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Wade Williamson

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Wade Williamson is a Senior Security Analyst at Palo Alto Networks. He has extensive industry experience in intrusion prevention, secure mobility, and both wired and wireless networking. Prior to joining Palo Alto Networks, he led the product management team at AirMagnet, Inc. He has been a steady and active researcher of new threats and techniques used to compromise enterprise networks and mobile end-users. He also brings well-rounded experience from silicon-valley visionaries Netscape and Sun Microsystems.

Recent articles by Wade Williamson

  • Analysis of the Jericho Botnet - A Modern Malware Case Study
    The rapid sophistication of malware over the last several years is a byproduct of the network effect: malware writers are now able co-opt increasingly powerful end-user applications and then analyze the effectiveness of their own efforts vis-à-vis existing IT security products and share knowledge about which evasive techniques work and which ones do not.
  • Protecting Your Network From DoS Attacks
    In this week's column we will take a brief look at some anti-DDoS best practices and what an overall DDoS strategy could look like. Regardless of the source, defending a network from these DDoS attacks has become an integral part of any IT threat prevention strategy.
  • Analyzing the Verizon Breach Report
    The Verizon DBIR highlights how common the worst-case scenario has become in terms of IT security. The security industry has notoriously been somewhat seen as the boy who cried wolf, always warning companies about the dangers of hackers while often overselling the risk.
  • Netting Out a Response to the Microsoft RDP Vulnerability
    This week Wade explains what you need to know to protect yourself from the RDP vulnerability and others like it. Patching is a great start, but what where do you go from there?
  • Patience: The Great CyberCrime Equalizer
    If we don’t have a solid notion of what is normal in our environments, it’s highly unlikely that we will notice the new threat once it arrives.
  • Combating Botnets - Think Globally and Act Locally
    In some ways botnets are a very local network security problem, meaning that your users are compromised, potentially having your enterprise information stolen, potentially using your network resources to launch other attacks.
  • Into the Fog of Greyware
    Targeted malware designed to break into organizations is news no matter how you look at it. However, there are interesting things going on at the grey end of the malware spectrum which also have the potential to make a similarly large impact to network security.
  • Three Malware Trends to Watch in 2012
    2011 was a landmark year to say the least, in terms of network security and the overall evolution of malware, and there are no indications that things will slow down anytime soon. With that in mind lets embark on that traditional new year exercise and predict a few of the trends we’re likely to see in 2012.
  • Understanding the Ecosystem of Modern Malware
    As malware gets progressively more complex, it’s important to understand how the major players in the malware industry fit together and how these relationships affect the ways that malware is developed, distributed and ultimately used in attacks.
  • Five Must-Have Capabilities for Controlling Modern Malware
    Malware has become a network-borne and network-enabled threat, and as such we need to bring network controls to the fight against malware. If you can take away the ability for malware to communicate, you can effectively take away much of its power.
  • Focus on Malware not the Myth
    While there is no doubt that modern malware are highly evasive and skilled at avoiding detection, if we give these threats too much credit we risk turning our problems into unsolvable myths, and in the process miss the chance to stop them.
  • Finding the Malware Needle in the Haystack
    Modern malware depends upon its ability to communicate with a remote attacker while hiding or blending in with our normal allowed traffic. However, we can often detect this ongoing command-and-control traffic and other telltale signs of malware infections if we know what we are looking for.
  • Getting Your Hands Dirty In the Fight on Malware, Part 2
    We should assume our networks will be compromised if they haven’t already. This week Wade describes how analyzing outbound and inbound traffic and network segmentation can help protect internal assets, even after your network has been compromised.
  • Getting Your Hands Dirty in the Fight on Modern Malware
    This week Wade describes how enterprises can protect themselves against modern malware by getting in the middle of drive-by-downloads, controlling risky applications, and finding the unknown malware.
  • The Evolution of Malware
    Wade provides an introduction to malware and touches on the evolution of modern malware, discussing the history and background of modern malware threats, and explains the malware lifecycle.