Our goal in building a security awareness program is to embed security into our partners’ existing organizational culture. Impacting culture is a long-term process that can take years and requires executive support. If you are tasked with managing a security awareness program, it is your job to measure and show leadership that your program is…
Read
What is JSON? What is JSON? JSON is an acronym for JavaScript Object Notation. For years it has been in use as a common serialization format for APIs across the web. It also has gained favor as a format for logging (particularly for use in structured logging). Now, it has become even more common for…
Read
For many organizations, data center operations are handled by the facilities team or a third-party vendor. Although these functions aren’t part of the everyday responsibilities of the IT or Security departments, they are crucial to systems availability and to the ongoing operations of the business. Having a full understanding of the capacity and capabilities of…
Read
One of the most common questions asked by business leadership is also one of the most challenging to answer: “How secure are we?” Now, some of you reading this may already be cringing or yelling at your screen that this question on its own shouldn’t have a simple answer with little actionable value. However, when…
Read
For many organizations, rapidly implementing work-from-home initiatives over the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic required quickly rolling out new processes and deploying new technologies without adequate time for attention to Information Security standards. Perhaps your company recently acquired a new line of business, and you want to make sure the integration won’t adversely…
Read
In 2019, the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council (SSC) modified the Qualification Requirements for Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) employees. Prior to the modification, the requirements stipulated that QSA employees must hold either an Information Security certification or an audit certification, but now QSA employees must have a minimum of two (2) industry certifications:…
Read
An organization’s overall security posture can be viewed from multiple different angles, such as technical assessments, program assessments, controls assessments, and risk assessments. A number of different frameworks for each of these assessment types exist, intended to help both technical teams as well as leadership organize security program building activities. Some of these include: Penetration…
Read
Logging, monitoring, and alerting programs are some of the most critical elements of any security and compliance program, but traditional approaches for implementing and upgrading these capabilities are often noisy, expensive, and laborious. Traditional Alerting Approaches are Failing During program assessments, we find that a lot of clients are generating so many alerts that they…
Read
Deploying a remote workforce is uncharted territory for some organizations, while others have been perfecting the model for years. Most security programs have different ways to handle their workforce. For on-premise users, which has traditionally used more of castle mentality where you attempt to prevent outsiders from penetrating the network perimeter (similar to a castle…
Read
Recently, Gartner put out a report on the top 10 inquiries regarding security projects. The report is based on their analysis of over 10,200 client interactions covering relevant security and risk management topics from July 2018 through January 2019 (see the research here). Interestingly enough, Trustedsec has heard similar inquiries regarding product offerings in discussions…
Read