Securing your Web front-end with Azure Application Gateway Part 2

4th of July, 2018 / / No Comments

In part one of this post we looked at configuring an Azure Application Gateway to secure your web application front-end, it is available here.
In part two we will be looking at some additional post configuration tasks and how to start investigating whether the WAF is blocking any of our application traffic and how to check for this.
First up we will look at configuring some NSG (Network Security Group) inbound and outbound rules for the subnet that the Application Gateway is deployed within.… [Keep reading] “Securing your Web front-end with Azure Application Gateway Part 2”

Securing your Web front-end with Azure Application Gateway Part 1

3rd of July, 2018 / / 2 Comments

I have just completed a project with a customer who were using Azure Application Gateway to secure their web front-end and thought it would be good to post some findings.
This is part one in a two part post looking at how to secure a web front-end using Azure Application Gateway with the WAF component enabled. In this post I will explain the process for configuring the Application Gateway once deployed. You can deploy the Application Gateway from an ARM Template, Azure PowerShell or the portal.… [Keep reading] “Securing your Web front-end with Azure Application Gateway Part 1”

EU GDPR – is it relevant to Australian companies?

26th of March, 2018 / / No Comments

The new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) from the European Union (EU) imposes new rules on organisations that offer goods and services to the people in the EU, or collects and analyses data tied to EU residents, no matter where the organisations or the data processing is located. GDPR comes into force in May 2018.
If your customers reside in the EU, whether you have a presence in the EU or not, then GDPR applies to you.… [Keep reading] “EU GDPR – is it relevant to Australian companies?”

Validating a Yubico YubiKeys' One Time Password (OTP) using Single Factor Authentication and PowerShell

20th of March, 2018 / / No Comments

Multi-factor Authentication comes in many different formats. Physical tokens historically have been very common and moving forward with FIDO v2 standards will likely continue to be so for many security scenarios where soft tokens (think Authenticator Apps on mobile devices) aren’t possible.
Yubico YubiKeys are physical tokens that have a number of properties that make them desirable. They don’t use a battery (so aren’t limited to the life of the battery), they come in many differing formats (NFC, USB-3, USB-C), can hold multiple sets of credentials and support open standards for multi-factor authentication.… [Keep reading] “Validating a Yubico YubiKeys' One Time Password (OTP) using Single Factor Authentication and PowerShell”

Identifying Active Directory Users with Pwned Passwords using Microsoft/Forefront Identity Manager v2, k-Anonymity and Have I Been Pwned

22nd of February, 2018 / / No Comments

Background

In August 2017 Troy Hunted released a sizeable list of Pwned Passwords. 320 Million in fact.
I subsequently wrote this post on Identifying Active Directory Users with Pwned Passwords using Microsoft/Forefront Identity Manager which called the API and sets a boolean attribute in the MIM Service that could be used with business logic to force users with accounts that have compromised passwords to change their password on next logon.
Whilst that was a proof of concept/discussion point of sorts AND  I had a disclaimer about sending passwords across the internet to a third-party service there was a lot of momentum around the HIBP API and I developed a solution and wrote this update to check the passwords locally.… [Keep reading] “Identifying Active Directory Users with Pwned Passwords using Microsoft/Forefront Identity Manager v2, k-Anonymity and Have I Been Pwned”

Using Intune and AAD to protect against Spectre and Meltdown

1st of February, 2018 / / No Comments

Kieran Jacobsen is a Melbourne based IT professional specialising in Microsoft infrastructure, automation and security. Kieran is Head of Information Technology for Microsoft partner, Readify.
I’m a big fan of Intune’s device compliance policies and Azure Active Directory’s (AAD) conditional access rules. They’re one piece of the puzzle in moving to a Beyond Corp model, that I believe is the future of enterprise networks.
Compliance policies allow us to define what it takes for a device (typically a client) to be considered secure.… [Keep reading] “Using Intune and AAD to protect against Spectre and Meltdown”

Checking and patching your Microsoft Windows computer for Meltdown and Spectre

6th of January, 2018 / / 6 Comments

Overview

A Google team named Project Zero in mid 2017 identified vulnerabilities with many Intel, AMD and ARM CPU’s that allow speculative pre-processing of code to be abused. Speculative pre-processing aids performance which is why it exists. However when used maliciously it would allow an attacker to use JavaScript in a webpage to access memory that could contain information present in a users environment such as key strokes, passwords and personal sensitive information.
A very good overview on the how (and a little of the why) is summarised in a series of tweets by Graham Sutherland here.… [Keep reading] “Checking and patching your Microsoft Windows computer for Meltdown and Spectre”

Another day, another data breach

11th of September, 2017 / / No Comments

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Make no mistake the Equifax Data Breach of about 143 million records (approx. 44% of US population) is one of the largest and ‘will be’ the most expensive data breach in the history. Equifax is one of the four largest American credit agencies alongside Experian, Trans Union and Innovis.

The data breach notification by Equifax should remind us that data breaches are inevitable and these breaches will continue to happen and make headlines.

However, the key message of this breach is the reporting firm took over 5 weeks to publicly disclose the data breach, which means that the personal information of 143 million people was exposed for over 2 months before they were made aware of the compromise.… [Keep reading] “Another day, another data breach”

170 Days to Go…

5th of September, 2017 / / No Comments

Notifiable Data Breach Scheme starts on 22nd February 2018 — How well are you prepared?

Background

The focus on cyber security is rapidly increasing partly due to recent high-profile security breaches within major organisations and businesses. Evolving levels of sophistication, stealth, and reach of organised cyber-attacks requires more attention than ever before. Coupling cyber concerns with threats organisations face internally, cyber security now resides high on many corporate risk registers as a top concern for executives and business owners.… [Keep reading] “170 Days to Go…”