s National Data Privacy Regulation
It can be difficult to keep up with all the data privacy regulations across the globe, and failure to comply can result in heavy fines and other punishments. This growth of global data privacy laws represents major progress for consumer rights and gives organizations who comply a chance to earn trust from their customers.
This brings us to the most recent major data privacy law to go into effect – Brazil’s Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados Pessoais (LGPD). Originally the regulation was set to…
