All Posts

6 min Ransomware

The Ransomware Chronicles: A DevOps Survival Guide

NOTE: Tom Sellers , Jon Hart , Derek Abdine and (really) the entire Rapid7 Labs team made this post possible. On the internet, no one may know if you're of the canine persuasion, but with a little time and just a few resources they can easily determine whether you're running an open “devops-ish” server or not. We're loosely defining devops-ish as: * MongoDB * CouchDB * Elasticsearch for this post

3 min Automation and Orchestration

Understanding Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) (1/2)

Synopsis To transport packets in a private and secure path over a public network, we use the process of encapsulating packets inside an IP encapsulation protocol. GRE follows this protocol and sends packets from one network to another through a GRE tunnel. In this blog, we will understand what is encapsulation, the CoS of GRE and firewall filters in GRE. Understanding GRE – Generic Routing Encapsulation What is encapsulation? The general internal representation of an object or data or packet is

6 min IT Ops

5 Rules of Pair Programming Etiquette

I like Pair Programming . I’ve been doing it episodically for about 10 years. Whenever I’ve pair programmed, at the end of a session, I’ve always walked away a better developer than when I started. However, the practice can be expensive when the pair doing the programming are not efficient. When a lot of friction exists between the two coders involved, costs can exceed double that of a single programmer trying to hash things out on his or her ow

5 min Komand

How to Automate Response to Endpoint Threats with Sysdig Falco, Splunk, Duo, and Komand

Many security teams use endpoint threat detection solutions to detect and respond to threats like malware, credential theft, and more. In a common architecture using a SIEM or Log Management solution, alerts from endpoint detection products can be managed and correlated with telemetry from other solutions or logs, and validated: Generally, a human being has to get involved anywhere from the third step forward. Can we do better? Using a typical architecture with a real endpoint threat detecti

2 min Nexpose

Scan Configuration Improvements in Nexpose

A common request we hear from customers is for the ability to schedule scans on individual assets, or on subsets of assets. Currently, you can start a manual scan and choose specific IPs, engine and template, but you need to have permissions to create sites in order to schedule such a scan. Good news! In version 6.4.18 version of Nexpose, released Jan 25th 2017, we've addressed this! Now individual site owners can create schedules and choose specific IP's, ranges or asset groups to kick off a

5 min Automation and Orchestration

Two Factor Authentication Methods and Technologies

Synopsis Authentication is a critical step that forms the basis of trust on the Internet or any network based transactions. To state simply it verifies that the person or entity is who they claim to be. However authentication mechanisms are constantly under attack. Two Factor Authentication is an evolution to counter these security threats. This tutorial takes a look at various types of authentication methods and technologies behind them. Different Types of Authentication Factors Three distinct

3 min Komand

The Most Repetitive Tasks Security Analysts Perform

It’s not very productive to come into work day in and day out just to perform the same task dozens of times when you were trained to hunt threats and remediate complex problems. The repetition of rote tasks like IP scoring, alert monitoring, and URL lookups can be fatiguing and dissatisfying, which, as major security breaches show , can cause alerts to slip through the cracks and threats to get in

4 min Komand

Introducing Komand’s Security Orchestration and Automation Platform

It was just a few months ago when we launched our beta program. And with beta users working within our security orchestration and automation platform , we built out new features, refined others, and overall fortified our solution. We validated that security teams not only want to save time, increase productivity, and streamline operations, they also need a tool that would allow them to add automation to their security work

2 min Nexpose

Maximizing PCI Compliance with Nexpose and Coalfire

In 2007 Coalfire selected Rapid 7 Nexpose as the engine around which to build their PCI Approved Scan Vendor offering.  PCI was just a few years old and merchants were struggling to achieve and document full compliance with the highly proscriptive Data Security Standard.  Our goal was to find that classic sports car blend of style and power: a vulnerability assessment solution that was as streamlined and easy to use as possible, but robust enough to significantly improve the customer's security.

3 min Komand

The 3 Things You Need in Place to Successfully Leverage Security Orchestration and Automation

In a time where security is becoming a board-level discussion and threats are affecting not only big businesses, but small ones too, many security teams are scrambling to keep up. But keeping up with a mounting number of threats requires massive efficiencies and a proactive security posture. The way to achieve both of those simultaneously is through security orchestration and automation . By this point you’ve probably hear

2 min IT Ops

Java 8 - Lazy argument evaluation

Overview “I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job. Because he will find an easy way to do it” – Bill Gates Lazy evaluation is an evaluation strategy which delays the evaluation of an expression until its value is needed. The opposite of this is eager evaluation, where an expression is evaluated as soon as it is bound to a variable.] Like most imperative programming l

5 min Intrusion Detection

The Pros & Cons of Intrusion Detection Systems

Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) A network intrusion detection system (NIDS) can be an integral part of an organization’s security, but they are just one aspect of many in a cohesive and safe system. They have many great applications, but there are also weaknesses that need to be considered. It is important to compare an NIDS against the alternatives, as well as to understand the best ways to implement them. What Is an Intrusion Detection System? Intrusion detection systems

6 min Automation and Orchestration

How to Install Snort NIDS on Ubuntu Linux

Synopsis Security is a major issue in today’s enterprise environments. There are lots of tools available to secure network infrastructure and communication over the internet. Snort is a free and open source lightweight network intrusion detection and prevention system. Snort is the most widely-used NIDS (Network Intrusion and Detection System) that detects and prevent intrusions by searching protocol, content analysis, and various pre-processors. Snort provides a wealth of features, like buffer

3 min Automation and Orchestration

Introduction to Incident Response Life Cycle of NIST SP 800-61

Synopsis In the series of blog posts titled “Incident Response Life Cycle in NIST and ISO standards” we review incident response life cycle, as defined and described in NIST and ISO standards related to incident management. In previous article in this series we reviewed NIST’s approach to incident response team and explained how security automation can help mitigate issues related to building a

4 min Automation and Orchestration

Recommendations for Incident Response Team included in NIST Special Publication 800-61

Synopsis We are starting series of blog posts: “Incident Response Life Cycle in NIST and ISO standards”. In this series we will review incident response life cycle, as defined and described in NIST and ISO standards related to incident management. In the first post in this series, we introduce these standards and discuss NIST’s approach to incident response team. Introduction NIST and ISO standards are excellent tools that can help organize and manage security incident management in any organi