Author: David Froud

On June 15th, Gartner released it’s Top 10 Technologies for Information Security in 2016. As a security ‘professional’ with over 15 years front-line experience, it has taken me this long to find out what half of these things are even trying to achieve. My initial impression was that this was just an attempt to corner the market on acronyms.

Now that I’ve had a little more time to look at them, it’s not just about acronyms, it’s about selling things. Things the vast majority of businesses don’t need. Things that if you DID introduce them into your current environment it would be like building a castle on a swamp (hope you got the Monty Python reference);

Utterly useless, expensive, and completely missing the point.

The breakdown:

  1. Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASBs), provide a “…critical control point for the secure and compliant use of cloud services across multiple cloud providers.” – In the real world this is called performing proper due diligence, before you outsource to a cloud provider. The right reporting should be built into the SLAs. Good God, even the PCI DSS makes this a requirement!
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  2. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), “EDR tools typically record numerous endpoint and network events, and store this information either locally on the endpoint or in a centralized database.” then compare the output to “known indicators of compromise (IOC)“. [Ed. note the 2-for-1 on the acronym front] – Why the Hell would you wait for a ‘known indicator of compromise’ instead of trying to fix the problem pro-actively first?!  Hardening guides, vulnerability management, system baselining, FIM et al are all designed to produce baselines of known-good configs thereby minimising exposure. This is nothing more than a rebranding of basic security tenet in order to sell a technology.
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  3. Non-Signature Approaches for Endpoint Prevention, uses “machine learning-based malware prevention using mathematical models as an alternative to signatures for malware identification and blocking.” – Seriously (see 2. above)? Once you have your system at a known-good config, stop anything NOT that. Are you seriously going to spend God-knows how much on a new technology instead of doing what you SHOULD have doing all along …for free(ish)?
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  4. User and Entity Behavioral Analytics (EUBA), “…provides user-centric analytics around user behavior, but also around other entities such as endpoints, networks and applications.” – This one just pisses me off, and I can only assume Gartner were paid a ton of money by EUBA vendors to add this to the list. This is the THIRD nod to baselining and I’m only at number 4 on the list.
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  5. Microsegmentation and Flow Visibility, which is basically more granular segmentation (think system-to-system instead of the usual network-to-network). – So let’s see; most organisations have horrible segmentation at the network level, so to combat this, buy a technology that puts the ‘firewalls’ on each endpoint and maps your traffic flows at that level. I have an idea, why don’t you just do segmentation properly with the infrastructure you have and THEN decide if you need more. I seriously doubt you will unless you’re an IaaS/PaaS provider.
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  6. Security Testing for DevOps (DevSecOps) – In other words; building security and security testing into every step of the development process. This is new? I have to assume this was just padding to avoid a Top 9 scenario.
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  7. Intelligence-Driven Security Operations Center Orchestration Solutions, “an intelligence-driven SOC [ISOC] also needs to move beyond traditional defenses, with an adaptive architecture and context-aware components.” – So what you’re saying is; Let me know if something happens that’s not normal? Errr, isn’t that reporting events outside of a KNOWN-GOOD BASELINE!?!
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  8. Remote Browser solutions “…remotely present the browser session from a “browser server” (typically Linux based) running on-premises or delivered as a cloud-based service.” – This one kinda makes sense, but haven’t we had jump-servers for decades that could do something very similar?
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  9. Deception “technologies are defined by the use of deceits and/or tricks designed to thwart, or throw off, an attacker’s cognitive processes, disrupt an attacker’s automation tools, delay an attacker’s activities or disrupt breach progression.” – Anyone who uses this technology deserves to be hacked. This is perhaps the stupidest concept I have ever seen and I cannot believe it’s on anyone’s list. Gartner should actually be ashamed of themselves.
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  10. Pervasive Trust Services, “As enterprise security departments are asked to extend their protection capabilities to operational technology and the Internet of Things, new security models must emerge to provision and manage trust at scale.” – Finally we agree on something; centralised management of end-points based on known-good configs.

As far as I am concerned, 99.9% of organisations can effectively ignore this Top 10 list. You will NEVER find a technology that fixes stupid. Just do security properly and you’ll achieve what every organisation is looking for; appropriate, value-for-money, security.

It’s a shame Gartner can’t monitise a ‘Top 10 Information Security Back to Basics’, that would actually be worth a read.

 

No idea.

But let’s be honest, everyone will be making wild speculations at this point, just as ‘experts’ in every other field will be. The only thing for certain, is that the UNcertainty will be used by security vendors to try to scare UK companies into buying something.

This one is unrelated, but is actually very good and you should read it first; Brexit: The Implications for the Insurance Industry.

Two of the pending EU laws in the pipeline that will be most cited are the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). While both of these do not relate to information security per se, security is an enormously important component of each, and penalties will be commensurate with the egregiousness of the data misuse/loss.

The UK would have had to make these law within the next 2 -3 years, but now what? If we’re not IN the EU, do we have to follow the EU rules? Can’t we just do our own thing, like the US?

Well yes, we could, all we’d have to do is adopt something like Safe Harbor and all EU countries would be more than happy to do business with us. Right?

I don’t think so somehow.

Clearly the UK would never put itself in that position [praying silently], and seeing as both PSD2 and GDPR are fully supported by the UK, I would very much doubt any UK-only law would be markedly different. But ANY difference will still complicate things for UK businesses. It will likely require UK organisations to be far more pro-active in the demonstration of their compliance than would otherwise be necessary.

And if there’s one thing that no organisation I have ever come across is good at, it’s the demonstration of good security practices.

Not one.

Luckily for us, there is absolutely nothing in ANY regulation of which I am aware that requires anything more than ‘appropriate’ controls. From the GDPR for example; “Personal data should be processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security and confidentiality of the personal data, including for preventing unauthorised access to or use of personal data and the equipment used for the processing.”

This is the greatest thing about my chosen career; Information security cares nothing for law, regulation, compliance, geography, or politics, it’s about a piece of data, on a computer, that someone wants to steal. Everything else is just reporting.

However, getting to the point where the demonstration of compliance is business as usual, is extremely difficult. Not complicated, just difficult. It’s actually very simple, all you have to do is get the CEO/BoD to care about it and it will happen. Easy, right?

UK organisations had 2 years from May 25th to demonstrate compliance with the GDPR, now [potentially] they have to demonstrate their equivalent compliance to every EU business with whom they want to transact. And you thought answering RFPs was bad now!

Nothing will change anytime soon, but in the meantime, just do what you know you should have doing all along, but start now.

Don’t know how, ask.

In my vast experience of the Agile Methodology (just over a month now), I have managed to go from a proponent (as in Running PCI as an Agile Project?) to someone who is rather more circumspect when the objective in question falls outside the realm of a short-term project. An easily defined short-term project at that.

In other words, NOT a soup-to-nuts security program.

The overused adage; “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” is particularly relevant here, as Agile proponents have actually gone looking for nails to the point where some security ‘professionals’ are designing their entire program around this single tool! Being generous, this shows a spectacular naiveté,  at worst, it shows a complete ignorance of what constitutes a sustainable and effective security program.

And to be clear; Agile is a tool, nothing more. It is not a philosophy, it’s not even a framework, it is used for very specific requirements at very specific times for an easily quantifiable result; like a new user interface, a segmentation project, or even the installation of a centralised logging technology. Where it make absolutely NO sense is the exact place a good security program starts; with the culture.

The implementation of a good security program has always been, and will always be, more art than science, and completely dependent on the prevailing culture, a culture defined by the CEO’s attitude towards it. In other words, trying to implement a security program AND instill a culture at the same time with nothing more than a single tool, is no different from trying to build an entire house with just a hammer. It simply does not work that way.

Also, those focusing on Agile tend to come from a highly technical background and therefore focus on technology over process, which just compounds the problem to the point where any short-term gains will be built on nothing but air (like my sandcastle ‘metaphor’). Technology is critical for the automation of KNOWN-good processes, it can never be the solution in and of itself.

In one of my first blogs I posited that there are only Four Foundation of Security:

  1. Management Buy-In / Culture
  2. Policies & Procedures
  3. Governance
  4. Education & Training

…I would now actually add a fifth; Vision (or perhaps just include it in the first one), as it’s the CEO’s vision for the organisation that will drive the development of an appropriate security program.

Assuming you agree with the Foundations, perhaps you can now see how using Agile for any one of them is utterly meaningless. Implementing two week sprints and daily stand-ups to ask whether or not the CEO has signed-off on the security policy framework, or if all relevant staff have taken their annual awareness training, makes no sense whatsoever.

In the development of a security program, a competent security practitioner at the CSO / CISO level would usually follow these steps (gross oversimplification):

  1. Get the CEO to agree to take an active role in the program’s implementation / socialisation. Get this in writing.
  2. Define the governance framework to get all relevant senior stakeholders to the table. Have the CEO ratify it.
  3. Draft Information Security Policy Framework for the policy committee’s review and approval. Have the CEO sign it.
  4. Distribute the relevant policies to the right people as part of the socialisation and initial training exercise. Have the CEO visibly endorse it.
  5. Implement an ongoing awareness program to solidify the culture changes. Have the CEO evangelise it.

If you can’t even get the first step in place, you needn’t bother with the rest, as no matter what you do your security program will collapse under the weight of indifference.

No tool is going to fix this, certainly not Agile.

A CEO discount is when I offer an organisation a 10% reduction on my consultancy day-rate if they can arrange for a 30 minute, 1-on-1, face-to-face, meeting with the CEO.

Sound like a gimmick? Well, it is partially, I’m trying to run a business, but it’s also extremely beneficial to both sides. Not only that, addresses the most fundamental of all security challenges; management buy-in/support. Continue reading “Why I Offer a ‘CEO Discount’” →

Have you ever noticed that a lot of organisations purporting to embrace change and innovation end up hiring the same type of people who are the majority cause of their current challenges?

‘Talent acquisition’ is much like the famous [mis]quote by Henry Ford; “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.”. By sticking to standard job descriptions and not looking for PEOPLE to fulfill the leadership’s vision, companies will get what they ask for, and not what they need.

I’ve never seen a job description yet (that wasn’t written by me, FOR me) that did not set me up for failure before I even began. There are people much better at certain things than me, and who may actually enjoy doing them, why would you give those things to me?

Worst of all, above a certain level of seniority, you wind up being lumped into one of two categories, and if you’re REALLY unlucky, both; Leader and/or Manager.

What if you’re neither?

Here’s a little experiment I conducted:

I typed; “books on leadership” into Google and got >271,000,000 hits. If even 0.1% of those are ACTUAL books, that’s 271,000 books on leadership, some of which may even have been written by a true leader. Possible, but unlikely.

Then I typed “books on being a manager” and got >170,000,000 hits If I apply the same criteria as above, that’s another 170,000 books to plough through.

Finally, I typed “books for neither a manager or a leader” and these are the top 5 hits;

  1. 3 Things That Separate Leaders From Managers – Business Insider
  2. Managers and Leaders: Are They Different? – Harvard Business Review
  3. Why All Managers Must Be Leaders – Forbes
  4. Leaders and managers, leadership and management … – CIPD Courses
  5. Why Managers Can’t Lead and Leaders Can’t Manage

OK, so I’ve completely tipped this in favour of the point I’m trying to make, but not ONE article on the first 5 pages of hits gets close to what I’m saying, which is;

People who are very good at what they do don’t need to be a Leader or a Manager, they need a great leader in whom to believe, and great managers to get the right people on board.

My favourite phrase on leadership is on www.despair.com; “Leaders are like eagles, we don’t have either of them here.”. The same could be said for managers, both leadership and managing people are talents not skills, and the really good ones are equally rare.

What if the skills you need, even temporarily, are actually in someone who’s neither?

A good leader has specific attributes that VERY few people have (hence LEADer I suppose), and I truly believe leadership is not something you can learn.

A good manager is, to me, someone who can recognise the talents and skills you HAVE, not the ones they either a) think you might have, or b) want you to have, or c) need you to have for the job at hand.

Focusing on these 2 senior-level talents ignores the vast array of other talents that require neither of these attributes to provide enormous benefit. Call them subject matter experts, gurus, trusted advisors, or a whole host of meaninglessly clichéd names, what you get is the same; someone who can take the leader’s vision, and translate it into something the managers can act upon. Leaders usually can’t manage, managers should rarely lead, and neither has the necessary talents / skills / knowledge to bring the vision to life.

So if you have failed at fulfilling either of these roles (as I have many times), maybe they are not for you. But what you DO have could be of equal importance, if you know what it is.

No one likes to think they’re not a good fit for a senior position, but there’s little reason to extrapolate one or two bad ‘corporate’ fits into the rejection of an entire line of opportunities. Just make damned sure you ask the right questions up front. No you can’t guarantee an honest answer, but hopefully you’ll know pretty quickly if they sold you down the river.

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