Test Ranges • Practical Experience • Formal Training • Engaging Games • Security Clearance
Bridging your technical and business needs in order to deliver useful yet suitably secure systems
Team Roles & Key Selected Experience
Colin Beattie as Technical Consultant: Senior Systems Administrator at Bourne Leisure, secured and pen-tested corporate enterprise networks at multiple and varied external-facing gateways.
Eva Summerfield as Formal Methods and Auditor: Cyber Security Technologist Apprentice, including Intrusion Analyst modules. Reading for MSc Cryptography and Communication Systems at Royal Holloway.
Martin Hill as Lead Engineer: Freelance software systems engineer, designing and implementing upgrades to legacy systems that include security assessments, controls and tests. Military Intelligence analyst and trainer for the British Army.
Information Security Deliveries
- Assessed security requirements and implemented controls for:
- DSTL TS-level cataloguing system
- Battlefield Sensor Meshes, integrated with Bowman and Falcon
- Bourne Leisure external access points
- On-site realistic cyber ranges to test both breaching and defending techniques
- Trained Military Intelligence personnel to defend against penetration attacks for Army Cyber Spartan 4.
- Developing “IN.Security” board game to train non-technical staff in attack vectors and suitable defensive behaviours, in a fun and engaging way in order to persist learning.
- Testing new information environment following office relocation.
Technical Skills
General systems administration:
- Network scanning and discovery: ethernet and IP frames and packets, NIC configuration and ARP/DHCP discovery with tools such as nmap/netstat; overlaid protocols such as DNS, FTP, SSH/Telnet, SMTP; SCADA such as SNMP and DDS.
- Network Monitoring tools: eg Wireshark, Snort and the ELK stack
- System Monitoring & Exploring tools: eg kali/metasploit, PIRTG, Nagios, perl & bash scripting
- Configuring defenses: VPN servers, port forwarding, port spoofing, firewall rules on eg PFSense and IPFire.
Security test tools:
- Web Servers: Nikto, Arachni
- Wireless: Aircrack, currently assessing pwnagotchi
- Password breakers: John the ripper, hashcat, hydra and associated dictionaries
- Exploit tools: kali/metasploit
Toolmaking and bespoke systems:
- Familiar with systems configurations of Linux, BeOS, Windows
- Scripting and toolmaking with Python, perl, php, bash/shell, some MS powershell, plus
- higher level incl C, Java, SQL etc
- Fast take-up of bespoke or niche tools, eg RTI DDS
Support Skills
Audit & Assurance Protocols: compliance with standards, such as OSSTMM or PCI DSS, and assuring that penetration tests have actually tested the vulnerabilities they claim to have, is vital for security and certification. As experienced engineers we are used to ensuring that the tests prove that the deliverables satisfy the requirements.
Communicating technical issues into business terms: network systems and issues are notoriously difficult to translate into business risks. We are used to stepping away from technical jargon and using suitable metaphores and illustrative examples to explain the situation in terms that are useful to the risk owners.
Training: understanding acquired by testing and discovery should be transferred to the appropriate staff. Defences against attacks (eg phishing) are often practiced by nontechnical staff, and we develop exercises and games to train suitable staff behaviours.
Horizon Scanning: attack vectors continuously change, and relying on automated tools such as metasploit can still leave systems vulnerable to attacks that are not yet captured by these tools. We monitor security news feeds to ensure our tests reflect current threats.