“****, my system has been attacked by ransomware…” has been one of the most commonly said statements in this year alone… The last several months have seen ransomware evolve from a relatively small hacker operation into a global IT epidemic, and one o...

We learned about the one-way hash function in the previous blog post. We understood that a strong hashing algorithm does not produce the same hash value for two different messages. If the algorithm does produce the same value for two distin...

Block ciphers have several modes of operation and each mode works in a specific way. Each mode of operation has its own utility and performs well under specific circumstances. Sometimes you may find that there is a trade-off between security and conv...

In the previous blog post, we learned about the Electronic Code Book (ECB), Cipher Block Chaining (CBC), and Cipher Feedback (CFB) modes of operation. While the ECB mode has been made for very small blocks, the CBC mode works the best with large bloc...

Quite often in the world of cryptography will you hear the term, PKI or Public Key Infrastructure. While people often use this term loosely without understanding ( and even appreciating) the whole gamut which this word entails, it is extremely import...

In the previous blog post, we learned about the various pieces of the puzzle called the public key infrastructure. It’s time to learn how these pieces work after fitting together.The PKI is made up of the following different components.• Certificatio...

“Trust” is what was the starting point of the discussion on PKI. The public key infrastructure is based on the premise to enable trust between unknown parties to ensure the secure transmission of information. Another element that ensures trust is the...

In the previous blog post, we dissected the definition of cloud computing as per NIST and ISO/IEC. Before you proceed further, I urge you to read it before continuing. In this blog post, we will learn about traditional virtualization and how the clou...

At a high level, both cloud and traditional computing adhere to a logical model that helps identify different layers based on functionality. The four layers are :Infrastructure: The core components of a computing system: are compute, networ...

When I was preparing for CISSP a few years back, a line from the book AIO guide - by Shon Harris really made an impact on me. It goes like this “ There are only two people in the world I trust - You and I and I m not so sure about you.” This statemen...

Governance and Risk management are some of the most important aspects of any business, irrespective of the fact whether you are running your applications (business) in the cloud / on-prem or even space. All businesses need to be governed and risks fa...

What if it is possible to analyze or manipulate encrypted data without revealing the data to anyone? Make an encrypted search query to a search engine and the results come back in an encrypted form, payment data is never decrypted, and still, transac...

A recent survey by Trend Micro revealed alarming results. When asked for feedback on companies’ approaches to cloud data destruction, 25% of the population responded with “What’s that?” as the response. Another 31% said their cloud provider handles c...

The Cloud Security Alliance Guidance explains the Data Security Lifecycle which mentions the various phases data undergoes in the cloud. This lifecycle was adapted from a blog article on Securosis. Rich Mogull, Analyst & CEO, stated that he was n...

“Horizon scanning is a technique for detecting early signs of potentially important developments through a systematic examination of potential threats and opportunities, with emphasis on new technology and its effects on the issue at hand.”With the w...