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About 4 years ago we saw the first big wave of replacements of older email security tools with a second generation we now call ‘content security’. Early email security products were deployed in-house and focused on anti-virus, anti-spam, and mail server integration. The current generation of products offered new SaaS and hybrid deployment models, technology advancements in web and content filtering, more elastic service sets, and centralized web management consoles. And let’s not forget the larger security firms with products lagging far behind the state of the art, milking their cash cows while smaller firms innovated. We see the same wave of succession right now in the SIEM market. First generation products – despite being entrenched – make customers uncomfortable enough to start asking what else is available. They are looking for better, easier, and faster. We hear numerous complaints about existing solutions: “We collect every event in the data center, but we can’t answer security questions, only run basic security reports.” “We can barely manage our SIEM today, and we plan on rolling event collection out across the rest of the organization in the coming months.” “I don’t want to manage these appliances – can this be outsourced?” “Do I really need a SIEM, or is log management and ad hoc reporting enough?” “Can we please have a tool that does what it says?” “Why is this this product so effing hard to manage?” We see new products designed to both improve scalability and come closer to real-time analysis. They can collect events from just about every type of network device and application, normalize, and provide better drill-down capabilities. And there are many new analysis features – including enrichment, attack signature patterns, and application-layer monitoring. The first generation of products are looking old and I hear more and more unhappiness with today’s entrenched solutions. I ran across Anton Chuvakin’s How to Replace a SIEM? this week. But his tips apply to a wider audience than just Cisco MARS customers kicking other vendor tires. He offers two excellent vendor migration suggestions that bear repeating. First, leave the existing system running for some time – at least through the migration. This way you are still covered during the migration, and in the event previously collected data is not compatible across systems, you can still run reports and access forensic data. I have seen cases of “rip and replace” where the old system is removed while – or even before – the new system is up and running. That means no coverage for a (potentially extended) period. I sometimes call that ‘optimism’, but you may prefer another term. The sales process is a good time to ensure your (new, hungry) vendor can run in parallel with your existing tool – don’t buy it and then let them tell you that’s an unsupported scenario. Second, have the new vendor help with setup. Deployment issues are some of the most serious problems we hear of. Hiring the vendor not only helps avoid many pitfalls, but also makes it easier and quicker to replicate the rules and reports you currently use. And during the sales process you can negotiate attractive pricing on getting the work done as a condition of the sale. But before you replace a SIEM there are a couple other things you need to consider: Post Mortem: What exactly are the problems with the existing system and what do you hope to accomplish? It’s not hard to come up with a list of problems and areas for improvement – it’s much harder to vet a new technology to confirm addresses your demands without adding its own slew of new pitfalls. The problem here is that vendors will tell you they can do whatever you ask for. Realistically, you need to check with other customers who already own and operate new products before you buy – see what their experiences have been. What you have: The SIEM you have was installed for a reason. Actually, they are normally installed for several reasons, to address a list of business and security problems which grows over time. It’s easy to forget everything your system does when its failings are so easy to see. Make sure you have a complete understanding of what issues are currently being addressed and must be replicated on the new system. This includes compliance and security functions across management, operations, and security organizations. Worse, the existing SIEM likely feeds data to other systems you forgot about. The list you build is almost always much longer than expected. The good news is this process saves time and avoids trouble down the road, and helps form RFP questions and guide proof of concept testing. You want a new product that handles your new wish list, but don’t give up on any core reasons you are already running SIEM. SIEM replacement can be easier than a first installation, but you need to leverage the knowledge you have to make it so. That may sound easy, but it takes work to gather the organizational memory you need and clearly document your goals moving forward. Share:

Do you ever think about how you could just disappear? Or become someone else? Maybe only I do that after reading one too many Jason Bourne novels. Given anyone’s ability, with a keyboard and an Internet connection, to become anyone (even Abraham Lincoln is spewing quotes on Twitter now), what does ‘identity’ mean now? In the future? And is your ‘identity’ singular, or will it become identities moving forward? This interview on NetworkWorld with a guy who specializes in making folks disappear was fascinating. Mostly because the approach is totally counter-intuitive. You’d probably guess it’s about hiding your identity or taking someone else’s. But it’s not – at least according to this guy who helps folks hide for a living. It’s about making it hard (if not impossible) to find you through disinformation, using tactics like manufacturing online identities with the same name and sending anyone trying to find you on a wild goose chase. Unless you have someone very motivated to find you personally, this should work like a charm. Think about that for a second. Maybe even think about it from my perspective. There are already a bunch of Mike Rothmans out there. I went to college with one. Yes, a guy with my name – even down to our common middle initial – ended up in the same class at the same college. And that’s without even trying. What if a bunch of new Mike Rothmans showed up? How would you know which one(s) was really me? Maybe I’m not a great example due to my attention whoring disorder – I want you to find me, at least online. But less public folks could likely disappear with little fanfare, leaving a myriad of false trails. So as The Who sang years ago, “Who the F*** are you?” False identities are created every day, with severe ramifications. Think about all those crazy parents creating Facebook identities to spy on their kids or make their kids’ rivals look bad. In this age of social networking, citizen journalism, and Twitter, identity matters but is increasingly hard to define – and even harder to verify. Some folks have been able to get verified Twitter accounts, which could then be hacked. We talked about identity verification and non-repudiation as this ecommerce thing caught fire a few years ago, and we basically forget about it and forced the credit card companies to take on most of the liability from it. Then they forced the merchants to eat it. Risk transference for the win. And now the media seems to fall hook, line, and sinker every time a “citizen journalist” creates a meme, which turns out to be just a front for some big nameless company driving its own agenda. Folks take seriously what they read on all these myriad communication vehicles, regardless of source. And everyone engaging in social networking contributes. As long as they don’t exhibit trollish behavior, it looks like most of us have no issue linking to them and including them as part of the conversation, even though we don’t know who they are. I know I do, fairly frequently. I’ve been struggling with my position on anonymous folks for years. I get that some folks cannot divulge their real names because it could cost them their jobs. But do I continue giving these unverified folks any airtime? And what do I tell my kids? I constantly harp on honesty and honorable behavior. But I’m trying to show them that not everyone holds themselves to the same ethical standards. It’s important they do not believe everything they read or hear. They need to do the work, and figure out what is real and what is not. What they want to believe and what they want to reject. Given this lack of identity, the problem is going to get worse. Where is identity going? How will we verify who is who? Do we even need to? What’s the significance for how we do security? At this point I don’t have any answers. I’m not even sure I know the questions. I know Gunnar and Adrian have been thinking quite a bit about how identity evolves from here. I plan to pick Gunnar’s brain at Secure360 this week, and plenty of other big brains. If you have given some thought to this, please let me know what you think in the comments. Share: