Research

No rest for the weary, it seems. As soon as we wrapped up last week’s blog series we start two more. Check out Rich’s new DLP series, and today I am starting to dig into the mobile security issue. We will also start up Phase 2 of the Malware Analysis Quant series this week. But don’t cry for us, Argentina. Being this busy is a good problem to have. We have seen plenty of vendor FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) about mobile security. And the concern isn’t totally misplaced. Those crazy users bring their own devices (yes, the consumerization buzzword) and connect them to your networks. They access your critical data and take that data with them. They lose their devices (or resell them, too often with data still on them), or download compromised apps from an app store, and those devices wreak havoc on your environment. It all makes your no-win your job even harder. Your increasing inability to enforce device standards or ingress paths further impairs your ability to secure the network and the information assets your organization deems important. Let’s call this situation what is: escalating anarchy. We know that’s a harsh characterization but we don’t know what else to call it. You basically can’t dictate the devices, have little influence of the configurations, must support connections from everywhere, and need to provide access to sensitive stuff. Yep, we stare down network anarchy on a daily basis. Before we get mired in feelings of futility, let’s get back to your charter as a network security professional. You need to make sure the right ‘people’ (which actually includes devices and applications) access the right stuff at the right times. Of course the powers that be don’t care whether you focus on devices or the network – they just want the problem addressed so they don’t have to worry about it. As long as the CEO can connect to the network and get the quarterly numbers on her iPad from a beach in the Caribbean it’s all good. What could possibly go wrong with that? Last year we documented a number of these mobile and consumerization drivers, and some ideas on network controls to address the issues, in the paper Network Security in the Age of Any Computing. That research centered around how to put some network controls in place to provide a semblance of order. Things like network segmentation and implementing a ‘vault’ architecture to ensure devices jump through a sufficient number of hoops before accessing important stuff. But that only scratched the surface of this issue. It’s like an iceberg – about 20% of the problems in supporting these consumer-grade devices are apparent. Unfortunately there is no single answer to this issue – instead you need a number of controls to work in concert, in order to offer some modicum of mobile device control. We need to orchestrate the full force of all the controls at our disposal to bridge this mobile security gap. In this series we will examine both device and network level tactics. Even better, we will pinpoint some of the operational difficulties inherent in making these controls work together, being sure to balance protection against usability. Before we jump into a short analysis of device-centric controls, it’s time to thank our friends at ForeScout for sponsoring this series. Without our sponsors we’d have no way to pay for coffee, and that would be a huge problem. Device-centric Controls When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? It seems like this has been the approach to addressing the security implications of consumerization. Folks didn’t really know what to do, so they looked at mobile device management (MDM) solutions as the answer to their problems. As we wrote in last year’s Mobile Device Security paper (PDF), a device-centric security approach starts with setting policies for who can have certain devices and what they can access. Of course your ability to say ‘no’ has eroded faster than your privacy on the Internet, so you’re soon looking at specific capabilities of the MDM platform to bail you out. Many organizations use MDM to enforce configuration policies, ensuring they can wipe devices remotely and routing traffic device traffic through a corporate VPN. This helps reduce the biggest risks. Completely effective? Not really, but you need to get through the day, and there have been few weaponized exploits targeting mobile devices, so the risk so far has been acceptable. But relying on MDM implicitly limits your ability to ensure the right folks get to the right stuff at the right time. You know – your charter as a network security professional. For instance, by focusing on the device you have no visibility into what the user is actually surfing to. The privacy modes available on most mobile browsers make sure there are no tracks left for those who want to, uh, do research on the Internet. Sure, you might be able to force them through a VPN, but the VPN provides a pass into your network and bypasses your perimeter defenses. Once an attacker is on the VPN with access to your network, they may as well be connected to the network port in your CEO’s office. Egress filtering, DLP, and content inspection can no longer monitor or restrict traffic to and from that mobile device. What about making sure the mobile devices don’t get compromised? You can check for malware on mobile devices but that has never worked very well for other endpoint devices, and we see no reason to think security vendors have suddenly solved the problems they have been struggling with for decades. You can also (usually) wipe devices if and when you realize they been compromised. But there is a window when the attacker may have unfettered access to your network, which we don’t like. Compounding these issues, focusing exclusively on devices provides no network traffic visibility. We advocate a Monitor Everything approach, which means you need watch the network for anomalous traffic, which might indicate an attacker in your midst. Device-centric solutions cannot provide that visibility. But this is

I have been so tied up with the Nexus, CCSK, and other projects that I haven’t been blogging as much as usual… but not to worry, it’s time to start a nice, juicy new technical series. And once again I return to my bread and butter: DLP. As much as I keep thinking I can simply run off and play with pretty clouds, something in DLP always drags me back in. This time it’s a chance to dig in and focus on implementation and management (thanks to McAfee for sponsoring something I’ve been wanting to write for a long time). With that said, let’s dig in… In many ways Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is one of the most far-reaching tools in our security arsenal. A single DLP platform touches our endpoints, network, email servers, web gateways, storage, directory servers, and more. There are more potential integration points than nearly any other security tool – with the possible exception of SIEM. And then we need to build policies, define workflow, and implement blocking… all based on nebulous concepts like “customer data” and “intellectual property”. It’s no wonder many organizations are intimidated by the thought implementing a large DLP deployment. Yet, based on our 2010 survey data, somewhere upwards of 40% of organizations use some form of DLP. Fortunately implementing and managing DLP isn’t nearly as difficult as many security professionals expect. Over the nearly 10 years we have covered the technology – talking with probably hundreds of DLP users – we have collected countless tips, tricks, and techniques for streamlined and effective deployments that we’ve compiled into straightforward processes to ease most potential pains. We are not trying to pretend deploying DLP is simple. DLP is one of the most powerful and important tools in our modern security arsenal, and anything with that kind of versatility and wide range of integration points can easily be a problem if you fail to appropriately plan or test. But that’s where this series steps in. We’ll lay out the processes for you, including different paths to meet different needs – all to help you get up and running; and to stay there as quickly, efficiently, and effectively as possible. We have watched the pioneers lay the trails and hit the land mines – now it’s time to share those lessons with everyone else. Keep in mind that despite what you’ve heard, DLP isn’t all that difficult to deploy. There are many misperceptions, in large part due to squabbling vendors (especially non-DLP vendors). But it doesn’t take much to get started with DLP. On a practical note this series is a follow-up to our Understanding and Selecting a Data Loss Prevention Solution paper now in its second revision. We pick up right where that paper left off, so if you get lost in any terminology we suggest you use that paper as a reference. On that note, let’s start with an overview and then we’ll delve into the details. Quick Wins for Long Term Success One of the main challenges in deploying DLP is to show immediate value without drowning yourself in data. DLP tools are generally not be too bad for false positives – certainly nowhere near as bad as IDS. That said, we have seen many people deploy these tools without knowing what they wanted to look for – which can result in a lot of what we call false real positives: real alerts on real policy violations, just not things you actually care about. The way to handle too many alerts is to deploy slowly and tune your policies, which can take a lot of time and may even focus you on protecting the wrong kinds of content in the wrong places. So we have compiled two separate implementation options: The Quick Wins process is best for initial deployments. Your focus is on rapid deployment and information gathering rather than enforcement, and will help guide your full deployment later. We detailed this process in a white paper and will only briefly review it here. The Full Deployment process is what you’ll use for the long haul. It’s a methodical series of steps for full enforcement policies. Since the goal is enforcement (even if enforcement is alert and response, instead of automated blocking and filtering), and we spend more time tuning policies to produce useful results. The key difference is that the Quick Wins process isn’t intended to block every single violation – just really egregious problems. It’s about getting up and running and quickly showing value by identifying key problem areas and helping set you up for a full deployment. The Full Deployment process is where you dig in, spend more time on tuning, and implement long-term policies for enforcement. The good news is that we designed these to work together. If you start with Quick Wins, everything you do will feed directly into full deployment. If you already know where you want to focus you can jump right into a full deployment without bothering with Quick Wins. In either case the process guides you around common problems and should speed up implementation. In our next post we’ll show you where to get started and start laying out the processes… Share:

Really? It’s that time again? Time to prepare for the onslaught that is the RSA Conference. Well, we’re 5 weeks out, which means Clubber Lang was exactly right. My Prediction? Pain! Pain in your head, and likely a sick feeling in your stomach and ringing in your ears. All induced by an inability to restrain your consumption when surrounded by oodles of fellow security geeks and free drinks. Who said going to that party in the club with music at 110 decibels was a good idea? But rest easy – we’re here for you. Once again, with the help of our friends at ThreatPost, SchwartzMSL and Kulesa Faul, we will be holding our Disaster Recovery Breakfast to cure what ales you (or ails you, but I think my version is more accurate). As always, the breakfast will be Thursday morning from 8-11 at Jillian’s in the Metreon. It’s an open door – come and leave as you want. We’ll have food, beverages, and assorted recovery items to ease your day (non-prescription only). Remember what the DR Breakfast is all about. No marketing, no spin, just a quiet place to relax and have muddled conversations with folks you know, or maybe even go out on a limb and meet someone new. After three nights of RSA Conference shenanigans, it’s an oasis in a morass of hyperbole, booth babes, and tchotchke hunters. Invite below. See you there. To help us estimate numbers please RSVP to rsvp@securosis.com. Share: