Philip

Philip is an esteemed Information Security Manager with a robust track record spanning over 25 years in Fortune 500 corporate IT environments. His extensive experience encompasses managing a broad array of resources, teams, and high-impact projects. Philip specializes in Information Security Management and Security Operations, and he is particularly adept in Intrusion Detection & Handling, Computer Forensics & Investigation. He is well-versed in critical standards and practices, including the Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 (SAS-70) and the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard. Philip's expertise also covers Security Architecture Design, Information Disaster Recovery, Network Security, Cryptography, and Secure Application & System Development, making him a comprehensive authority in the cybersecurity field.
A group of cybersecurity professionals working in a high-tech security operations center.

Introduction to Cybersecurity Careers

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Cybersecurity isn’t just about hacking or stopping hackers; it’s a diverse field that plays a crucial role in protecting personal and corporate data against cyber threats and maintaining the integrity of our digital infrastructures. As cyber threats continue to evolve, so does the need for skilled professionals who can preempt and neutralize these threats. This … Read more

A digital fortress symbolizing robust network security measures.

The Basics of Network Security: Protecting Your First Line of Defense

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In the modern digital age, network security is the bulwark against an ever-evolving array of cyber threats. For cybersecurity students, mastering network security fundamentals is not just a curriculum requirement—it’s a crucial skill set for shaping a safer digital future. This article delves into network security’s core principles, offering theoretical insights and practical strategies to … Read more

Selling your Information Security Team Part 7

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Onward with the Attacker VM.  In order to make the attack sequence easier during a presentation, everything will be scripted.  The best tool for that in Kali Linux is Metasploit.  Each phase of the Cyber Kill Chain introduced at the beginning of the series will have it’s own Metasploit script and will use it’s own set of ports so we can clearly separate each phase for our audience.  Things will be much clearer in the final post wrapping up this series, but for now, onto the fun.

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Selling your Information Security Team Part 6

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We are on to building the Victim VM.  This VM will be built with Window 7 SP1 32-bit.  Be aware that when SP1 was released, these vulnerabilities were either not known or were later zero day discoveries.  More on the vulnerabilities in SP1 later during the post on the attacker VM.

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Selling your Information Security Team Part 5

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The center piece of this demonstration is the Splunk Dashboard.  The idea is to provide clear indicators when things are good (green) or bad (red) during the demo.  In Part 1 we discussed the Cyber Kill Chain in 4 phases, so we will build a Splunk Dashboard that shows those 4 phases clearly.

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Selling your Information Security Team Part 4

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Continuing the series on Selling Your Information Security Team, it’s now time to start building the Utility Virtual Machine that will host all the support programs and applications used in the demonstration.  This post will cover building that very importation Swiss Army Knife of the demonstration … the Utility Virtual Machine.  In Part 2 of this series, we built the host environment and defined the two networks joined by the firewall.  Then in Part 3 we build the firewall to join the previously defined networks together.

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Vulnhub Boot2Root “PwnLab: init”

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While this walk-through looks fairly strait forward it was not in reality.  There were a lot of dead-ends and attempts that didn’t work, or didn’t give me the results I wanted.  Once I found the correct path though, it took only a few minutes to walk through it again and document it with screen shots.

If you have not had a chance to complete the PwnLab:Init challenge on VulnHub STOP READING NOW.  This is a fun challenge and I recommend you try it.

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Selling your Information Security Team Part 2

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In the previous installment of this series, we discussed how Information Security can be similar to insurance … it’s only discussed when bad things happen, and it’s rarely a revenue generating center.  We also talked about how one might show return on investment in the Information Security Team.  Finally we walked through a four phase Cyber Kill Chain that could be used to simplify a complex demonstration of Information Security that could be presented to non-InfoSec managers and Board of Directors.  In this part of the series we will install Virtualization Software for the Virtual Penetration Lab that will be the foundation of our demonstration to the Board of Directors.

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Selling your Information Security Team

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Information Security can be similar to insurance … it’s only discussed when bad things happen and it’s rarely a revenue generating center.  So how does one show return on investment?  I was recently asked to do just that by participating in a presentation to our Board of Directors.  Senior management wanted to show off the new security operation center and the SOC team to the board.  My first thought was: <sarcasm>That is a great idea … they can walk through a SOC and see all the “Security Bling” screens on the wall.</sarcasm>  But after brain storming with the team, we actually came up with a great idea that I will be writing about over the next several weeks.

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