Introducing Pulse

Well if you've been doing DNS zone transfers on VulnerableMinds.com then you know, but for the rest of you Pulse has been a mystery. Begun as Project Tango Pulse was meant to do one thing; give you a summarized, quick, complete look at the status of the information security threat landscape. It's a simple concept, but a lacking resource on the Internet.

Pulse came out of my own needs as a threat analyst. Work leaves me with no shortage of projects, research, emails, meetings, and yet the imperative need to have a complete view of what vulnerabilities, exploits, and malcode affecting all platforms. RSS feeds were a good start, but I quickly found myself reading dozens of feeds a day, many filled with useless information. Many I was able to replace or weed out, making it easy to get general news and the opinions, but I still needed more. I still needed information about threats, vulnerabilities and the code to exploit them, but struggled with so many feeds, and I still spent a huge amount of time reading unimportant information.

To this end I decided I needed a tool of my own, something to bring together all these feeds that bring into one place and yet eliminate the chaff, the low threat, the endless mailing list responses; the unnecessary.

The result is Pulse.

Now Pulse is a huge part of my daily workflow. I start my day with it, along with SANS Internet Storm Center and Arbor Networks Atlas portal. I feel that this combination gives me all the information I need to know to be on the "pulse" of the infosec threat landscape. 

I'll quit waxing philosophical about the why's and hows. It's straightforward, but I feel like it meets a need that isn't easily being filled by other services available on the Internet. So take a look, use it, enjoy, and feel free to send me feedback. Pulse isn't done, it's not finished, it's just beginning. To find out more:

• Introduction to Pulse - Presentation
  
• Project Tango Specification - Document