14 Aug 2004: This document will introduce OpenVPN as a free, secure and easy to use and configure SSLbased VPN solution. The document will present some simple (and verified) scenario’s that might be useful for preparing security/networking labs with students, for creating a remote access solution or as a new project for the interested home user.
This article discusses Network Access Quarantine Control with Windows Server 2003, which allows administrators to quarantine mobile users before giving them full network access, by first ensuring these machines are up-to-date according to a baseline security model.
…excerpt from: http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1794
In the June issue of the Information Security Bulletin there is an article examining specific ways that the security and development teams can collaborate while software is being designed and developed as opposed to only patching software once it has been deployed. The article explores how software is extremely malleble in the design and development phase, once the architectural layers, tiers and distribution models are set and the application is deployed, then the cost and complexity of making changes rises dramatically.
My favorite part of the article is the clarity it gives in a table of the Software Development Activities and Artifacts. It clearly relates development processes and security-specific artifacts. Basically it looks something like this:
Phase Activity Standard Software Development Process Artifact Security-specific artifact Analysis Use Case Misuse Case Functional and non-functional requirements Glossary Design Object modeling Threat Modeling Design Patterns Data Classification Security Integration Design Coding Unit Tests Unit Hacks Code Development Countermeasure and detection development Deployment Build and configuration Security Baseline Operational processes Response processes Integration to Overall Security Architecture Table 1- Software Development Activities and Artifacts Anyways, this was part one of a series on the topic. Will be interesting to read the next installment. If you are into secure programming, this article might be an interesting read to pass along to your dev team partners.
I consider myself a power internet user. I typically have at least four browser windows open and the nature of my job dictates that I be able to diagnose issues with web servers as fast as possible. So in that persuit I have tried just about every web browser on the MS and Linux platform. And while there are some outstanding browsers out there I have come to love Mozilla Firebird. It is by far one of the best availible on either platform. With so many powerful addons it can really help in diagnoses and hacking around websites. Below are a the Extensions I use on all my PC’s
Here is the list I currently have installed.
Here are some security tools that I find useful.
Because I love Open Source software here is how to make your own Web Security Appliance for Apache
Windows 2003 Certificate Services article #1
Windows 2003 Certificate Services article #2
MS Cluster guide and tool
This guide provides step-by-step instructions for creating and configuring a typical single quorum device multi-node server cluster using a shared disk on servers running the Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003 Enterprise Edition and Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition operating systems.
The Cluster Recovery Utility is a tool that collects together a number of pieces of functionality that are particularly useful in a server cluster after a disk on the shared bus has failed.
Server cluster configurations manage disks on a shared storage infrastructure that are visible from multiple nodes although only one node in a server cluster can access any given disk at any point in time. In the event of the failure or corruption of a disk on the shared storage interconnect special care must be taken to restore the data and recover the applications.
The Cluster Recovery Utility is a tool that collects together a number of pieces of functionality that are particularly useful in a server cluster after a disk on the shared bus has failed.
This utility is primarily aimed at the following scenarios:
Restoring resource checkpoint files
Replacing a failed disk
Recovering from disk signature changes
Migrating data to a different disk on the shared bus
Note: this tool works on WIndows 2000 too!
Blogs to look at
Web Application Security devices - Recommended by Steve@BofA
I would love to have this Dilbert IT Clock
Jabber
Dell - We just bought two fully loaded 1655MC’s and need to buy these rails