The /c/cybersecurity community on Infosec.pub has new icon and banner artwork courtesy of @bolo ! It already makes the space look nicer if you ask me 🎨 😄
Weekly thread for any and all career, learning and general guidance questions. Thinking of taking a training or going for a cert? Wondering how to level up your career? Wondering what NOT to do? Got other questions? This is the time and place to ask!
I’m a security architect in the public sector, state government. I started as an entry level sysadmin around 2000. I’m being strongly encouraged to apply for the CISO position here. I’m 46, and currently lead a team of 3.
Every time I apply for the private sector, including lower level jobs, it’s crickets. If I apply for govt work, I get people banging on my door.
How do I get a resume review, or someone to point out what I need to make the jump from govt to private sector?
Hey smart peeps, I’m a remote worker who attends a lot of virtual meetings. I also sometimes create training videos or host training sessions, and my current earbuds are some $15 amazon cheapos....
Always love these kinds of questions, and love how you are working to build this community.
I work for a government agency as a deputy ciso, and I’m putting together a decision package for legislature to request new staff. I’m looking for five new members of my team, which would slightly double our size. It’s a very long process, which involves a lot of capacity planning, reading strategic plans and tying it to things other people have talked about, demonstrating work bottlenecks through metrics from our soc, and leveraging relationships and capital Goodwill that I’ve built over the last couple years.
image descriptionAn infographic titled “How To Write Alt Text” featuring a photo of a capybara. Parts of alt text are divided by color, including “identify who”, “expression”, “description”, “colour”, and “interesting features”. The finished description reads “A capybara looking relaxed in a hot spa....
It might help to think of things in a maturity model. Putting in a SEIM is a big job, and maybe more appropriate for when the security program at your org has matured more. What you can do is spend time working on the other stuff - what’s your endpoint protection? What compliance requirements do you have? How’s your inventory & asset management? What’s policy look like? Do your AD accounts all make sense? What’s the password policy? Do you have any old service accounts?
Picking little stuff allows you to make progress, and gets you ready to move to the bigger things. A mentor once told me to use a checklist (for life in general, but applies to cyber):
1 Did they ask you for help 2 Do you have it to give 3 Have you done enough for now
This is how I do my home system, Dell r710xd I believe. I bought it used via craigslist and I think it came from the local power company. In the States we have government surplus sites that have stuff cheap.
You can mount a rack mount system vertically on the side of the wall, hanging down with a couple of shelf brackets.
If you’re getting a new litter box and have access to a Cricut - then you, too can have a ribbon-cutting ceremony for your brand new Performing Arts Center
If it’s #2, I tend to scoop (with a plastic dog bag, I don’t use one of those ) pretty much right away, tie it off & put it in the trash. I’m with @iamericandre, changing to wood cut down on smell quite a bit. I change it out once a week now.
Ayy, nice work getting started down the selfhosting route! Start by remembering that security is a maturity process. To find out if you’re doing the right things at the right time, ask yourself:
Do I know it needs to be done
Have I done enough (this day, week, etc)
Do I have it to give
If you’re just one person and it’s a self-hosted home setup, remember you can’t patch all the things all at once. Asking yourself regularly if you maturing your environment over time is essential. Do a little work each week and you’ll make good progress.
When I think of security, I think of a few things
Authentication & Access - each system should have just enough accounts with just enough permissions to get work done. Change default passwords. Make them long and unique. Use MFA whenever possible (often impractical for self-hosted; cut yourself slack when this is the case!). A note on logging - if you can, while you’re doing this homework, check how long it saves logs. Shoot for keeping logs longer if possible; I like 30 days, but you might want more. Also make sure you have a time server, or at least that you’re getting accurate time stamps. If something weird happens and you’re investigating, having timestamps on logs that line up and make sense helps you recreate what happened, so you can decide if you need to wipe something and reload it.
**Patching **- automated scanning of your stuff for vulns would be fantastic if you’re interested in going that route, but a Saturday morning checklist to run updates on everything works too.
Attack Surface Management - if you’re not sure you’re exposed, scanning externally can be a big help. I have a Racknerd server ($40/yr, it’s amazing) in San Diego and I periodically run scans of my home network to see what’s forwarded. This is using nmap, although I could also use a free version of Nessus Essentials on there. This gives me an idea of what I look like from outside my network.
Inventory - do you know what you have, and what’s it doing? Even a pencil drawing of your network, IP addresses, and services they have can come in super handy. While big orgs have an index of critical data and where it’s stored, just knowing what containers are running on which VM or physical box can help if stuff goes sideways. I redraw mine periodically, yes it’s hand drawn because it’s fast and does the job lol. Do what works for you, though, to keep an inventory of your stuff. You need to know what you have, what it does, and where it’s supposed to be going.
Mentorship Monday - Discussions for career and learning!
Weekly thread for any and all career, learning and general guidance questions. Thinking of taking a training or going for a cert? Wondering how to level up your career? Wondering what NOT to do? Got other questions? This is the time and place to ask!
Looking for good USB ear buds
Hey smart peeps, I’m a remote worker who attends a lot of virtual meetings. I also sometimes create training videos or host training sessions, and my current earbuds are some $15 amazon cheapos....
What are You Working on Wednesday
Weekly thread to discuss whatever you’re working on, big or small, at work or in your free time.
That's a lot of corned beef... (lemmy.world)
A helpful graphic about writing alt text (lemmy.ml)
image descriptionAn infographic titled “How To Write Alt Text” featuring a photo of a capybara. Parts of alt text are divided by color, including “identify who”, “expression”, “description”, “colour”, and “interesting features”. The finished description reads “A capybara looking relaxed in a hot spa....
Replace old IBM hardware
Hi all...
There used to be whole forests like this in the Pacific Northwest (lemmy.today)
New litterbox day (lemmy.today)
If you’re getting a new litter box and have access to a Cricut - then you, too can have a ribbon-cutting ceremony for your brand new Performing Arts Center
I'm new to self hosting. How do I monitor security?
I’m not great with Docker or networking, so when I picked up an n100 mini pc for self hosting I installed Ubuntu and Tipi to get started....