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RSAC Guide 2015: DevOpsX Games

Rich April 8, 2015 2 Comments

DevOps is one of the hottest trends in all of IT – sailing over every barrier in front of it like a boardercross racer catching big air on the last roller before the drop to the finish. (We’d translate that, but don’t want to make you feel too old and out of touch). We here at Securosis are major fans of DevOps. We think it provides opportunities for security and resiliency our profession has long dreamed of. DevOps has been a major focus of our research, and even driven some of us back to writing code, because that’s really the only way to fully understand the implications. But just because we like something doesn’t mean it won’t get distorted. Part of the problem comes from DevOps itself: there is no single definition (as with the closely related Agile development methodology), and it is as much as a cultural approach as a collection of technical tools and techniques. The name alone conveys a sense of de-segregation of duties – the sort of thing that rings security alarm bells. We now see DevOps discussed and used in nearly every major enterprise and startup we talk with, to varying degrees. DevOps is a bit like extreme sports. It pushes the envelope, creating incredible outcomes that seem nearly magical from the outside. But when it crashes and burns it happens faster than that ski jumper suffering the agony of defeat (for those who remember NBC’s Wide World of Sports… it’s on YouTube now – look it up, young’ns). Extreme sports (if that term even applies anymore) is all about your ability to execute, just like DevOps. It’s about getting the job done better and faster to improve agility, resiliency, and economics. You can’t really fake your way through building a continuous deployment pipeline, any more than you can to backflip a snowmobile (really, we can’t make this stuff up – YouTube, people). We believe DevOps isn’t merely trendy, it’s our future – but that doesn’t mean people who don’t fully understand it won’t try to ride the wave. This year expect to see a lot more DevOps. Some will be good, like the DevOps.com pre-RSA day the Monday before the conference starts. And vendors updating products to integrate security assessment into that continuous deployment pipeline. But expect plenty bad too, especially presentations on the ‘risks’ of DevOps that show someone doesn’t understand it doesn’t actually allow developers to modify production environments despite policy. As for the expo floor? We look forward to seeing that ourselves… and as with anything new, we expect to see plenty of banners proclaiming their antivirus is “DevOps ready”. Posers. Share:

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RSA Guide 2015: Get Bigger (Data) Now!!!

Dave Lewis April 8, 2015 No Comments

This year at RSA we will no doubt see the return of Big Data to the show floor. This comes along with all the muscle confusion that it generates – not unlike Crossfit. Before you hoist me to the scaffolding or pummel me with your running shoes, let’s think about this. Other than the acolytes of this exercise regimen, who truly understands it? Say “Big Data” out loud. Does that hold any meaning for you, other than a shiny marketing buzzword and marketing imagery? It does? Excellent. If you say it three times out loud a project manager will appear, but sadly you will still need to fight for your budget. Last year we leveraged the tired (nay, exhausted) analogy of sex in high school. Everyone talks about it but… yeah. You get the idea. Every large company out there today has a treasure trove of data available, but they have yet to truly gain any aerobic benefit from it. Certainly they are leveraging this information but who is approaching it in a coherent fashion? Surprisingly, quite a few folks. Projects such as the Centers for Disease Control’s data visualizations, Twitter’s “Topography of Tweets”, SETI’s search for aliens, and even Yelp’s hipster tracking map. They all leverage Big Data in new and interesting ways. Hmm, SETI and Yelp should probably compare notes on their data sets. These are projects happening, often despite the best intentions of organizational IT security departments. Big Data is here, and security teams need to get their collective heads around the situation rather than hanging about doing kipping pull-ups. As security practitioners we need to find sane ways to tackle the security aspects of these projects, to help guard against inadvertent data leakage as they thrust forward with their walking lunges. One thing we recommend is ahike out on the show floor to visit some vendors you’ve never heard of. There will be a handful of vendors developing tools specifically to protect Big Data clusters, and some delivering tools to keep sensitive data out of Big Data pools. And your Garmin will record a couple thousand more steps in the process. Second, just as many Big Data platforms and features are built by the open source community, so are security tools. These will be under-represented at the show, but a quick Google search for Apache security tools will find more options. Your internal security teams need to be aware of the issues with big data projects while striking a balance supporting business units. That will truly lead to muscle confusion for some. If you’re looking for the Big Data security purveyors, they will most likely be the ones on the show floor quietly licking wounds from their workout while pounding back energy drinks. Share:

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