Friday, June 21, 2013

Info. Security: Do you have the right people for the job?

Information Security:
Do you have the right people for the job?


When you have a problem at your house (or are building a new one), do you trust your general contractor to do the specialized and sophisticated work? If your pipes burst, don’t you want a licensed and experienced plumber to take care of it? If you choose a dedicated and specialized professional for these jobs, why aren’t you doing the same thing with your IT security? Why trust the same guy that plugs in your printers and keyboards with sophisticated work like managing your network security, protecting you against targeted attacks, and preventing your client and private information from being stolen?

In today’s digital landscape hackers are becoming more sophisticated and precise in their attacks. These attacks come from all corners of the internet: from China looking to steal proprietary intellectual property, from Iran looking to disrupt bank transfers, and from “hacktivists” like Anonymous and other groups. How can you depend on your IT group (either in house or consultant) to know and defend against all of these online threats? The reality is that you can’t. When it comes to information security, you need someone that has seen the threats first hand and knows how to protect against them.

Here at Wapack Labs we have experts with proven track records in the field. Our analysts and digital forensic examiners have years of real world experience protecting companies large and small from targeted and complicated attacks to their information networks.  Backed by the power of its parent company Red Sky Alliance, Wapack Labs is able to bring the knowledge and information sharing of Fortune 500 companies to the table to protect your network.



We know how to protect you and your data, and we have developed a layered solution that will make sure that you are secure from every angle. Here at Wapack Labs, we have developed the Socrates Solution (our own version of the Socratic Method). This solution combines information security protection from industry leaders into an easy to install solution that we manage for you! The impact to your company is minimal and you don’t need to train your current staff to operate or manage the equipment. Once a simple setup is done, everything is managed off site from our location in Manchester, NH. The Socrates Solution protects against threats from the outside at the perimeter (right where your modem is) all the way down to the individual workstation. If your business needs to conform to HIPAA, PCI, or Sarbanes–Oxley regulations then the Socrates Solution is for you and can give you Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to make sure that none of your personal and client information is getting out.


If you are concerned about your current security setup, or just have questions as to how we can help you, don’t hesitate to give us a call at 603-606-1246 or email me at dkirmes@wapacklabs.com

Friday, June 14, 2013

We are a week away from the official start of summer and things could not be going better here at Red Sky and Wapack Labs. This week we had the entire team from both the Wapack Labs and the Red Sky side in the office in Manchester, NH. This facilitated as both a meet and greet and as a “hive mind” to share ideas. This experience was wonderful and really let loose the creative energies of the whole team. Having such bright and driven people collaborating and creating great work product is both inspiring and satisfying when you can look back and see all your hard work pay off.

This week Red Sky Alliance saw a great milestone with our 50th fusion product. This consists of roughly 1000 pages of technical APT analytics covering 11 known and emerging threats. Along with the great analytic work that is being done here at Red Sky, we are also seeing steady growth in the membership. The new members we are bringing on help expand the information gathering and bring different types of industries to the table.

Also in the office this week were some of our interns that are participating in the Red Sky Institute. Our analysts are working hand in hand with these intelligent and aspiring individuals to show them the ropes of the Infosec world. The interns are eager to learn and have jumped in head first trying to learn as much as possible from our world class analysts. With their core academics from their respective Universities combined with Red Sky know how, it won’t be long before they are getting their hands dirty and shedding light into the darkest corners of the deep web.


Wapack Labs is also seeing some great strides in our products and analytics. Along with our current forensic and incident response investigations, we are also developing our Socrates security product. This product will be a turn-key solution for small businesses that are worried about network security –APT, targeted event, etc., as well as PCI and HIPAA compliance. The idea is that using this very lightweight MSSP model, Red Sky can test information gathered from the customers networks for the presence of what Mandiant likes to call evil, while at the same time broadening the ability to capture new data from this largely ignored business segment. We’re starting in New England and for those small businesses this is a great way to get big company protection using enterprise tools and an expert analytic capability at a small business price. This security platform is perfect for anyone accepting credit card information, we specialize in protecting patient information in your doctor office or client information with insurance companies and many, many more. 

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Breaking new local ground with Wapack Socrates!

This local Manchester market is very different from the national and global markets I'm used to. I have no problem picking up the phone and talking with the CISO of a Fortune 500, but the hair dresser who's running her own shop up the street? Damn. That's HARD! I tell the Fortune 500 CISO he's got problems with cyber actors, and he understands. We talk about full packet capture, finding the needles in the haystack of needles, and live over the wire investigations and he/she gets it. But the financial planner or the doctor, or the insurance agent, or the commercial banker, or the hair dresser up on Elm Street? They have no idea what cyber means to them, how it might affect their business, how to recognize it, or what to do about it even if they did!

We're on it.

Introducing Wapack Labs' Socrates services.
  
Wapack Labs will come to your company, install a sensor on your network, and diagnose any issues found. As an example, during our testing, we recorded over 4,000,000 scans on our test network and over 40 attempts to compromise our network --this was in 48 hours! Likely many of these were automated, but the automated attempts usually lead to a botnet infection --used to steal credit card data! As a larger company, this might not surprise you at all. In fact, the numbers probably sound small, but to the mom and pop on the corner, well, they need to know what it means. Wapack is a local company servicing not only the Red Sky Alliance, but also Elm Street. Forensic Services, Socrates, R&D, Analysis. We can help you too.  Derek does a great job on forensics, and is working through the Socrates build-out.  Interested in a trial? Drop us a note!

We've had a terrific week on the R&D side of the house. 

WhoisRecon: Wapack Labs created an analysis tool called WhoisRecon. WhoisRecon is a graphic analysis tool used to discover, provide a representation, and dynamically create relationships of  Whois searches individually or in batch. WhoisRecon is perfect for pen testers, analysts, and investigators! We introduced the beta WhoseRecon for our Red Sky Alliance team this week and testing is now open to the larger security community! Check out whoisrecon.com, or send us an email if you are interested in beta-testing. 

Red Sky Jive Chat: We posted our first screenshot of our new Jive Chat for the portals. It looks great, and the Jive community seems to have gone wild over it. We'll be looking for our first beta user beyond Red Sky for revenue opportunities soon.

Research and Development is going well. We're working on a threat intelligence and analysis database for one of the Red Sky members. We've automated many of the queries needed to pull in data from the right sources, and have gotten to a place where data is fairly normalized.