Eric Goldman

3 AppSec Lessons from Cloud with a Chance of Meatballs

Maybe you've seen 2009's Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Perhaps you thought this was a movie about science and about a young nerdy-man trying to find his place in the world. Actually, the real purpose of this movie is to help teach you and other developers some very important Application Security lessons.

Security » #appsec #security #communication

Push the Button: Making Security Training Fun and Interactive

As humans, we are all constantly trying to find the signal in the noise. Unfortunately, the topics and behaviors that we, as corporate security trainers, are trying to explain, teach, and reinforce are often seen as noise to those whom we are targeting. Therefore, to achieve our goals we need more than pertinent information and slick graphics; we need to find ways to stand out, capture people's attention, and find a way to cement our desirable security behaviors with positive associations. An effective strategy to stand out, make your message more memorable, and to build a positive reputation for your security team is to incorporate interactive exhibits and activities in your security training program.

Security » #human factors #training #security awareness #journal article

Vulnerability Report: Open Redirect in Jive Social Networking Platform

The enterprise social networking platform, Jive (jiveon.com) uses an exit-link tracking mechanism for all external links. The links through this exit mechanism were not validated. An attacker could leverage the trust in a Jive based social network to perform spear-phishing against community users. This issue was reported to Jive at has been remediated with an optional configuration setting as of the time of publication. Remediation requires action by the Jive instance administrator to enable this setting.

Security » #Jive #Vulnerability Report #open redirect

Encryption in the Hands of End Users

Organizations are increasingly investing in encryption capabilities. One form of encryption that is seeing increased deployment is end-user managed encryption; however, such deployments present many challenges for the enterprise. Such tools typically lack centralized management and control capabilities, either forcing or allowing users to make security decisions on their own. This makes monitoring and enforcement of proper usage difficult and leaves doubts over whether users are using encryption properly, if at all. In addition, monitoring and data loss prevention tools are often rendered mute because most solutions lack escrow and security infrastructure integration. In this article we will discuss some of the challenges and risks in deploying end-user managed encryption and will also evaluate alternative centralized solutions and their benefits.

Security » #encryption #human factors #zip #siem #journal article

Help your users protect themselves from family member fraud

Social networks and similar service providers must take proactive actions to protect their users from fraud attempts and account abuse perpetrated by friends and family members. With easy physical access and intimate knowledge, these threat actors can impact not just the victim, but other users and the overall quality and reputation of your service. While service providers cannot force technical controls, such as screen saver passwords, on their users, they can adopt techniques and strategies to reduce their potential exposure and to help their users to take proactive measures to protect themselves and practice good security hygiene.

Security » #fraud #social media #accounts #password management #redaction #journal article

The effect of acquisition decision making on security posture

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of decision making in IT acquisition and security, and the disparity between the two domains. The paper postulates that improving decision processes during acquisition increases decision makers' security consciousness and security posture.. Analysis suggests a significant positive correlation between the effectiveness of acquisition decision making and organizational security posture and attitudes, further suggesting that small improvements in acquisition decision making may result in substantial improvements in an organization's security posture.

Security » #human factors #aquistion #journal article