infosec
No Curve Ball Here, Unified Security Metrics Deliver Meaningful Results
Editor’s Note: This is the first part of a four-part series featuring an in-depth overview of Infosec’s (Information Security) Unified Security Metrics Program. In this first installment, we discuss the value of security metrics at Cisco. What does the film Moneyball have in common with security me…
Operational Security Intelligence
Security intelligence, threat intelligence, cyber threat intelligence, or “intel” for short is a popular topic these days in the Infosec world. It seems everyone has a feed of “bad” IP addresses and hostnames they want to sell you, or share. This is an encouraging trend in that it indicates the secu…
Where’s Our Grace?
Every year in Scottsdale, Arizona, there’s a unique Information Security conference created by Joyce Brocaglia at ALTA, supported by a who’s who of InfoSec companies like Cisco, RSA, and Symantec, and attended by hundreds of some of the brightest people I’ve ever met. It’s no coincidence that they a…
Using a “Playbook” Model to Organize Your Information Security Monitoring Strategy
CSIRT, I have a project for you. We have a big network and we’re definitely getting hacked constantly. Your group needs to develop and implement security monitoring to get our malware and hacking problem under control. If you’ve been a security engineer for more than a few years,…
To SIEM or Not to SIEM? Part II
The Great Correlate Debate SIEMs have been pitched in the past as “correlation engines” and their special algorithms can take in volumes of logs and filter everything down to just the good stuff. In its most basic form, correlation is a mathematical, statistical, or logical relationship…
To SIEM or Not to SIEM? Part I
Security information and event management systems (SIEM, or sometimes SEIM) are intended to be the glue between an organization’s various security tools. Security and other event log sources export their alarms to a remote collection system like a SIEM, or display them locally for direct acces…
Big Security—Mining Mountains of Log Data to Find Bad Stuff
Your network, servers, and a horde of laptops have been hacked. You might suspect it, or you might think it’s not possible, but it’s happened already. What’s your next move? The dilemma of the “next move” is that you can only discover an attack either as it’s happ…
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