Avoiding the Mis-management of Patch Management

Presented at ShmooCon I (2005), Feb. 5, 2005, 1 p.m. (60 minutes)

Patch-management: it is one of our latest and greatest challenges and could quite possibly be the keystone to keeping our systems simply working, let alone relatively free from the kids that need extra space for their MP3s. What are we talking about? What AREN'T we talking about?! Pros and cons of the most popular patch-management solutions on the market. Tips and tricks culled from the last year of one of the newest and most needed mailing lists on the planet at patchmanagement.org. Challenges. Success stories. Miserable failures. Emerging technology to manage patching and emerging technology that needs to be patched. Come sit down and chat about patch-management--the task we all love to hate, but know damn well needs to get done.


Presenters:

  • Tina Bird - Security Architect, InfoExpress
    Tina Bird brings rigorous scientific discipline, a wealth of network administration and Internet security expertise, and substantial teaching experience to her role as the Security Architect for InfoExpress. tbird moderates the Log Analysis and VPN mailing lists. With Marcus Ranum, she runs http://www.loganalysis.org, a portal for building enterprising logging infrastructures and interpreting log data. She is slowly authoring a short topics guide to system logging for SAGE, the System Administrator's Guild. tbird is a co-moderator of the newly founded Patch Management mailing list. Previously tbird was responsible for technical review and implementation of Internet firewalls, virtual private networks and authentication systems at Cerner Corporation in Kansas City, and subsequently for Secure Network Group in Lawrence, Kansas; the Director of Network Intelligence at Counterpane Internet Security; and a Computer Security Officer for Stanford University. Her responsibilities have included assessment of threats to corporate assets and current security practices, technical evaluation of available products, planning for long-term growth of Internet and extranet infrastructure, and network configuration and management in accordance with security policy. At Secure Network Group she also developed and implemented a training curriculum for the company and its customers. In this regard she obtained vendor certification from Security Dynamics to provide ACE/Server Administration courses, developed and presented classes on Sidewinder, FireWall-1 and Gauntlet firewalls as well as classes for USENIX and Network World on virtual private networks. At Counterpane she developed strategies and documentation for integrating customer devices into the monitoring system; tested new attacks and vulnerabilities to determine log-based forensic signatures; and wrote alerts for both internal use and customer distribution, based on significant new security vulnerabilities and attacks. At Stanford, she worked on the design and implementation of security infrastructure for University systems; writing Security Alerts for desktop and server machines on the 40000-host network; healthcare information security & HIPAA compliance; and extending the university's logging infrastructure. tbird was the primary Stanford representative for FIRST, the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams. tbird graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a B.S. in physics, and has a master's degree and Ph.D in astrophysics from the University of Minnesota.

Links:

Similar Presentations: