Defense never seems to garner quite as much glory as offense, but good home-base security is what keeps the lights on and the enterprise humming. Today we'll check out three Black Hat USA 2015 Trainings that aim to up your security game and take the "hard" out of hardening.
Hacks are hard to avoid; even with perfect patching, systems may be compromised through 0-days that only attackers know of. But take heart, says Bastille Linux's Jay Beale, because there are great defensive technologies and techniques that allow you to deflect attacks even when patches don't exist. His hands-on Training Linux Lockdown and Proactive Security will teach you how to protect a Linux system from compromise... and prove that you succeeded (good for bragging rights). As you'll see, you don't have to work in a prison to become a master of lockdown.
Defending Linux boxes may be a well-established art, but hardening cloud instances is something of a newer beast. That'll be the focus of Rich Mogulli's Cloud Security Hands-On (CCSK-Plus), which will give you a solid foundation in cloud security and a full day of hands-on lab exercises. By the end you'll know everything needed to pass the Cloud Security Alliance Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK) exam, and just-added material will explore how you can leverage cloud characteristics and DevOps techniques to take cloud security to another level.
Last on our hitlist today is Active Defense, Offensive Countermeasures and Hacking Back, a Training which embraces the age-old idea that offense can be a key aspect of defense. Come learn how to force an attacker to take more moves to attack your network (increasing your ability to detect them), how to better identify attackers and their motives, and how to get access to the bad guy's system. Oh, a key point: You'll learn how to do all of this legally.
That's all our intel for today. Black Hat USA 2015 will occur at the Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas. It goes down August 1-6, so there's plenty of time to lock in early-bird discounts.