BeyondCorp Weekly 5
Ivan Dwyer - January 31, 2017
Good morning. I’m here at the Usenix Enigma conference in Oakland, which has brought together a strong and diverse set of folks across academia and business. It’s been very informative so far, with two more full days of sessions to go. A key theme throughout has been how best to present security best practices to people in a usable and encouraging way.
On that topic, there was a great fireside chat between Parisa Tabriz from Google and Alex Stamos from Facebook. Aside from the fake fire video background, it was a real authentic conversation about the challenges they face making security work for everyone. I plan to write up a more extensive review of the conference later this week, which I’ll share in next week’s newsletter. Here are a few things that caught my eye this past week.
Improving account security with delegated recovery [Facebook]
Also at Enigma, Brad Hill announced an account recovery feature with GitHub as an example. This points to a larger trend where Facebook becomes an official Identity Provider.
The foundation of a more secure web [Google Security Blog]
Google continues to release more security announcements, further backing up their own practices. They have now expanded their CA to operate as a Root CA.
New Trojan Turns Thousands of Linux Devices Into Proxy Servers [The Hacker News]
This newly discovered Trojan that impacts SSH further enforces the need for more dynamic privileged identity management over using static credentials.
It might be time to stop using antivirus [Ars Technica]
A by-product of incorporating Zero Trust practices as with BeyondCorp is enforcing better security practices at the endpoints. This means keeping up with software updates more so than AV. Whether to ditch it entirely is up for debate.
How to keep branch offices as secure as corporate HQ [CSO Online]
A key reason for Google to design BeyondCorp the way they did was because of their numerous satellite offices and remote workers. This article covers a few basic tips that are in line with the BeyondCorp principles.
Upcoming Events
Tonight is the BeyondCorpSF Happy Hour in conjunction with the Enigma conference. If you’re at the conference, come by District Oakland around 7 after the welcome reception. It’s open to all.
For those attending RSA who may want a break from the main conference, Google is hosting a satellite event nearby on Tuesday and Wednesday. The talks are all relevant to BeyondCorp, with our very own Paul Querna joining a panel discussion on Identity and Access. Be sure to RSVP here.
That does it for this week. Check back this time next week for another set of relevant news, articles, and events. Cheers,
Ivan at ScaleFT
Ivan Dwyer
Ivan Dwyer is the VP of Product Marketing at ScaleFT, working with the community to raise awareness around BeyondCorp and Zero Trust for organizations of all kinds looking to modernize their security architecture.
