Getting back to our Infrastructure Security Research Agenda for 2011 (Part 1: Positivity, Part 2: Posturing and RFAB), let’s now turn our attention to two more areas of focus. The first is ‘vaulting’, a fancy way of talking about network segmentation with additional security controls based on what you are protecting. Then we’ll touch on assurance, another fancy term for testing your stuff.

Vaulting

As I described in my initial post on the topic, this is about network segmentation and designing specific control sets based on the sensitivity of the data. Many folks have plenty of bones to pick with the PCI Data Security Standard (DSS), but it has brought some pretty good security practices into common vernacular. Network segmentation is one; another is identifying critical data and then segregating it from general purpose (less sensitive) data.

Of course, PCI begins and ends with cardholder data, and odds are there’s more to your business. But the general concepts of figuring out what is important (‘in-scope’, in PCI parlance), making sure only folks who need access to that data have it, and then using all sorts of controls to make sure it’s protected, are goodness. These concepts can and should be applied across all your data, and that’s what vaulting is about.

In 2011, we’ll be documenting a lot of what this means in practical terms, given that we already have lots of gear that needs to evolve (like IDS/IPS), as well as additional device types (mobile) that fundamentally change who has access to our stuff and from where. We can’t boil the ocean, so our research will happen in stages. Here are some ideas for breaking down the concepts:

  1. Implementing a Trusted Zones Program: This project focuses on how to implement the vaulting (trusted zones) concept, starting with defining and then classifying the data. Next design the control sets for each level of sensitivity. And finally implement network segmentation with the network ops team. It also includes a discussion of keeping data definitions up to date and control sets current.
  2. IDS/IPS Evolution: Given the evolution towards application aware firewalls (see Understanding and Selecting an Enterprise Firewall), the role of the traditional network-based IDS/IPS must and will clearly evolve. But the reality is there are millions of customers using these capabilities, so they are not going away overnight. This research will help customers understand how their existing IDS/IPS infrastructure will play in this new world order, and how end users need to think about intrusion prevention moving forward.
  3. Protecting Wireless: Keep in mind that we are still dealing with the ingress aspects, but pretty much all organizations have some kind of wireless networks in their environments, so we need to document ways to handle them securely and how the wireless infrastructure needs to play with other network security controls. There are many compliance issues to deal with as well, such as avoiding WEP.

Yes, combining the Positivity and Vaulting concepts does involve a significant re-architecture/re-deployment of network security over the next few years. You didn’t really think you were done, did you?

Security Assurance

One of the areas I’ve been all over for the past 5 years is the need to constantly be testing our defenses. The bad guys are doing this every day, so we need to also. If only to know what they are going to find. So I’m a big fan of penetration testing (using both humans and tools) and think we collectively need to do a better job of understanding what works and what doesn’t.

There are many areas to focus on for assurance. Here are a few ideas for interesting research that we think could even be useful:

  1. Scoping the Pen Test: Many penetration tests fail because they aren’t scoped to be successful. This research project will focus on defining success and setting the ground rules to get maximum impact from a pen test and if/when to pull the plug if internal buy-in can’t be gained.
  2. Automating Pen Testing: We all seem to be fans of tools that automate pen tests, but why? We’ll dig deeply into what these tools do, how to use them safely, what differentiates the offerings, and how to use them systematically to figure out what can really be exploited, as opposed to just vulnerable.

As you can see, there is no lack of stuff to write about. Next we’ll turn the tables a little and deal with the egress research ideas we are percolating.

Share: