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Why Successful Risk Management is Still a Failure

Rich November 17, 2009 1 Comment

Thanks to my wife’s job at a hospital, yesterday I was able to finally get my H1N1 flu shot. While driving down, I was also listening to a science podcast talking about the problems when the government last rolled out a big flu vaccine program in the 1970s. The epidemic never really hit, and there was a much higher than usual complication rate with that vaccine (don’t let this scare you off – we’ve had 30 years of improvement since then). The public was justifiably angry, and the Ford administration took a major hit over the situation.   Recently I also read an article about the Y2K “scare”, and how none of the fears panned out. Actually, I think it was a movie review for 2012, so perhaps I shouldn’t take it too seriously. In many years of being involved with risk-based careers, from mountain rescue and emergency medicine to my current geeky stuff, I’ve noticed a constant trend by majorities to see risk management successes as failures. Rather than believing that the hype was real and we actually succeeded in preventing a major negative event, most people merely interpret the situation as an overhyped fear that failed to manifest. They thus focus on the inconvenience and cost of the risk mitigation, as opposed to its success. Y2K is probably one of the best examples. I know of many cases where we would have experienced major failures if it weren’t for the hard work of programmers and IT staff. We faced a huge problem, worked our assess off, and got the job done. (BTW – if you are a runner, this Nike Y2K commercial is probably the most awesomest thing ever.) This behavior is something we constantly wrestle with in security. The better we do our job, the less intrusive we (and the bad guys) are, and the more invisible our successes. I’ve always felt that security should never be in the spotlight – our job is to disappear and not be noticed. Our ultimate achievement is absolute normalcy. In fact, our most noticeable achievements are failures. When we swoop in to clean up a major breach, or are dangling on the end of a rope hanging off a cliff, we’ve failed. We failed to prevent a negative event, and are now merely cleaning up. Successful risk management is a failure because the more we succeed, the more we are seen as irrelevant. Share:

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ADMP Market Acceptance

Adrian Lane November 17, 2009 No Comments

Rich and I were on a data security Q&A podcast today. I was surprised when the audience asked questions about Application & Database Monitoring and Protection (ADMP), as it was not on our agenda, nor have we written about it in the last year. When Rich first sketched out the concept, he listed specific market forces behind ADMP, and presented a couple of ADMP models. But these are really technical challenges to management and security and the projected synergies if they are linked. When we were asked about ADMP today, I was able to name a half dozen vendors implementing parts of the model, each with customers who deployed their solution. ADMP is no longer a philosophical discussion of technical synergies but a reality, due to customer acceptance. I see the evolution of ADMP being very similar to what happened with web and email security. Just a couple years ago there was a sharp division between email security and web security vendors. That market has evolved from the point solutions of email security, anti-virus, email content security, anti-malware, web content filtering, URL filtering, TLS, and gateway services into single platforms. In customer minds the problem is monitoring and controlling how employees use the Internet. The evolution of Symantec, Websense, Proofpoint and Barracuda are all examples, and it is nearly impossible for any collection of technologies to compete with these unified platforms. ADMP is about monitoring and controlling use of web applications. A year ago I would have discussed the need for ADMP’s technical benefits, due to having all products under one management interface. The ability to write one policy to direct multiple security functions. The ability for discovery from one component to configure other features. The ability to select the most appropriate tool or feature to address a threat, or even provide some redundancy. ADMP became a reality when customers began viewing web application monitoring and control as a single problem. Successful relationships between database activity monitoring vendors, web app firewalls companies, pen testers, and application assessment firms are showing value and customer acceptance. We have a long, long way to go in linking these technologies together into a robust solution, but the market has evolved a lot over the last 14 months. Share:

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