Issue: Winter 2017

From the Winter 2017 Issue

The Changing Dynamics of Cyber Assessments

Author(s):

John Williams, CEO, CyVision Technologies, Inc.

Cybersecurity is a lot like meteorology. For example, hurricane tracking systems fuse disparate weather data into a common model that supports situational awareness, decision making and response planning. A single datum, such as wind speed or barometric pressure is not sufficient to determine the hurricane’s path. The model’s accuracy is dependent on the integration of … Read more

From the Winter 2017 Issue

The Move to Standardization and Open Architectures Enable Cybersecurity Automation for Government Sector

Author(s):

Steve Kirk, Vice President, Fortinet Federal

As networks become increasingly complex, with wireless connectivity, the move to the cloud, BYOD, and the Internet of Things, they present ever-growing opportunities for compromise. Most organizations have deployed several security devices as part of their overall security infrastructure, usually from different vendors. Often, those devices don’t talk to one another. These interoperability challenges can … Read more

From the Winter 2017 Issue

Security through Planned Destruction— Using the Cloud to Reduce APT Risk 

Author(s):

Chris Rutherford, CISSP, CAP, Senior Strategic Cyber Consultant, LMI

David K. Shepherd, CISSP, PMP, Senior Consultant, LMI

Many network attacks gaining attention today are advanced persistent threats (APT) that aim to maintain access for long-term data exfiltration. The advent of cloud infrastructure provides a new avenue of defense against persistent network attacks. The ability to plan the destruction and re-creation of virtual machines in the cloud environment can dramatically reduce the time … Read more

From the Winter 2017 Issue

Achilles Heel: The Vulnerability of Embedded Firmware

Author(s):

Terry Dunlap, Founder and CEO, Tactical Network Solutions

Embedded firmware “is the flash memory chip that stores specialized software running in a chip in an embedded device to control its functions.”1 It’s everywhere – in computers, large and small electronic devices, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, medical devices, phones, tablets, cars and a host of other places. The vast majority resides in vulnerable … Read more

From the Winter 2017 Issue

from the{EDITOR-IN-CHIEF} 

Author(s):

Adam Firestone, Editor-in-Chief , United States Cybersecurity Magazine

Hello, The dust never really settles on cyber and information security. Immediately following one of the most contentious presidential races in American history, focus shifted to questions about the impact cyber-attacks may have had on the election’s outcome. Election hacking so dominates the discussion that the Yahoo breach, estimated to have impacted over a billion … Read more

From the Winter 2017 Issue

from the{PUBLISHER} 

Author(s):

Karen Austin, CEO, United States Cybersecurity Magazine

Karen Austin

Greetings, New Year. New Administration. Welcome to our Winter 2017 issue of the United States Cybersecurity Magazine. First and foremost, I would like to thank our sponsors, members and our contributors for their continued support. Secondly, I would like to acknowledge our staff for their meticulous work in producing this high-end, solutions-oriented cybersecurity magazine that … Read more