This article will explore methods for “hiding” SSH servers so that the server is harder to discover by malicious users on public networks. We’ll focus on changing the default SSH port and implementing SSH port knocking to make it more difficult for unwanted users to discover or locate the server.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) is a go-to solution to prevent privilege misuse and insider threats, and limit malware propagation. After all, properly protecting and monitoring the keys to the kingdom is always a good practice. Privileged Access Management has been even more critical in recent times. With the advent of the cloud where infrastructure is provisioned with a single API call and authenticated with a single API key, the risk of someone misusing these credentials is far higher.
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a keystone to accessing AWS accounts, but as companies grow, it can be difficult to understand and standardize, especially across many AWS accounts. To put some personality into the challenges of managing identity for multiple AWS resources and accounts, I’ll start with a short story about a fictional company that you might recognize as similar to the one you work in today! ACME Net is growing fast.
The SSH agent (ssh-agent) is an SSH key manager that stores the SSH key in a process memory so that users can log into SSH servers without having to type the key’s passphrase every time they authenticate with the server. In addition to the key management feature, SSH agent supports agent forwarding, which helps to authenticate with servers that sit behind a bastion or jump server.
Z3 is a satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) solver developed by Microsoft Research. With a description like that, you’d expect it to be restricted to esoteric corners of the computerized mathematics world, but it has made impressive inroads addressing conventional software engineering needs: analyzing network ACLs and firewalls in Microsoft Azure, for example.
Lack of access accountability and unmonitored access create a considerable security risk for organizations, and the best way to mitigate this challenge is by implementing identity-based access.
SSH servers are a common target for brute-force attacks. This is even more true if your infrastructure sits behind an SSH bastion because attackers have no choice but to compromise the bastion host either by exploitation or denial of service. In this article, we will list a few controls which will help you harden your SSH servers from brute- force attacks.
SSH bastion hosts are an indispensable security enforcement stack for secure infrastructure access. Every security compliance standard that deals with remote infrastructure access (e.g., FedRAMP AC-17 - Remote Access, HIPAA §164.312(a)(1) - Access control, SOC2 CC6.1 - Manage Points of Access) mandates preventing direct network access to the servers and APIs.
2022 feels a little different, doesn’t it? Every day I’m prepared to hear something new, something scary, or something exciting. These last couple of years have made it seem like we just never know what is coming next. It’s no different for financial services companies who have to be prepared for the unexpected, including disruptive technologies that can challenge their core businesses.
Many market-leading companies who have dominated their respective sectors with hardware or on-prem/installable software solutions are turning to SaaS offerings to fuel the next phase of their growth. Why? Simple. Market valuations are much higher for SaaS companies than they are for traditional software and hardware companies. The median multiple on earnings for a SaaS company is 12.7x as of Q3 2021 according to venture capitalist Jamin Ball who tracks the Public Cloud Software (e.g.
