Austin ISSA

Making Blockchain Real for Business

Wednesday, September 18, 2019, Austin ISSA Chapter Meeting

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Register by September 11, 2019 to avail ISSA member discount !

Blockchain is a trusted digital transaction system that has been getting a lot of attention and is being applied to a lot of business use cases. This presentation will address the trust divide between enterprise blockchain and the cryptocurrency world. It will survey the inspirations for real world uses cases and deployments. This is a must-attend event for all security professionals who would want to learn more about blockchain technology, its impact on business, and the new security challenges of shared business networks.

About Our Speaker

Nitin Gaur,
Director, IBM WW Digital Asset Labs

Nitin is a senior technology executive at IBM. He is a forward-thinking, business-minded executive with rich experience as a leader, strategist, and innovator entrenched in the design and development of enterprise infrastructures and applications—including leading-edge middle-ware and mobility solutions for Fortune 500 companies in 20+ countries. He has a Master of Business Administration (MBA), has a Master of Science (MS) in Management Information Systems, and is an IBM Master Inventor with 70+ patents to his credit.

In his role as Director of IBM Blockchain Labs he was involved in instituting a body of knowledge and an organizational understanding around blockchain technology and its industry specific applications. He pioneered an enterprise blockchain strategy and advised IBM, business partners, and clients. He is also a co-author of the book “Hands-On Blockchain with Hyper-ledger”.

August 21 2019 Recap

Presentation – Jose Alvarez, DevSecOps – Security as Code, Beyond the Pipeline

Jose Alvarez is a DevSecOps Engineer

First, Jose defined DevSecOps and talked about some of the reasons security teams might want to go “agile.” He recommended reading The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford. Next, he explained some of the more useful tools for automation—such as Jenkins, Ansible, Puppet, and Chef—and some useful security tools—which include nmap, Nikto, the OWASP Dependency checks, and Metasploit.

The best part was the demonstration he did using Jenkins with the Blue Ocean plugin to run automated tests.

It was a very informative meeting!

Slides will be available for this meeting at https://www.members.issa.org/resource/collection/DA59637C-851B-4DB2-8B5B-977AB3118D4C/Dev-Sec-Ops_Presentation__1_.pptx

DevSecOps (Security as Code)

Upcoming 21 August 2019, Austin ISSA Chapter Meeting

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Register by August 14, 2019 to avail ISSA member discount !

This presentation will cover a high-level overview of the emerging DevSecOps culture, methodologies, practices, tools and tactics. Furthermore, the DevSecOps presentation will go over high level implementations regarding CI/CD security pipelines and where to implement security tools and why security practitioners need to become more agile through automation.

About Our Speaker

Jose Alvarez is a DevSecOps Evangelist & Enthusiast who has 19 plus years of experience in Information Technology with an Associates of Applied Science in Computer Science & a Bachelors in Cyber Security (Graduated Summa Cum Laude). Jose has worked for 4 years in the newly evolving DevSecOps field. Jose has been educating and promoting best practices and awareness regarding the evolution of DevOps into DevSecOps. Jose Has several certifications including Splunk (multiple), Ansible, YAML, DevSecOps, CompTIA, Fiber Optics & GCP Cloud Security. He has developed new ways of developing Security as Code Pipelines that increase operational tempo as well as security by leveraging DevOps automation tools and lean manufacturing principles. He has developed new workflows that don’t interfere with existing pipelines and found new and creative ways to transform security teams from only being a cost center into a savings and possibly a profit center using DevSecOps as a defensive competitive advantage.

July 2019 Recap

Presentation – Dan Teal, How New Features Affect the Windows 10 Attack Surface

Dan Teal is currently a principal engineer at Sophos working on Sophos for Windows. He has been very involved in information security since he helped develop techniques for offensive and defensive information warfare during his career as a US Air Force officer in the early 1990s. Since leaving the Air force, he was a co founder and CTO of CoreTrace Corporation and has also worked at Cisco, Trident Data Systems, WheelGroup Corporation, and Lumension Security.

One of the first things to understand about Windows 10 is that it is a service. Microsoft has added many new security features and continues to add new ones at a rapid pace. Most of these new security features are turned off by default. The list of optional features is available by choosing Control Panel, Programs and Features, and finally, click on Turn Windows features on or off. The features available will vary according to the version of Windows 10 running on your computer. To discover information on version of Windows 10 running on your computer, hit the Windows key+I, choose System > About. There you will find the edition of Windows, Version, OS build, and other information about your computer.

It was a very informative meeting! Presentation available from ISSA member site : https://www.members.issa.org/members/group_content_view.asp?group=90291&id=152524

Raffle

Don’t forget that the Austin ISSA chapter meeting has a raffle every month for chapter members. Someone is going to win! Join us next month and it could be you.

How New Features Affect the Windows 10 Attack Surface

Upcoming 17 July 2019, Austin ISSA Chapter Meeting

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ISSA Members avail early bird discount. New to Austin ISSA? Send an mail to our membership director for a complimentary code for registration

Microsoft released Windows 10 to the public four years ago and the operating system has evolved rapidly since then. This presentation will provide an overview of several features that have been introduced and how they increase or decrease the operating system attack surface.

Most of the features addressed in this presentation are available in all Windows 10 editions and Windows Server 2016 and 2019. We will especially focus on Containers and the Windows Subsystem for Linux and how these features can help or hinder your security posture.

Speaker for July,2019 – Dan Teal, Principal Engineer, Sophos

Dan is a consummate computer security professional. He has watched the security field grow over his career and is accomplished in many of the facets of security today. As a US Air Force Officer in the early 1990s, he helped develop the technologies and techniques for offensive and defensive information warfare. Dan has long proposed that you cannot adequately secure something unless you know how to attack it. He has developed penetration testing tools; researched and developed host and network-based intrusion detection systems, tested the efficacy of security products, architected next generation security products, and mentored security development teams. Dan’s primary objective is to develop advanced security products to stop the threats of today and mitigate the threats of tomorrow..

June 19, 2019 Chapter Meeting Recap

Sponsor – Kudelski Security

Patrick Charters gave a short presentation on Kudelski Security. He can be reached at 512-740-6502 or Patrick.Charters@KudelskiSecurity.com.

Presentation – Daniel Crowley, Intro to Python for Security Professionals

Daniel Crowley is the Research Baron at IBM X-Force Red. He belongs to Austin Hacker’s Anonymous and encouraged our membership to attend a meeting. Information about AHA meetings is posted at http://takeonme.org/.

He gave an introduction on Python, which was geared toward someone who knew at least 1 language. He introduced several terms, such as “duck typing,” which means that type declarations are not used. He recommended reading the official Python documentation at https://www.python.org/doc/. He discussed differences between Python 2 and Python 3. He showed some methods for converting Python 2 code to Python 3. Then he segued into how to leverage that into scripts than an Infosec professional would find useful, such as how to fingerprint a server, write Scapy modules (documentation available here: https://scapy.readthedocs.io/en/latest/), build a ICMP tunnel to send data, which could evade detection, and how to print all ICMP payloads. It was a fascinating overview! Slides are not available for this meeting.

Raffle

Don’t forget that the Austin ISSA chapter meeting has a raffle every month for chapter members. Someone is going to win! Join us next month and it could be you.

Introduction to Python for Security Professionals

Upcoming 19 June 2019 Austin ISSA Chapter Meeting

Register here today! If you are new to Austin, TX or Austin ISSA and wants to check out our meeting before becoming a member, send a note to membership@austinissa.org for information on getting a complimentary ticket.

Python is a popular scripting language with a wide range of useful features for many tasks. Notably, there are several security-focused Python modules with no equivalent in other languages. This presentation will provide an introduction to Python and its idioms, with mention of some “gotchas” that may surprise even people already familiar with one or more programming languages. Following that, we will discuss several useful security-related Python modules and how to use them.

About Speaker

Daniel Crowley is the head of research and a penetration tester for X-Force Red. Daniel denies all allegations regarding unicorn smuggling and questions your character for even suggesting it. Daniel is the primary author of both the Magical Code Injection Rainbow, a configurable vulnerability testbed, and FeatherDuster, an automated cryptanalysis tool.

Daniel enjoys climbing large rocks and is TIME magazine’s 2006 person of the year. Daniel has been working in the information security industry since 2004 and is a frequent speaker at conferences including Black Hat, DEF CON, Shmoocon, and SOURCE. Daniel does his own charcuterie and brews his own beer. Daniel’s work has been included in books and college courses. Daniel also holds the noble title of Baron in the micro nation of Sealand.

CHAPTER MEETING LOCATION: Norris Conference Center, 2525 W Anderson Ln #365, Austin, TX 78757

May 15 Meeting Recap

Scott Parker – Symantec Internet Security Threat Report

Scott Parker, Sr Principal Systems Engineer at Symantec, presented some of the intriguing findings from the 24^th Symantec Internet Security Threat Report. He compared last year’s results with previous years. He explained 2018 highlights, such as supply chain, Web, and targeted attacks, as well as form jacking and ransomware, crypto jacking attacks are on the increase. He also examined attack timelines and the increase and decrease of different types of attacks.

ISSA members can download his slides here. The actual report, as well as other information, can be downloaded here.

Austin ISSA President Seth Robertson (L) thanks Scott Parker (R) for his presentation

Raffle

Don’t forget that the Austin ISSA chapter meeting has a raffle every month for chapter members. Someone is going to win! Join us next month and it could be you. Ben Flores was the lucky winner for the May 2019 meeting.

Seth Robertson (R), Austin ISSA President, congratulates Ben Flores (L) on winning this month’s Amazon Gift Certificate.

Symantec Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR) 2019

Upcoming 15 May 2019 Chapter Meeting

Click here to Register today !

Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR) 2019, Vol. 24 has been released! If you’re not familiar with the report, it’s a crown jewel of intelligence Symantec publishes each year, which provides an overview and analysis of the year in global threat activity. The report is based on intel from the world’s largest civilian threat network, including 123 million sensors which record thousands of threat events per second from 157 countries and block 142 million threats daily. The 2019 Internet Security Threat Report takes a deep dive into the latest trends in cyber security attacks, including:

Formjacking: The Breakthrough Threat of 2018
Living Off the Land Attacks and Supply Chain Weaknesses are Here to Stay
Cryptojacking Down, But Certainly Not Out
Cloud Security is Organizations’ Achilles Heel
IoT in the Crosshairs of Cyber Criminals and Attack Groups

About our Speaker for May 2019

Scott Parker, CISSP, CISM, SCS Sr Principal Systems Engineer ISSA Distinguished Fellow Symantec Corporation

Scott has been with Symantec for 20 years and is an Information Systems Security Association Distinguished Fellow with over 30 years of tactical and strategic information security experience across multiple control points – data centers, endpoints, and gateways with a focus on threat protection, information protection, cyber security services and security analytics.

April 17, 2019 Recap

We had a full house for our April 2019 Chapter Meeting. Thanks for a great attendance.

Rick Handley, Data Security Manager at Schlumberger, gave an interesting and informative overview on steps to protect data in Microsoft Office 365. He covered licensing, the ecosystem of Office 365, SharePoint, recommended practices and available tools (Azure Rights Management Services, Information Rights Management, Azure Information Protection, and DRM), and leak opportunities and mitigation. Lastly, he went over lessons learned during Schlumberger’s implementation.

ISSA members can download his slides here.

Raffle

Don’t forget that the Austin ISSA chapter meeting has a raffle every month for chapter members. Someone is going to win. Join us next month and it could be you.