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4 min Security Strategy

UX Research: Steps & Methodologies to Inform Product Redesign

The user experience (UX) design and research teams are preparing to revamp Rapid7's customer learning and online help. As such, I thought I would take the opportunity to provide our community insight into the role UX research plays in bringing new designs – of both new and existing features and experiences – to fruition. Before I begin, I'll tell you a little bit about our “research” team. The Rapid7 UX research team, which sits within the greater UX team, consists of myself and my colleague Ge

5 min IT Ops

Get your work done even faster with the Logentries REST API

Now you can get your work done even faster by automating tasks with the Logentries REST API. With the ability to programmatically query data, manage users, create alerts and integrate third party tools, it’s now easier to finish the job and get on with your day. Table of contents * Query API- Example Usage * Team and User Management API- Example Usage * Tags and Alerts API- Example Usage * LeExportPy- Read More * LeCLI- Read More On-demand Webinar Interested in learning more about the

4 min Automation and Orchestration

Secure Password Storage in Web Apps

Synopsis We like writing web applications. Increasingly, software that might have once run as a desktop application now runs on the web. So how do we properly authenticate users in web contexts? Passwords, of course! Let’s look at how to handle password authentication on the web. What not to do It’s very tempting to use plaintext authentication for web applications. Let’s whip up a quick python web server that we’ll use to test authentication. Let’s say we want to provide access to magic number

5 min Komand

5 Reasons Companies Are Losing Security Talent (And What to Do)

It’s hard enough finding security talent, but losing the talent you already have can be a particularly painful blow. That’s why we’ve put together a quick guide to help you: * Address some of the underlying causes of attrition * Increase retention of your security talent * Solve the security gap at your organization Here are five common talent-retention challenges and how to address them head-on. Challenge #1: Constrained Budgets and Disproportionate Strategy According to Kaspersky Labs, 8

5 min Komand

Filtering and Automated Decisions with PEG.js and React-Mentions

Here at Komand, we needed an intuitive way to filter data from a trigger step.  When automating security operations and processes, sometimes you don’t want a workflow to start on every trigger.  Splunk logs may be firing off millions of events, but running a workflow for each one may not really be what you need.  If we were to set up a privilege escalation rule in Sysdig Falco and index it in Splunk, we would want to run a specific workflow for that rule, but a separate workflow for detecting SQ

5 min IT Ops

Hashing Infrastructures

Engineers in fast moving, medium to large scale infrastructures in the cloud are often faced with the challenge of bringing up systems in a repeatable, fast and scalable way. There are currently tools which aid engineers in accomplishing this task e.g. Convection, Terraform, Saltstack, Chef, Ansible, Docker. Once the system is brought up there is a maintenance challenge of continually deploying and destroying the resources. What if we can hash the inputs for describing an infrastructure, where

4 min

Disaster Preparedness: It's Not Thought Of Until It Is Needed Most

...and then it might be too late. > An update from Delta CEO Ed Bastian: pic.twitter.com/udNN0kzbKs — Delta (@Delta) August 8, 2016 Recently, Delta Airlines suffered a weeklong outage that, if you take it on it's face, ticks just about every box on a security person's disaster recovery planning scenario. Delta has given

3 min Komand

Defining the Roles & Responsibilities of Your Security Team

Muddling together security responsibilities often leads to tasks falling through the cracks. Instead, organizations should be as clear as possible about which member of the security staff is responsible for which tasks. Moreover, the division of those tasks should reflect the unique capabilities and strengths of each team member. For instance, SOC personnel should be given tasks that require immediate attention, such as alert handling and incident response. Security engineers, on the other hand

3 min

Nexpose Now Notes: August 2016

We build Nexpose to help security practitioners get from find to fix faster. With the launch of Nexpose Now , Rapid7 delivered Liveboards to help you know what's weak in your world right now. Liveboards combine your live threat exposure data, powerful analytics and intuitive querying so you can spend less time compiling data, and more time improving your security program.

3 min Komand

Does Security Automation Mean SOC Employees Will Be Obsolete?

Telephones, computers, and robots all have one thing in common: People thought they’d replace the need for human input, putting us all out of a job. On the contrary, these technologies were widely embraced once the public realized what their true purpose was: to automate tedious work and enable us to do things we actually enjoy doing, and faster, too. The same benefits apply to security operations, and this is a great thing for security operations centers (SOCs)

2 min

SMB Security is so Simple - Take Advantage of it Now.

This is a guest post from our frequent contributor Kevin Beaver . You can read all of his previous guest posts here . Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have it made in terms of security. No, I'm not referring to the threats, vulnerabilities, and business risks. Those are the same regardless of the size of the organization. Instead, I'm talking about how relatively easy it is to establish and build out core information security functions and o

3 min Metasploit

Metasploit Weekly Wrapup: Aug. 12, 2016

Las Vegas 2016 is in The Books This week's wrap-up actually covers two weeks thanks in large part to the yearly pilgrimage to Las Vegas.  I myself elected not to attend, but I'm told everyone had a great time.  Many on the team are still recuperating, but I'd wager that they all enjoyed seeing you there as well.  Here's to everyone's speedy recovery. Centreon Web UserAlias Command Execution Our first new module this go-around exploits a remote command execution vulnerability in Centreon Web via

3 min Log Management

Using Log Data as Forensic Evidence

This is a guest post by Ed Tittel. Ed, a regular contributor to blog.logentries.com , has been writing about information security topics since the mid-1990s. He contributed to the first five editions of the CISSP Study Guide (Sybex, 6e, 2012, ISBN: 978-1-119-31427-3) and to two editions of Computer Forensics JumpStart (Sybex, 2e, 2011, ISBN: 978-0-470-93166-0), and still writes and blogs regularly on security topics for websites including Tom's IT Pro, GoCertify.co

3 min IT Ops

4 Potential Security Issues Raised By Pokémon Go

Pokémon Go is a phenomenon. The game is objectively a success and has been breaking mobile gaming records almost weekly. The game’s current success is without being open in some significant markets and it shows no signs of slowing. It is important to remind players to take measures to protect your company’s interests when playing. Pokémon Go is an Augmented Reality game. Players see the game’s fictional world on top of everyday reality. Augmented Reality manifests in several ways: from import

1 min Public Policy

NIST 800-53 Control Mappings in SQL Query Export

In July, we added National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-53r4 controls mappings to version 2.0.2 of the reporting data model for SQL Query Export reports. NIST 800-53 is a publication that develops a set of security controls standards that are designed to aid organizations in protecting themselves from an array of threats. What does this mean for you? Well, now you can measure your compliance against these controls by writing SQL queries. For example, say