When Prevention Fails: Extending IR and Digital Forensics to the Corporate Network (slides from SANS Boston 2011)

The slides from my @night talk at SANS Boston 2011 are available for download now:

When Prevention Fails, Extending IR and Digital Forensics Capabilities to the Corporate Network (PDF – 6,2 MB)

Speaking at SANS Boston

Thanks to Barbara Basalguete, Stephen Northcutt and the rest of the SANS crew for the opportunity to participate in such a great event, as well as to all the attendees that preferred to stay around after a long training day instead of heading off to Harvard Square for Friday party!

When Prevention Fails: Extending IR and Digital Forensics capabilities to the corporate network

2011 is being a big year for cybersecurity incidents with high profile attacks reported against large organizations including HBGary Federal, RSA, Lockheed Martin and several Sony companies among others. With smarter intruders that can make use of both very sophisticated attacks and simple, yet effective, phishing attacks against our users, everyone should assume that at some point their preventive measures will fail, and that sooner or later you will have to recover from a future intrusion. Based on this assumption several questions arise: When prevention fails, what is left? Am I ready to detect, react and recover from an intrusion? What can Network Security Monitoring and Digital Forensics do for me?

Ismael’s talk will address these questions, describing the latest trends in computer attacks and intrusions, including the use of Botnets and what has been called the Advanced Persistent Threats (APT). Lastly, Ismael will show how Network Security Monitoring (NSM) and Digital Forensics methods and tools can be extended to the corporate network to assist in the early detection and investigation of these threats. Best practices and techniques on how to do NSM, full packet capture, network forensic analysis and data carving will be discussed, along with some live demos using tools that are available to any security practitioner.

Community SANS and SEC 503 comes to Berlin! 16-21 May

I can’t think of any better place to be in May than… Berlin!! So all packet-ninjas looking to improve their TCP/IP and traffic analysis skills are welcome to join us in the first ever Community SANS Berlin for the SECURITY 503: Intrusion Detection In-Depth track.

A full description of the event can be found here:

http://www.sans.org/info/74514

Registration is still open but you have to be quick. It might be also a good idea to drop me an email if you’re planning to be there 😉

See you in Berlin!

Teaching Community SANS Security 503: Intrusion Detection In-Depth

I’m glad to announce that I will be teaching Community SANS Security 503: Intrusion Detection In-Depth at Banbury, Oxfordshire (UK). This 6-day course will run from Monday, February 15, 2010 through Saturday, February 20, 2010.

If you haven’t heard of Community SANS courses before, I encourage you to have a look at this new format (new outside the US, where it’s been running for years). This is a great way of bringing the popular SANS courses to your local security community at a reasonable cost, especially for those that can’t attend the major events.  It’s worth mentioning that unlike the SANS Mentor  sessions, these are delivered over a six-day period, just like it is at a larger SANS event, including the full set of books and access to audio files. They are just delivered in your own community, in a small classroom setting and at a discounted cost for tuition and travel expenses.

I’ve already described my experience with SANS, both as student and facilitator, so I won’t go over that again. Also, you can find a further detailed description of the Security 503 track on SANS website, an outstanding course that I’ve already described as the “most valuable course I’ve ever taken”. However, I want you to listen to Mike Poor, instructor at the SANS Institute and co-author of this course (along with Judy Novak and Guy Bruneau), describing it on YouTube. Mike Poor is both an amazing professional and a great guy that I had the opportunity to meet at SANS Sydney in 2008, when I took his Penetration Testing class. As Mike would say, this IDS course is simply “awesome”!