I like to write

A writing portfolio can be tough to maintain, as links tend to change over time. Instead, I've decided to share a copy of some of my contract work here, as well as some of own personal writing.

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How Threat Research Can Inform Your Cloud Security Strategy

Published August 24, 2023 for Orca Security

As the world has wholeheartedly embraced online-first living in the wake of the last three years, our collective attack surface has increased exponentially, creating more opportunities for bad actors to exploit. Having a cybersecurity strategy and building one are two entirely different things. The way you accomplish this will be heavily informed by your threat research methodologies. Like all things, the more tuned in you are to the cloud security landscape, the more adaptive you can become. But what exactly does it mean to be “tuned in” and how can you possibly keep up with the constantly changing world of cybersecurity while still having enough time to eat, sleep and drink the occasional espresso-based beverage? What Is a Threat, Anyway? One of the biggest challenges in threat research is keeping up with the rapid evolution of the definition of the word “threat” — and boy has it evolved. In just...

Cloud Workload Security vs. Cloud Security Posture Management

Published August 17, 2023 for Orca Security

Cloud security is hard. Seriously. In a world where everything from our phones to our refrigerators can be connected to the internet, securing any cloud native organization can be an overwhelming task simply due to all of the moving parts. It’s not just employee devices you have to worry about anymore, but every identity, configuration and nuance in your (probably many) cloud providers. Not to mention all of the workloads that you run within these providers. Cloud-based servers run software, and software has vulnerabilities, all of which need to be tracked, patched and managed.

Common CWE Finds: Reachable Assertion

Published July 25, 2023 for Mayhem

In this blog post series, we’re diving into Mayhem’s top common weaknesses enumeration (CWE) finds. A Common Weakness Enumeration, or CWE for short, is a list of software and hardware patterns that can lead to vulnerabilities and other weaknesses. One such CWE that is both fairly common and possibly unexpected is the reachable assertion, a fascinatingly niche weakness that can lead to denial of service attacks. How Do Assertions Work, Anyway? In their simplest form, assertions are simply conditionals that, when false, immediately halt the execution of the underlying program. While not a feature of every major language, assertions are still quite common and are typically used as pre-conditions to ensure the necessary environment and dependencies are available to the running program. As an example, let’s say that we have an application that can only run successfully before the year 2032. The way we might enforce this pre-condition using an assert in the C programming...

What Is Cloud Patch Management?

Published March 7, 2023 for Orca Security

In 2017, a major American credit bureau suffered one of the largest data breaches in history. Over 150 million people had their private records exposed as a result of this breach, ultimately resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars of financial damage to the organization (not to mention an incalculable amount of reputational damage). The cause? A vulnerable instance of the Apache Struts web framework that had a critical patch released over two months prior. While the impact of this hack is one of the most extreme in history, it is a particularly valuable story for illustrating both the need for patch management and the consequences of failing to take it seriously. But, what exactly is patch management? In a nutshell, patch management is the process of ensuring that the software your organization relies on remains up-to-date and protected against any known vulnerabilities. This can be done either manually or...

3 Benefits of Technology Integrations in Cloud Security

Published January 18, 2023 for Orca Security

I’ve always been a fan of applications that integrate with all (or some) of the other tools and services I use. It’s like a superpower that, when activated, creates something that is larger than the sum of its parts. Now, instead of a single tool that does one thing well, it’s a collection of tools that each work together in harmony to solve problems faster, easier and more transparently — like a digital Swiss Army knife. When it comes to cloud security, these benefits are especially pronounced, as the amount of overhead required to manage the security of a cloud native organization is already incredibly high. As a cloud native company, you are inherently putting your trust in companies with potentially complex configuration systems that can expose you to a security incident with only an errant keystroke. Cloud security tools that integrate into your technology ecosystem allow you to better...