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2020 SANS CTI Summit Notes

Unfortunately due to some back surgery I was not able to attend the SANS CTI summit this year, however I always try to take advantage of the great content SANS makes available. To help me out in synthesizing the information, I combined the context provided by those that were live tweeting which is useful when reviewing the slide decks. Hope you find this useful and well done @rickholland , @PDXbek , and @likethecoins , another great year of great content! Day 1 Secret Squirrels and Flashlights: Legal Risks and Threat Intelligence https://www.sans.org/cyber-security-summit/archives/file/summit-archive-1579535253.pdf @CristinGoodwin Assistant General Counsel for Customer Security and Trust, Microsoft Boundaries and strategies to help analysts identify and manage legal risks while hunting, investigating, and responding "Have a principled approach to sharing, so when the crisis comes you don’t have to panic.” "What we call common in #threatinel sharing is what a l
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European DFIR Summit 2018 Review

On Monday October 1st, I attended the European edition of the SANS DFIR Summit in Prague. Normally I try to attend this in Austin, however this year I couldn't make it so attended this one later in the year instead. I took a couple days PTO just to spend some time seeing the sights and it was cool getting to take time visiting the historical sights, instead of my typical shut in routine. If you have time, I would highly recommend this and definitely book a night time river cruise. Also worth noting, the new Spiderman movie was filming last week which was kinda cool. A few other recommendations I would make, would be to stay closer to the city center and take the subway daily. This has the added benefit of staying at a nicer, more western hotel (eg Marriott, Hilton), but also being near the old town square. I'm staying at the Angelo Hotel, but the training is actually split between two hotels and I don't get the benefit of being able to quickly jet up th

FIRST Conference 2018 - Review (Kuala Lumpur Edition)

As apart of my new job, my employer is seeking to gain FIRST membership later this year. To support that goal, I was asked to attend the 30th FIRST Conference in Kuala Lumpur. For the travel weary, this is not a trip to take lightly. For me it was 3 flights and 28 hours total of travel just to arrive. I do have to say, the conference venue, the Shangri-La hotel is absolutely fabulous. Very nice, clean, and ultra courteous staff. The swag bag I was given at registration was also very nice, including 3 shirts, challenge coin, notebook, mini first aid kit, and a pretty decent backpack. I also have to say the lunch options for the conference are vastly superior to anything I have ever experienced. SANS and Blackhat could learn a few things. For a 5 day conference, you get a much greater value here. If you are interested in jumping straight the slides you can visit here . Opening The conference was kicked off on Day 1 by Thomas Schreck (@shrekts) who gave out some

Top 10 InfoSec Mistakes

This is my Top 10 list based on what common mistakes I am seeing, which may be completely different from what others are observing. Please share your experiences to see where there is overlap or uniqueness. 1) No CISO Left Behind Having a low performing CISO is in almost all cases a program killer. Not only is it bad for morale, it typically derails efforts to reduce risk and puts budget dollars on projects with very low ROI. One thing I have noticed is that C-levels and most BoDs are unable to adequately assess CISO performance. Its often only measured on personality and the pure luck of avoiding a public security breach. Conversely, many high performing CISOs get a raw deal when they experience a breach, yet have advanced the program further than any of their predecessors. Recommend: Hold quarterly KPI reviews, including discussion of new KPIs at least annually. Maintain accountability of a CISO's time, specifically around time spent building their personal bran

The saga of Norse and an industry indictment

I first interacted with Norse and Sam Glines in 2013, when they were making the rounds in St. Louis pitching their product. They showed up to our office with 3 people and another person on the phone. They couldn't really answer any of my technical questions, but were pleasant enough. I knew right away though, they had nothing to offer me as leader of an IT security program at a then Fortune 500 energy company. Because they had an office in St. Louis and I was keen to see them succeed, I gave Sam advice to the effect that in their current form they were only replicating what Damballa had already done years earlier and much better. I told him they were too early and needed to establish an actual threat intelligence team with experienced, industry recognized analysts. I also recommended they focus on nation state versus the commodity type data they were collecting in the "deep, dark, web". No idea what he actually thought of this, but I'm going to go out on a limb and s