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I’ve always been pretty competitive. For instance, back in high school my friends and I would make boasts about how we’d have more of this or that, and steal the other’s wife, etc. Yes, it was silly high school ego run rampant, but I thought life was a zero sum game back then. Win/win was not in my vocabulary. I win, you lose, that’s it. I carried that competitive spirit into the first 15 years or so of my working career. At META, it was about my service selling more than yours. About me being able to stake out overlapping coverage areas and winning the research battle. In the start-up world, it was about raising the money and beating the other companies with similar stories & models. Then in a variety of vendor gigs, each in very competitive market spaces, it was about competing and winning and having a better story and giving the sales team better tools to win more deals. Nothing was ever good enough – not at work, not at home, and not in my own head. Yeah, I was frackin’ miserable. And made most of the people around me miserable as well. When I was told my services were no longer needed at CipherTrust, I saw it as an opportunity to go in a different direction. To focus on helping folks do better, as opposed to winning whatever ‘needed’ to be won. It wasn’t exactly a conscious decision, but I knew I needed a change in focus and attitude. For the most part, it worked. I was much happier, I was doing better, and I was less grumpy. Then I stepped back into corporate life, but to be honest, my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t care if we lost a specific deal because we should be able to get into a lot of deals and statistically we’d be OK. Of course, I had to mask that indifference, but ultimately for a lot of reasons it didn’t make sense for me to continue in that role. So I left and got back to where I could help folks, and not worry about winning. But you can’t entirely escape competition. Now I play softball on Sundays with a bunch of old guys like me. But some of them still have that competitive fire burning and to be honest it gets annoying. When someone boots a ground ball or lines out with runners on, these guys get all pissed off. We lost a one-run game last Sunday, after coming back from 3 runs down in the last inning. I was happy with that effort – we didn’t give up. Others were pissed. Personally, I play softball because it’s fun. I get outside, I run around, I get my couple of at-bats and make a few plays in the field. But when guys get all uppity about not winning or someone making a mistake, it’s demotivating to me. I’ve got to find a way to tune out the negativity and still have fun playing. Or I’ll need to stop, which is the wrong answer. But I am working too hard to be positive (which is not my default mode) to hang around with negatives. Yes, I like to win. But I don’t need to win anymore. And I’m a lot happier now because of it. But that’s just me. – Mike. Photo credits: “win win” uploaded to Flickr by TheTruthAbout… Recent Securosis Posts Understanding and Selecting SIEM/LM: Deployment Models. Trustwave, Acquisitions, PCI, and Navigating Conflicts of Interest. FireStarter: Is Full Disk Encryption without Pre-Boot Secure? Return of the Security Start-up? Doing Well by Doing Good (and Protecting the Kids). Take Our Data Security Survey & Win an iPad. Incite 4 U Different NAC strokes for different folks – A few weeks ago, Joel Snyder talked about what went wrong with NAC. It was a good analysis of the market issues. Joel’s conclusion is that there isn’t really a standard set of NAC features, but rather a number of different breeds. Which basically means there is no market – not a consistent one, anyway. No wonder the category has struggled – nobody can agree on what problem the technology is supposed to solve. Joel also points out some of the political issues of deploying a solution that spans network, endpoint, and security teams. This week, NetworkWorld published the Joel’s review. He does likes some of the products (those based on 802.1X like Avenda, Enterasys, and Juniper), and has issues with some of the others (ForeScout and TrustWave). But ultimately the review highlights the reality of the market, which is that there isn’t one. – MR DRM dreams – Designing DRM systems in 1996, I had big hopes that digital lockers would be a popular choice to secure content for people to share on the Internet. I thought everyone from banking systems to media distribution could benefit. By 1998 that dream faded as nobody was really interested in secure content storage or delivery. But it turns out someone has the same dreams I did: hackers embrace DRM as a way to hide pirated content as reported on Yahoo! News. Basically pirated video is wrapped up in a protective blanket of encryption, which can then be moved and stored freely, without detection by content analysis tools. Porn, pirated movies, and whatever else, can be distributed without fear of being inspected and discovered. And this model works really freaking’ well when the buyer and seller want to keep their activity a secret. Hollywood may have complained bitterly about pirated DVDs, but this particular delivery model will be near impossible to stop. No, Cyber-nanny will not cut it. There are only a handful of ways to catch and prosecute this type of crime. Law enforcement will have to figure out how to police the exchange of decryption keys for money. – AL Disclosure is religion – I’ve been known to write and talk about the disclosure debate, but I’m starting to wonder if it’s

I am thinking about writing a guide to secure open source databases, including verification queries. Do you all think that would be useful? For the most part, when I write about database security, I write about generic approaches that apply to all database platforms. I think this is helpful for database managers, as well as security and IT professionals who have projects that span multiple database types. When writing the Database Security Fundamentals series, my goal was to provide a universal checklist of the database security basics that anyone with basic DBA skills could accomplish in a week. DBAs who work in large enterprise may have established guidelines, but small and medium sized firms generally don’t, and I wanted the series to provide an awareness on what to look for and what to do. I also find that mainstream Oracle DBAs tune out because I don’t provide specific queries or discuss native features. The downside is that the series covers what to do, but not how to do it. By taking a more abstract look at the problems to be solved across security and compliance, I cannot provide specific details that will help with Oracle, Sybase, Teradata, PostgreSQL, or others – there are simply too many policies for too many platforms for me to sufficiently cover. Most DBAs know how to write the queries to fulfill the policies I outlined. For the non-DBA security or IT professional, I recognize that what I wrote leaves a gap between what you should do and how to do it. To close this gap you have a couple of options: Acquire tools like DAM, encryption, and assessment from commercial vendors Participate on database chat boards and ask questions RTFM Make friends with a good DBA Yes, there are free tools out there for assessment, auditing, and monitoring. They provide limited value, and that may be sufficient for you. I find that the free assessment tools are pretty bad because they usually only work for one database, and their policies are miserably out of date. Further, if you try to get assessment from a commercial vendor, they don’t cover open source databases like Derby, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Open Ingres. These platforms are totally underserved by the security community but most have very large installed user bases. But you have to dig for information, and cobble together stuff for anything that is not a large commercial platform. So here is what I am thinking: through the remainder of the year I am going to write a security guide to open source databases. I will create an overview for each of the platforms (PostgreSQL, Derby, Ingres and MySQL), and cover the basics for passwords, communications security, encryption options, and so forth, including specific assessment polices and rules for baselining the databases. Every week I’ll provide a couple new rules for one platform, and I will write some specific assessment policies as well. This is going to take a little resourcefulness on my part, as I am not even sure my test server boots at this point, and I have never used Derby, but what the heck – I think it will be fun. We will post the assessment rules much like Rich and Chris did for the ipfw Firewall Rule Set. So what do you think? Should I include other databases? Should I include under-served but non-open-source such as MS Access and Teradata? Anyone out there want to volunteer to test scripts (because frankly I suck at query execution plans and optimization nowdays)? Let me know because I have been kicking this idea around for a while, but it’s not fully fleshed out, and I would appreciate your input. Share:

This morning Trustwave announced their acquisition of Breach Security, the web application firewall vendor. Trustwave’s been on an acquisition streak for a while now, picking up companies such as Mirage (NAC), Vericept (DLP), BitArmor (encryption), and Intellitactics (log management/SIEM). Notice any trends? All these products have a strong PCI angles, none of the companies were seeing strong sales (Trustwave doesn’t do acquisitions for large multiples of sales), and all were more mid-market focused. Adding a WAF to the mix makes perfect sense, especially since Trustwave also has web application testing (both controls meet PCI requirement 6.6). Trustwave is clearly looking to become a one-stop shop for PCI compliance. Especially since they hold the largest share of the PCI assessment market. To be honest, there are concerns about Trustwave and other PCI assessment firms offering both the assessment and remediation services. You know, the old fox guarding the henhouse thing. There’s a reason regulations prohibit financial auditors from offering other services to their clients – the conflicts of interest are extremely difficult to eliminate or even keep under control. When the person making sure you are compliant also sells you tools to help become compliant, we should always be skeptical. We all know how this goes down. Sales folks will do whatever it takes to hit their numbers (you know, they have BMW payments to make), and few of them have any qualms about telling a client they will be compliant if they buy both their assessment services and a nice package of security tools and implementation services. They’ll use words like “partners” and “holistic” to seem all warm and fuzzy. We can’t really blame Trustwave and other firms for jumping all over this opportunity. The PCI Council shows no interest in controlling conflicts of interest, and when a breach does happen the investigation in the kangaroo court will show the company wasn’t compliant anyway. But there is also an upside. We also know that every single client of every single PCI assessment, consulting, or product firm merely wants them to make PCI “go away”, especially in the mid-market. Having firms with a complete package of services is compelling, and companies with big security product portfolios like Symantec, McAfee, and IBM aren’t well positioned to provide a full PCI-related portfolio, even though they have many of the pieces. If Trustwave can pull all these acquisitions together, make them good enough, and hit the right price point, the odds are they will make a killing in the market. They face three major challenges in this process: Failing to properly manage the conflicts of interest could become a liability. Unhappy customers could lead to either bad press and word of mouth, or even changes in PCI code to remove the conflicts, which they want to avoid at all costs. The actual assessors and consultants are reasonably well walled off, but they will need to aggressively manage their own sales forces to avoid problems. Ideally account execs will only sell one side of the product line, which could help manage the potential issues. Customers won’t understand that PCI compliance isn’t the same as general security. Trustwave may get the blame for non-PCI security breaches (never mind the real cardholder data breaches), especially given the PCI Council’s history of playing Tuesday morning QB and saying no breached organization could possibly be compliant (even if they passed their assessment). Packaging all this together at the right price point for the mid-market won’t be easy. Products need real integration, including leveraging a central management console and reporting engine. This is where the real leverage is – not merely services-based integration, which is not good enough for the mid-market. So the Breach acquisition is a smart move for Trustwave, and might be good for the market. But as an assessor, Trustwave needs to carefully manage their acquisition strategy in ways mere product mashup shops don’t need to worry about. Share:

We have covered the major features and capabilities of SIEM and Log Management tools, so now let’s discuss architecture and deployment models. Each architecture addresses a specific issue, such as coverage for remote devices, scaling across hundreds of thousands of devices, real-time analysis, or handling millions of events per second. Each has advantages and disadvantages in analysis performance, reporting performance, scalability, storage, and cost. There are four models to discuss: ‘flat’ central collection, hierarchical, ring, and mesh. As a caveat, none of these deployment models is mutually exclusive. Some regions may deploy a flat model, but send information up to a central location via a hierarchy. These are not absolutes, just guidelines to consider as you design your deployment to solve the specific use cases driving your project. Flat The original deployment model for SIM and log management platforms was a single server that collected and consolidated log files. In this model all log storage, normalization, and correlation occurs within a central appliance. All data collection methods (agent, flow, syslog, etc.) are available, but data is always stored in the same central location. A flat model is far simpler to deploy. All data and policies reside in a single location, so there are no policy or data synchronization issues. But of course ultimately a flat central collection model is limited in scalability, processing, and the quantity of data it can manage. A single installation provides a fixed amount of processing and storage, and reporting becomes progressively harder and slower as data sets grow. Truth be told, we only see this kind of architecture for “checkbox compliance”, predominately for smaller companies with modest data collection needs. The remaining models address the limitations of this base architecture. Hierarchical In the Ring model – or what Mike likes to call the Moat – you have a central SIEM server ringed by many log collection devices. Each logger in the ring is responsible for collecting data from event sources. These log archives are also used to support distributed reporting. The log devices send a normalized and filtered (so substantially reduced) stream of events to the master SIEM device. The SIEM server sitting in the middle is responsible for correlation of events and analysis. This architecture was largely designed to address scalability limitations with some SIEM offerings. It wasn’t cost effective to scale the SIEM engine to handle mushrooming event traffic, so surrounding the SIEM centerpiece with logging devices allowed it to analyze the most critical events while providing a more cost-effective scaling mechanism. The upside of this model is that simple (cheaper) high-performance loggers do the bulk of the heavy lifting, and the expensive SIEM components provide the meat of the analysis. This model addresses scalability and data management issues, while reducing the need to distribute code and policies among many different devices. There are a couple issues with the ring model. The biggest problem remains a lack of integration between the two systems. Management tools for the data loggers and the SIEM may be linked together with some type of dashboard, but you quickly discover the two-headed monster of two totally separate products under the covers. Similarly, log management vendors were trying to graft better analysis and correlation onto their existing products, resulting in a series of acquisitions that provided log management players with SIEM. Either way, you end up with two separate products trying to solve a single problem. This is not a happy “you got your chocolate in my peanut butter,” moment, and will continue to be a thorny issue for customers until vendors fully integrate their SIEM and log management offerings as opposed to marketing bandaids dashboards as integrated products. Mesh The last model we want to discuss is the mesh deployment. The mesh is a group of interrelated systems, each performing full log management and SIEM functions for a small part of the environment. Basically this is a cluster of SIEM/LM appliances; each a functional peer with full analysis, correlation, filtering, storage, and reporting for local events. The servers can all be linked together to form a mesh, depending on customer needs. While this model is more complex to deploy and administer, and requires a purpose-built data store to manage high-speed storage and analysis, it does solve several problems. For organizations that require segregation of both data and duties, the mesh model is unmatched. It provides the ability to aggregate and correlate specific segments or applications on specific subsets of servers, making analysis and reporting flexible. Unlike the other models, it can divide and conquer processing and storage requirements flexibly depending on the requirements of the business, rather than the scalability limitations of the product being deployed. Each vendor’s product is capable implementing two or more of these models, but typically not all of them. Each product’s technical design (particularly the datastore) dictates which deployment models are possible. Additionally, the level of integration between the SIEM and Log Management pieces has an effect as well. As we said in our introduction, every SIEM vendor offers some degree of log management capability, and most Log Management vendors offer SIEM functions. This does not mean that the offerings are fully integrated by any stretch. Deployment and management costs are clearly affected by product integration or lack thereof, so make sure to do your due diligence in the purchase process to understand the underlying product architecture and the limitations and compromises necessary to make the product work in your environment. Share:

This FireStarter is more of a real conversation starter than a definitive statement designed to rile everyone up. Over the past couple months I’ve talked with a few organizations – some of them quite large – deploying full disk encryption for laptops but skipping the pre-boot environment. For those of you who don’t know, nearly every full drive encryption product works by first booting up a mini-operating system. The user logs into this mini-OS, which then decrypts and loads the main operating system. This ensures that nothing is decrypted without the user’s credentials. It can be a bit of a problem for installing software updates, because if the user isn’t logged in you can’t get to the operating system, and if you kick off a reboot after installing a patch it will stall at pre-boot. But every major product has ways to manage this. Typically they allow you to set a “log in once” flag to the pre-boot environment for software updates, but there are a couple others ways to deal with it. I consider this problem essentially solved, based on the user discussions I’ve had. Another downside is that users need to log into pre-boot before the operating system. Some organizations deploy their FDE to require two logins, but many more synchronize the user’s Windows credentials to the pre-boot, then automatically log into Windows (or whatever OS is being protected). Both seem fine to me, and one of the differentiators between various encryption products is how well they handle user support, password changes, and other authentication issues in pre-boot. But I’m now hearing of people deploying a FDE product without using pre-boot. Essentially (I think) they reverse the process I just described and automatically log into the pre-boot environment, then have the user log into Windows. I’m not talking about the tricky stuff a near-full-disk-encryption product like Credent uses, but skipping pre-boot altogether. This seems fracking insane to me. You somewhat reduce the risk of a forensic evaluation of the drive, but lose most of the benefits of FDE. In every case, the reason given is, “We don’t want to confuse our users.” Am I missing something here? In my analysis this obviates most of the benefits of FDE, making it a big waste of cash. Then again, let’s think about compliance. Most regulations say, “Thou shalt encrypt laptop drives.” Thus, this seems to tick the compliance checkbox, even if it’s a bad idea from a security perspective. Also, realistically, the vast majority of lost drives don’t result in the compromise of data. I’m unaware of any non-targeted breach where a lost drive resulted in losses beyond the cost of dealing with breach reporting. I’m sure there have been some, but none that crossed my desk. Share:

As Rich described on Friday, he, Adrian, and I were sequestered at the end of last week working on our evil plans for world domination. But we did take some time for meetings, and we met up with a small company, the proverbial “last company standing” in a relatively mature market. All their competitors have been acquired and every deal they see involves competing with a multi-billion dollar public company. After a few beers, we reminisced about the good old days when it was cool to deal with start-ups. Where the big companies were at a disadvantage, since it was lame to buy from huge monoliths. I probably had dark hair back then, but after the Internet bubble burst and we went through a couple recessions, most end user organizations opt for big and stable vendors – not small and exciting. This trend was compounded by the increasing value of suites in maturing markets, and most of security has been maturing rapidly. There is no award for doing system integration on the endpoint or the perimeter anymore. It’s just easier to buy integrated solutions which satisfy requirements from a single vendor. Add in the constant consolidation of innovative companies by the security and big IT aggregators, and there has been a real shift away from start-ups. But there is a downside of this big company reign. Innovation basically stops at big companies because the aggregators are focused on milking the installed base and not necessarily betting the ranch on new features. Most of the big security companies aren’t very good at integrating acquired technology into their stacks either. So you take an exciting start-up, pay them a lot of money, and then let the technology erode as the big company bureaucracy brings the start-up to its knees. A majority of the brain power leaves and it’s a crap show. Of course, not every deal goes down like this. But enough do that it’s the exception when an acquisition isn’t a total train wreck a year later. So back to my small company friends. Winning as a small company is all about managing the perception of risk in doing business with them. There is funding/viability risk, as more than a couple small security companies have gone away over the past few years, leaving customers holding the bag. Most big companies take a look at the balance sheet of a start-up and it’s a horror show (at least relative to what they are used to), so the procurement group blows a gasket when asked to write a substantial check to a start-up. There is also technology risk, in that smaller companies can’t do everything so they might miss the next big thing. Small companies need good answers on both these fronts to have any shot of beating a large entrenched competitor. It’s commonly forgotten, but small companies do innovate, and that cliche about them being more nimble is actually true. Those advantages need to be substantiated during the sales cycle to address those risks. But end users also face risks outside of the control of a small company. Things like acquisition risk, which is the likelihood of the small company being acquired and then going to pot. And integration risk, where the small company does not provide integration with the other solutions the end user needs, and has no resources to get it done. All of these are legitimate issues facing an end user trying to determine the right product to solve his/her problem. As an end user, is it worth taking these risks on a smaller company? The answer depends on sophistication of the requirement. If the requirement can be met out-of-the box and the current generation of technology meets your needs, then it’s fine to go with the big company. The reality of non-innovation and crappy integration from a big company isn’t a concern. As long as the existing feature set solves your problems, you’ll be OK. It’s when you are looking at either a less mature market or requirements that are not plain vanilla where the decision becomes a bit murky. Ultimately it rests on your organization’s ability to support and integrate the technology yourself, since you can’t guarantee that the smaller company will survive or innovate for any length of time. But there are risks in working with large companies as well. Don’t forget that acquired products languish or even get worse (relative to the market) once acquired, and the benefits of integration don’t necessarily materialize. So the pendulum swings both ways in evaluating risks relative to procurement. And you thought risk management was only about dealing with the risk of attack? There are some tactics end users can use to swing things the right way. Understand that while negotiating the original PO with a small company, you have leverage. You can get them to add features you need or throw in deployment resources or cut the price (especially at the end of the quarter). Once the deal closes (and the check clears), they’ll move onto the next big deal. They have to – the small company is trying to survive. So get what you can before you cut the check. So back to the topic of this post: are we going to see a return of the security start-up? Can smaller security companies survive and prosper in the face of competition from multi-billion dollar behemoths? We think there is a role for the security start-up, providing innovation and responsiveness to customer needs – something big companies do poorly. But the secret is to find the small companies that act big. Not by being slow, lumbering, and bureaucratic, but by aligning with powerful OEM and reseller partners to broaden market coverage. And having strong technology alliances to deliver a broader product than a small company can deliver themselves. Yes, it’s possible, but we don’t see a lot of it. There are very few small companies out there doing anything innovative. That’s the real issue. Even if you wanted

Dear Securosis readers, The Friday Summary is currently unavailable. Our staff is at an offsite in an undisclosed location completing our world domination plans. We apologize for the inconvenience, and instead of our full summary of the week’s events here are a few links to keep you busy. If you need more, Mike Rothman suggests you “find your own &%^ news”. Mike’s attitude does not necessarily represent Securosis, even though we give him business cards. Thank you, we appreciate your support, and turn off your WiFi! Securosis Posts Doing Well by Doing Good (and Protecting the Kids). Take Our Data Security Survey & Win an iPad. Incite 6/16/2010: Fenced in. Need to know the time? Ask the consultant. Top 5 Security Tips for Small Business. If You Had a 3G iPad Before June 9, Get a New SIM. Insider Threat Alive and Well. Other News Unpatched Windows XP Flaw Being Exploited. Zombies take over Newsweek (The brain-eating kind, not a botnet). Share:

My kids are getting more sophisticated in their computer usage. I was hoping I could put off the implementation of draconian security controls on their computers for a while. More because I’m lazy and it will dramatically increase the amount of time I spend supporting the in-house computers. But hope is not a strategy, my oldest will be 10 this year, and she is curious – so it’s time. The first thing I did was configure the Mac’s Parental Controls on the kid’s machine. That was a big pile of fail. Locking down email pretty much put her out of business. All her email went to me, even when I whitelisted a recipient. The web whitelist didn’t work very well either. The time controls worked fine, but I don’t need those because the computer is downstairs. So I turned it off Apple’s Parental Controls. I did some research into the parental control options out there. There are commercial products that work pretty well, as well as some free stuff (seems Blue Coat’s K9 web filter is highly regarded) that is useful. But surprisingly enough I agree with Ed over at SecurityCurve, Symantec is doing a good job with the family security stuff. They have not only a lot of educational material on their site for kids of all ages, but also have a service called Norton Online Family. It’s basically an agent you install on your PCs or Macs and it controls web browsing and email, and can even filter outbound traffic to make sure private information isn’t sent over the wire. You set the policies through an online service and can monitor activity through the web site. It’s basically centralized security and management for all your family computers. That’s a pretty good idea. And from what I’ve seen it works well. I haven’t tightened the controls yet to the point of soliciting squeals from the constituents, but so far so good. But it does beg the question of why a company like Symantec would offer something like this for free? It’s not like companies like NetNanny aren’t getting consumers to pay $40 for the same stuff. Ultimately it’s about both doing the right thing in eliminating any cost barrier to protecting kids online, and building the Big Yellow brand. Consumers have a choice with their endpoint security. Yes, the yellow boxes catch your eye in the big box retailers, but ultimately the earlier they get to kids and imprint their brand onto malleable brains, the more likely they are to maintain a favorable place there. My kids see a big orange building and think Home Depot. Symantec hopes they see a yellow box and think Symantec and Internet Security. Though more likely will think: that’s the company that doesn’t let me surf pr0n. As cynical as I am, I join Ed in applauding Symantec, Blue Coat, and all the other companies providing parental control technology without cost. Share:

I spent last weekend at my 20th college reunion. I dutifully flew into Ithaca, NY to see many Cornell friends and (fraternity) brothers. It was a great trip, but I did have an experience that reminded me I’m no spring chicken any more. I guess I could consider the unbelievable hangover I had on Saturday morning as the first indication that I can’t behave like a 20-year-old and expect no consequences. But it gets better. We were closing da Palms on Saturday night and an undergrad called me over because he had about 3/4 of a pitcher left and graciously asked for some help. I scurried over (because who turns down free beer?) and we started chatting. So he asked me, “When did you graduate?” I responded that I was Class of 1990. He looked at me cross-eyed and I figured he was just respecting my beer drinking prowess. Not so much. He then said, “Wow. I was born in 1989.” Uh. This kid was crapping his pants when I graduated from college. I literally have T-shirts that are older than this guy. That put everything into perspective: 20 years is a long time. Of course the campus has changed a lot as well. Lots more buildings, but the biggest change was the ever-present fences. In the last year, there have been numerous suicides on campus. It’s actually very sad that kids today can’t deal with the pressure and have no perspective that whatever it is, and however hard it feels, it will pass. So they jump off any number of bridges overlooking Ithaca’s beautiful gorges. Splat. So the Cornell administration figured one way to stop the jumpers is to put 10-foot-high fences on all the bridges. It now looks more like a detainment camp than an Ivy League university. That’s sad too. Cornell is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. Now not so much. It’s still a campus, it just feels different. Being the engineers many of my friends are, we tried to come up with better solutions. The ideas (after a number of beers, as I recall) ranged from a big airbag on the bottom of the gorge to a high speed blower to keep the jumper suspended in air (like those Vegas rides). We also talked about nets and other ideas, of course none really feasible. I guess I’ll just have to become accustomed to the fences, and remember how things were. With the understanding that like my ability to recover quickly from a night of binge drinking, some things are destined to stay in the past. – Mike. Photo credits: “Fenced In” originally uploaded by Mike Rothman Incite 4 U Getting to know your local Hoover – No, this isn’t about vacuums, but about getting to know your local law enforcement personnel. It seems the FBI is out there educating folks about how and when to get them involved in breaches. The Bureau is also taking a more proactive stance in sharing information with the financials and other corporates. All this is good stuff, and a key part of your incident response plan needs to be interfacing with law enforcement. So defining your organization’s rules of engagement sooner rather than later is a good thing. – MR String theory – Kelly Jackson Higgins had the most interesting post of the past week, covering Dan Kaminsky’s announcement of Interpolique. Actually, the story is mostly a pre-announcement for Dan’s Black Hat presentation in Vegas later this summer, but the teaser is intriguing. The tool that Kaminsky is describing would automatically format code – with what I assume is some type of pre-compiler – making it far more difficult to execute injected code via string variables. The only burden on the developer would be to define strings in such a way that the pre-compiler recognizes them and corrects the code prior to compilation/execution. That and remembering to run the tool. This is different than something like Arxan, which acts like a linker after compilation. Philosophically both approaches sound like good ideas. But Interpolique should be simpler to implement and deploy, especially if Recursion Ventures can embed the technology into development environments. Dan is dead right that “… string-injection flaws are endemic to the Web, cross all languages …” – the real question is whether this stops injection attacks across all languages. I guess we have to wait until Black Hat to find out. – AL Hatfields and McCoys, my ass – Evidently there is a feud between Symantec and McAfee. I guess a VP shot another VP and now the clans have been at war for generations. Computer security changes fundamentally every couple years. And fervent competition is always a good thing for customers. Prices go down and innovation goes up. But to say the AV market is a two-horse race seems wrong. To get back to the Coke vs. Pepsi analogy used in this story, in this market Dr. Pepper and 7Up each have a shot because some customers decide they need a fundamentally different drink. Security is about much more than just the endpoint, and if the Hatfields or McCoys take their eyes off the Microsofts and the HPs, they will end up in the annals of history, like the DECs and the Wangs. – MR Speed may kill… – Sophos is hoping that the security industry has a short memory. They just announced a ‘Live Protection’ offering in their endpoint suite that uses a cloud service to push signature updates. Right, that’s not novel, but they are using speed as the differentiator. So you can get real-time updates. Of course that assumes you won’t have a Bad DAT(e) try to slip your devices a roofie that renders them useless. Needless to say, there is a bunch of marketing hocus-pocus going on here, since Sophos is also talking about their speed gain resulting from not pushing full signature updates, but doing some analysis in the cloud. Ah, calling Dr. Latency – this is something

One of the biggest problems in security is that we rarely have a good sense of which controls actually improve security outcomes. This is especially true for newer areas like data security, filled with tools and controls that haven’t been as well tested or widely deployed as things like firewalls. Thanks to all the great feedback you sent in on our drafts, we are happy to kick off our big data security survey. This one is a bit different than most of the others you’ve seen floating around, because we are focusing more on effectiveness (technically perceived) of controls rather than losses & incidents. We do have some incident-related questions, but only what we need to feed into the effectiveness results. As with most of our surveys, we’ve set this one up so you can take it anonymously, and all the raw results (anonymized, in spreadsheet format) will be released after our analysis. Since we have a sponsor for this one (Imperva), we actually have a little budget and will be giving away a 32gb WiFi iPad to a random participant. You don’t need to provide an email address to take the survey, but you do if you want the iPad. If we get a lot of recipients (say over 200) we’ll cough up for more iPads so the odds stay better than the lottery. Click here to take the survey, and please spread the word. We designed it to only take 10-20 minutes. Even if you aren’t doing a lot with data security, we need your responses to balance the results. With our surveys we also use something called a “registration code” to keep track of where people found out about it. We use this to get a sense of which social media channels people use. If you take the survey based on this post, please use “Securosis”. If you re-post this link, feel free to make up your own code and email it to us, and we will let you know how many people responded to your referral – get enough and we can give you a custom slice of the data. Thanks! Our plan is to keep this open for a few weeks. Share: