Qualys Blog

For InfoSec pros, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the constant noise from cybersecurity industry players — vendors, research firms, consultants, industry groups, government regulators and media outlets. A good antidote for this hyperactive chatter is to refocus on foundational InfoSec practices. That’s what SANS Institute Senior Analyst John Pescatore and I will do this week: An immersion into the Center for Internet Security’s Critical Security Controls (CSCs).

During an hour-long webcast on Sept. 28, we’ll be discussing the benefits of implementing these 20 recommended controls. Initially published in 2008, these information security best practices have been endorsed by many leading organizations and successfully adopted by thousands of InfoSec teams over the years. Now on version 6.1, the CIS CSCs map effectively to most security control frameworks, as well as regulatory and industry mandates, and are more relevant and useful than ever.

Continue reading …

Earlier this month, after roughly six months of deliberation and planning, Google finalised their plans for staged deprecation of Symantec certificates. The process began in March 2017 when Google had announced on the Blink mailing list that they had lost confidence about Symantec’s certificate issuance policies and practices of recent years. The initial deprecation proposal was very strict and looked like it would completely paralyse Symantec, ending with limiting their certificates to validity time of less than one year.

Over time, however, a different solution emerged and Symantec agreed to handle operations of their PKI to some other CA, selecting DigiCert for the role. In return, Google agreed to a deprecation plan that will still be difficult for Symantec, but allows them to resume issuance normally afterwards. Mozilla carried out their own investigation and agreed to follow Google’s plan. In the final twist, Symantec decided to sell their certificate business to DigiCert.

Continue reading …

This is the third post in my series on HPKP. In my first post I declared HPKP dead, and in my second post I explored the possibility of fixing it by introducing pin revocation. Today I will consider an entirely different approach to make HPKP much safer, by changing how it’s activated.

Continue reading …

Today Microsoft released a fairly large batch of patches covering 81 vulnerabilities as part of September’s Patch Tuesday update, with 38 of them impacting Windows. Patches covering 27 of these vulnerabilities are labeled as Critical, and 39 can result in Remote Code Execution (RCE).  According to Microsoft, one critical vulnerability impacting HoloLens has a public exploit, and there are active malware campaigns exploiting a .NET vulnerability. Microsoft has also patched the BlueBorne vulnerability that could allow an attacker to perform a man-in-the-middle attack against a Windows system.

Continue reading …

Last year, almost exactly to the day, I declared HPKP effectively dead. I believed then—and I still do—that HPKP is too complex and too dangerous to be worth the effort. The biggest problem lies in the fact that there is no sufficient margin of safety; pinning failures are always catastrophic. That’s always bothered me and I wondered if it was possible to somehow fix HPKP without starting from scratch. That’s what this blog post is about.

If you haven’t already read my last year’s blog post, I suggest that you do so now as it will make the discussion easier to follow. I’ll wait for you patiently until you come back.

Today I am exploring the possibility of fixing HPKP with an introduction of pin revocation, which would be used in case of emergency. Please note that, even though I’ll be trying to save HPKP from a technical perspective, I am not necessarily declaring that HPKP is worth saving. The landscape of PKI had changed and today we have Certificate Transparency (CT), which addresses one set of problems that HPKP was supposed to solve, and also Certification Authority Authorization (CAA), which addresses another set of problems. One could argue that, between CT and CAA, there is perhaps not enough left for HPKP to do, given its complexities. I’ll leave that discussion for some other time. For now, let’s attempt the challenge of making HPKP more palatable. Continue reading …

End users and their devices are right smack in the center of the battle between enterprise InfoSec teams and malicious hackers, and it’s not hard to see why.

When compromised, connected endpoints — desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets — offer intruders major entry points into corporate networks. However, end users are also their organizations’ best threat detection tools.

That’s a key takeaway from SANS Institute’s “2017 Threat Landscape Survey: Users on the Front Line,” a report published in August and co-sponsored by Qualys.

The study, conducted in May and June, polled 263 IT and InfoSec pros from companies of all sizes and major industries such as finance, government, technology and education.

It found that most of the top intrusion methods reported by respondents sought to directly or indirectly compromise end users or their devices. Hackers’ preferred threat vectors included:

• Email attachment or link (flagged by 74 percent of respondents)
• Web-based drive by or download (48 percent)
• App vulnerabilities on endpoints (30 percent)
• Web server / web app vulnerabilities (26 percent)
• Removable storage devices (26 percent)

Continue reading …

This release of the Qualys Cloud Platform version 2.30 includes updates and new features for Cloud Agent, EC2 Connector, Web Application Scanning, Web Application Firewall, and Security Assessment Questionnaire, highlights as follows.  (This posting has been updated on 9/6/2017 to reflect new feature capabilities in the release, as noted below.)

Continue reading …

Qualys’ library of built-in policies makes it easy to comply with commonly adhered to security standards and regulations. Qualys provides a wide range of policies, including many that have been certified by CIS as well as ones based on security guidelines from vendors such as Microsoft and VMware.

In order to keep up with the latest changes in security control requirements and new technologies, Qualys publishes new content to the Policy Library monthly.

This release includes new policies and updates covering:

• New CIS versions for Apache HTTP Server, Solaris, Microsoft Windows 2016, centOS, Microsoft IIS, Oracle Linux, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• New DISA STIG policies for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows 2016
• New Security & Configuration Policies for IIS, MS SQL Server 2016
• New Mandate mappings for CIS Critical Security Controls & First Five CIS Controls
• Several updates to minor versions for Vendor Recommended and CIS policies

Continue reading …

From the first page, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation stresses the importance it places on the security and privacy of EU residents’ private information. The 88-page document opens by referring to the protection of this personal data as a “fundamental right” essential for “freedom, security and justice” and for creating the “trust” needed for the “digital economy” to flourish.

The stakes are sky-high for EU regulators tasked with enforcing GDPR, and for organisations that must comply with it. The requirements outlined in the document amount to what some have called “zero-tolerance” on mishandling EU residents’ personal data and apply to any organisation doing business in the EU, regardless of where they are based.

Both data “controllers” — those who collect the data — and data “processors” — those with whom it’s shared — must implement “appropriate technical and organisational measures” and their IT networks and systems must “resist, at a given level of confidence, accidental events or unlawful or malicious actions.”

Bottom line: Organisations are expected to have technology and processes in place to prevent accidental or malicious incidents that compromise the “availability, authenticity, integrity and confidentiality of stored or transmitted personal data.”

As we’ve discussed in this GDPR preparedness blog series, while the regulation’s document is light on specific prescriptive information security controls and technologies, organisations must have solid InfoSec foundations in place to comply with this regulation, which goes into effect in May 2018.

In prior installments, we’ve discussed the importance for GDPR compliance of IT asset inventory, vulnerability management, prioritization of remediation based on current threats, and vendor risk assessment. Today, we’ll focus on another core component for preparing for GDPR: policy compliance.

Continue reading …