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Help Build the Mother of All Data Security Surveys

Rich May 6, 2010 4 Comments

I spend a heck of a lot of time researching, writing, and speaking about data security. One area that’s been very disappointing is the quality of many of the surveys. Most either try to quantify losses (without using a verifiable loss model), measure general attitudes to inspire some BS hype press release, or assess some other fuzzy aspect you can spin any way you want. This bugs me, and it’s been on my to-do list to run a better survey myself. When a vendor (Imperva) proposed the same thing back at RSA (meaning we’d have funding) and agreed to our Totally Transparent Research process, it was time to promote it to the top of the stack. So we are kicking off our first big data security study. Following in the footsteps of the one we did for patch management, this survey will focus on hard metrics – our goal is to avoid general attitude and unquantifiable loss guesses, and focus on figuring out what people are really doing about data security. As with all our surveys, we are soliciting ideas and feedback before we run it, and will release all the raw results. Here are my initial ideas on how we might structure the questions: We will group the questions to match the phases in the Pragmatic Data Security Cycle, since we need some structure to start with. For each phase, we will list out the major technologies and processes, then ask which one organizations have adopted. For technologies, we will ask which they’ve researched, budgeted for, purchased, deployed in a limited manner (such as testing), deployed in initial production, and deployed in full production (organization wide). For processes, we will ask about maturity from ad-hoc through fully formalized and documented, similar to what we did for patch management. For the tools and processes, we’ll ask if they were implemented due to a specific compliance deficiency during an assessment. I’m also wondering if we ask should how many breaches or breach disclosures were directly prevented by the tool (estimates). I’m on the fence about this, because we would need to tightly constrain the question to avoid the results being abused in some way. Those are my rough ideas – what do you think? Anything else you want to see? Is this even in the right direction? And remember – raw (anonymized) results will be released, so it’s kind of like your chance to run a survey and have someone else bear the costs and do all the work… FYI The sponsor gets an exclusive on the raw results for 45 days or so, but they will be released free after that. We have to pay for these things somehow. Share:

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Friday Summary: May 7, 2010

Rich May 6, 2010 No Comments

Yesterday I finished up a presentation for the Secure360 Conference: “Putting the Fun in Dysfunctional – How the Security Industry Works, and Why It’s Your Fault”. This is a combination of a bunch of things I’ve been thinking about for a while, mostly focused on cognitive science and economics. Essentially, security makes a heck of a lot more sense once you start trying to understand why people make the decisions they do, which is a combination of their own internal workings and external forces. Since it’s very hard to change how people think (in terms of process, not opinion), the best way to induce change is to modify the forces that drive their decision making. I have a section in the presentation on cognitive bias, which is our tendency to make errors in judgement due to how our brains work. It’s pretty fascinating stuff, and essential knowledge for anyone who wants to improve their critical thinking. Here are some examples relevant to the practice of security (from Wikipedia): Framing by using a too-narrow approach and description of the situation or issue. Hindsight bias, sometimes called the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect, is the inclination to see past events as being predictable. Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions – this is related to cognitive dissonance. Self-serving bias is the tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests. Bandwagon effect: the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink, herd behavior, and mania. Base rate fallacy: ignoring available statistical data in favor of particulars. Focusing effect: prediction bias which occurs when people place too much importance on one aspect of an event – this causes errors when attempting to predict the utility of a future outcome. Loss aversion: “the disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it”. Outcome bias: the tendency to judge a decision based its eventual outcome, rather than by the information available when it was made. Post-purchase rationalization: the tendency to persuade oneself that a purchase was a good value. Status quo bias: our preference for to stay the same (see also loss aversion and endowment effect). Zero-risk bias: preference for reducing a small risk to zero, over a greater reduction in a larger risk. Cognitive bias also has interesting ties to logical fallacies, another essential area for any good security pro or skeptic. Not that understanding psychology and economics solves all our problems, but they sure help reduce the frustration. And applied to ourselves, understanding can really improve our ability to analyze information and make decisions. Cool stuff. On to the Summary: Webcasts, Podcasts, Outside Writing, and Conferences Rich on the Digital Underground podcast with Dennis Fisher. Favorite Securosis Posts Rich: Thoughts on Data Breach History. I sort of have a thing for history… when you look at the big picture, sometimes things become obvious. Adrian Lane: You Should Ignore the NetworkWorld DLP Review. Nice. David Mortman: Firestarter: For Secure Code, Process Is a Placebo; It’s All about Peer Pressure! Other Securosis Posts Help Build the Mother of All Data Security Surveys. Download Our Kick-Ass Database Encryption and Tokenization Paper. Database Security Fundamentals: Encryption. Understanding and Selecting SIEM/LM: Use Cases, Part 2. Optimism and Cautions on OpenDLP. Understanding and Selecting SIEM/LM: Use Cases, Part 1. Favorite Outside Posts Rich: 2010 DBIR to include cases from U.S. Secret Service This is simply awesome! The Secret Service is analyzing all their cases from the past couple years using Verizon’s framework. This is a gold mine for those of us who care about real world security (disclosure – I’m on the board of the VERIS project for Verizon, but I am not compensated in any way). Adrian Lane: What Egress Filters Should I Use? Branden Williams offers a pragmatic discussion of egress filtering. Project Quant Posts DB Quant: Planning Metrics (Part 1) Research Reports and Presentations Understanding and Selecting a Database Encryption or Tokenization Solution. Low Hanging Fruit: Quick Wins with Data Loss Prevention. Top News and Posts Vuln Disclosure is Rude. Open letter to Facebook on privacy (Noticing a trend this week?). OMB issues new rules on IT security. Penetration Testing in the Real World. How Assumptions May Be Making Us All Less Secure. (Almost made my favorite of the week). Six Things You Need to Know About Facebook Connections. Didier Stevens on PDF Hacking and Security. Facebook disables chat after security hole discovered. DNSSEC on all root servers. Turning Stolen Credit Cards to Cash. Making dreams come true. God, I love online payment scams! The Cisco Secure Development Lifecycle: An Overview. I did not expect to see a secure development cycle coming from Cisco. Review to come. Regular expression sandboxing. An interesting discussion, albeit a little more technical, on the use of regex to parse / match JavaScript. Rethinking the Cyber Threat – A Microsoft paper. Feds Thwart Alleged ATM Hacking Spree. Cash machine reprogramming. More creative than skimming. Opera Plugs ‘Extremely Severe’ Security Hole. Encryption Can’t Stop The Wiretapping Boom. Former Ars Technica Forum Host Compromised. Blog Comment of the Week Remember, for every comment selected, Securosis makes a $25 donation to Hackers for Charity. This week’s best comment goes to Betsy Nichols, in response to Thoughts on Data Breach History. Very interesting presentation. The OSF is doing amazing work in two areas: data breaches and vulnerabilities. It is amazing what they have accomplished with a volunteer community. They are definitely a worthwhile cause that merits broad support from all of us who benefit from their work. You and other interested folks in the Securosis community may be interested in some of the quantitative analysis I have done using the OSF DataLossDB. You can see it at www.metricscenter.net. (No login necessary.) Just go to the Dashboards area of the site.

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