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Use Case #2: Improve Efficiency Turn back the clock about 5 months – you were finalizing your 2010 security spending, and then you got the news: budgets are going down again. At least they didn’t make you cut staff during the “right-sizing” at the end of 2008, eh? Of course, budget and resources be damned, you are still on the hook to secure the new applications, which will require some new security gadgets and generate more data. And we cannot afford to forget the audit deficiencies detailed in your friendly neighborhood assessor’s last findings. Yes, those have to be dealt with too, and sometime in the first quarter, because the audit is scheduled for early May. This may seem like an untenable situation, but it’s all too real. Security professionals now must continue looking for opportunities to improve efficiency and do more with less. As we look deeper into this scenario, there are a couple of inevitable situations we have got to deal with: Compliance requirements: Government and industry regulations force us to demonstrate compliance – requiring gathering log files, parsing unneeded events, and analyzing transactions into human-readable reports to prove you’re doing things right. IT and Security must help Audit determine which events are meaningful, so regulatory controls are based upon complete and accurate information, and internal and external audit teams define how this data is presented. Nothing gets shut down: No matter how hard we try, we cannot shut down old security devices that protect a small portion of the environment. Thus every new device and widget increases the total amount of resources required to keep the environment operational. Given the number of new attack vectors clamoring for new protection mechanisms, this problem is going to get worse, and may never get better. Cost center reality: Security is still an overhead function and as such, it’s expected to work as efficiently as possible. That means no matter what the demands, there will always be pressure to cut costs. So this use case is all about how SIEM/LM can improve efficiency of existing staff, allowing them to manage more devices which are detecting more attacks, all while reducing the time from detection to remediation. A tall order, sure, but let’s look at the capabilities we have to accomplish this: Data aggregation: Similar to our react faster use case, having access to more data means less time is wasted moving between systems (swivel chair management). This increases efficiency and should allow security analysts to support more devices. Dashboards: Since a picture is worth a thousand words, a well architected security dashboard has to be worth more than that. When trying to support an increasing number of systems, the ability to see what’s happening and gain context with an overview of the big picture is critical. Alerts: When your folks need to increase their efficiency, they don’t have a lot of time to waste chasing down false positives and investigating dead ends. So having the ability to fire alerts based on real events rather than gut feel will save everyone a lot of time. Forensic investigations: Once the problem is verified, it becomes about finding root cause as quickly as possible. The SIEM/LM solution can provide the context and information needed to dig into the attack and figure out the extent of the damage – it’s about working smarter, not harder. Automated policy implementation: Some SIEM/LM tools can build automated policies based on observed traffic. This baseline (assuming it represents normal and healthy traffic) enables the system to start looking for _not normal activity, which then may require investigation. This use case is really about doing more with what you already have, which has been demanded of security professionals for years. There have been no lack of tools and products to solve problems, but the resources and expertise to take best advantage of those capabilities can be elusive. Without a heavy dose of automation, and most importantly a significant investment to get the SIEM/LM system configured appropriately, there is no way we can keep up with the bad folks. Use Case #3: Compliance Automation You know the feeling you get when you look at your monthly calendar, and it shows an upcoming audit? Whatever you were planning to do goes out the window, as you spend countless hours assembling data, massaging it, putting it into fancy checklists and pie charts, and getting ready for the visit from the auditor. Some organizations have folks who just focus on documenting security controls, but that probably isn’t you. So you’ve got to take time from the more strategic or even generally operational tasks you’ve been working on to prepare for the audit. And it gets worse, since every regulation has its own vernacular and rule set – even though they are talking about the same sets of security controls. So there is little you can leverage from last month’s PCI audit to help prepare for next month’s HIPAA assessment. And don’t forget that compliance is not just about technology. There are underlying business processes in play that can put private data at risk, which have to be documented and substantiated as well. This requires more domain expertise than any one person or team possesses. The need to collaborate on a mixture of technical and non-technical tasks makes preparing for an audit that much harder and resource intensive. Also keep in mind the opportunity cost of getting ready for audits. For one, time spent in Excel and PowerPoint massaging data is time you aren’t working on protecting information or singing the praises of your security program. And managing huge data sets for multi-national organizations across potentially hundreds of sites requires ninja-level Microsoft Office skills. Drat, don’t have that. As if things weren’t hard enough, regulatory audits tend to be more subjective than objective, which means your auditor’s opinion will make the difference between the rubber stamp and a book of audit deficiencies that will keep your team busy for two years. So getting as detailed

Project Management Judo In It’s not about risk, Shrdlu got me thinking about the problem of perception. A few years back, I noticed one of my IT staff doing something odd. Every couple weeks, over a period of many months, I would see this person walk into a room with marketing and sales people to attend a half-hour meeting. I was pretty sure the IT staffer did not know these people and had nothing to do with marketing or sales efforts. We were not running any joint projects at the time, so I could not figure out why he was meeting with these other teams. At some point curiosity overcame me and I asked what was going on and the IT guy told me they were figuring out how to set up credit card purchases for online software sales. Uh, what? It had started innocently enough. Someone in sales asked the IT guy if they could have some space on a public FTP server, outside the firewall, to host customer reference documents and user guides. Just benign PDF files. Eager to help, IT made it happen. And it was a success. Soon a sales manager asked for a ‘help’ email account, so an email server was set up on the same box. Marketing got wind of this, and placed their own sales support docs on the server, but asked for a web interface to the documents. Done. A few months later the VP of sales thought there was a lead generation opportunity, so he asked for a sign-in page with logins forwarded to the sales team. Marketing asked if it was possible to simply share the marketing folder to the collateral server to make it easier to push content, and it was finished by day’s end. Each new request was completed as asked. Customers said it would be great if they could pay for some of our upgrades online, so someone in sales said “Absolutely!” and asked the IT guy how quickly taking credit cards could be set up. This is the point I enter the story. I call this a “lose-lose, with a side of bad news” situation. I found that I had an unsecured server outside the firewall, with FTP, email, file sharing, and a web server, opening a gaping hole into the network. Worse, the service was already a success, with several groups dependent upon it. I was about to shut down this entire unsanctioned and insecure operation and piss off sales and marketing, and gently admonish an employee who really did nothing but try to be helpful. To further tweak everyone involved, I am playing scrooge, and killing off their Christmas dreams of generating Internet sales before the end of Q4. What started as a simple repository rapidly evolved into a full-service portal, with each step introducing visible benefits, but security threats not entirely obvious to those requesting the services. And honestly, they did not care, as the customers were happy. Marketing was happy. Sales was happy. IT Guy was happy. Me? Not so much. Shrdlu points out that “The onus to demonstrate benefit is on those who propose the action be taken.” I get this. In spades. The side of the coin opposite “Mr. Happy Go-getter” is “Mr. Negative Boat-anchor”. It sucks to be the boat anchor. But someone has to be the adult and say ‘No’. Or maybe not say ‘No’ out loud, but make someone else say it for you. There are ways to do this without being labelled “not a team player”. It’s really quite easy to dream up new ways to generate revenue, and everyone wants to make more money. You want to make more money for the company, don’t you? (Try answering that Porcupine Question , in front of your CEO, when a sales guy drops it into your lap). Pointing out the flaws and telling people this is a bad idea makes you the bad guy who keeps the company from being successful. Or you are positioned as the impediment to success. But asking the right questions or providing alternative perspectives – in a positive way – can make you seem like the smart, cautious person who saved the company from serious problems. It’s tough to sit through project scoping meetings and think about what could go wrong when your peers are all wide-eyed and dreamy about some cool new web service. Based on some hard-learned lesions, I would modify Shrdlu’s point to say you need to find clever ways to make the presenter of the action address the risks. You need to develop some IT Project Judo moves to place both the good and the bad at the feet of those who propose the actions. It’s all in how you go about it. On to the Summary: Webcasts, Podcasts, Outside Writing, and Conferences Adrian at Dark Reading on PCI Token Alternatives. Favorite Securosis Posts Mike Rothman: Symantec Bets on Data Protection with PGP and GuardianEdge. Rich: FireStarter: Centralize or Decentralize the Security Organization? Adrian Lane: Incite 4/27/2010: Dishwasher Tales. I was re-arranging just before I read this post. David Mortman: Understanding and Selecting SIEM/Log Management: Introduction. Other Securosis Posts Friday Summary: April 23, 2010. Favorite Outside Posts Mike Rothman: 10 Quick, Dirty and Cheap Things to Improve Enterprise Security. Rich Mogull: Wozniak, Apple Security, Employee Termination and Gray Powell. Adrian Lane: The Narcissistic Vulnerability Pimp post, along with responses from Robert Graham and David “Did someone say Pimp?” Maynor and Russ McRee, purely for their imagery and subtexts. Project Quant Posts Project Quant: Database Security – Change Management. Project Quant: Database Security – Patch. Research Reports and Presentations Low Hanging Fruit: Quick Wins with Data Loss Prevention. Report: Database Assessment. Top News and Posts Texas Botnet Herder caught. Metasploit Express. Ponemon Study on Web App Security (registration required). Personally, I need a survey on Ponemon surveys just to keep track. Seems like every time I turn around there is a new one. Brokerage firm fined for data breach.

When you think about it, security success in today’s environment comes down to a handful of key imperatives. First we need to improve the security of our environment. We are losing ground to the bad guys, and we’ve got to make some inroads on more quickly figuring out what’s being attacked and stopping it. Next we’ve got to do more with less. Yes, it seems the global economy is improving, but we can’t expect to get back to the halcyon days of spend first, ask questions later – ever. With more systems under management we have more to worry about and less time to spend poring over reports, looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. Given the number of new attacks – counted by any measure you like – we’ve got to increase the efficiency of our resource utilization. Finally, auditors show up a few times a year, and they want their reports. Summary reports, detail reports, and reports that validate other reports. The entire auditor dance focuses on convincing the audit team that you have the proper security controls implemented and effective. That involves a tremendous amount of data gathering, analysis, and reporting just to set up; with continued tweaking over time. It’s basically a full time job to get ready for the audit, dropped on folks who already have full time jobs. So we’ve got to automate those functions to the greatest degree possible. Yes, there are lots of other reasons organizations embrace SIEM and Log Management technology, but these three make up the vast majority of the projects we see funded. So let’s dig into each use case and understand exactly what problem we are trying to solve. Use Case #1: React Faster Imagine the typical day of a security analyst. They sit down at their desk, check out their monitors, and start seeing events scroll past. A lot of events, probably millions. Their job is to look at that information and figure out what’s wrong and identify the root cause of each problem. They probably have alerts set up to report critical issues within their individual system consoles, in an effort to cull down the millions of events into some finite set of things to investigate – per system. So the analyst goes back and forth between the firewall, IPS, and network traffic analysis consoles. If a WAF is deployed, or a database activity monitoring product, they have to deal with that as well. An office chair that swivels easily is a good investment to keep your neck from wearing out. Security analysts tend to be pretty talented folks, so they do find stuff based on their understanding of the networks and devices and their own familiarity with normal, which allows them to recognize not normal. There are some events that just look weird but cannot be captured in a policy or rule. Successful reviews rise from the ability of the human analyst to interpret the alerts between the various systems and identify attacks. The issues with this scenario are numerous: Too much data, not enough information: With anywhere from 10-2000 devices to monitor, each generating a couple thousand logs and/or alerts a day, there is plenty of data. The analyst has to turn that data into information, which is a tall order for anyone. High signal to noise ratio: With that much data, the analyst is likely only going to investigate the most obvious attacks. And without some way to reduce the number of alerts to deal with, there will be lots of false positives to wade through, impacting productivity. No “situational awareness”: The new new term in security circles is situational awareness; the concept that anomalous situations are lost in a sea of detail unless the bigger business context in considered. With only events to wade through, a human analyst will lose context and not be able to keep track of the big picture. Too many tools to isolate root cause: Without centralizing data from multiple systems, there is no way to know if an IPS alert was related to a web attack or some other issue. So the analyst needs to quickly move from system to system to validate and confirm the attack, and to understand the depth of the issue. That approach isn’t particularly efficient and in an incident situation, time is the enemy. We’ve written on numerous occasions about the need to react faster, since we can’t predict where the next attack is coming from. The promise of SIEM and Log Management solutions is to help us react faster – and better – and make the world a better place, right? The features and functions a security analyst will employ are: Data aggregation: SIEM/LM solutions aggregate data from many sources, including network, security, servers, databases, applications, etc. – providing the ability to monitor everything. Having all of the events in one place helps avoid missing subtle but important ones. Correlation: Correlation looks for common attributes, and links events together into meaningful bundles. Being able to look at all events in a particular window of time, or everything a specific user did, gives us a meaningful way to investigate security events. This technology provides the ability to perform a variety of correlation techniques to integrate different sources, in order to turn data into useful information. Check out our more detailed view of correlation. Alerting: Automated analysis of correlated events can produce more substantial and detailed alerts, and help identify what needs to be investigated right now. Dashboards: With liberal use of eye candy, SIEM/LM tools take event data and turn it into fancy charts. These charts can assist the analyst in seeing patterns, and more importantly in seeing activity that is not a standard pattern, or not visible when looking at individual log entries. So ultimately this use case provides the security analyst with a set of automatic eyes and ears to wade through all the data and help identify what’s most important and requires attention now. This is the first

Symantec has once again flexed its wallet, and bought a spot in the data protection market. By acquiring PGP Corporation for $300MM and GuardianEdge for $70MM in cash, Symantec basically bought the marketshare lead in endpoint encryption. Whatever that means, since encryption is a number of different markets with distinct buying constituencies and market leaders. We estimate PGP got a multiple of around 4x bookings, and GuardianEdge got between 3-4x as well, which is pretty generous but not crazy like some of Symantec’s past deals (Vontu, MessageLabs). So what is Symantec getting in the PGP acquisition? Good FDE. They are getting a well-designed key management product, as well as encryption tools that can be leveraged into the MessageLabs suite of email security tools. PGP also has a lot of desktop encryption customers, which will be a nice bundling option for the endpoint protection suites. While the core encryption technology and key management pieces are very good products, PGP has struggled on the management side. They have not done a very good job of listening to the market, or addressing ease of use and deployment concerns around Universal Server, especially at the enterprise level. The only thing universal about Universal is how much people hate it. They have been slow to develop mobile and cloud-based services, and their provisioning approach looks like a poor man’s DRM. Good parts, but poorly orchestrated. Looks like they’ll fit right in at Symantec. GuardianEdge also has a good Full Disk Encryption (FDE) product, which Symantec has been providing via an OEM agreement. Clearly not having a FDE option was a big issue for Symantec, given their biggest competitors (McAfee, Sophos, & Check Point) have acquired market leading products and are increasingly bundling with the endpoint suite. It does beg the question: why acquire GuardianEdge as well? We surmise their decision was based on momentum and product strength. Symantec has been selling GuardianEdge for a while, and to have to migrate customers to PGP would be unpleasant. Additionally, GuardianEdge’s product is strong in the critical places where PGP is weak. They have a much better rights management console, and their endpoint management and smart phone infrastructure are each clearly a step ahead of PGP. On paper, the products from PGP and GuardianEdge are more synergistic than competitive. Which brings us to the blind spot in these deals: strategy and integration. Symantec must now stitch pieces of technology from these two companies together, which will not be easy. It’s never simple, just from a technology perspective, but now Symantec has to reconcile three separate cultures. They will also also need to create an over-arching data protection strategy, including how DLP plays into the architecture. Strategy is not Symantec’s strong suit, but in order to really achieve leverage and earn back their investment, they must communicate a strong data protection strategy and then integrate the products to make it a reality. And there are mixed messages with the target audience: with mobile device support and policy management more tuned for corporate environments, how will these products work for Symantec’s government clients? I think PGP was one of the first security tools I ever purchased. I have been using their email encryption product for over a dozen years, starting with version 5 way back in the mid-90s. PGP is as close to a household name as you get for encryption. It was always reliable, easy to use and secure. Their full disk encryption product – as a single-user product – was the best I have used. They have all the pieces you need for mobile device and data encryption, but have not executed as well as they should have. And as a Mac user, their crappy iPhone support and warning users OS X updates would destroy data – several days after the update was announced – were not at all cool. But those are all personal observations. As far as the market is concerned, encryption is just a tool for security. There are hundreds, of uses cases for encryption, but ultimately encryption needs to be embedded within applications, email clients, and the OS to have its full impact. Encryption as a standalone market opportunity? Not so much. Which is why the deal makes sense on a number of levels. But as Symantec has proven over the past 5 years, having all the pieces doesn’t make it successful. Just having a giant freakin’ sales force is not enough. The onus is on them to actually execute on these deals. We’ll see if the new Enrique Salem regime will have better luck with making big deals work. Share:

After being married for coming up on 14 years, some things about your beloved you just need to accept. They aren’t changing. The Boss would like me to be more affectionate. As much as I’d like to, it just doesn’t occur to me. It’s not an intentional slight – the thought of giving an unprompted hug, etc., just never enters my mind. It causes her some angst, but she knows I love her and that I’m not likely to change. My issue is the dishwasher. You see I’m a systems guy. I like to come up with better and more efficient ways to do something. Like load the dishwasher. There is a right way and a wrong way to load the thing. Even if you think your way is fine, it’s not. My way is the way. Believe me, I’ve thought long and hard about how to fit the most crap into the machine and not impact cleaning function. The Boss has not, I assure you. You know those wider spaces on the bottom shelf? Yeah, those are for bowls, which slide in perfectly and get clean. The more narrow spaces are for the plastic plates without edges. The slightly larger spaces are for our fancy plates with edges. Everything just fits. That’s not the way she looks at the problem. If there is a space, she’ll just ram the dirty dish in question into the space. Structure be damned. I can hear the bending metal tines of the shelf crying in agony. And don’t be me started about the upper shelf or whether you should actually rinse the caked on food from the dish before putting it in the dishwasher. Let’s not go there. Her way is just not efficient and that irks me. Of course, I have to fix it. That’s right, regardless of what time it is I’ll likely take everything out and repack it. I just can’t help it. Even when I’m dog tired and can think of nothing more than getting in my bed, I have to repack it. I know, it’s silly. But I do it anyway. For a while my repacking activities annoyed her. Now she just laughs. Because just as she’s not going to pack the dishwasher more efficiently, I’m not going to stop repacking it until it’s right. And that’s the way it is. – Mike. Photo credits: “In ur dishwashr” originally uploaded by mollyali Incite 4 U LHF from Gunnar and James McGovern – I’m a big fan of low hanging fruit. The reality is most folks don’t have the stomach for systemic change or the brutally hard work of implementing a real security program. Not that we shouldn’t, but most don’t. So Gunnar and James’ 10 Quick, Dirty and Cheap Things to Improve Enterprise Security (PDF) was music to my ears. There is, well, quick and dirty stuff in here. Like actually marketing to developers, prioritizing security needs, and getting involved in application security organizations to learn and share best practices. And RTFM – yeah! Of course, in reality some of these things aren’t necessarily easy or quick, but they are important. So read it and do it. Or pat yourself on the back if you are already there. – MR Diversion, McAfee-style – Before I take my meds, let’s put on the tinfoil hats and speculate on some conspiracy theories. Our friends at McAfee are still spinning hard about their DAT FAIL, talking about funding the channel to finish cleaning up the mess and to restore customer faith as the other AV vultures circle. What better way to divert attention from the screw-up than to leak a rumor about HP fishing around to acquire Little Red, yet again. That’s the oldest trick in the book. The issue isn’t that we screwed the pooch on a DAT update, but wouldn’t it be cool to be part of HP and put a hurt on Cisco? When you don’t want to talk about something anymore, just change the subject. Too bad that doesn’t work in the real world. Not with the Boss anyway. Do I think MFE really leaked something? Nah. Could the rumblings be true? Maybe. But given the ink is hardly dry on the HP/3Com deal, it would seem a bit much to swallow McAfee right now. Especially since McAfee is a little busy at the moment. – MR Metrics. Kinda, Sorta. – Managers love metrics. In fact they need them. How else do you judge when a software release is ready to go live? We only have a handful of metrics in software development, and they only loosely equate to abstract concepts like ‘security’ and ‘quality’. We use yardsticks like bug counts, lines of new code, number of QA tests performed, percentage of code modules tested, and a whole bunch of other arbitrary data points to gauge progress toward our end goal. And then derive some value from that data. None of the metrics are accurate indications of quality or security, but they trend close enough that we get a relative indicator. That is relative to where you were a week ago, or a month ago, or perhaps in relation to your last release cycle. You can get a pretty good idea of how well the code has been covered and whether you have shaken the tree hard enough for the serious bugs to fall out. Rafal Los, in his post on The Validation Fallacy, makes the good point that the discovery of vulnerabilities itself is not a very good metric. This is really no different than general software testing, with the total number of bugs telling you very little. You may have twice as many bugs this release as last, but if you have four times the amount of new code, you’re probably doing pretty well. In the greater scheme of things you don’t really care about the individual bugs, but the trends. When you are monitoring the output of pen testing or code review prior to

Over the past decade business processes have been changing rapidly. We focus on collaboration, both inside and outside our own organizations. We have to support more devices in different form factors, many of which IT doesn’t directly control. We add new applications on a monthly basis, and are currently witnessing the decomposition of monolithic applications into dozens of smaller loosely connected application stacks. We add virtualization technologies and SaaS for increased efficiency. Now we are expected to provide anywhere access while maintaining accountability, but we have less control. A lot less control. If that wasn’t enough, bad things are happening much faster. Not only are our businesses always on, the attackers don’t take breaks either. New exploits are discovered, ‘weaponized’, and distributed to the world within hours. So we have to be constantly vigilant and we don’t have a lot of time to figure out what’s under attack and how to protect ourselves before the damage is done. Compound the 24/7 mindset with the addition of new devices implemented to deal with new threats. Every device, service, and application streams zillions of log files, events, and alerts. Our regulators now mandate we analyze this data every day. But that’s not the issue. The real issue is pretty straightforward: of all the things flashing at us every minute, we don’t know what is really important. We have too much data, but not enough information. This lack of information compounds the process of preparing for the inevitable audit(s), which takes way too long for folks who would rather be dealing with security issues. Sure, most folks just bludgeon their auditors with reams of data, none of which provides context or substantiation for the control sets in place relative to the regulations in play. But that’s a bad answer for both sides. Audits take too long and security teams never look as good as they should, given they can’t prove what they are doing. Ask any security practitioner about their holy grail and the answer is twofold: They want one alert telling exactly what is broken, on just the relevant events, with the ability to learn the extent of the damage. They need to pare down the billions of events into actionable information. And they want to make the auditor go away as quickly and painlessly as possible, which requires them to streamline both the preparation and presentation aspects of the audit process. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Log Management tools have emerged to address those needs and continue to generate a tremendous amount of interest in the market, given the compelling use cases for the technology. Defining SIEM and Log Management Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools emerged about 10 years ago as the great hope of security folks constantly trying to reduce the chatter from their firewalls and IPS devices. Historically, SIEM consisted of two distinct offerings: SEM (security event management), which collected and aggregated for security events; and SIM (security information management), which correlated and normalized the collected security event data. These days, integrated SIEM platforms provide pseudo-real-time monitoring of network and security devices, with the idea of identifying the root causes of security incidents and collecting useful data for compliance reporting. The standard perception is that the technology is at best a hassle, and at worst an abject failure. SIEM is believed to be too complex, and too slow to implement, without providing enough customer value to justify the investment. While SIM & SEM products focused on aggregation and analysis of security information, Log Management platforms were designed within a broader context of the collection and management of any log files. Log Management solutions don’t have the negative perception of SIEM because they do what they say they do – basically aggregate, parse, and index logs. Log Management has helped get logs under control, but underdelivered on the opportunity to pluck value from the archives. Collection, aggregation, and reporting is enough to check the compliance box; but not enough to impact security operations – which is what organizations are really looking for. End users want simple solutions that improve security operations, while checking the compliance box. Given that backdrop, it’s clear the user requirements that were served by separate SIEM and Log Management solutions have fused. As such, these historically disparate product categories have fused as well. If not from an integrated architecture standpoint; certainly from the standpoint of user experience, management console, and value proposition. There really aren’t independent SIEM and Log Management markets any more. The key features we see in most SIEM/Log Management solutions include: Log Aggregation: Collection and aggregation of log records from the network, security, servers, databases, identity systems, and applications. Correlation: Attack identification by analyzing multiple data sets from multiple devices to identify patterns not obvious when looking at only one data source. Alerting: Defining rules and thresholds to display console alerts based on customer-defined prioritization of risk and/or asset value. Dashboards: Presentation of key security indicators within an interface to identify problem areas and facilitate investigation. Forensics: Providing the ability to investigate incidents by indexing and searching relevant events. Reporting: Documentation of control sets and other relevant security operations or compliance activities. Prior to this series we have written a lot about SIEM and Log Management, but mostly on current events and trends within this market. Given the rapid evolution of the SIEM and Log Management markets, and unprecedented interest from our readers, we are now embarking on a thorough analysis of the space, in order to help end user organizations select products more quickly and successfully, by becoming more educated buyers. It is time to spotlight both the grim realities and real benefits of SIEM. The vendors are certainly not going to tell you about the bad stuff in their products, but instead shout out the same fantastic advantages the last vendor did. Trust us when we say there are a lot of pissed-off SIEM users, but there are a lot of happy ones as well. We want

The pendulum swings back and forth. And back and forth. And back and forth again. In the early days of security, there was a network security team and they dealt with authentication tokens and the firewall. Then there was an endpoint security team, who dealt with AV. Then the messaging security team, who dealt with spam. The database security team, the application security team, and so on and so forth. At some point in the evolution of these disparate teams, someone internally made a power play to consolidate all the security functions into one group with a senior security person driving things. Maybe that person was the “security manager,” or perhaps the CISO. And maybe it wasn’t even a power play, but simply an acknowledgement that having security dispersed throughout the organization wasn’t efficient and was creating unnecessary exposures. But the pendulum inevitably swings back (regardless of where you are) and the central team was dispersed into operations teams. Or the security specialists were pulled back into a security group. Regardless, it seems that the org chart is always changing, regardless of the sense of doing such. Let’s take a step back and figure out whether it makes sense to have a central security team with operational resources or not. Philosophically, I believe there does need to be a central security function, but not necessarily a big team. This group needs to: Manage the program: Someone has to be responsible and accountable for the security program. So this is really about setting strategy and getting the wheels in motion to execute on the strategy. Persuade the troops: Security is not something folks do without a little push (or a big one). So the central function needs to persuade the other operating IT units and line of business groups that following security policies is a good thing. Report on progress: Ultimately someone has to generate reports for the auditors, and this group is usually it. They also tend to present to the board and other senior execs about the effectiveness and efficiency of the security program. So the real question is how many resources does this central security function need? Do they need to have firewall jockeys, IDS tuners, SOC console watchers, and database security folks? I can see both sides of the argument. The ops teams don’t care about security (for the most part), so if you put the security folks in the operational groups, ultimately they’ll be marginalized. Or so the argument goes for those favoring the central security function. You also lose a lot of integration and defense-in-depth coordination when you have ops folks scattered throughout the organization. In this model the central security function needs to coordinate all the activities in the ops groups to ensure (and enforce) policy compliance. On the other hand, we all want security just baked in, meaning security is just there – like a utility. Of course, we’re nowhere close to that, but how can we ever get there unless we have security folks living right next to their operational cohorts … and eventually the separate security folks just go away, as our core infrastructure takes on security characteristics, as opposed to having to bolt security on. So what are you folks seeing out there? I know there are folks strongly on both sides of the discussion, so let’s hash it out and figure out what is the latest, greatest, and best model for security organizations nowadays. Share:

“Don’t worry about that 5 and 1 Adjustable Rate Mortgage. 5 years from now your house will be worth twice what you paid, and you can re-finance.” It’s worth half, and you can’t get a new loan. “That’s a great interest rate!” It wasn’t, and points were padded on the back end. “Collateralzied debt obligations are a great investment – they are Triple A rated!” Terrible investment, closer to Triple B value, and a root cause of the financial collapse. “Rates have never been lower so you should refinance now!” The reappraisal that is a part of refinancing often resets the equity proportions and amortization percentage, so you can pay an extra $100k in interest, plus PMI to protect the bank. “This credit card gives you 1 air mile for every dollar you spend!” And a 31.5% interest rate, plus a fee for the privilege. Haven’t heard these? How about “Don’t use your PIN number with your Debit Card: it’s less secure”? Are you kidding me? Signatures are pretty easy to forge, but a stolen debit card is a lot more difficult to use if you don’t have the PIN number. But this is not a little misunderstanding, like “Diet soda doesn’t make you fat.” Despite the existence of illicit card readers and hidden cameras, PINs are effective at stopping most would-be criminals from draining your bank account. Chase is actually encouraging their customers to be less secure so they can weasel a few extra bucks from the merchants. Multiply this across a few million people and we are talking serious money. And when fraud does occur, the bank is exempt from liability. Amazing! I used to get mad when I visited foreclosed homes and saw “Lawn Service by …” signs – when there was no lawn, or new “Winterized by …” signs on home in Phoenix. In June. I thought the banks were getting ripped off. Then I learned that the banks owned a significant portion of the service companies performing these unneeded services. I guess I should not be surprised by banking shenanigans any more, but this is maddening. Take my advice … use a PIN with your debit card. Or if the banks frustrate you, just use cash. Webcasts, Podcasts, Outside Writing, and Conferences Adrian’s Dark Reading post on PCI Alternatives. Rich on Database Security for Security Professionals. Rich on Security and Pen Testing. Favorite Securosis Posts Mike: Whitepaper Released: Quick Wins with Data Loss Prevention. This is a great paper. Short, focused, and to the point. How can you get quick value from a DLP investment? The answer is here. Rich: ESF: Controls: Full Disk Encryption. It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law. Sort of. In some states. Depending on the data. Not so much the law as a safe harbor. Well, sometimes a safe harbor, depending on how the data is lost. And… forget it – just encrypt your damn hard drives. Adrian: Who DAT McAfee Fail? Other Securosis Posts Database Security Fundamentals: Auditing Events. Incite 4/21/2010: Picky Picky. Google: An Example of Why Single Sign On Sucks. Level 4 Apathy. FireStarter: You Don’t Need Central Key Management. ESF: Endpoint Incident Response. Public Goods. Favorite Outside Posts Mike: Cybersecurity and National Policy This is from two weeks ago (and I mentioned it in the Incite this week), but if you missed Dan Geer’s perspectives on the challenges facing to building the national cybersecurity policy, you really missed out. Read It Now. Rich: CSRF Isn’t A Big Deal – Duh! Here’s what stuns me about the CSRF article Rsnake criticizes. My hacking skills are far from 133t, but CSRF was the first thing I figured out on my own long before I ever heard the term. It’s so simple you need to be pretty brain dead to miss it. Repeat after me: if a site maintains session persistence, odds are really darn good you can hit it with a Cross Site Request Forgery, because all you need to do is fake-submit some form data. Adrian: Measurements Over Models. Project Quant Posts Project Quant: Database Security – Change Management. Research Reports and Presentations Low Hanging Fruit: Quick Wins with Data Loss Prevention. Report: Database Assessment. Top News and Posts Get your friends to join EFF, go to Defcon! Porn Virus Blackmails Victims Over “Copyright Violation”. Network Solutions Sites Hacked Again. SANS: Critical Control 15: Data Loss Prevention. Amrit’s Securing the Mobile Workforce. PayPal Patches Critical Vulnerabilities. US government finally admits most piracy estimates are bogus. Not that it will stop them. Personally, I welcome our RIAA and MPAA thought police overlords. Google to Reveal Research into Fake AV Operations. Oracle released the April 2010 CPU. Hackers exploit new Java zero-day bug. Apple Patches Pwn2Own Flaw That Hacked Safari. Blog Comment of the Week Remember, for every comment selected, Securosis makes a $25 donation to Hackers for Charity. This week’s best comment goes to ds, in response to Who DAT McAfee Fail. To McAfee’s credit, they did own the issue and made numerous apologies. Personally, I think the apology should have come from DeWalt, the CEO on the blog. But they aren’t making excuses and are working diligently to fix the problem. You must not be a McAfee customer. They didn’t own the issue. They blamed the customer. They said “Corporations who kept a feature called “Scan Processes on Enable” in McAfee VirusScan Enterprise disabled, as it is by default, were not affected.” Unfortunately, the above is factually inaccurate. It is disabled by default in 8.7, if you were running an older client, you’re screwed. Not only is it on, but it cannot be disabled. Also, if you don’t scan SVChost on process enable, you may scan it when you conduct a daily memory scan or when you do a scheduled scan. Either of those can catch it and screw you. If you do a memory scan at boot, you’ll be in the same loop. They also obfuscated on the severity: “the error can result in

Two of the most common criticisms of Data Loss Prevention (DLP) that comes up in user discussions are a) its complexity and b) the fear of false positives. Security professionals worry that DLP is an expensive widget that will fail to deliver the expected value – turning into yet another black hole of productivity. But when used properly DLP provides rapid assessment and identification of data security issues not available with any other technology. We don’t mean to play down the real complexities you might encounter as you roll out a complete data protection program. Business use of information is itself complicated, and no tool designed to protect that data can simplify or mask the underlying business processes. But there are steps you can take to obtain significant immediate value and security gains without blowing your productivity or wasting important resources. In this paper we highlight the lowest hanging fruit for DLP, refined in conversations with hundreds of DLP users. These aren’t meant to incorporate the entire DLP process, but to show you how to get real and immediate wins before you move on to more complex policies and use cases. I like this paper, and not just because I wrote it. Short, to the point, with advice on deriving immediate value as opposed to kicking off some costly and complex process. This paper is the culmination of the Quick Wins in DLP blog series I posted, all compiled together with a pretty picture or two. Special thanks to McAfee for licensing the report. You can download the paper directly, or visit the landing page, where you can leave comments or criticism, and track revisions. Share:

I realized from my last post that I made a mistake. In my previous post on Auditing Transactions, attempting to simplify database auditing, I instead made it more complicated. What I want to do is to differentiate between database auditing through the native database transactional audit trail, from other forms of logging and event collection. The reason is that the native database audit trail provides a sequence of associated events, and whether and when those events were committed to disk. Simple events do not provide the same degree of context and are not as capable of providing database state. If you need application context and state – perhaps for Sarbanes-Oxley – you need the audit log. Make no mistake: there are simpler and less invasive ways of collecting data. They also provide an alternative – and in some cases clearer – picture of events. For example, it’s a heck of a lot easier to get data from syslog that native audit. And if all you are interested in is when patches are installed, syslog is a better source of information. If you are only interested in failed login attempts, a login trigger is far more efficient. The entire purpose of this Database Security Fundamentals series is to create a set of steps, which can each be performed in about an afternoon’s time, to secure your database. I believe the entire sequence can be completed in a week. My goal is to provide clarity and simplicity for database and IT administrators who do not have time to learn and deploy advanced security measures, and are instead interested in raising the security bar without spending weeks or months on the project. So I want to step back and clarify that the last post is specifically for at those who must use native database audit, primarily to populate reports or fulfill regulatory controls, with security as a secondary goal. And yes, compliance of some sort has become a fundamental requirement for the majority of DBAs. For the rest of you, we’ll dig into simple event collection for security events. If you are interested in a few simple events, but not enough to justify the burden of audit, this phase will be more useful to you. Define events: The goal here is to figure out what you need, or what others want from you. Installation of patches, alteration of specific permissions settings, granting of public roles, insertion of stored procedures, ad-hoc database access, use of management tools like Toad, adding views, 3 or more failed login attempts, and just about anything involving DBA capabilities are common concerns. These are all simple events with frequency rates low enough not to overwhelm you. Determine collection methods: Based on which events you want, select a data collection method or two that gather the data you need. There are a lot of ways to gather event data. System tables, command line tools, triggers, syslog, trace options, etc. Write scripts: To make this easier on yourself script your queries, or turn them into stored procedures, or both. Create the scripts to collect the events and, if needed, filter out what you don’t need. Use whatever scripting language you are comfortable with. Keep in mind that it is often useful to have the scripts make follow-up queries to reference other data sources, and being able to recursively gather additional information based upon simple if-then or where comparisons on data will save you a lot of work. User permission mapping is one such example, as the groups and roles a user belongs to could be a complex set of queries, depending on which platform you are using. You may want to send yourself an email for more critical events that need urgent attention. Implement: Deploy your scripts and test. Annoying though it may be, you will want to set up a specific user account with just enough privileges to perform the data collection. Secure these scripts so unprivileged users cannot use or modify them. You will want to set up a secure place to dump the results, and if necessary archive and remove files so they don’t take up too much disk space. Set review schedule: The data you collect is only valuable if you use it, so get in the habit of reviewing the results for anomalies. If security is your goal, plan on spending a few minutes every day on this, and setting alerts on the one or two events that absolutely, positively, look suspicious. Archive the scripts and document: Keep a copy of the scripts and notes on what you implemented for future reference. For a single database I find that I can create and test the scripts in an afternoon. Another few hours to set up the user accounts, cron jobs, or archive scripts. After that the entire process is pretty much self-sustaining as long as you stay on top of event review. Some of you who are the lone DBA at your job will consider this step in the Fundamentals series silly. I have had DBAs ask me, “Why would you set up a script to track your own work? Why would I send myself a reminder that I just added a table view?” Remember that this is meant to catch stuff that should not be happening, or events you were not aware of, like someone else in IT making changes to be ‘helpful’. Or when an attacker tries to compromise a database. This afternoon’s effort will all seem worth it when you have your first ‘WTF?’ moment a few months from now, when some web programmer changes the database without telling you. More advanced methods I intended to leave database activity monitoring out of this discussion. Monitoring is an advanced database security option, and does not fit into this simpler Essentials series. But those tools provide far more advanced data collection and storage capabilities, policies, and reporting. If the number of events to collect, or of databases grows, or if the policies and reports you