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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

  • Passwords, Malware and the AP-Twitter Hack
    Passwords are the ultimate goal for many hacking operations regardless of their sophistication. But, it’s important that we address the reality that strong passwords can’t be the only answer.
  • The Unique Challenges of Controlling Java Exploits
    The challenges of Java-based threats go deeper than your average 0-day vulnerability, and these challenges will likely affect your approach to controlling them. Organizations need to weigh the risk of a technology against the reward for the enterprise.
  • Getting a Handle on the Scale of Modern Malware
    Security evasion and customized malware has become mainstream for attackers of all skill levels, and we will always lose if we attempt to fight an automated threat with a manual response.
  • Lessons from Mandiant’s APT1 Report
    Wade summarizes key indicators as well as some of the techniques that may help you find other indicators of advanced attacks in your network.
  • Google Puts Its Money on Chrome OS
    Not only is Google raising the bar, installing a ladder and raising the bar again in terms of vuln bounties - they are doing so for an operating system that is virtually non-existent in the wild.
  • It's OK to Google Yourself
    Developing our own search skills will not only expose us to lots of interesting information, but can also significantly improve our own security posture.
  • Combating Emerging Threats Through Security Collaboration
    As the threat landscape continues to grow more daunting, it will become increasingly important that security teams find a safe way to share data concerning threats across organizational boundaries.
  • Keeping Up With Threats in the Virtualized Data Center
    Modern data centers are in the midst of an ongoing period of very dynamic evolution that has fundamentally changed the speed and efficiency of enterprise computing. For this reason alone, it is critically important that we design modern security controls into our virtualized data centers.
  • Black Hole Dominates on the Web
    Data in Microsoft's Security Intelligences report shows the broad impact of the Black Hole exploit kit in terms of its role in the delivery of threats.
  • Modern Malware and the Balance Between IDS and IPS
    Security will ultimately boil down to enforcement, even if we initially begin with detection. As a result, it’s important that when we perform our due diligence and evaluate new technologies that we do so with the end goal in mind.
  • Skill: The Most Important Layer of Defense in Depth
    In network security we are always in a battle of wits against the attackers, and today the best counter-measure for an intelligent attacker is still an intelligent defender.
  • Lessons From a Targeted Attack
    If you have information that is valuable enough to keep private, then there is value for an attacker in stealing it. Assuming that a targeted attack “won’t happen to me” is simply setting yourself up to fail.
  • Why Teaching Kids to Hack is a Good Thing
    The idea of teaching someone how to hack almost always generates a negative visceral reaction, because the assumption is that you intend to teach someone how to become a criminal. However, an understanding of hacking no more makes a criminal than an understanding of karate makes someone use the discipline maliciously.
  • To Stop Threats, First Know Your Traffic
    Knowing your traffic provides a long-term approach to managing threats that goes beyond simply buying anti-threat products. Unknown network traffic can be denied by default and in effect remove a critical hiding spot for malware.
  • What Flame Means to the Enterprise
    While the immediate risk of "Flame" is low, the long-term risk is high, as attackers learn new techniques and repackage them Into new malware, reminding us that we need to prepare to deal with uknown malware that remain undetected by antivirus products.
  • 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.