January 8, 2002

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama

We discussed Current Events briefly, and then went on to our program.

Gary Warner, of Energen, presented a talk on Defining the Perimeter, encouraging attendees to identify the entire perimeter of the network and discussing both internal and external perimeters.

Daniel Uriah Clemens presented a talk on Defending the Perimeter, which discussed the importance of logging ALL network traffic that passes through the firewall, and had recommended also logging border Router traffic using a syslog server. Agent Mauldin interrupted to say that without these logs it is often impossible to prosecute a criminal action. Bottom line: If you want to be able to catch the bad guys, you have to have the logs.

Greg McGill, our Blue Cross Blue Shield host, ended our meeting with a presentation on Elements of Wireless Security. BCBS is using wireless, but only after carefully designing their network to minimize traffic "leaks", registering all "allowed" wireless devices (via MAC address) and encrypting the data in transit through a VPN. Very scary but informative talk!