New National Exam Program Risk Alert

In case you missed the most recent National Exam Program Risk Alert, you might want to head over to their website and determine what this may mean for you and your company. Since this may be a topic at your next board meeting, you should be prepared to answer any potential questions. Your board...

BYOD Survey 2013: Employees and Companies Remain Lax with BYOD Security

Despite a dramatic increase in mobile device sales in the past year, BYOD security among employees remains static. Gartner forecasts 2013 tablet shipments to grow 67.9 percent, with shipments reaching 202 million units, while the mobile phone market will grow 4.3 percent, with volume of more than...

Agencies to report progress with FedRAMP

The FedRAMP PMO recently conducted webinars on April 23 and 25 regarding Agencies requirement to report their progress on compliance with FedRAMP. The discussion covered the FedRAMP progress to date, the reporting requirements and process for moving services to FedRAMP authorized cloud service...

Information Governance: Get Data Classification Right First

Data classification is one of the most crucial elements of an effective information governance process--yet its also one that many companies fail to implement well. In its simplest terms, data classification is the process of categorizing data based on its level of sensitivity. When done properly...

Coalfire Appoints Larry Jones to Board of Directors

We are proud to announce the election of Larry Jones to our board of directors. Larry is the former CEO of StarTek, Activant, Message Media and NeoData, and is a seasoned veteran in technology services. He also serves on the board of Comverge, Inc., a publicly traded provider of smart grid, deman...

Coalfire Systems Speaking at Shared Assessments Summit 2011

Do you know how to ensure reliability and resiliency in cloud and SaaS environments? Join leaders from within the IT outsourcing risk management industry at the Shared Assessments Summit 2011 in Boston on March 29 and 30. Coalfire is participating in this summit because the value of managing risk...

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...

FAQ: Transitioning to the highly anticipated new revision of ISO 27001

For a group like Coalfire Certification that lives and breathes these standards daily, it has been an exciting few months monitoring the progress of this publication and its review through the various ISO working groups...

The Long-Term Impact of Log4j

In its aftermath, Log4j vulnerabilities put the spotlight on vendor management and supply chain security practices. Software suppliers should expect vendor security questionnaires to expand in scope and detail around application security practices. Its relatively easy for software buyers to...

CMMC 2.0 – what, how, and why act now?

With the recent streamlining of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification CMMC framework, the path to assure Defense Industrial Base DIB cybersecurity has changed dramatically from what was originally planned. Theres a lot to learn about CMMC 2.0, but the objective remains the same: protect...

Accelerating CMMC compliance

The reason the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program is so critical to national security can be traced back to the second World War: To counter German submarine attacks against Allied supply chains, British intelligence hacked a German Enigma machine, stole the code, intercepted enem...

Android: DNS setup for developing and testing against local web services

Most "interesting" smartphone applications do not run only on the smartphone device; they rely on supporting web services that can be run both by the deploying organization and 3rd parties. One of the challenges we have run into when developing Android application is setting up a suitable...

General Overview of Vulnerability Management

In a world where most companies take nearly six months to detect a data breach, establishing a comprehensive and continuous process for identifying, classifying, mitigating and preventing security vulnerabilities within an organization can help prevent current cybersecurity challenges...

So much compliance to do…so little time (and people!)

In my seven years at Coalfire I've had the pleasure of working with dedicated compliance professionals at organizations of all shapes and sizes. Over time I've seen the pressure on these fine folks increase tenfold as the stream of new compliance obligations jumps its banks and becomes a flood. T...

A new way to manage supply chain risk – Introducing the AICPA SOC for Supply Chain report

With the continuation of its System and Organization Controls SOC suite of services SOC 2®, SOC for Cybersecurity, etc., the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants AICPA has released a new report format that focuses on manufacturing and distribution supply chains. The AICPAs SOC for...

Remote Workforce is NOT the New Norm, but “Secure Work Anywhere” Should Be

Secure Work Anywhere SWA is a new term for an old idea that is quickly becoming an industry standard. The overall principles of SWA are not new, but the risks associated with increased rates of workers connecting from potentially unsecure networks highlight the importance of those principles now...

With IoT, common devices pose new threats

For Instance… Hackers Setting Your 3D Printer on Fire The world is careening toward the reality that almost all electronics in your home and business are connected to the internet. Many of these devices contain things like heating elements, batteries, and motors that are entirely...

What are the benefits of SAST testing in CI/CD pipelines?

Static application security testing SAST is traditionally used in software development lifecycles both early on in the process and often to "white box" test all files containing source code. Integrating SAST into modern CI/CD pipelines allows developers to continuously monitor their code, providi...

Incident Response: Do Your Vendor Contracts Have Claws (for Liability)?

In previous blogs, weve discussed some of the struggles organizations have when responding to cyber incidents. For many, it is the recovery aspect, and specifically vendor liability for the data or privacy breach, that poses many questions. In trying to assign liability, the obvious place to star...

PCI Compliance: Early-TLS and Cloud Service Providers

Organizations tracking their PCI compliance are likely aware of the impending June 30, 2018 deadline to disable SSLv3 and early-TLS. This blog post examines the special case of Cloud Service Providers CSPs and how their customers should proceed to achieve compliance...

DFARS 7012 Compliance

At Coalfire, we field a lot of questions from government contractors about compliance with National Institute of Science and Technology NIST Special Publication SP 800-171. We also address requests for help with "DFARS 7012," which is a commonly used shorthand for Defense Acquisition Regulation...

The Spectre of Chips on Meltdown

The news is rife with emerging details of Intel and other chip vulnerabilities and the hardware bugs that can potentially exploit them. While details are still developing and will likely continue to be uncovered in the days, weeks, and even months ahead, we will explore what is known to date...

Healthcare Security Pros Prioritize Sharing and Caring in the Wild, Wild West of Healthcare

Security professionals from healthcare delivery organizations HDOs, medical device manufacturers, and pharmaceutical companies gathered in Scottsdale, Arizona for the NH-ISAC Cyber Rodeo Summit last month. The big topics were how to share more threat intelligence, while at the same time ensuring...

Black Hat 2017: training, cybersecurity trends and end-point protection

Every year, Black Hat is a highly anticipated event in the cybersecurity community--and Black Hat 2017 certainly did not disappoint! It was yet another year of record traffic, bustling with visitors from the security community that want to strengthen their security skills and postures...

What does the FBI have to say about ransomware

The FBI provided guidance on ransomware at a recent FBI/US Secret Service/ISAC event. They defined ransomware as a type of malware that is commonly transmitted through malicious email, which is disguised to look normal. Once the email link has been clicked on, or an email attachment has been...

Report from the PCI SSC North American Community Meeting

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council held their 2015 North American Community Meeting this year in Vancouver, BC, from September 29 - October 1. Coalfire was well represented at the meeting, with Dan Fritsche, Managing Director, Application Security, making two presentations at th...

Banking with digital currency - A futuristic application

Digital Currency is a thing? $3 Billion dollars USD of money is out there in a digital format, not printed or managed by a government. It has many different product names and each one operates separately. One example of a digital currency is Bitcoin. It is only one of the many digital currencies...

COSO Framework for Service Organizations and SOC Reporting (Part 2 of 3)

Every SOC report whether it is a SOC 1, SOC 2 or SOC 3 should include information about the service organizations risk assessment process. Risk assessment can take many forms and there is no "one size fits all" format. Risk assessment is intended to be an evolutionary process, designed to meet th...

Law Firm - Forensics Services

As cyber threats and attacks have increased year over year, Coalfire has seen a drastic increased need for support to law firms in cybersecurity cases. Attacks and threats vary so often, many law firms lack the skills required to properly evaluate cyber-attacks involving their clients. As such la...

How do cyber insurer's assess cyber risk?

Last week I presented on risk transfer as a viable risk management option to compliance and security professionals at the Financial Crime Compliance Professionals Conference in London. As mentioned in one of Ricks earlier blog entries analyzing the Target kill chain, the communication between...

War on Passwords? Check with Your QSA First!

Passwords have long been the workhorse of user authentication schemes, and many security experts are speaking out on the need for more effective controls. It seems like hardly a week goes by when we dont see a password breach in the news...

Cyber Security Fraud in the Banking Industry: Lessons Learned in OCC Examiner Training

In late October 2011, Coalfire participated in a day of IT audit training with about 35 bank examiners. As you would expect, we covered a lot of previously hot topics. The conversation changed as we started talking about the amount of fraud being realized by community banks and credit unions...

Coalfire Expands Dallas Office and Names Kurt Hagerman Managing Director

I am pleased to announce that our Dallas office is growing by leaps and bounds. Leading the charge is Kurt Hagerman, the newly appointed managing director. Kurt will serve more than 60 clients in the Southwest region and oversee Coalfires strategic vision while building new client relationships f...

They Changed What? HIPAA & HITECH

In 1996, the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act HIPAA opened the door to increased exchanges of healthcare information in an effort to improve care and reduce costs. The Act included new provisions for protected health information PHI. Since there are only a few limited revie...

Meet John Rostern: Managing Director of the New York Office

We are pleased to announce that John Rostern has joined Coalfire Systems as managing director of the New York office...

How the CISO drives value across the enterprise

Coalfire's Securealities 2023 State of CISO Influence report shows that CISOs have a growing responsibility to report to the board/c-suite. During budget planning, CISOs can drive value and secure budget allocations by demonstrating Return on Security Investment ROSI...

Mobile app usage soars but security still falls short

Benchmark analysis of mobile apps shows 99% have security or privacy vulnerabilities. These weaknesses can cause exposure of sensitive information and jeopardize brand reputation, customer trust and company value...

It’s time to bite the bullet for more secure software

On September 14, 2022, the Office of Management and Budget OMB released their M-22-18 memorandum on "Enhancing the Security of the Software Supply Chain through Secure Software Development Practices." This document builds upon previous government documents such as Executive Order EO 14028...

Hacking Ham Radio: WinAPRS – Part 2

In part one of this series on vulnerability research in ham radio software, we discussed ham radio and digital communications via packet radio. We reviewed some relevant packet radio protocols such as AX.25, APRS, and KISS. We then chose WinAPRS as our target application. In this installment we...

Governing the organization

Security is the biggest risk to business today. Managing security has become one of the hardest jobs in the enterprise, and failing to do so effectively can create opportunities for severe operational disruption. One of the keystone conclusions from Coalfires Cloud Advisory Boards the Smartest Pa...

The secure development lifecycle

Whatever tolerance we had for failure has been turned upside down in the cloud. The consequences have never been greater. So, whats the solution? As made clear in Coalfires latest Cloud Advisory Board CAB Securealities report, smartest path to DevSecOps transformation, nothing is more important t...

AppSec Bites: Implementing DevOps? What Security Teams Need to Know. (Part 4)

DevOps practices can be difficult to implement for any business. While the overall goal is to streamline the business and join the development and operations sides of things together, the first step needs to be a strong relationship between DevOps and security teams otherwise things will typicall...

AppSec concerns: UUID generation

During static analysis, one of the things the application security team checks for is strong random number generation for security sensitive contexts. We see weaknesses in this space quite often for temporary passwords and session identifiers, but an increasingly common variant is for universally...

So Long, Privacy Shield

In whats rapidly becoming the splashiest news to hit the privacy space in years, the Court of Justice of the EU CJEU, the highest court in the European Union, invalidated the U.S. Privacy Shield, a legal instrument that made it possible for organizations operating in the United States to transfer...

Baselining PassGAN: Adventures in the rhubarb

Cracking is a complex topic full of misunderstandings, confusing terminology and weird people. This blog post is front-loaded with some terminology, some explanations, and maybe some apologies. Password cracking: This is fundamentally one thing: guessing. Were not reversing, or talking to spirits...

Planning Ahead to Prevent Vulnerabilities

The cost to remediate vulnerabilities increases as those vulnerabilities make it further into the development process. If they make it into a final release, those vulnerabilities can leave organizations vulnerable to attacks, costing time and resources to address, as well as causing damage to the...

FedRAMP – 8 years in and 100 assessments achieved

Back in 2011, if you had asked me what cloud computing was, I would have looked at you with a blank look on my face. At the time, I was supporting a Federal client when my boss asked me to assist in applying to become a 3PAO. I had no clue what 3PAO even stood for it stands for Third-Party...

Dodge Data Breaches with Real-Time PCI Compliance

Its been five years since the PCI Council released the first "Best Practices for Maintaining PCI DSS Compliance" guidance document in August 2014. Since then, many prominent payment data breaches have occurred, with the finger often pointing to lapses in the affected organizations compliance...

NIST SP 800-171A Assessment: Finalized Assessment Objectives Foster a Roadmap to Compliance

On June 13, 2018, NIST formally released their Special Publication SP 800-171A, Assessing Security Requirements Controlled Unclassified Information CUI.This publication provides organizations with an assessment methodology to evaluate their compliance with the CUI security requirements defined in...

AWS Public Sector Summit 2017: Cloud Super Powers and Security

Coalfire recently returned from the Amazon Web Services AWS Public Sector Summit, held in Washington, D.C., which addresses some of the most pressing issues todays leaders face around security, governance and compliance, and more. While Coalfire has attended the show in the past, we were especial...