Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Enterprise PDF Attack Prevention Best Practices: As commended by SANS

"According to McAfee Avert Labs, as of Q1 2010, malicious malformed PDF files are now involved with 28% of all malware directly connected to exploits." So states Mike Cobb in this very handy article on Enterprise PDF Attack Prevention Best Practices (free registration may be required but is totally worth it).

Of course, you may be thinking: Stephen Cobb says it's worth reading because Mike Cobb wrote it. So here's an objective opinion: "very good refresher on best practices for protecting against any malware spread by using any number of compromised attachments." That's Deb Hale of Long Lines, writing in SANS Internet Storm Center Diary.

True, Mike Cobb is my brother, but he is also Mike Cobb, CLAS, CISSP-IASSP, MCDBA. (BTW, for the acronymically-minded, CLAS = CESG Listed Adviser Scheme. CESG is the Communications-Electronics Security Group, which describes itself as the Information Assurance (IA) arm of GCHQ (as in Government Communications Headquarters) which is basically the UK equivalent of the USA's NSA/NRO). In other words, Mike knows quite a bit about security, as well as initials and acronyms.