Speaking as a “master of the obvious,” it’s worth mentioning the importance of having a correct mindset heading into the new year. Odds are you’ve just gotten back from the holiday and that sinking “beaten down” feeling is setting in. Wow, that didn’t take long.

So I figured I’d do a quick reminder of the universal truisms that we know and love, but which still make us crazy. Let’s just cover a few:

There is no 100% security

I know, I know – you already know that. But the point here is that your management forgets. So it’s always a good thing to remind them as early and often as you can. Even worse, there are folks (we’ll get to them later) who tell your senior people (usually over a round of golf or a bourbon in some mahogany-laden club) that it is possible to secure your stuff.

You must fight propaganda with fact. You must point out data breaches, not to be Chicken Little, but to manage expectations. It can (and does) happen to everyone. Make sure the senior folks know that.

Compliance is a means to an end

There is a lot of angst right now (especially from one of my favorite people, Josh Corman) about the reality that compliance drives most of what we do. Deal with it, Josh. Deal with it, everyone. It is what it is. You aren’t going to change it, so you’d better figure out how to prosper in this kind of reality.

What to do? Use compliance to your advantage. Any new (or updated) regulation comes with some level of budget flexibility. Use that money to buy stuff you really need. So what if you need to spend some time writing reports with your new widget to keep the auditor happy. Without compliance, you wouldn’t have your new toy.

Don’t forget the fundamentals

Listen, most of us have serious security kung fu. They probably task folks like you to fix hard problems and deflect attackers from a lot of soft tissue. And they leave the perimeter and endpoints to the snot-nosed kid with his shiny new Norwich paper. That’s OK, but only if you periodically make sure things function correctly.

Maybe that means running Core against your stuff every month. Maybe it means revisiting that change control process to make sure that open port (which that developer just had to have) doesn’t allow the masses into your shorts.

If you are nailed by an innovative attack, shame on them. Hopefully your incident response plan holds up. If you are nailed by some stupid configuration or fundamental mistake, shame on you.

Widgets will not make you secure

Keep in mind the driving force for any vendor is to sell you something. The best security practitioners I know drive their projects – they don’t let vendors drive them. They have a plan and they get products and/or services to execute on that plan.

That doesn’t mean reps won’t try to convince you their widget needs to be part of your plan. Believe me, I’ve spent many a day in sales training helping reps to learn how to drive the sales process. I’ve developed hundreds of presentations designed to create a catalyst for a buyer to write a check. The best reps try to help you, as long as that involves making the payment on their 735i.

And even worse, as a reformed marketing guy, I’m here to say a lot of vendors will resort to bravado in order to convince you of something you know not to be true. Like that a product will make you secure. Sometimes you see something so objectionable to the security person in you, it makes you sick.

Let’s take the end of this post from LogLogic as an example. For some context, their post mostly evaluates the recent Verizon DBIR supplement.

What does LogLogic predict for 2010? Regardless of whether, all, some, or none, of Verizon’s predictions come true, networks will still be left vulnerable, applications will be un-patched, user error will causes breaches in protocol, and criminals will successfully knock down walls.

But not on a LogLogic protected infrastructure.

We can prevent, capture and prove compliance for whatever 2010 throws at your systems. LogLogic customers are predicting a stress free, safe 2010.

Wow. Best case, this is irresponsible marketing. Worst case, this is clearly someone who doesn’t understand how this business works. I won’t judge (too much) because I don’t know the author, but still. This is the kind of stuff that makes me question who is running the store over there.

Repeat after me: A widget will not make me secure. Neither will two widgets or a partridge in a pear tree.

So welcome to 2010. Seems a lot like 2009 and pretty much every other year of the last decade. Get your head screwed on correctly. The bad guys attack. The auditors audit. And your management squeezes your budget.

Rock on!

Share: