After a year of blogging apathy, I decided it's time to write a new entry. What prompted me is an interview I did for Infosecurity Europe about social engineering and blended attacks just recently. It's now up on YouTube, so take a peek and let me know what you think!

Cloud Security Alliance UK & Ireland

I am delighted to have been appointed to the executive board of the new UK & Ireland chapter of the Cloud Security Alliance. I'm Chair of the Advisory Board which will give me plenty to work on over the next few months! I gave the keynote at our inaugural chapter meeting last week and really enjoyed the feedback and audience participation. Our next event is on Thursday 21 April when we are hosting a summit in London, inside Infosecurity Europe 2011.

May 2010 ramblings

I see it's been almost two months since my last blog entry. What poor discipline - sorry. Things have been really hectic here at First Base Technologies, which is my only excuse.

This year's Infosecurity Europe was the best for many years - we invested in a new and larger stand and more staff and the results speak for themselves. Lots of visitors with a better appreciation of what penetration testing is all about and how it fits into PCI-DSS. Better informed discussions about penetration testing as part of Governance, Risk and Compliance too.

Today I had an excellent meeting with Claranet who provide secure hosting in a private cloud. Just what we need - a guarantee of where our data resides for compliance with Data Protection coupled with a cast-iron SLA. And they provide secure networking too. Great stuff.

The show is over ... and web authentication bypass

Well, that's Infosecurity Europe over for another year - our 7th as exhibitors and my 11th as a speaker (I think). The new venue at Earls Court seemed to be viewed by most people as a big improvement and I have to agree - the show felt more relaxed yet more alive.

Our press conference on web authentication bypass was well received, with Computer Weekly and Infosecurity Adviser reporting the story. We'll be explaining more about this problem, which stems from poor web site configuration, at our next white-hats.co.uk meeting on 15 May. The fact that the problem affects web portals as well as e-commerce sites and that even two-factor authentication is no protection makes this an important issue for discussion.

It's that time again!

Once again it's almost time for Infosecurity Europe and this year I seem to have a very full diary for all three days!

On Tuesday 28th April at 12:00 I'm giving a talk on "Cloud Computing: 50 Ways to Lose Your Data" closely followed by a press conference on a nasty new trend in compromising e-commerce sites.

On Wednesday 29th at 15:00 I'm wearing my white-hats.co.uk and ISACA hats and chairing a security expert panel on "Social Engineering: Techniques and Mitigation", a topic very close to my heart!

Then finally on Thursday 30th, again wearing my white-hats.co.uk hat, I'm facilitating two different discussions in the new Security Cafe one on "Laptop Security - Understanding The Threats & Countermeasures" and the second on "Wireless Security - The Real State Of Play" which is about threats to corporate security through insecure home wireless networks.

I'll be ready for the long weekend after all that!