Coalfire Contributes to New Book on Cybersecurity

Today marks the launch of a new book published by the New York Stock Exchange and Palo Alto Networks called, "Navigating the Digital Age: The Definitive Cybersecurity Guide for Directors and Officers." Im proud to have worked with my predecessor, the late Rick Dakin, to contribute a chapter to th...

Coalfire Receives Investment from The Carlyle Group and The Chertoff Group

Im pleased to announce that we recently closed on a significant investment from The Carlyle Group and The Chertoff Group - two prestigious investment groups that both have extensive experience in the cybersecurity space. The selection of these two firms came after an extensive six-month process o...

Apple Pay and PCI Compliance

A year ago, many retail cybersecurity discussions began and ended with PCI compliance. Today, after a gut-wrenching 10 months of data breaches stretching from mom-and-pop shops to category-leading brands, the discussions are broader, the risks are better understood and every link in the customer...

IT Security Horror Story: Is your Network an Unsegmented Haunted House?

One day I went to a client site to perform internal penetration test to emulate the insider threat. This testing was designed to help this client understand the damage a rogue employee or an intruder who gained physical access to the network could do. The site that I was visiting was a storefront...

Chertoff Group Security Series Educates Financial Services Institutions about Cybercrime

Last week I attended The Chertoff Groups Security Series on Building Resiliency for Financial Services Sector. They provided insight into what theyre doing to protect their organizations, how they see the industry evolving, and firsthand knowledge about emerging threats...

Keeping your restaurant & hospitality Cardholder Data Environment safe

Reports of new credit card data breaches seem to be in the news daily. Recent high profile breaches within major retailers this year should serve as a wake-up call to the restaurant and hospitality industries. As a result of having high volumes of credit card transactions and decentralized securi...

Secret Services Issues Warning to Hospitality Industry, Now What?

The U.S. Secret Service has issued an advisory to the hospitality industry to be on alert for keyloggers on the computers in the business center. Whether your hotel received this advice or not, this is something that will undoubtedly affect your business in the near future. Weve put together this...

Cybersecurity and the Financial Services Industry

2014 is the year that the US Securities and Exchange Commissions Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations OCIE is turning its focus to cybersecurity, a looming threat to any and all companies that utilize the internet. In case you missed my last post, back in March the OCIE hosted a...

What are Insurers really covering?

Across the country, executives and their boards saw the data breaches that occurred at large, well-run retailers and immediately began asking the right questions about their own systems and protections. The challenge for the insurance industry is that the plan for many of these companies seems to...

Heartbleed – When Will the Next Shoe Drop?

Last week, while I was in the offices of one of our customers, a long-present but little-known vulnerability in OpenSSL became public knowledge. Our client detected it early and made the necessary patches and updates. The systems deployed by their customers are now secure. Consumers will change...

SEC Roundtable

On Wednesday, I attended a roundtable discussion the Securities and Exchange Commission held to gather information on cybersecurity trends and potential disclosure requirements for regulated public companies and stock exchanges...

The PCI DSS 3.0 SAQs are here!

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council PCI SSC released Data Security Standards DSS 3.0 in November 2013 and has just released the related Self-Assessment Questionnaires SAQ. There are two new SAQs, SAQ A-EP and SAQ B-IP...

PCI SSC Releases New SAQ Versions for 3.0

As expected, the SSC finally released the new version of the Self-Assessments Questionnaires SAQs today on their website. They are available on the PCI SSCs website here:...

IT Security Horror Story #1: The Case of the Phantom Blood Red Team

An unsuspecting Fortune 100 company allows horrible creatures into their building and systems during a Red Team engagement. READ MORE…IF YOU DARE -...

MAPCO Incident Highlights the Risks Faced by All Convenience Stores

On May 6, 2013, convenience store operator MAPCO Express, Inc. did a responsible thing - they issued a press release that shared important information about a data security incident that was discovered at their stores. Such notices ---along with a whole lot of behind-the-scenes investigative work...

PCI DSS 3.0 Is Coming Soon

The PCI Security Standards Council SSC plans on releasing the newest version of the PCI Data Security Standard in October, 2013. Predictably, the PCI SSC has been tight-lipped on divulging details regarding any expected changes...

All Aboard the HIPAA Omnibus - but is the ‘bus’ missing anything?

In the wake of the recently-released HIPAA Omnibus Rule with its upcoming deadline, healthcare organizations are trying to figure out how theyre going to achieve compliance. Weve been busy trying to get through the 563-page rule and determine what it means to our clients...

The PCI SAQ P2PE-HW: Patience, POIs and PIMs

The new PCI SAQ P2PE-HW Point to Point Encryption Self-Assessment Questionnaire was released in July 2012, and many merchants are excited about the prospect of a shorter, less arduous compliance validation effort. After all, its significantly shorter than the SAQ-D; instead 12 sections, there are...

VMware releases PCI Solution Guide and it has good news for compliance-oriented buyers

This month VMware release an important document, the VMware Solution Guide for Payment Card Industry PCI. Its significant because it is the first document of its kind to map the PCI requirements - including those authored by the PCI SSCs Virtualization SIG - to a commercially-available stack of...

P2P Encryption Program now available from PCI Council

The PCI council has updated the Point-to-Point encryption P2PE program requirements PDF. The update impacts merchants, payment applications, point of sale vendors and service providers. As a participating organization of the PCI P2PE task force, providing input into the standard, I wanted to...

Moving to the Cloud: Considerations for Implementing Cloud Migration Plans

Over 60 executive level attendees came to the Omni Interlocken Resort in Broomfield, Colorado for the National Council of Higer Education Loan Programs NCHELP Spring convention and to hear from a panel of cloud experts on how the migration to cloud IT services could impact their business in the...

Mobile Banking Malware: Protect Your Finances

The prolific rise in smartphones, tablets and other portable devices has greatly expanded the ways in which we interact with personal and professional services. The public can now singlehandedly use their mobile device to pay for things with the ease of flashing their cell phone. Unfortunately,...

Electronic Health Records and Meaningful Use: Protecting Electronic Health Information

Since 2009, healthcare providers and other companies providing services to the healthcare industry have been mobilizing to take advantage of government incentives to implement Electronic Health Records or EHRs. These incentives were established by federal law as a part of the HITECH Act of 2009,...

Coalfire Systems Assessment: Merchant Link’s TransactionShield and TransactionVault Reduce Merchant’s PCI Scope

Merchants spend a lot of time and money developing IT controls programs to protect consumer credit card data. Through our work with thousands of retailers, weve learned that one of the best ways to contain costs and reduce risk is to keep cardholder data out of as many systems and business...

Top 10 challenges of building an in-house application security program

Building a successful application security program can be a daunting task, as it involves many different skill sets. Resource constraints, lack of expertise, and cultural resistance are among the many challenges preventing organizations from reaping the full benefits of an in-house AppSec program...

Everything you need to know about HITRUST v11

HITRUST v11 is finally here. In this blog post, Coalfire HITRUST experts provide guidance to address the key details surrounding the transition timelines and what organizations can expect with the latest version...

Software supply chain security is coming of age

Coalfires first Securealities Software Supply Chain Risk Report revealed dramatic budget increases for enterprise security in general and a growing demand for more testing, training, and process improvements in the battle to defend digital assets. But perhaps the most significant takeaway from th...

Security Performance Reporting: Command guidance for CISO-to-stakeholder communications

There is tremendous urgency for security professionals to do a better job at communicating security program performance to enterprise stakeholders and boards of directors. For the Coalfire Cloud Advisory Board CAB, effective reporting on this level is mission-critical for cyber teams, and was a...

The paradigm shift of PCI SSF: what executive leaders need to know now

As a security leader who lives and breathes security controls, protocols, and compliance standards, youre probably aware of the upcoming Payment Card Industry PCI Software Security Framework SSF transition thats been coming for some time. In fact, I posted a blog about the phase-out of the...

The biggest update you’ll barely see

Its been more than 10 years since ThreadFix had its first lines of code written by its creator, Dan Cornell, as a means of solving a very pervasive issue in the application security space. While it quickly became a popular talking point at conferences and app sec parties they exist!, it was never...

Getting started with ZAP and the OWASP top 10: common questions

I recently received an email from a developer who was gearing up to use OWASP ZAP to test the security of their code. The developer had some questions about OWASP ZAP, testing for the OWASP Top 10 2013, and ZAP configuration. After I answered the email, I asked if I could repost it here because I...

State privacy laws: 2020 highs and lows

2020 is shaping up to be another interesting year for data privacy, especially given that public health agencies, private companies, and states are now working feverishly to create contact tracing apps and programs while still preserving privacy. Being thoughtful and accountable about data privac...

A strategy for cybersecurity strategy

Let's start with an assumption: Having a cybersecurity strategy is best practice. So, what makes a good cybersecurity strategy? You'd be surprised how this answer varies across the security industry, especially from seasoned CISOs of Fortune 500 companies...

Establishing risk appetite is key to effective risk management

The mission of an enterprise risk management program is to respond to and monitor risks to the enterprises operations and objectives. In order to properly respond to and monitor risks, the enterprise must establish risk appetite thresholds. Well-established and well-communicated risk appetite...

Managing Vulnerabilities Introduced from Open Source Code Libraries

Modern development architectures are commonly based around open source components. Using open source components helps organizations lower their overall development cost while improving the time to market for new applications. Introducing these components however, can lead to serious consequences...

So your company has decided to do FedRAMP - What does that mean?

The exponential increase in cloud adoption in recent years has led to a dramatic increase in technology companies evolving from software and application companies to Software as a Service SaaS, Platform as a Service PaaS or Infrastructure as a Service IaaS providers. The 2011 release of the Cloud...

New News About the HITRUST Scoring Rubric and PRISMA Model

This is a high-level overview of the most significant changes about the updated HITRUST scoring rubric and PRISMA model that will affect all organizations using the HITRUST framework. It contains tips and guidance for how to prepare for upcoming HITRUST assessments. If you need a deeper dive into...

Sleuthing the Cloud: The Challenges of Forensics in Cloud Environments

More and more companies are embracing Cloud computing for the practicality, efficiency, and economy of outsourcing the housing, maintenance, and monitoring of applications and their associated infrastructure to a third-party provider. As the Cloud becomes more the norm than the exception, there i...

How You Respond Can Make All the Difference

Part Three of a Three Part Series As the narrative on the Equifax compromise evolves, the general public, politicians, and speculators continue to seek blame for what happened. Was it an unpatched vulnerability? Was Equifax not following proper configuration management? Was management derelict in...

FedRAMP JAB Business Case extended

The FedRAMP Business Case for being considered for this cycle of the Joint Authorization Board JAB has been pushed out to August 31 at 5:00pm eastern. The additional time is to accommodate the large number of requests to document demand verification. Earlier the JAB has stated that federal demand...

Getting the Most Value Out of Your Phishing Program

Are your phishing tests worth the money you are spending on them? Please dont misinterpret that as suggesting you shouldnt be testing your users. To the contrary, I think you should be testing all your users executives of all ranks included on a regular basis. What I mean by that question is; are...

FedRAMP Prioritization

Coalfire has been participating in the American Council for Technology and the Industry Advisory Council ACT-IAC Cloud Computing community of interest in order to contribute in developing the new FedRAMP JAB Prioritization process...

Best of Enterprise and AD Exploitation at Black Hat / DEFCON

Lots of hacks, lots of people, lots of content, and lots of parties. That basically sums up this years BlackHat and Defcon. The two conferences seem to get bigger every year with no sign of slowing down, which emphasizes how cybersecurity is becoming more and more of an issue for everyone:...

Highlights from the HITRUST Health Industry Third Party Assurance Summit

On June 29, 2015, the Health Information Trust Alliance HITRUST announced that several massive payer organizations, including Anthem, Health Care Services Corp., Highmark, Humana, and UnitedHealth Group will require their business associates to obtain CSF certification. While this is old news,...

Guest blog: PCI audits and how to recognize a good QSA auditor and partner

Many organizations approach a PCI audit with fear and trepidation. There are a lot of stories out there about how difficult, expensive and disruptive a PCI audit can be, but I want to see if I can add some balance to this view. I believe that when it comes to a PCI auditor it matters a great deal...

P2PE in Higher Education--Reducing Applicable Controls

Point to Point Encryption P2PE is the hottest topic in the PCI world right now and many of our Higher Education clients are anxious to take advantage of the solutions available to them. However, with 2.0 not yet released, and then the subsequent release of the audit guidelines, there are many...

Big news from the HITRUST 2015 conference: The HITRUST CSF is gaining momentum as the de facto framework amongst healthcare organizations

As the HITRUST 2015 conference in Grapevine, Texas ended, I was reminded of the numerous predictions that flagged 2015 the year of the healthcare breach. And in just the first half of the year weve already witnessed three mega breaches that combined to compromise over 90 million patient records. ...

Evolving Financial Services Security Requirements: Part 1

Through the end of the year, the New York State Department of Financial Services NYSDFS, or DFS for short, expects to proceed with a number of initiatives to help strengthen cybersecurity at its regulated companies. Among these changes will be integration of regular, targeted assessments of...

Upcoming Podcast: Python security projects

Join Coalfire penetration tester Dan McInerney on Thursday April 30th at 6:00pm ET on the Security Weekly Podcast...

Top 10 Cybersecurity Predictions for 2015

Fueled by cybercrime, cyber warfare, and cyber terrorism, the cost of cybersecurity and risk management will double in 2015. Thats the bad news. The good news is there will be a shift to cyber offense that will begin to stem the tide of cyber threats...