Config Management Camp 2023 Ghent

Looking at security with cat eyes
2023-02-06, 16:45–17:35, D Aud

The OpenKAT-project is a series of integrated projects started to fill in the gap between technical checks, compliance questions, automated warning and non repudiation of the information gathered and presented.

OpenKAT takes a radical different approach on security while not discarding what we have built during the last decades. Just like a cat you see more while looking at the same information just by interpreting it differently. KAT (cat in Dutch) delivers information on vulnerabilities in a forensic accurate manners, monitors environments and more over proves how things change over time.

The OpenKAT project was started by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport.


The COVID19-crisis forced to build dozens of software solutions rapidly with too few people under immense pressure. Meanwhile the threat level as well as the stakes are high. Failure is not an option yet guaranteed. You can no longer afford vague questions like are we secure? You need to find what makes you vulnerabilities before that hit you as well as soon as they hit you.

With dozens COVID-testing organizations to monitor, three countries to help, 17 projects to help come to life and to guard during operation security is an impossible job with the tools and people available. The options are simple: drown or find a trick to survive.The COVID19-crisis forced to build dozens of software solutions rapidly with too few people under immense pressure. Meanwhile the threat level as well as the stakes are high. Failure is not an option yet guaranteed. You can no longer afford vague questions like are we secure? You need to find what makes you vulnerabilities before that hit you as well as soon as they hit you.
With dozens COVID-testing organizations to monitor, three countries to help, 17 projects to help come to life and to guard during operation security is an impossible job with the tools and people available. The options are simple: drown or find a trick to survive.

The OpenKAT-project was started to fill in that gap to take a radical different approach on security while not discarding what we have already. KAT (cat in Dutch) delivers information on vulnerabilities in a forensic accurate manners, monitors environments and more over proves how things change over time. In the meantime it solves the issue of proving compliance as a continuous process without doing things twice.

In the presentation the mechanisms of OpenKAT, technical workings and the different approach of security because of the tool will be the main focus. Also a new set of tools will be announced during the talk.

Brenno de Winter has been involved in open source since the '90s. He has a keen interest in security and privacy. He is the founder of the OpenKAT-project and the CSPO at the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports.

Brenno de Winter, 1971, is a Dutch hacker former journalist, cat owner (and lover) and involved in open source since the '90s. He first programmed at the age of five or six and the initiator of the Kwetsbaarheden Analyse Tool (KAT) - the OpenKat.nl project.