After posting the video and opinion paper It is Time for a Data Security Revolution! a reader posed a simple yet deep question. GroogFish, in the YouTube video comments asked ...who is supposed to start this "revolution"? As my response is a bit lengthy for the comments section of YouTube, I am posting here.
I believe everyone has a role to play and a responsibility to support steps for securing data. It is, after all, OUR information. To succeed, a data security revolution must be a community effort resulting in the development of an entire ecosystem, with standards, communication, and an open architecture.
Consumer demands bring attention to the problem and ultimately will drive features. Regulatory bodies, dare I submit, can enact requirements which mandate changes to technology capabilities. Hardware and firmware vendors are important in order to support new architectures. Data management and processing organizations must be on-board to insure interfaces and storage formats of data are compatible. Operating system and application writers are key players to utilize and enforce such controls at the host system and repository levels. They develop the products which engage the user.
The information security communities are the expert advocates. They must analyze the situation, stimulate conversations, guide changes, and engage in value assessment discussions to become the sharpened spearhead which leads the charge forward. Traditional and social news media should also contribute to overall education and public awareness. They must go beyond just reporting the breaches, failures, and losses. We are at risk of becoming numb at all the stories, without a meaningful reference point or perspectives of significance which show how the situation can change. The public must be better informed to the root problem, the industry opportunities, and the dark truth of where apathy will lead.
I would like to see a consortium formed with major players and international standards bodies to establish a framework for development. Government, privacy, commercial, academia, technology, and security representatives should be represented at the very least. Critical mass with the aforementioned groups must be established before enough traction motivates a commitment on behalf of lead players to allocate initial resources. Alternatively, assertive academic bodies could work together and take a first step by developing recommended standards, architectures, and proof-of-concept systems.
Although some pieces to the puzzle are out there, we don’t even know what the picture is supposed to look like and no guarantees the available parts will or should be brought together. Boldly, I believe we must enforce a tabula rasa to nurture a fresh start, otherwise risk poisoning from our natural presumptions of what we believe we know. It may not be the most popular sentiment, but adopting refined solutions and attempting to bolt them together is a mistake. Instead, we take the learned and proven principles of those solutions and integrate them at a strategic level to eventually lead us to workable end solutions.
Threat agents maintain the initiative and we respond to restore balance. The bad guys innovate, find exposures, and use technology which they can leverage to achieve their objectives. They take the first step, set the tempo, and lead this wicked dance. The security industry normally operates in a responsive manner, closing the door behind successful attacks to prevent further loss and scrambling to prepare for the next issue. But every once in a while, the security community comes up with a predictive and proactive idea which has sweeping effects against attackers and their future likely methods, and we show true leadership in innovation.
These golden nuggets can change the initiative and give an advantage to the defenders. Sadly, it is rare. In most instances it is difficult to justify expenditures for capabilities which may or may not interdict future potential attacks. Our industry cannot confidently measure and substantiate such innovation to determine which will leapfrog us ahead of the bad guys and those which fail miserably. Without clear value, those holding the purse strings are not very motivated to blindly invest. It reverts back to the age old security problem of measuring attacks which are avoided.
How will we ever change our industry to support security taking back the initiative? First we must devise a good way of measuring innovation. We have much better metrics for how good the bad guys succeed, and are blind on how to measure the value of security ideas. This must change in order to facilitate the financial support necessary for investment. The value is there, we must adjust our focus to see the opportunity. Otherwise, the enemy will maintain the advantage as we continue to follow behind the attackers, cleaning up messes, and forever responding to their ingenuity.
Russell C Thomas delivers a great post on How to Value Digital Assets. It covers many basics and more importantly gives a good direction to take while spotlighting common pitfalls in the valuation journey.
“This tutorial article presents one method aimed at helping line-of-business managers (”business owners” of digital assets) make economically rational decisions. It’s somewhat simplistic, but it does take some time and effort. Yet it should be feasable for most organizations if you really care about getting good answers. Warning: No simple spreadsheet formulas will do the job. Resist the temptation to put together magic valuation formulas based on traffic, unique visits, etc.”
Definitely a good read for anyone wondering where to start the valuation process. I especially like the Three Principles section. He makes a logical separation between assets which provide direct revenue (Class 1) and those which are in a support function (Class 2).
As follow-on, I believe some other aspects may be covered under the Class 2 section including liability avoidance, direct efficiency gain, life safety, and regulatory compliance. In certain cases we must apply a different method to determine the value, outside what has been explained. As management may be willing to replace or upgrade, but typically such investments must have a positive ROI, therefore they provide much more value than the replacement/repair costs.
Years ago I had a stimulating conversation with the late (and some would say infamous) Dr. Bill Hancock. Bill had trudged through the information security swamps for decades and had a unique insight to valuations of vulnerable systems, particularly single-points-of-critical-failure. He recanted his experience evaluating an airline’s security and discovery of a minor system which was largely ignored, a weights and balances server. Apparently when planes take off, the distribution of weight must be calculated to insure they don’t become giant ‘lawn darts’ (Bill’s colorful description) at the end of the airfield. A data integrity compromise of this system could cause catastrophic consequences, leading to the end of the business. Who would fly on an airline which had several take-off crashes in a single day? It would be the critical factor to likely cause the airline to no longer exist as a viable business. Although this was a support system, the integral value was far beyond the cost of the equipment, software, and support.
Secondly, the blog is written with the assumption the assets are already in place. Thus, in a perfect world, a proper ROI/justification has already been made to assist the decision to acquire and land these assets. But what if a decision to purchase or not, is the objective? The Class 2 method then becomes circular. The value is the expenditure management is willing to invest? How do they know?
Overall it is a great blog. I think it would be helpful if the author could give an example for a medium sized enterprise, with particular focus on Class 2 areas (specifically security or safety assets). Hopefully he is willing to post such details.
Passwords of reasonable strength (8 characters or more consisting of upper/lower case and special keys) coupled with timely expiration, are secure. Passphrases with comparable measures are equally secure. The systems and users are currently the weakest links in the security chain.
The interfaces and tools which we input the passwords may be vulnerable. This includes but is not limited to key-loggers, sniffers, input redirections, etc. But it is the user, where the most significant weakness exists. They can be duped into divulging their passwords (phone, web, chat, email, etc.) and in many cases make them available in other ways (sticky note under the keyboard).
A recent Newsweek article covered the topic of building a better password:
"...a short but hard-to-remember string like "J4fS<2" can be broken by what is called a brute-force attack (in which a computer attempts "a," then "ab," then "abc," and so on) in 219 years, while a long but easy-to-remember phrase like "du-bi-du-bi-dub" will stand for 531,855,448,467 years. (Two hundred nineteen years is actually very good, but the lesson remains: simpler can be stronger.) The idea of passphrases isn't new. But no one has ever told you about it, because over the years, complexity-mandating a mix of letters, numbers, and punctuation that AT&T researcher William Cheswick derides as "eye-of-newt, witches'-brew password fascism"-somehow became the sole determinant of password strength."
The difference between passwords which can be cracked in two-hundred versus a billion years is immaterial if users are forced to change passwords every few months. The bad guys just don’t have the time to crack the password before it is changed or the data is sufficiently aged to not be of value.
To undermine cracking attempts, we force users to use 'strong' passwords so that dictionary attacks are fruitless and threat agents must resort to a laborious brute force attack, trying massive numbers of combinations in order to be successful. All passwords can be cracked via brute force, but it takes time. It becomes an exercise in how many attempts can be made over a given period. The faster the process the more combinations can be tried and therefore the shorter the time to discover the one which works. The length and possible characters determines the number of combinations.
Undermining the strength of a password is not the biggest concern. It is far more likely for a password to be sniffed on the network, captured on a system, or duped from a user, rather than be cracked.
The most significant vulnerability is with the user and systems where passwords are entered and stored. There is no practical benefit to further abuse users with new diabolical password schemes. We should pay less attention to stronger and better password formats and instead invest in better behavioral controls, user education, and the strengthening of system and interfaces.
With a painful taste of irony, it was recently reported that the Ministry of Defense's (MoD) manual explaining how to prevent leaks, was itself leaked.
"The Defense Manual of Security is intended to help MoD, armed forces and intelligence personnel maintain information security in the face of hackers, journalists, foreign spies and others. But the 2,400-page restricted document has found its way on to Wikileaks, a website that publishes anonymous leaks of sensitive information from organizations including governments, corporations and religions."
Is this a fluke or is the world suffering from abhorrent information security practices, culture, and capabilities?
YES, the world is terrible at securing data! Yes, you and I are part of the problem! Yes it can be fixed, but it is unlikely unless dramatic steps are taken!
Information technology has lagged behind society’s skyrocketing need to manage and secure data.Information is growing exponentially and our demands for control and oversight continue to develop rapidly.Efforts to create or improve current paradigms are fractured and have failed to reach the tipping point of the maturity cycle necessary to catch up.We have failed. It is time we shed our entrenched archaic ways and leap forward to revolutionize how data is protected and managed.The confluence of changes in our culture’s expectations of data, demand we succeed.A revolution in data security is coming; we can either lead or be trampled by it.
The problem
The world is demanding more control, security, oversight, and awareness of where our data is and how it is being used.This includes information generated and processed at work, as well as our own personal information including financial, health, and privacy data.As a society, we are just starting down the road to explore data loss prevention issues, privacy expectations, digital rights management, and electronic discovery requirements.Additionally, we are just beginning to understand the vast, hidden, and expanding world of data breaches, identity theft, user profiling, and online victimization.Intellectual property controls are more important than ever to businesses in the information age and the social networking phenomenon is opening our eyes to the need for better security and management of individual’s data and the systems which control it.
Yet the current behaviors, tools, and infrastructure is vastly insufficient for what we need today and the gap is increasing, leading to a critical failure point in every way for what will be needed a decade from now.As fast as technology evolves, it simply cannot keep pace given the confines of current structures.We will be left with a snarl of vague and unrealistic regulations, unsatisfied community demands, incompatible point solutions, tools which can’t scale, and an entire generation of information victims.A radical change is needed!
The storm is brewing
A confluence of conditions is manifesting to create a perfect storm for radical change.Consider the following social and technical changes which will change people’s opinion:
·Data exposures are becoming public, showing the terrible depth of the problem
·The number of data victims, for identity theft and online crimes, is increasing as are the losses
·Data, system, and privacy regulations are emerging across the world with complex variations, creating severe challenges for global compliance, interpretation, and compatibility
·Social media users are realizing the honeymoon is ending, their data is exposed, and being used in ways they never intended
·Malware is reaching epic proportions.The trend is shifting to target capturing victim’s data
·Individual opportunists, organized criminals, and nation states are actively working to control systems, data, and networks
·Surveillance, profiling, and filtering controls are becoming mainstream to target or seek control of user data
·The sheer number of people and businesses on the internet is reaching a critical mass to determine how the world communicates, and the engine driving an exponential growth in the amount of data being generated
This problem may be complex in the details, but it is simple in principle.Basically, we manage data poorly.If I create a document today and email it to a co-worker, I essentially surrender almost all control.In a week’s time, I will have virtually no idea who has seen it, how many copies exist, how long it will stay buried on storage devices, or what modifications have been made to it.I have no control to update the copies, control access, or revoke the files.Chances are good that after a year I will likely lose it myself or forget the content of the document.It is terribly inefficient and represents poor overall management of data.
This situation presents as both a technical and behavioral problem.The personal computer revolution has bestowed the tools to easily create and store data.The pervasiveness of the internet established the unprecedented ability to share and disseminate information.The natural limitations of the pencil and paper generation supported modest but adequate physical management solutions.The creation, distribution, and control were tangible and restricted to local resources.Our newfound ability to generate and distribute information has not been coupled with equitable management solutions.Caught in the euphoria of new freedoms, we ignored the capabilities to control and secure.The shortcomings of technology have been tolerated due to an apathetic and disjointed demand from society.We have failed as consumers to recognize the importance of our data and the deficiencies in the realization of how it should easily be managed.
It’s the 21st century; do you know where your data is?
Today, data is easily created, lost, transferred, edited, stolen, abused and destroyed with very few mechanisms to prevent, detect, or respond.
Consider the following:
·We don’t track who creates files and who owns them
·Rarely do we consider if files should be secured or how
·We don’t take steps to determine who should access, view, or edit files and where they can be stored
·Destroying data after it is no longer useful, is a foreign concept, as is who should be responsible and when
·We don’t understand who, at any given time, has possession of our data and how to effectively recall it
·We have little insight to data content.We rely on short and sometimes cryptic filenames to give clues, but we don’t comprehend contents in a meaningful way
·Sharing data is mostly ad-hoc for specific files or locations, with little thought of content or other security factors which should be considered
In summary, we are poor custodians of data.In fact, people keep better track of the clothes in their closet than the information assets they create every day.I would wager you know where your clothes are, which are clean and which are soiled, and you have designated places for both.You regularly maintain your wardrobe by cleaning, pressing, matching, folding and storing clothes in an organized manner.Items are added, minor repairs made, and eventually clothes are purged when they no longer fit, are outdated, or simply not needed.You plan and may budget when new clothes are required.Depending on your age and habits, you may even have your name on them for ownership identification.You organize your closet for easy searching and you know which articles have been loaned out and to whom.For important items you would likely detect if they went missing and probably have a good idea of likely suspects, as you know and control who has access.So why do we do such a good job at managing our clothes, yet such a miserable job at managing our data?
People have not yet put the mental pieces together, but they will.When they do, they will demand technology deliver a solution.Revolt will be at hand.
Current efforts
A number of current initiatives have been struggling to gain modest traction but will always lack the ability to deliver a complete solution.Digital Rights Management(DRM) is well known in the online music circles, focusing on file based locks.Data Loss Prevention(DLP) is a collection of practices and tools which can scan, classify, and block inappropriate transmission of data.
Structures like Role Based Access Controls(RBAC), Mandatory Access Controls(MAC), Discretionary Access Controls(DAC), and Lattice Based Access Controls(LBAC) have attempted for years to establish controls within homogeneous and small environments, but rarely work as intended in large mixed environments like modern networks.A variety of secure data repositories have emerged, which do a stellar job protecting a few critical items akin to a vault, but are largely inaccessible, inconvenient, and not scalable.
A quick summary of current solutions highlights why they are not scalable, will fail to provide a complete solution, and likely never be widely adopted.Each of these does have its place and function but overall they will not deliver what is needed; a comprehensive capability to manage data security.
1.Vault solutions:Secure some files in a locked system or repository and provide access via custom interface applications.Not scalable for vast amounts of data, poor accessibility, high level of permissions management needed, inconvenient to use, and the trend to use proprietary software will keep the price tag high
2.Scan and classify DLP systems:Can apply controls both on clients and networks but relies on rules which are complex and a nightmare to maintain.Ultimately this is why they eventually just get ignored.Sustaining accuracy is not practical in environments which change and grow rapidly
3.Scan and alert/intervene DLP systems:Similar to Scan and Classify DLP systems, with an added benefit of intervention. Blocking suspect traffic and communications is a double edged sword, which requires high overhead to insure it does not interfere with legitimate business.These suffer from the same drawbacks as their cousins.
4.Employee policies:Policies which rely on manual intervention are hit or miss.For simple straightforward decisions they can be quite effective.For complex data decisions, changing environments, and potentially vague situations they fail miserably.People simply don’t act consistently when faced with complex decisions
5.System policy (MAC, DAC, and LBAC) solutions:System based solutions which can work well while data stays on the system but fails when collaboration across systems and users is required.They simply lack the applicability, scalability, and compatibility across a network with various uses and complex situations of collaboration and security.
6.Group/role access policies (RBAC): The natural evolution of the MAC, DAC, and LBAC concepts, can work great for small groups and data in an environment which does not change often.As the numbers and data size grows, the administration increases and ultimately does not scale efficiently.
7.File lockdown systems (DRM): Locking down files with digital rights (DRM) can work in situations needing a simple access control.Allowing a file to be opened or not, for example.But it does not work well when a multitude of access options are needed and other controls are required.Compatibility also poses a problem when sharing such files across systems.
8.Secure critical files and data solutions:File encryption is the major player in this field.Target only the most critical data and files, and focus on protecting those.Not scalable with the increasing amount of data organizations are processing and the shift of data across a much broader user and system landscape.Works great for handfuls of people with a small number of files needing protection.Those days are gone.
9.System data protection solutions:As file encryption has too much overhead necessary to scale, just encrypt the entire system and network.Works great for lost laptops but does little when the user has logged in and everything is now easily accessible.Network encryption only protects against sniffing.A good evolution but not nirvana.It is a one trick horse for confidentiality.
10.Do little to nothing and hope for the best.Don’t laugh.You might be surprised with how many financial, health, educational, and governmental systems followed this model for most of the past decade.
The list goes on.This is not comprehensive, but does give a taste of some stovepipe solutions which are struggling to evolve even slightly and will never leap forward on their own to meet what will be demanded.
Overview of solution
How do we succeed?We combine some of these technologies, integrate into the base computing infrastructure, and ease in the necessary user behaviors into the fabric of how people create, use, share, and destroy data.It must combine an object oriented definition structure and network based management controls.
Four core aspects for identification, security, and management of files
Data objects must carry specific characteristics to enable the computing environment to effectively and efficiently manage security.Although discrete parameters may differ based upon data type and parent organization, these aspects represent the necessary structures which work together to enable automation and to define security practices.Additionally the characteristics themselves must be secured and compartmentalized.
1.Confidentiality Designation – Level of sensitivity and confidentiality for the data.This has implications on required controls for data at rest, in use, and in transit.Also can define requirements for where and who can access and store the data.Examples might be Top Secret, Secret, Business Confidential , Personal, and Public.Classifications have implications to the Access and Handling aspects.
2.Access Rights and Permissions – Who has ability to access, edit, store, copy, transfer, etc. the data objects.DRM and RBAC technologies and DLP principles are a good start.The object must securely contain the concepts of ownership and those trusted to use the data in different ways, including to open, edit, destroy, move, copy , and transmit.
3.Content Synopsis, Tags, and Keywords – Identifying content supports indexing and understanding relationships between files.It facilitates scanning and auditing against policy as well as automation for determining access, classification, and secure handling requirements.
4.Secure Handling – Secure handling parameters determine retention, backup, destruction, storage, usage and transport requirements.These can be set by a default policy and updated based upon other aspects.Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) provide a good foundation for some practices.
These four aspects cooperate and influence each other.If for example, file content changes to include secret information, the classification may automatically bump to a secret designation, the secure handling settings will force persistent encryption, and change the access rights to allow access by a smaller community.
Cookbook of requirements:
This is the wakeup call for firmware, operating system, application and security solution providers.To change how people manage data, from creation to deletion, will require the major players to work together with standards and Application Programming Interfaces (API’s).We are not just altering one piece or bolting on additional security, we must change the fundamentals of the very infrastructure we use to manipulate data.
Some inroads have begun.DLP and DRM systems have established expertise in some preventative, detective and responsive functions.Social media is leading the way in many respects with tagging, sharing, collaboration and most importantly tracking and metrics.On the most modern sites, an author can post a video and track how often it is watched, by whom, and if they are using it in other mash-ups.A great deal of data can be gathered and if analyzed correctly, transformed into usable intelligence.Social media is the looking glass for what is to come.
These requirements are critical for success:
·Must apply system wide, embedded seamlessly in hardware, Operating Systems, and applications.It must include all data which is created, viewed, modified, transported, or deleted by users
·Must span across users, client systems, and into the backend infrastructure
·It must be holistic in nature and applyfrom creation to deletion (birth to death) for data and files
·Must possess default security for creation, storage, transit, and when in use
·Support at a minimum, basis functions of DLP, DRM, meta-data, content tagging, RBAC, client agents, data tracking, and control repositories
·Maintain a centralized structure for metrics, audits, maintenance, discovery, and reporting
·Distributed and centralized hybrid system supporting comprehensive scanning, indexing and auditing
·Enable data tracking, verification, auditing, and ownership administration
·End-user involvement and empowerment, to directly access and manage control systems and distributed data
·System interoperability across separately controlled domains and networks
·Establish end-user ease of use, manageability, and scalability at all integration points:
oStraightforward setup with additional modular extensibilities
oDefault settings based upon role for confidentiality and handling
oUser interface validation of parameters, and extra owner options, when saving, editing, moving or transmitting files
oDefault access rights based upon groups, tags/keywords, and storage location (for example, inherited rights based upon storage location or of like files)
oEscalation and resolution options when actions are prohibited by the system
Vision of Success
We have the intellect to succeed.We can create a new paradigm which meets the needs of legal, privacy, security and most importantly the maturing expectations of everyday people.
Keys to strategic success:
·Make the capability embedded, easy to use, and secure by default.Minimize impact and overhead to the users
·Champion behavioral changes of users and administrators, show the value
·Drive client Operating Systems and Applications to conform and support standards
·Leverage security tools to extend services and controls
·Establish back-end infrastructure support via standards
·Foster competition to drive affordability, scalability, support and continuous improvement
Key capabilities for value and functionality
·Automated intelligent determination of initial core file aspects, with validation by users during file management requests (save, transmit, copy, etc.)
·Automated security controls applied and enforced based upon file aspects and derived control requirements
·Automated data cleanup, archival, and destruction based upon file aspects and settings
·Data owners can easily search and organize their files both local and across the network
·Data owners can easily take control to manage access, confidentiality settings, change file handling parameters, and revoke files across the network
·Administration can conduct broad electronic discovery searches for files and data content, generate operational metrics, and gain an understanding of where sensitive data is located and how it is being used
·Automated security alerting and logging to assist with detection of unacceptable actions, resolution to events, and predictive information to facilitate the establishment of future preventative controls
Example Use cases
New document creation
Capturing the meta-attributes at the point of creation is a critical step.As a mock-up, this email was created and a default set of icons appear in the toolbar, showing the status of the 4 aspects.These default settings align to Confidentiality Designation, Access Permissions, Content Synopsis, and Secure Handling settings configurable by the organization or user.They establish base parameters but change dynamically as content is added.
As text is added, the system determines the content to match criteria which changes the classification, associates to a current project, adds to the content tags, and modifies access permissions automatically.The icons change in appearance to show how the data will be treated.The user can intercede manually by clicking the icons, which will open the user interface showing more options and configurations.
Saving, moving, deleting or transmitting data
A modified window appears whenever users attempt to save, move, delete or transmit data.This confirms settings and if needed, solicits additional necessary data to complete the transaction.
End state vision
·From creation to destruction, data is automatically classified, secured, and under the control of the owner
·Additional capabilities extend to allow complex management, sharing, security, and tracking
·End users are empowered to easily organize and revoke their data, control access, and know where it resides
·Through leveraging technology, data files are treated like assets and security is efficiently managed across user domains
Conclusion:
Change is coming.The underlying community, regulatory, and behavioral factors are present and becoming more prevalent.The information technology and security industries must escape the façade and false hope of small improvements and truly revolutionize how data is secured and managed.This can only be accomplished with aligned industry partnership, a realization of necessity, commitment to user efficiency, common technical standards, and most importantly a shared strategy.It is possible.Now is the time to think, discuss, and plan.
Measures generate data and metrics organize data to generate information. The difference between ‘data’ and ‘information’, the former is something you know, the latter is something you use.
Everyone wants information security to be easy. Wouldn’t it be nice if it were simple enough to fit snugly inside a fortune cookie? Well, although I don’t try to promote such foolish nonsense, I do on occasion pass on readily digestible nuggets to reinforce security principles and get people thinking how security applies to their environment.
The key to fortune cookie advice is ‘common sense’ in the context of security. It must be simple, succinct, and make sense to everyone, while conveying important security aspects.
Fortune Cookie advice for September, 2009:
Measures generate data and metrics organize data to generate information.
The difference between ‘data’ and ‘information’, the former is something you know,
the latter is something you use.
In security, it is easy to confuse the terms ‘measures’ and ‘metrics’. They are two distinct but related concepts. Measurement theory incorporates the scale of nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio, and absolute. These scales are used to measure something, with the output being data. Metrics however are about analysis and intelligent decision making. Metrics translate data into meaningful information which will support decision making. Data is something you know. Information is something you use to make decisions.
Thinking creatively, a South African IT company decided to use a low technology solution to complete a data transfer when their ISP network could not handle the job. Typically, quick out-of-the-box IT solutions are rarely secure. Smart technologists are good at finding solutions to meet their objectives, but when time is short, security tends to be ignored. Does the combination of frustrated people, short timelines and the need to transfer a lot of data equate to insecurity? Not always.
Being different sometimes has its security advantages. In this case data was transferred in a manner which was unpredictable to intercept, highly reliable, impossible to sniff, faster than the traditional available wired network, and maintained high security for integrity and confidentiality.
Employees need the ability to communicate securely. Deploying the right capabilities can empower employees to keep the organization’s information more secure. Matthew Rosenquist discusses a strategy to establish secure communication channels.
There is no Royal Road to understanding and achieving information security
Everyone wants information security to be easy. Wouldn’t it be nice if it were simple enough to fit snugly inside a fortune cookie? Well, although I don’t try to promote such foolish nonsense, I do on occasion pass on readily digestible nuggets to reinforce security principles and get people thinking how security applies to their environment.
The key to fortune cookie advice is ‘common sense’ in the context of security. It must be simple, succinct, and make sense to everyone, while conveying important security aspects.
Fortune Cookie advice for July, 2009:
There is no Royal Road to understanding and achieving information security
Taking a line of thought from Euclid, there is no easy route to understand the ever changing complexities of information security.
We exist in an era where information security is both exciting and complex.
The rapid evolution of information technology, increasing number of targets, and the explosive development of creative tools attackers employ all contribute to a dynamic environment where a continual struggle between aggressors and defenders shifts the balance on a daily basis. Only through hard work can security professionals effectively pursue achieving an optimal level of security which manages the tradeoffs of cost against controlling impacts and effectiveness of attacks. Achieving information security is an exercise in hard work, diligence, consistency, and flexibility to adapt technology and behaviors in meeting the challenge.
Risk metrics are the heart and soul of information security indicators. An increasing proliferation of tools and assessments has emerged, attempting to quantify states of information security. Given the nature of what is trying to be measured, this is arguably one of the toughest challenges in the metrics space. The recent trend is for different bodies to develop and publish their own standards, which creates confusion regarding accuracy and applicability. Why all the turmoil, competing models, and misalignment? The sad story is (queue the somber violins) we just have not figured out how to measure information security risks very well.
I have seen and applied many different methods, audits, and evaluations with varying degrees of success and disappointment. I have come to the following three basic conclusions:
Current tools and methods lack maturity in this area, for both accuracy and comprehensiveness (and yes, I am guilty of contributing to the pool)
No silver bullet exists. A unified method, which provides a predictive overarching and detailed risk analysis, is unlikely. Different approaches have their applicability. Choose wisely
There is no replacement for a security professional’s brain. From the selection of the analysis method, the gathering of relevant data, to the interpretation of the results, requires a seasoned security professional. There is no substitute which can handle the ambiguity, chaos, and relational dependencies affecting the outcome
An example will help express some of the challenges. The OCTAVE methodology, created by Carnegie Mellon University some years ago has been battle tested veteran in this role. It is a qualitative to quantitative device which leverages the expertise of key people to give a numerical value of risk in their respective area. Because personal bias and fears, the need to allow flexible ways of answering questions, and the varying degrees of base knowledge between the experts, results can vary greatly without even factoring in the changes occurring in the threat landscape.
Let me be clear, I am a fan and a longtime supporter. However, it has its limitations. I have developed several assessments based upon the model in a large environment. As long as the limitations are accepted, it is applied where it leverages its strengths, and the process is rolled out properly, the results can be very valuable.
But don’t confuse value with precision. I have observed the accuracy to be +/- 40% in complex organizations. I believe this is largely due to multiple tiers of qualitative-to-quantitative analysis and the bias introduced at each level. Credible sources have expressed a better +/- 20% accuracy for smaller implementations. Although these numbers sound terrible, it is very good compared to other methods. I have great respect for the chaps at Carnegie Mellon University who created the methodology. Groups within our company have used a modified form of this approach, with advanced structures tailored to our computing ecosystem, for years with great success. The low accuracy rate is not a poor reflection on the CMU model, rather it is a stark insight on how immature we are in this field.
So this is a sad story, but one which is not over. A cadre of very bright people is working to tackle this problem. In the short term, I expect to see many more methods, theories, templates, and standards emerge for specific situations. In the end, I doubt if ever we will have a unified way to measure security risks, but I hold high hopes the best will be culled to a small number which can be applied to most situations and deliver reasonable metrics.
Measuring the Return on Investment (ROI) of information security is challenging but not impossible. It is important to understand the necessary components and how they interrelate. In this brief video, I discuss one way of expressing value in relation to the positive impacts of security spending.
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Video Length: 3:26 minutes
This video provides a high level explanation. For more information regarding the challenges of information security ROI, please take a look at the following links:
I was recently trading thoughts with Anton Chuvakin, a respected security metrics professional, in a philosophical discussion of perfection and quality of security. Admittedly, I was on auto-pilot (operating without the benefit of coffee) rattling away with my ‘Optimal Security’ rhetoric, when Anton posed two thought provoking questions: CAN one "mandate optimal security"? How do you "mandate flexible"?
I was stopped in my tracks. This got me thinking. After fetching a tall cup of coffee to start my brain juices flowing in earnest, I reached back into the pages of history to come up with the following perspective and examples:
I believe, to a certain extent, we can mandate flexibility and optimization. Surely we can act in ways which deny both. So why can’t we act in a manner which intrinsically promotes them?
I think back to lessons of WWII and the Maginot line. The French chose to create a fortification which was static by design and lacked mobility or a capability to adapt to changing enemy tactics. They invested heavily into this control, which became the backbone of their country's eastern defense. It was an appalling failure. Alternatively, the German blitzkrieg, and the stratagems of both Rommel and Patton prevailed. Flexibility through mobility was far more effective than an elaborate static defense.
I would argue that flexibility can be mandated through proper planning and design. We have examples in the history of information security. In the early years of Anti-Virus (AV) products, they were non-memory resident applications which were prescribed to be run once a week. Updates were a rarity if at all. That rigid design quickly lost effectiveness, with the rise in velocity of new malware. AV vendors were forced to adapt. The overall design has changed to one which is flexible, can be updated to meet emerging malware, and continuously runs in the background to provide persistent security.
Rigid security postures lack the ability to remain effective over time and are likely derived by an equally rigid infrastructure which will struggle to adapt to new threats and changes within the organization. Create security to be flexible and you enable the service to keep up with the continual changes.
In general, design a system to be flexible and its longevity for effectiveness is extended. Plan how systems can continuously adjust itself to align to what is 'optimal' and you increase the sustaining efficiency.
We must be strategic in our planning and design of security, lest we suffer the fate of France's Maginot line.
Check out Anton’s Blog for other thought provoking viewpoints; just be sure to have your coffee at the ready.
