AFCEA Augusta-Fort Gordon Chapter Course: Inventory as a Cyber Security Foundation

Description

Cutting-edge security begins with a rock-solid foundation that includes knowing with certainty what is in a network. While investments in quantum encryption, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and block-chain are interesting, none of it will matter without a strong foundation.

The SANS/CIS Top 20-an industry-recognized benchmark focusing on security tasks that have the greatest impact-lists, in priority order, areas upon which an organization should focus; a complete and thorough understanding of the organization's inventory tops that list. Intuitively, this make sense; if a company does not know what it has, it cannot adapt or defend it. 

Accepting that inventory is a crucial first step, this session will  examine ways organizations attempt to manage inventory. It will review three primary methods, their strengths and weaknesses, and then introduce a new more effective way to achieve inventory awareness in a more holistic way. Three popular ways of collecting inventory information include: 

• Agents - Installing software on hardware to track inventory 
• Active scanning - Including tools like Nmap and NESSUS 
• Passive scanning - Monitoring flows with tools like NetFlow and S-flow

We will conclude by discussing ways to combine the best of both worlds-the use of inventory systems, combined with active and passive scanning to build a federated, single pane of glass through which to view inventory. Such a system can correlate the results between multiple OSS/BSS systems to provide insight into what is on the infrastructure and thus provide a strong foundation for cyber security operations.

Tracks:

• 
  Continuing Education
• 
  Greater Augusta Chapter Courses

Handouts

• Inventory as a Cyber Security Foundation