Posts by Rapid7

8 min

5 Wrong Lessons From Equifax, and the Missed Opportunity of OWASP

Much ink has been spilled on the Equifax breach, along with plenty of (well-deserved) public excoriation of all responsible parties, starting from the top. However, quantity is no substitute for quality, and certainly not when it comes to tech journalism. Oftentimes, the content of such articles is dictated by the need for attention: clickbait first, substance never. As a result, there’s a missed opportunity to turn a disaster into a teachable moment. What’s worse is that many people will

1 min Komand

Everything You Need to Know About Building a Career in Security

Are you thinking about pursuing a career in security? Or have you already started one, and you’re wondering what it will take to get to the next level? Perhaps you have been in the security field for a long time, and it’s starting to feel a little stale? Regardless of where you are in your journey, we’ve put together a helpful guide full of valuable information and real-world anecdotes about what it means to pursue this dynamic and challenging vocation. Free eBook: Defining Your Career Path as

5 min Rapid7 Perspective

NCSAM Security Crash Diet, Week 2: Social and Travel

Rapid7 guinea pig 'Olivia' describes her efforts during week two of her security 'crash diet for National Cyber Security Awareness Month. This week focused on social sharing and travel security.

2 min Guest Perspective

NIST Standards and Why They Matter

A primer on implementing NIST recommendations by guest author Matt Kelly

2 min InsightIDR

How to Detect BitTorrent Traffic on your Network

Learn how to detect BitTorrent traffic on your network to capture metadata such as INFO-HASH, IP addresses, and usernames.

5 min Cybersecurity

NCSAM Security Crash Diet, Week 1: Maintenance

One of Rapid7's employees tries a month of different 'security diets' in the spirit of National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Week one highlights the importance of maintenance.

3 min Komand

SOC Series: How to Choose the Right Skills for Your SOC

Do you have the right mix of skills in your security operations center (SOC) [https://www.rapid7.com/fundamentals/security-operations-center/]? Whether your SOC is brand new or has been around for years, you need to be sure it’s built to meet the demands of today’s complex security landscape. In this post, we’ll define the most important skills any SOC should have today so you can be sure to have the right mix of people to safeguard your business. Effective Team and Communication Skills Regard

3 min Automation and Orchestration

How to Password Protect Apache Directories with mod_authn_dbd and MySQL on Ubuntu Linux

Synopsis The mod_authn_dbd is an Apache module that provides the functionality for Apache to authenticate users with MySQL database. This module provides authentication front-ends such as mod_auth_digest and mod_auth_basic to authenticate users by looking up users in MySQL tables. Apache’s mod_authn_dbd supports a wide range of drivers such as, ODBC, MSSQL, SyBase, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL and SQLite. This module allows execution of arbitrary SQL for user / password matching and also support al

3 min Automation and Orchestration

How To Secure Apache with Let's Encrypt on Ubuntu Linux

Synopsis Improving your website security has generally been most complicated and expensive task for every Linux administrator. Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority that provides free X.509 certificates for Transport Layer Security encryption via an automated process. It is very complex process to install and add an SSL certificate to a web server. You can make it easier with the help of Let’s Encrypt. You can easily encrypt data [https://www.rapid7.com/fundamentals/

4 min Automation and Orchestration

How to Secure SSH Server using Port Knocking on Ubuntu Linux

Synopsis Port Knocking is a method used to secure your port access from unauthorised users. Port Knocking works by opening ports on a firewall by generating a connection attempt on a set of prespecified closed ports. Once a correct sequence of connection attempts is received, the firewall will open the port that was previously closed. The main purpose of port knocking is to defend yourself against port scanners. Changing your default ssh port is not a secure method to protect your server, becaus

3 min Automation and Orchestration

How to Secure MySQL Server on Ubuntu Linux

Synopsis Now a day database server is very critical and necessary component for any applications. Databases can be found in everything from web applications, web server to smartphones and other devices. Most of software applications rely on a database to store its data. This is the reason why databases are the number one target of any attackers. Among all the databases MySQL and MariaDB has become the world’s most popular open source database due to its fast performance, high reliability and eas

4 min

Introducing Web Server Agents

We at tCell are excited to announce the availability of tCell’s Web Server Agent (WSA). The WSA joins our stable of agents for JavaScript, Java, Ruby, Python, Node.js, and .Net, extending our monitoring and protection capabilities to common web servers (NGINX is available now, and we’re accepting requests to join the tech preview for Apache and IIS.) But first, why this move? For that, I’ll need to take you back a few years, when people were All About that Bass and yelling “Timber”. In the

2 min Detection and Response

The Legal Perspective of a Data Breach

The following is a guest post by Christopher Hart, an attorney at Foley Hoag and a member of Foley Hoag’s cybersecurity incident response team. This is not meant to constitute legal advice; instead, Chris offers helpful guidance for building an incident preparation and breach response framework in your own organization. A data breach is a business crisis that requires both a quick and a careful response. From my perspective as a lawyer, I want to provide the best advice and assistance I possibl

23 min Komand

An Interview with Rebekah Brown, Co-Author of Intelligence-Driven Incident Response

We recently interviewed Rebekah Brown for our Defender Spotlight series [/2017/08/09/defender-spotlight-rebekah-brown-rapid7/] on the topic of her life as a cybersecurity defender. When we spoke with her, she also talked in-depth about how threat intelligence can inform and improve the incident response lifecycle. Rebekah practices these concepts in her day-to-day life as a defender, and she’s even co-authored a book on this very topic called Intelligence-Driven Incident Response [http://shop.o

3 min Automation and Orchestration

RSA (Rivest, Shamir and Adleman)

Synopsis Rivest, Shamir & Adleman (RSA) is the public key cryptosystem.  The phenomenon of data transmission is secured through it. The letters “RSA” are the initials of the inventor of the system. Four steps are incorporated in this algorithm: Encryption, Decryption, Key Distribution and Key Generation.  After the development of public-key cryptography, the most famous cryptosystem in the world is RSA. In order to maintain proper security, the decryption exponent of RSA must be greater than cer