I was reading the RSA report on the Torpig/Sinowal trojan while stuck at the airport for several hours last Thursday. During my many hours of free time I overheard some IT executive discussing the difficulties of implementing data discovery and classification with his peers. I did not catch the name of the company, and probably would not pass it along even if I had, but the tired and whiny rant about their associated failures was not unique. Perhaps I was a bit testy about having to sit in an airport lobby for eight hours, but all I could think was “What is wrong with you? If hackers can navigate your data center, why can’t you?”

That’s where the RSA report just gelled my thoughts on the subject. If a small group, quite literally a handful of hackers, can use Torpig & BlaBla to steal hundreds of thousands of credit card numbers, steal accounts and passwords, install malicious software at multiple company sites … all without being provided credentials, access rights or a specific map of your IT infrastructure … why can’t your company classify its own data and intellectual property assets? You would think that a company, given a modest amount of resources, could discover, classify and categorize its own data. I mean, if you paid someone full time to do it, don’t you think you could get the job done?

Some of the irritating points that they raised …

“Data in motion made it difficult to track”: So what- the hacker tools are kept running and they never stopped scanning. Nor did they give up on the first try; rather they periodically modified their code to adapt for location and type of data, and they were persistent. You should be too.

“Difficulty to classify the data” and “Can’t find stuff you know is there”: So what- hire better programmers. Pressure vendors for better tools. Can’t afford expensive software? There is open source code out there to start with; hackers can do it, so can you. There is at least a dozen programatic ways to analyze data, through content or even context, and probably even more ways to traverse/crawl/inspect systems. If the application your company uses it can find it, so can you.

“Size of the project is difficult to manage”: So what- divide and conquer. Take a specific set of data you are worried about and start there. Compliance group breathing down your neck to meet XYZ regulation? Pick one category (customer accounts, credit card data, source code, whatever. Tune your tools and policies (you did not really think you were going to get perfection out of the box did you?), address the problem and move on. If you are starting with an ISACA or Cobit framework and trying to map a comprehensive strategy, stop making the problem more complex than it is. Hackers went for low hanging fruit; you should too.

“The results are not accurate”: So what- your not going to be 100% right all the time. The hackers aren’t either. Either accept 95-99% accuracy, or try something different. Or maybe your policy is out of line with reality and needs to be reconsidered.

“Expensive” and “Takes too much in the way of resources”: No chance! If hackers can run malware for 18 months at TJX and related stores UNDETECTED, then the methods used are not resource hogs, nor did they invest that much money in the tools.

Some times, you just got to stop whinin’ and git ‘er done!

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