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...

Target Hackers Broke in Via HVAC Company?

When I first heard about the account used to gain access to the Target environment, my first reaction was to laugh at the ridiculousness of the HVAC vendor having an impact on the CDE like it seems to or is rumored to have had in the recent breach. Then I started thinking with the PCI controls,...

Free and low-cost tools for PCI DSS Compliance

Complying with the PCI DSS requires policies and processes plus implementing and managing a variety of software tools. As a QSA who has performed many PCI assessments for merchants and service providers, Ive seen and assessed a variety of free and low-cost under $200 software tools that help our...

What every CIO should know about the new ISO 27001:2013 framework

Originally released in 2005, the ISO 27001 standard has recently been updated with additional guidelines for assessing risks within information management systems. These changes constitute the first revisions to the standard in eight years and have major implications for organizational compliance...

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 -...

Determining if your Company is Prepared for FedRAMP

Many companies interested in pursuing FedRAMP are seeking guidelines, checklists and any referenceable source to help them understand and determine their level of preparedness to go through the FedRAMP process. The GSAs FedRAMP.gov site provides documentation on the FedRAMP process in their "Guid...

Penetration Testing Frequently Asked Questions

You may have noticed this recent article about Googles contest that rewarded a hacker for discovering a vulnerability in Chrome. Once Google verified the vulnerability, they were able to fix the bug and issue the cash prize to the hacker. This is a very public example similar to what Coalfire Lab...

The hackerproof password? Tips and advice on password management

Having some security expert tell you that you should be creating strong passwords that are unique per account and change frequently is like your dentist telling you that you should floss morning, night and after consuming any dentally dangerous foods. The majority of us say, "yeah right". The tru...

Botnets: 2011 Rocky Mountain Information Security Conference

Botnets have become one of the most dangerous cyber threats affecting businesses today. Botnets criminals focus on the same things as most criminals: money and information. That is why these criminals are targeting payroll, human resources departments, C-level executives and senior strategists...

Is it Safe to Speak? Protection for Telephone-Based Payment Card Data

Recently, the PCI Security Standards Council released educational resource requirements for securing cardholder data in audio recordings. The PCI SSC has been focusing on call center operations and recording systems of merchants. The need to provide a secure system to protect cardholder data is a...

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...

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 as a differentiator: How to market the secure customer experience

Leveraging software development lifecycle security as a go-to-market differentiator is imperative in setting companies apart from competitors. As Coalfires Cloud Advisory Board and my colleague Gail Coury eloquently pointed out in our recent Securealities Report, Smartest Path to DevSecOps...

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...

A little actually doesn’t go a long way: Fight the urge to shortcut your TPRM program

Third Party Risk Management TPRM is hard to get right. Ineffective TPRM is when 83% of legal and compliance leaders identify third party risks after due diligence, despite spending 73% of effort on due diligence. This is supported by 49% of business leaders saying they lack a centralized strategy...

Certification body rebrands to Coalfire Certification

Were excited about our new name. It reflects what we do and where we are headed. We share this excitement with our clients and our teams and extend thanks to everyone that helped push the certification body to this level of framework coverage as Coalfire Certification enters this next period of...

Staying current with HITRUST advisory changes

As a result of an ever-evolving threat landscape, compliance requirements are proliferating at an unprecedented rate. It can be overwhelming to keep up with the staggering number of new and updated regulations, compliance frameworks, and standards. HITRUST®, founded in 2007, recognized this...

MIME sniffing in browsers and the security implications

Whenever a website in opened in a browser, there are many tasks that are being silently performed in the background. One of those tasks is fetching resources such as images, stylesheets and JavaScript from different domains on the internet and then parsing those resources...

AppSec Bites: Top 3 Things to Consider When Maturing Your AppSec Programs (Part 2)

Maturing security programs along with the growth of development programs are essential to ensuring a safe and efficient development lifecycle. The need to be on top of development while scaling programs is imperative to managing both risk and business opportunities. However, it is during times of...

Automated application scanning: handling complicated logins with AppScan (only!)

Ory Segal @orysegal from IBM Rational reached out with a simpler method to handle this natively in AppScan. It involves configuring AppScan to add a custom parameter to each request. For the sample case in the authexamples GitHub repository it would be handled like this...

Key scoping factors when pursuing ISO 27001 certification

Service providers that seek the most recognized implementation of an information security baseline and governance structure should consider the ISO/IEC 27001:2013 "ISO 27001" standard. The information security management system ISMS prescribed by this widely adopted publication engages personnel ...

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...

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...

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...

What to Expect in the initial FedRAMP briefing with your Agency Sponsor and the PMO

Most people who have spent any time researching the FedRAMP authorization process know there are two routes for a Cloud Service Provider CSP to become FedRAMP authorized: Agency and Joint Authorization Board JAB. Because of the limited number of CSPs selected each quarter for the JAB authorizatio...

What to Expect When You are Expecting… Your CISO to Leave

"The CISO is leaving the company. What are the next steps?" No executive likes to hear that a key member of the business is leaving the organization. Turnover among key business leaders isnt unusual, but as a factual matter, CISO average tenure is relatively short - approximately 24 to 48 months...

Applied ThreadFix: Getting the Most Out of Your Training Investment

As we talked about in an earlier blog post, secure coding training for developers can be expensive. Knowledgeable individuals who are adept at training are relatively rare. Quality training materials are expensive to develop and maintain. For these reasons, solid commercial instructor-led trainin...

Applied ThreadFix: Fire Bullets, Then Cannonballs – AppSec Edition

The concept of "firing bullets and then cannonballs" 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 what will work. This allows you to calibrate...

Coalfire participates in cybersecurity disaster exercise at the 2019 HSCC Spring Summit

The Healthcare and Public Health Sector Coordinating Council HSCC conducted their biannual Joint Cybersecurity Working Group JCWG All-Hands Meeting on April 3-4, 2019. As a member of HSCC, Coalfire participated in the JCWG meeting with other security leaders from across the healthcare industry an...

A Cyber Engineering Primer: Vulnerability Management Lifecycle

According to the SANS Institute, "Vulnerability management is the process in which vulnerabilities in IT are identified and the risks of these vulnerabilities are evaluated. This evaluation leads to correcting the vulnerabilities and removing the risk or a formal risk acceptance by the management...

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 Next-Generation Firewall Platforms Help Protect Your Perimeter at Each Stage of the Cyber Kill Chain*

Whether you need to upgrade your firewalls on-premise or in the cloud, next-generation firewalls NGFWs can significantly reduce the risks associated with the modern threat landscape. Since attacks have evolved using techniques such as encryption, polymorphism, etc., firewalls have also evolved to...

SOC 2 Criteria: Change Is Coming - And You Can Have a Voice

SOC 2 reports are an important tool service providers use to give their customers assurances about their services security, compliance, privacy, availability, confidentiality and processing integrity by providing details about the service and the related controls that are in place. SOC 2...

Q&A from P2PE-NESA Webinar for Merchants

The selection of a PCI-listed P2PE solution and determination of expected benefits can be challenging for even the most sophisticated merchants. The introduction of the NESA program can make decisions more difficult. To help guide merchants, Coalfire and FreedomPay held a webinar "P2PE & NESA for...

Reconciling Quarterly ASV and QSA Scanning Requirements

In the compliance realm, the term "quarterly" seems to be a sound and straight-forward term used to provide guidance and to aid entities in adhering to requirements. However, its meaning can vary based on its context in relation to dealing with various compliance requirements from your ASV and QS...

Ghosts in the Bank

It was a dark night. A car pulled up in the parking space next to me and quickly extinguished his lights. I looked out the my window and saw the driver. He gave me a quick nod and we exited our cars. Opening the trunk I pulled out my tools for the night. A backpack full of trash bags, a flash...

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:...

What to Expect in the PCI 3.2 Update

A preview of new requirements and guidance expected later this month from the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council was announced Thursday. The PCI DSS 3.2 version represents the first update to the standard that the Council has released since 3.1 in April 2015 and 3.0 in November of...

The Ghosts Inside - Horror Stories 2015

By 8 p.m. the donuts from the previous day had gone stale, what was left of them anyway. There was the eerie feeling of spirits in the night mist tonight. It was late October and the chill was thick with Halloween. You could smell it in the haze. I consider myself quite tough, but when you are a...

Audio Video Media Forensics

Our media forensics practice is a fast growing part of Coalfire. Were often asked what we can do, and this post is intended to be a quick primer to provide some background if youre in need of this service and what you can expect from us and others in the field...

DerbyCon is right around the corner (Sept. 23 - 25)

DerbyCon is right around the corner Sept. 23 - 25 and we wanted to highlight two sessions that Coalfire Labs team members will be presenting...

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...

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...

IT Security Horror Story: Slow Network, Big Phish

It was a typical morning, just like any other for Annie. She arrived at the office just in time to fill her coffee mug and get to her desk to read her email that had been piling up since Friday. After reading through the standard office wide emails she came across one from the help desk...

The Lesson of eBay

After every major cyber breach, security professionals are asked about the lessons we can learn from them. While the technical details of the eBay attack arent yet public, we can already learn lessons about from companys public statements and its communications to its customers...

The Top 3 Security Issues in Federal Cloud Computing

A journalist recently asked me for my top three pressing concerns related to Federal cloud security. Here are a few points I had to offer up...

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...

College students concerned about information security

Universities and colleges have been under significant pressure to upgrade their technology both in and out of the classroom. For instance, many organizations turn to mobility as a way to engage students and facilitate learning campus-wide. While much of the discussion is around issues such as the...

PCI DSS 3.0 puts emphasis on year-round awareness

Its easy to think of PCI compliance as just another annual hoop to jump through. Of course, after the annual audit, the business is safe for another 12 months, right? Well, not exactly, and with the upcoming release of PCI DSS 3.0, there will be an even bigger reason to think about compliance...

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...