Michael Banks - Blog of a Security Engineer

How I got started and my journey in Cybersecurity

Recently I was extended an opportunity to speak at an undergraduate class of computer science. The topic I was to speak on was how I got into cybersecurity and my experience of different roles within the public and private sector of cybersecurity. I thought I'd share my story here as well.

general

The 5 Books every cybersecurity professional should read

A group of industry professionals that I know started to talk about interesting books they've read and thus own our very own cyber book club began. Now I keep track of a running and ever-evolving list of books that I genuinely believe EVERYONE in the field and industry should read.

aws

How I manage a Serverless Blog for a little over $1 a month

I switched to a "serverless" architecture that costs me pennies to operate monthly. Managing the site with pure HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Implementing a blog would require code changes and pushing objects to S3.

tools

Here's one way I check for malicious IPs

AbuseIPDB is a project dedicated to helping combat the spread of hackers, spammers, and abusive activity on the internet. Here's a tool I wrote to query their API and data base of malicious IPs.

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This is My Architecture

Like all things in our industry, things change and evolve. Years ago, I started a personal website. I believe everyone should have a presence somewhere that explains who you are and what you do.

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Please Don't Be Like These Guys

With the inevitable breaches that are publicized in the news regularly, there begs the question that crosses my mind every now and gain: "What exactly are companies doing to protect our data?"

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A Year In The Life

This has been just an amazing year. I have flown about 50,000 miles (47,820) in the sky on an airplane and got to see so much of the US in a short amount of time. I have spent 101 days on the road and have stayed in many Marriott's and Hiltons.

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What's In Your Lab?

There come times where an Information Security Consultant may have to deal with a program, vulnerability, or even an operating system that you haven't made contact with before. Times like that is where an essential item in a consultant's toolbox needs to be utilization. A lab!

dfir

Embracing DFIR W/ SANS FOR408

FOR408: WINDOWS FORENSIC ANALYSISContinuing education and furthering one's toolset in their profession is a critical part of anyone's life. An information security (infosec) consultant many times has to be agile

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Project Slam

Project Slam is an initiative to utilize tools to aid in defending against nefarious adversaries. The overall focus is to research adversary’s behavior and utilize the data to generate wordlists and expose methodologies of various threat actors that can be provided back to the public.

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5 Tips Airports Should Probably Pay Attention To

While being at the airport a lot, you tend to end up noticing some not so flattering things. In general, it's been my experience that all airports have issues.

presentations

TakeDownCon 2016 (Rocket City)

Conferences (Cons) and training events where people from the same industry have become a great resource for people in the industry to networks, share research and give back. I submitted my call for papers and got picked up to participate in TakeDownCON by the EC Council foundation in Huntsville, AL.