Cybersecurity

It’s been a couple of years since I moved to Galway, and I’m still absolutely thrilled with my decision! Over the past few months, I’ve had the chance to meet some awesome people at a local security meetup called BurbSec. It was a fantastic experience—sharing ideas, meeting new faces, and of course, enjoying a few beers! ;-) Now, some of these folks are organizing a security conference called BSIDES Galway, happening on February 22nd, 2025! ...

As you may know, one of the key components of the CyberArk Conjur architecture is the Synchronizer, which is required to receive secrets from the Vault. Last week, I took charge of an abandoned Synchronizer version 11.7 that had not been working for some time and also needed to be upgraded to the latest 12.7 release. After completing the upgrade (check this link for the steps), the Windows service failed to start, and the log contained the following error: ...

During the past few weeks, I have described what a secrets manager is and provided an overview of the architecture and system requirements of CyberArk Conjur. A secrets manager can’t do its job if it can’t communicate with those who need to request secrets, and that’s where Conjur’s magic comes in! The “authenticators” are responsible for the authentication process in Conjur and are specialized to do this in the most secure way, depending on the service. Here is the list of authenticators currently supported: ...

Security is always a complex topic to address, as an error or omission in processes can lead to serious economic or reputational damage for a company. When we talk about “secrets,” consider the following examples: Usernames Database passwords SSL certificates and keys SSH keys Cloud credentials Simply reading through this list helps to explain why this topic needs to be considered and handled carefully. Some common bad practices or risks include: ...