g00d_4sh, no problem - glad to help.

There are many variations on the cards that you can get from Gemalto, to suit certain needs.

Your best bet would be to identify the requirements that are needed and begin your search based on your set of requirements. But just a quick look using:

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=site%3Agemalto.com+%2B+HSPD-12+compliance&meta=

Hit quite a few pages, so I think you're in luck. It's important to remain vendor neutral and maybe I haven't been. So another great company is Giesecke & Devrient - http://www.gi-de.com/ - I'm sure they can suit your needs also.

It should be noted based on you mentioning you're in the US, that Gemalto was the underlying card used in the Department of Defense Common Access Card initiative.

I meant to address jimbob's comment earlier - there is a big concern regarding people leaving their cards left within the device. There are a few ways to combat this, first a directive control can be used such as policy, and measured with spot checks. Unfortunately this isn't a preventative measure in nature - only detective. That's why we opted to use our cards for physical access as well. They can only get around the building with their card.

Chris

g00d_4sh: I'm not sure how much experience you have with smartcards or various solutions pertaining to them.

While I have not deployed and implemented a solution within my company, I can say we have reached the pilot stage and we are more or less awaiting management approval...

I have found that Gemalto is a very good company to work with. Our goal was to utilize smartcards for network log on, local log on for VPN users, and physical access with our existing access card system. In other words they needed to be contact and contactless smartcards. I contacted Gemalto and they were very diligent in finding an appropriate solution, even going as far as creating a custom card for our particular environment so we didn't have to update our physical access readers (they have a great relationship with HID) - it's also worth mentioning Gemalto cards are natively supported on Vista.

If you have any more technical questions, don't hesitate to private message me, or post here for the benefit of all members.

Chris

I have a fair amount of experience using Splunk.

It is certainly a robust solution for log indexing and correlation, but I'm sure you will find - depending on the amount of data you feed it, you will need a solid business case.

The effectiveness of the tool (in my opinion) relies on the creativity of the operational people using it.

The searches you create can be captured and turned into useful dashboards with great reporting functionality. I personally find this application much more useful than any SIEM out there.

Splunk can literally take any information, in any format - and index it, so it can be searched later. I don't know of many SIEMs capable of that.

There is a trial version availible - and I'd more than willing to answer any direct questions you have, rather than continuing to ramble on...

Hello,

It's important for you to know, it is not mandatory for someone with a CISSP to endorse you.

You can also be endorsed by someone within the security field as long as the endorser can validate they are in the field etc.

Also, don't be overwhelmed by the examination - I found it quite basic, and avoid any practice exams that ask you questions like "What is the optimal temp of a server room?"

These sorts of questions do not help you become a more competent security professional, if that information is needed, you can research it at the time. Be careful not to get wrapped up in questions like that or you will be studying the wrong things. Shon Harris material is notorious for these examples.

Chris