Research

This is the Securosis Friday Summary. For those of you who don’t know this is where Rich and I vent. When I started working with Rich I used to loathe writing this intro; now it’s therapeutic. It gives me a chance to talk about whatever is on my mind that I think people might find interesting. Sure, most Friday posts talk about security, but not always. If such things bother you – as one reader mentioned last week – search within the page for ‘Summary’ to avoid our ramblings. Security Burnout? Breach Apathy? Repetitive task depression? Been there, done that, got the T-shirt to prove it? If you have been in security long enough, you will go though some security industry induced negative mental states. It happens to everyone on the security treadmill – it’s the security professionals’ version of the marathon runners’ wall. A tired, disinterested, day-to-day grind of SOSDD. I know I’ve had it – twice in fact. As an IT admin reviewing the same log files over and over again, and also from writing about security breaches caused by the same old SQL injection attacks. Rich, James Arlen, and I got into a conversation about this over dinner the other night. Rich and I have achieved a quiet inner peace with the ups and downs of security, mainly because our work lets us do more of what we like and less of the daily grind that folks in IT security deal with on a daily basis. Usually during my career, with vacations frowned upon for startup executives, conferences were a source of inspiration. Actually, they still are. Presentations like Errata security’s malicious iPhone and Jackpotting Automated Tellers can renew my interest and fascination with the profession. I go back to work with new energy and new ideas on what I can do to make things better. Somewhere down the line, though reality always settles back in. As with life in general, I try not to get too worked up about this profession, but to find the pieces that fascinate me and delve into those technologies, leaving the rest of the stuff behind. On Monday during the RSA Security Conference, Mike, Rich, David Mortman, and I will be helping with the ‘e10+’ event. The idea of this session is to provide advanced discussions for security pros who have been in the field over 10 years. We talk about some of the complex organizational problems security folks deal with, and share different strategies for addressing problems. Of course there is no shortage of interesting problems, and there are some heavily experienced – and opinionated – people in the room, so the discussion gets lively. It’s not on the agenda, but it dawned on me that dealing with security burnout – both causes and reactions – would actually be a good topic for that event. How to put the fun back in security. I hope our talks will do just that. Rich has some great ideas on consumerization and risk (yeah, I know – who thought risk could be interesting?) that I expect to spark some lively debate. Usually during RSA I am too busy worrying about my presentation or meeting with people to see much new stuff, but this year I am looking forward to the event. On to the Summary: Webcasts, Podcasts, Outside Writing, and Conferences Rich, Adrian, and Shimmy discuss NoSQL Security with Couchbase and Mongo founders. Adrian, Jamie, and Rich on the NetSec Podcast. Other Securosis Posts Our Research Page with every freakin’ white paper we’ve done in the last three years. Implementing DLP: Getting Started. Incite 1/25/2011: Prized Possessions. Bridging the Mobile Security Gap: Staring down Network Anarchy (new series). Implementing and Managing a DLP Solution. The 2012 Disaster Recovery Breakfast. Baby Steps toward the New School. Favorite Outside Posts Mike Rothman: Executive could learn a lot from Supernanny. Kevin hits it on the head here, just as Wendy did last week. Without even enforcement of the rules you’re lost. Unless you are Steven Seagal (and you’re not), no one is Above the Law. Dave Lewis: How to close your Google account. Lots of blowback due to Google’s new privacy policy – here’s how you can protest. Adrian Lane: Implementation of MITM Attack on HDCP-Secured Links. Fascinating examination of an HDMI encryption attack – in real time – for fair use. It’s a bit on the technical side but does get to the heart of why DRM and closed systems stifle innovation. Rich: Pete Lindstrom’s take on recent SCADA vulnerability disclosures. I disagree with Pete a lot. It’s hit absurd levels in the past on a mailing list we are both on. And while I don’t agree with his characterizations of vulnerability research justifications, I do agree that for some things – especially SCADA – we need to think differently about disclosure. David Mortman: Google+ Failed Because of Real Names. Project Quant Posts Malware Analysis Quant: Monitoring for Reinfection. Malware Analysis Quant: Remediate. Malware Analysis Quant: Find Infected Devices. Malware Analysis Quant: Defining Rules. Malware Analysis Quant: The Malware Profile. Malware Analysis Quant: Dynamic Analysis. Malware Analysis Quant: Static Analysis. Malware Analysis Quant: Build Testbed. Research Reports and Presentations Tokenization Guidance Analysis: Jan 2012. Applied Network Security Analysis: Moving from Data to Information. Tokenization Guidance. Security Management 2.0: Time to Replace Your SIEM? Fact-Based Network Security: Metrics and the Pursuit of Prioritization. Tokenization vs. Encryption: Options for Compliance. Security Benchmarking: Going Beyond Metrics. And it case you missed it: Our Research Page with every freakin’ white paper we’ve done in the last three years. Top News and Posts Kill pcAnywhere Right Now! We the People: Populist Protest Kills SOPA (Again). The spam tag cloud: Keeping you up to date on what’s important in life! Trojan Trouble-ticket system. Say what you will about malware authors, but they’re usually highly adept at software development tools and techniques. Defacement frenzy via our friends at LiquidMatrix. O2 leaking mobile numbers to web sites Symantec acquires LiveOffice. Norton Source Code Stolen in 2006. Blog Comment of the Week No comments this week. We need to start writing better posts! Share:

At this point you should be in the process of cleaning your directory servers, with your incident handling process outlined in case you find any bad stuff early in your deployment. Now it’s time to determine your initial priorities to figure out whether you want to start with the Quick Wins process or jump right into full deployment. Most organizations have at least a vague sense of their DLP priorities, but translating them into deployment priorities can be a bit tricky. It’s one thing to know you want to use DLP to comply with PCI, but quite another to know exactly how to accomplish that. On the right is an example of how to map out high-level requirements into a prioritized deployment strategy. It isn’t meant to be canonical, but should provide a good overview for most of you. Here’s the reasoning behind it: Compliance priorities depend on the regulation involved. For PCI your best bet is to use DLP to scan storage for Primary Account Numbers. You can automate this process and use it to define your PCI scope and reduce assessment costs. For HIPAA the focus often starts with email to ensure no one is sending out unencrypted patient data. The next step is often to find where that data is stored – both in departments and on workstations. If we were to add a third item it would probably be web/webmail, because that is a common leak vector. Intellectual Property Leaks tend to be either document based (engineering plans) or application/database based (customer lists). For documents – assuming your laptops are already encrypted – USB devices are usually one of the top concerns, followed by webmail. You probably also want to scan storage repositories, and maybe endpoints, depending on your corporate culture and the kind of data you are concerned about. Email turns out to be a less common source of leaks than the other channels, so it’s lower on the list. If the data comes out of an application or database then we tend to worry more about network leaks (an insider or an attacker), webmail, and then storage (to figure out all the places it’s stored and at risk). We also toss in USB above email, because all sorts of big leaks have shown USB is a very easy way to move large amounts of data. Customer PII is frequently exposed by being stored where it shouldn’t be, so we start with discovery again. Then, from sources such as the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report and the Open Security Foundation DataLossDB we know to look at webmail, endpoints and portable storage, and lastly email. You will need to mix and match these based on your own circumstances – and we highly recommend using data-derived reports like the ones listed above to help align your priorities with evidence, rather than operating solely on gut feel. Then adapt based on what you know about your own organization – which may include things like “the CIO said we have to watch email”. If you followed our guidance in Understanding and Selecting a DLP Solution you can feed the information from that worksheet into these priorities. Now you should have a sense of what data to focus on and where to start. The next step is to pick a deployment process. Here are some suggestions for deciding which to start with. The easy answer is to almost always start with the Quick Wins process… Only start with the full deployment process if you have already prioritized what to protect, have a good sense of where you need to protect it, and believe you understand the scope you are dealing with. This is usually when you have a specific compliance or IP protection initiative, where the scope includes well-defined data and a well-defined scope (e.g., where to look for the data or monitor and/or block it). For everyone else we suggest starting with the Quick Wins process. It will highlight your hot spots and help you figure out where to focus your full deployment. We’ll discuss each of those processes in more depth later. Share: