|
The UF Office of Information Technology Newsletter | |
|
Security Team Members Speak At GatorLUG Meeting | |
Two University of Florida IT Security Team members spoke about computer forensics and intrusion detection systems at the Gator Linux User Group meeting on May 17 to teach the Gainesville IT community about open source products and trends.
John Sawyer, IT security engineer, and Jordan Wiens, senior network security engineer, are both members of the GatorLUG organization and were pleased to present when approached with the opportunity. Sawyer’s presentation was on using open-source software when performing computer forensics. Wiens presented on intrusion detection systems (IDS) and open-source solutions for implementing them.
"It's important that users know there's free, open-source software out there than can work just as effectively as commercially available proprietary products," said Sayer.
The main topics Sawyer covered included drive imaging, data integrity, file hash signatures, data analysis, data carving, timeline analysis, and anti-forensics tools. For each of these topics, he gave examples of open-source software and some of the advantages they had over proprietary software.
Data and timeline analysis are Sawyer's favorite topics. He said that by analyzing the data you can discover who, what, when, where and the intentions of the hacker. It's like solving a mystery.
Wiens covered intrusion detection types, techniques, history and future trends in his presentation. It was very similar to the presentation he gave last month to a group of students in the Decision and Information Services graduate program at the Warrington College of Business.
He also discussed intrusion detection systems, open-source software and different ways to use them. Wiens gave a brief demonstration using the Snort IDS and Sguil analysis console.
All security team presentations and publication can be found at: http://infosec.ufl.edu/aboutus/publications.shtml
GatorLUG meets the third Wednesday of every month at the local Virtually Cuban restaurant (2409 SW 13th Street, Gainesville) at 6 p.m. Members of the group support open-source products, formats and communication standards. Meetings are free and open to the public. More information can be found at: http://www.gatorlug.org.
Return to IT Connections current issue, top page.