ANCHOR CYBER FEED

This post is one in a series of blog posts on the fundamentals of an information security program. You can see the complete list of posts in this series here . If anti-virus is the most basic control people think of in securing a computer, then firewalls serve the same role in network security. To many laypersons, “firewall” is synonymous with network security. But it was not until the late 1980s that practical network packet filters were introduced, allowing organizations to connect two networks while controlling what types of traffic were allowed, to which endpoints, and in which directions. Firewalls these days have evolved into “next-generation firewalls” or even “unified threat management devices.” These names denote two trends in the evolution of firewalls: the ability to filter traffic based on more detailed traffic properties, and the incorporation of other security functions (such as intrusio detection/prevention) that were traditionally provided by other devices. The f...

When it comes to security, it would seem like encryption is a good thing, right? Encryption is a good tool for protecting the confidentiality of your information, but (as the trend of ransomware has shown us) it has a down side. Secrecy can work for the the good guys and the bad guys both. Securing your network requires being aware of what is going on and what communications take place, and encryption can make that difficult. Just a few years ago, encryption on the web was used primarily just for logins and for sensitive parts of session, such as payments. However, that began to change in 2010 when Google changed Gmail to use HTTPS by default. That was followed by Facebook and Google search going to HTTPS by default in 2011 (Google completed the switch in 2012), Twitter in 2012, YouTube in 2014, and Wikipedia in 2015. Netflix has announced their intention to move entirely to HTTPS, but currently most of their actual streaming is still un-encrypted. Currently, most networks see more...