SEC547: Defending Product Supply Chains

The following are course or equivalent experience prerequisites for SEC547:

• SANS SEC401: Security Essentials - Network, Endpoint and Cloud or hands-on experience with the below topics
• Basic understanding of risk management
• Basic Linux OS fundamentals
• Basic networking knowledge
• Understanding of core security principles
• Experience using VMware and virtual machines

PREPARING FOR SEC547

Students should have a basic awareness of how their organization buys and sells technology and services from both a process standpoint as well as the security requirements and frameworks that align with technology acquisition and implementation. While not required, having conversations with peers inside your organization beforehand on these topics will be helpful as we touch on these areas in the course.

Important! Bring your own system configured according to these instructions.

A properly configured system is required to fully participate in this course. If you do not carefully read and follow these instructions, you will not be able to fully participate in hands-on exercises in your course. Therefore, please arrive with a system meeting all the specified requirements.

Back up your system before class. Better yet, use a system without any sensitive/critical data. SANS is not responsible for your system or data.

MANDATORY SEC547 SYSTEM HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS

• CPU: 64-bit Intel i5/i7 (8th generation or newer) or AMD equivalent. A x64 bit, 2.0+ GHz or newer processor is mandatory for this class.
• CRITICAL: Apple Silicon devices cannot perform the necessary virtualization and therefore cannot in any way be used for this course.
• BIOS settings must be set to enable virtualization technology, such as "Intel-VTx" or "AMD-V" extensions. Be absolutely certain you can access your BIOS if it is password protected in case changes are necessary.
• 16GB of RAM or more is required.
• 65GB of free storage space or more is required.
• At least one available USB 3.0 Type-A port. A Type-C to Type-A adapter may be necessary for newer laptops. Some endpoint protection software prevents the use of USB devices, so test your system with a USB drive before class.
• Wireless networking (802.11 standard) is required. There is no wired Internet access in the classroom.

MANDATORY SEC547 HOST CONFIGURATION AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

• Your host operating system must be the latest version of Windows 10, Windows 11, or macOS 10.15.x or newer.
• Fully update your host operating system prior to class to ensure you have the right drivers and patches installed.
• Linux hosts are not supported in the classroom due to their numerous variations. If you choose to use Linux as your host, you are solely responsible for configuring it to work with the course materials and/or VMs.
• Local Administrator Access is required. (Yes, this is absolutely required. Don't let your IT team tell you otherwise.) If your company will not permit this access for the duration of the course, then you should make arrangements to bring a different laptop.
• You should ensure that antivirus or endpoint protection software is disabled, fully removed, or that you have the administrative privileges to do so. Many of our courses require full administrative access to the operating system and these products can prevent you from accomplishing the labs.
• Any filtering of egress traffic may prevent accomplishing the labs in your course. Firewalls should be disabled, or you must have the administrative privileges to disable it.
• Download and install Vmware Workstation Pro 16.2.X+ or Vmware Player 16.2.X+ (for Windows 10 hosts), Vmware Workstation Pro 17.0.0+ or Vmware Player 17.0.0+ (for Windows 11 hosts), or VMWare Fusion Pro 12.2+ or Vmware Fusion Player 11.5+ (for macOS hosts) prior to class beginning. If you do not own a licensed copy of Vmware Workstation Pro or Vmware Fusion Pro, you can download a free 30-day trial copy from Vmware. Vmware will send you a time-limited serial number if you register for the trial at their website. Also note that Vmware Workstation Player offers fewer features than Vmware Workstation Pro. For those with Windows host systems, Workstation Pro is recommended for a more seamless student experience.
• On Windows hosts, Vmware products might not coexist with the Hyper-V hypervisor. For the best experience, ensure Vmware can boot a virtual machine. This may require disabling Hyper-V. Instructions for disabling Hyper-V, Device Guard, and Credential Guard are contained in the setup documentation that accompanies your course materials.
• Download and install 7-Zip (for Windows Hosts) or Keka (for macOS hosts). These tools are also included in your downloaded course materials.

Your course media is delivered via download. The media files for class can be large. Many are in the 40-50GB range, with some over 100GB. You need to allow plenty of time for the download to complete. Internet connections and speed vary greatly and are dependent on many different factors. Therefore, it is not possible to give an estimate of the length of time it will take to download your materials. Please start your course media downloads as soon as you get the link. You will need your course media immediately on the first day of class. Do not wait until the night before class to start downloading these files.

Your course materials include a "Setup Instructions" document that details important steps you must take prior to starting the online class. It may take 30 minutes or more to complete these instructions.

Your class uses an electronic workbook for its lab instructions. In this new environment, a second monitor and/or a tablet device can be useful for keeping class materials visible while you are working on your course's labs.

If you have additional questions about the laptop specifications, please contact support.

With high profile incidents such as Solarwinds and Log4j dominating news cycles and urgent action called for from the federal government and industry at large, supply chain risk management is one of the most charged topics in security today. It's a vast topic covering many domains of knowledge and is challenging for many to understand where to even start. The guidance from industry is deafening but hard to navigate. Do we need security questionnaires? Vendor scorecards? SBOMs? Firmware analysis? AppSec tools? Something else?

There are many fantastic solutions out there, but the reality is they are not all well-suited for where you are in your security journey, nor do the terms mean the same things to everyone. The guidance from industry analysts is also dated and unhelpful. This can be very confusing! I drew on a career of over 25 years, supporting supply chain use cases in electronics manufacturing, vendor risk and software supply chain for critical infrastructure in writing this course to help navigate through the noise and provide real world examples of what works and what doesn't. Join me as we chart a path forward to Defending Product Supply Chains!

- Tony Turner, SANS Instructor