Doing My Part - Sending Data to the Internet Storm Center

Home and small office broadband users MUST take responsibility for tightening their security. There are a number of excellent papers on small office / home office (SOHO) security in the SANS Reading Room that provide clear examples of using a variety of inexpensive firewall devices and/or software-based personal firewalls, which allow even a novice to start at the beginning and slowly work through securing a home or small office network. Following these best practices is an excellent start, but my SANS Security Essentials instructor, Bob Hillery, made it a point to emphasize that locking the doors is only a part of the answer -- to really be secure on the internet you have to go a step further - you have to do your part to stop hacker activity. 4 This paper documents the procedure that I set up to automate collecting and sending intrusion attempt information to Incidents.org and the Internet Storm Center, then discusses my results and some possible next steps.