Stories by: C.J. Kelly

The team gathered in the security lab for our weekly meeting. At the top of the agenda was distributed intrusion detection. The junior-level security engineer glanced toward a whiteboard that displayed his work of art -- numerous lines drawn in different colors depicting the complicated layout of our network. The black lines represented copper links, the red lines fiber, the black boxes routers and switches, and the blue boxes network taps and Snort sensors.

When the call came, I wasn't surprised. The voice at the other end of the line said, "Our network security analysis tool has found something we call 'suspicion indicators' on your network. I think you need to look at this right away." I had a sick feeling as my mind raced to the conversations I would soon be having with senior management. I tried to focus on the conversation at hand.