A Cyber Engineering Primer: Automated Tools for Compliance Auditing

Cybersecurity practitioners sometimes forget to define and explain the terms we use during the course of our work. Thus, my colleagues and I have embarked on a series of posts that provide a primer on some of the most important cyber engineering practices. In this post, we will focus on...

An Analysis of PCI DSS Requirement 11.3.4.1 and the Compliance Expectations

For some organizations, understanding, navigating, and complying with the Payment Card Industry PCI Data Security Standard DSS, especially after the release of the latest version v3.2 released in April 2016, has become confusing and/or challenging because of the inclusion of phased-in applicabili...

Getting cert-y with all-5 AWS certs

I thought my recent experience achieving all five 5 AWS certs might be helpful to others in the community that are looking to do the same. However, this blog isnt meant to stand on its own, and I encourage everyone interested in going for all 5 certs to read other blogs posts too...

SSAE No 18 effective for SOC reports dated May 1, 2017

The AICPA Auditing Standards Board ASB announces new changes for SOC reporting under SSAE No. 18 in April 2016. A description of the changes and what it means for service organizations is below. The AICPAs attestation standards contain the requirements and application guidance for performing and...

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...

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...

Reporting LIVE from the HIMSS 2015 Cybersecurity Command Center

Well, its not exactly live anymore but it certainly was worth tweeting live from the brand new Cybersecurity Command Center CCC at HIMSS 2015 in Chicago a couple weeks ago given all the excitement. The CCC was the place to be at HIMSS this year with standing room only at the educational sessions...

PCI DSS version 3.1 released!

As expected, a "minor" revision to the PCI DSS 3.0 standard now version 3.1 was released by the PCI SSC today to address the vulnerabilities exposed by the POODLE and BEAST browser attacks. PCI DSS 3.1 primarily addresses the insecure use of SSL as an encryption protocol within a Cardholder Data...

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...

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...

A New Cold War – with Many Sides

A New Cold War - with Many Sides Theres a lot we still dont know about the FBIs investigation of the data theft at JP Morgan Chase & Co. Criminal hackers based in Russia were targeting U.S. financial institutions long before Russia annexed Crimea or the West responded with sanctions. Is this trul...

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...

HIMSS Privacy & Security Forum – West 2014 Wrap-Up

The first HIMSS Privacy & Security Forum in the western U.S. proved to be a success and was attended by over 300 people including attendees CEs and BAs, speakers, exhibitors, and partners. We reconnected with several clients and met new friends at our booth, which was located right in the middle ...

Embracing the Cloud's Potential for Security

I spoke recently at TIAs Network of the Future conference. At the session, which was heavier on vendors than operators, the discussion was very focused on the cloud. Everyone wants to know whats coming next and if theyre ready for it...

Please make sure you have offline backups

This ransomware has hit not only personal computers, but also organizations, including a town in New Hampshire. This particular attack was carried out when an employee opened a seemingly legitimate email attachment, once again reminding us of the ever-present danger of social engineering...

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...

Heartbleed Vulnerability Bug: What You Need to Know

The widely publicized heartbleed bug http://heartbleed.com/ may be impacting as many as 500,000 systems across the Internet. Heartbleed is the name of a vulnerability in the OpenSSL program that powers encrypted communication to many of the worlds web sites and private networks. Below you will fi...

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...

University Data Breaches Pose Threat to Students, Academic Openness

North Dakota State University administrators confirmed last week that hackers never accessed the personal information of more than 200,000 students, faculty and staff housed on the server they successfully infiltrated. This attack perfectly suits the modern hackers MO. They attack open systems...

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:...

Highlights of Newly Released PCI DSS 3.0 Information

The standards are coming! The PCI SSC has finally let loose with some much needed information regarding the upcoming releases of the PCI DSS 3.0 and PA DSS 3.0 standards. Available on the PCI SSC website; the document titled "Version 3.0 Change Highlights" contains information on what PCI...

Long-awaited HIPAA Omnibus Rule is Unveiled

As of January 17, 2013, the HIPAA Omnibus Rule has finally been released by the Department of Health and Human Services HHS, which will modify the HIPAA privacy, security, and enforcement rules. The package of regulations, in regard to this long-overdue HIPAA Omnibus Rule, will officially be post...

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...

Surprises Ahead for Some Level 2 Merchants

The PCI DSS has been around for years, and most PCI "pros" are familiar with the processes needed to validate compliance. However, insiders often forget that small changes to the guidelines can have a big impact on merchants. One such change is upon us: MasterCards new validation guidelines for...

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,...

The Budding Healthcare IT Spring

HIMSS12 is in full production in Las Vegas this week. Over 40,000 healthcare IT professionals and service providers have descended upon a conference that will set the direction for a new wave to technology innovations for the healthcare industry. Almost every booth has a sign that extolls the...

Data Privacy Day 2012 – BYOD

January marks Data Privacy Month and on January 28th we celebrated Data Privacy Day. In the past year, we have seen an increase in the consumerization of IT and "Bring Your Own Device" BYOD in the enterprise. In honor of Data Privacy Day 2012, we have partnered with The Center for Identity at The...

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,...

Exercise your Incident Response Plan

So youve finally completed your Incident Response Plan. Youve named your team, defined roles, documented standard operating procedures, and establishing escalation processes. Heck, youve even got training material. So now what?...

New Guidelines Address PCI DSS Tokenization

"Tokenization" is one of the best techniques to reduce the risk of credit card data loss. Basically, it is the process of substituting sensitive data with other values not considered sensitive. By doing this, tokenization technology essentially removes anything of value from the data stream, and,...

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...

Mobile Application Security – The New Frontier

The power and popularity of consumer mobile computing is changing faster then you can say iFart the 1 downloaded app worldwide. Commercial entities are rapidly adopting mobile-based applications for retail sales floors, restaurants and dining rooms, distributed mobile banking, and more...

Sitting in cars with hackers

Are organizations doing enough to protect customer data? The auto industry can teach us a lot about vulnerability management...

Understanding compliance platform capabilities: black box automation has its limitations

Compliance is hard. It is not a "black box" of opaque inputs and outputs, where systems and data are hidden and where users are oblivious to their inner workings. There has yet to be a product made that can magically produce all the evidence sufficient for testing and verification across the wide...

CMMC – The smoke is clearing

The smoke is finally starting to clear on "CMMC 2.0." Hundreds of companies are already lining up for Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification assessments. Everything is taking place faster and with far more urgency than most organizations have planned around or prepared for...

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...

AppSec Bites: What Opportunities Does Remote Working Create for AppSec Teams? (Part 3)

Its no secret that the pandemic has shifted the operational mindset of many organizations as we adapted to a fully remote workspace. In additional to this, many businesses were subjected to tighter budgets, compelling them to find ways to be more efficient and cost effective. The automation of...

Cybersecurity Risk Management – From HIPAA to HITRUST

Cybersecurity risk management for healthcare organizations continues to be a perplexing issue. While it is explicit in the security management standard of the HIPAA Security Rule that a Covered Entity and their Business Associates must conduct an "accurate and thorough" risk analysis teamed with ...

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...

Applied ThreadFix: Fire Bullets, Then Cannonballs – Part 2

In Part 1 of this blog post, we looked at the concept of "firing bullets and then cannonballs" that comes from the book Great By Choice by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen. The idea works a little like this: first fire your "bullets" - low-cost, low-risk, low-distraction experiments to figure out...

Humans Are the Weakest Link in Security

In our recent analysis of penetration testing engagements contained in our Penetration Risk Report, we discuss the impact that social engineering, specifically phishing, has on the ability to allow attackers insider access to compromise an organization...

Cybersecurity Incident Response: Three Lessons from Uber’s Story

The recent news regarding the Uber breach has captured the attention of both the public and legislators. It seems that Ubers security team discovered a breach, paid a ransom, and didnt report the matter to company leaders, law enforcement, personnel, or customers...

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...

DevOps, Automation, Security and Compliance

Phew, the title of this post alone sounds like it could be quite a lot to deal with! So what is DevOps? DevOps is simply the blending of infrastructure operations processes and software development to enable faster changes to business applications/technology. These processes share a lot of ideolo...

FedRAMP Tailored program for low-risk use cloud service offerings

On February 16, the FedRAMP Project Management Office PMO released the new FedRAMP Tailored security controls baseline for public comment comment period closes March 17, 2017. The new FedRAMP Tailored security controls baseline was created for Cloud Service Providers CSPs who have cloud service...

Chip Cards Finally Come to America – But What Does it Mean for Merchants and Consumers?

Like it or not, today the U.S. finally adopts EMV technology. While the implementation by most major retailers and large U.S. banks is expected to be delayed, the "chip and PIN" card types are coming to America to stay. The real debate is, will EMV adoption do anything for card data security?...