The ramblings of a computer geek
VMware vCenter can use a multitude of authentication methods, such as LDAP, Active Directory and SAML (ADFS), however since vCenter 8.0 U1 the ability to integrate with OKTA for authentication has been added, which allows for adding MFA (multi-factor authentication) for enhanced security and detaching the vCenter appliance from Active Directory. When switching to use […]
More...There are a number of ways to protect secrets you wish to use in your Playbooks. I’ll show a simple example here of how you can encrypt a string, copy it into your Playbook for use and then run the Playbook, where the string is de-crypted in-line and used without exposing it in plain text […]
More...A quick guide to setting up SSH Public Key Authentication. SSH Public Key Authentication means you can authenticate to a remove server via SSH without needing to enter your username and password. Instead you create a public-private key pair, then place the public key on the target server. Then when you SSH to the server […]
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Although its becoming increasingly rare nowadays to be using un-encrypted connections, let’s see what it really means at the network level. Un-encrypted connections on their own are not necessarily a problem, its all about what value what you are sending has and therefore what could be exposed to a nefarious actor. If you are viewing […]
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A Web Application Firewall (WAF), is a layer of protection you can add to your web application. Adding a WAF to an Application Load Balancer (ALB) is pretty straightforward. You need to create at least one WebACL, to which you configure some rules (that filter the traffic), you can then attach the WebACL to the […]
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IT Security continues to be a very important topic in the IT ecosystem, ensuring your Information Security is as good as it can be also makes good business sense, through the reduction of risk of loss and showing commitment to your customers of your organisation’s quality and capability. Information Security doesn’t just come from technical […]
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A big topic at the moment in Information Security is multi-factor authentication(MFA), also known as two factor authentication (2FA). So the first question, what is a “factor”? Put simply a “factor” is element that a principal (i.e. a person trying to logon to a system) can use to prove to the system they are the […]
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The Kemp WAF is based on the OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set (CRS), it is a set of firewall rules that are loaded that provide generic signatures for common attack types (e.g. SQL Injection, XSS and so on), it uses string matching, regex techniques to look for and block attacks in a general way. What […]
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NOTE: See https://geekmungus.co.uk/?p=3619 for the most up to date article! We’ve had an issue with the recent “Security Update for Microsoft Windows (KB5019964)” update, as by the looks of it a load of other people. In our case we are running Microsoft Windows 2016 domain controllers, the NetApp filers are pretty old we’re readying to […]
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I’ve recently passed the CISSP exam. Passing the exam is just one step in becoming a Certified Information System Security Professional, once you’ve passed the exam there are additional steps required to achieve the certification. There is a lot of chatter about exactly how long the process takes to get registered after the exam, so […]
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