Research

Today Verizon released their Supplement to the 2009 Data Breach Investigations Report. As with previous reports, it is extremely well written, densely loaded with data, and an absolute must read. The bulk of the report gives significantly more information on the breakdown of attacks, by both how often attacks occurred, and how many records were lost as a result of each attack. While the above is fascinating, where things got most interesting was in the appendix, which was all about comparing the Verizon data set from 2004 through 2008 to the DataLossDB archives from 2000-2009. One of the big outstanding questions from past Verizon reports was how biased is the Verizon dataset, and thus how well does it reflect the world at large? While there was some overlap with the DataLossDB, their dataset is significantly larger (2,300+ events). Verizon discovered a fairly high level of correlation between the two data sets. (Page 25, Table 4). This is huge, because it allows us to start extrapolating about the world at large and what attacks might look like to other organizations. The great thing about having so much data is that we can now start to prioritize how we implement controls and processes. Case in point: Table 5 on page 26. We once again see that the vast vast majority (over 70%!) of incidents are from outsiders. This tells us that’s where protection should be focused first. If you go back to the body of the supplement and start looking at the details, you can start to re-evaluate your current program and re-prioritize appropriately. Share:

One of the more difficult aspects of medical research is correlating treatments/actions with outcomes. This is a core principle of science based medicine (if you’ve never worked in the medical field, you might be shocked at the lack of science at the practitioner level). When performing medical studies the results aren’t always clean cut. There are practical and ethical limits to how certain studies can be performed, and organisms like people are so complex, living in an uncontrolled environment, that results are rarely cut and dried. Three categories of studies are: Pre-clinical/biological: lab research on cells, animals, or other subsystems to test the basic science. For example, exposing a single cell to a drug to assess the response. Experimental/clinical: a broad classification for studies where treatments are tested on patients with control groups, specific monitoring criteria, and attempts to control and monitor for environmental effects. The classic double blind study is an example. Observational studies: observing, without testing specific treatments. For example, observational studies show that autism rates have not increased over time by measuring autism rates of different age groups using a single diagnostic criteria. With rates holding steady at 1% for all living age groups, the conclusion is that while there is a perception of increasing autism, at most it’s an increase in diagnosis rates, likely due to greater awareness and testing for autism. No single class of study is typically definitive, so much of medicine is based on correlating multiple studies to draw conclusions. A drug that works in the lab might not work in a clinical study, or one showing positive results in a clinical study might fail to show desired long-term outcomes. For example, the press was recently full of stories that the latest research showed little to no improvement in long-term patent outcomes due to routine mammograms for patients without risk factors before the age of 50. When studies focus on the effectiveness of mammograms detecting early tumors, they show positive results. But these results do not correlate with improvements in long-term patient outcomes. Touchy stuff, but there are many studies all over medicine and other areas of science where positive research results don’t necessarily correlate with positive outcomes. We face the same situation with security, and the recent debate over password rotation highlights (see a post here at Securosis, Russell Thomas’s more-detailed analysis, and Pete Lindstrom’s take). Read through the comments and you will see that we have good tools to measure how easy or hard it is to crack a password based on how it was encrypted/hashed, length, use of dictionary words, and so on, but none of those necessarily predict or correlate with outcomes. None of that research answers the question, “How often does 90 day password rotation prevent an incident, or in what percentage of incidents did lack of password rotation lead to exploitation?” Technically, even those questions don’t relate to outcomes, since we aren’t assessing the damage associated with the exploitation (due to the lack of password rotation), which is what we’d all really like to know. When evaluating security, I think wherever possible we should focus on correlating, to the best of our ability, security controls with outcomes. Studies like the Verizon Data Breach Report are starting to improve our ability to draw these conclusions and make more informed risk assessments. This isn’t one of those “you’re doing it wrong” posts. I believe that we have generally lacked the right data to take this approach, but that’s quickly changing, and we should take full advantage of the opportunity. Share:

As you are already well aware (if not, see the announcement – we’ll wait), Google is now offering a free DNS resolver service. Before we get into the players, though, let’s first understand the reasons to use one of these free services. You’re obviously reading this blog post, and to get here your computer or upstream DNS cache resolved securosis.com to 209.240.81.67 – as long as that works, what’s the big deal? Why change anything? Most of you are probably reading this on a computer that dynamically obtains its IP address from the network you’re plugged into. It could be at work, home, or a Starbucks filled with entirely too much Christmas junk. Aside from assigning your own network address, whatever router you are connecting to also tells you where to look up addresses, so you can convert securosis.com to the actual IP address of the server. You never have to configuring your DNS resolver, but can rely on whatever the upstream router (or other DHCP server) tells you to use. For the most part this is fine, but there’s nothing that says the DNS resolver has to be accurate, and if it’s hacked it could be malicious. It might also be slow, unreliable, or vulnerable to certain kinds of attacks. Some resolvers actively mess with your traffic, such as ISPs that return a search pages filled with advertisements whenever you type in a bad address, instead of the expected error. If you’re on the road, your DNS resolver is normally assigned by whatever network you’re plugged into. At home, it’s your home router, which gets its upstream resolver from your ISP. At work, it’s… work. Work networks are generally safe, but aside from the reliability issues we know that home ISPs and public networks are prime targets for DNS attacks. Thus there are security, reliability, performance, and even privacy advantages to using a trustworthy service. Each of the more notable free providers cites its own advantages, along the lines of: Cache/speed – In this case a large cache should equate to a fast lookup. Since DNS is hierarchical in naturem if the immediate cache you’re asking to resolve a name already has the record you want, there is less wait to get the answer back. Maintaining the relevance and accuracy of this cache is part of what separates a good fast DNS service from, say, the not-very-well-maintained-DNS-service-from-your-ISP. Believe it or not, but depending on your ISP, a faster resolver might noticeably speed up your web browsing. Anycast/efficiency – This gets down into the network architecture weeds, but at a high level it means that when I am in Minnesota, traffic I send to a certain special IP address may end up at a server in Chicago, while traffic from Oregon to that same address may go to a server in California instead. Anycast is often used in DNS to provide faster lookups based on geolocation, user density, or any other metrics the network engineers choose, to improve speed and efficiency. Security – Since DNS is susceptible to many different attacks, it’s a common attack vector for things like create a denial-of-service on a domain name, or poisoning DNS results so users of a service (domain name) are redirected to a malicious site instead. There are many attacks, but the point is that if a vendor focuses on DNS as a service, they have probably invested more time and effort into protecting it than an ISP who regards DNS as simply a minor cost of doing business. These are just a few reasons you might want to switch to a dedicated DNS resolver. While there are a bunch of them out there, here are three major services, each offering something slightly different: OpenDNS: One of the most full featured DNS resolution services, OpenDNS offers multiple plans to suit your needs – basic is free. The thing that sets OpenDNS apart from the others is their dashboard, from which you can change how the service responds to your networks. This adds flexibility, with the ability to enable and disable features such as content filtering, phishing/botnet/malware protection, reporting, logging, and personalized shortcuts. This enables DNS to serve as a security feature, as the resolver can redirect you someplace safe if you enter the wrong address; you can also filter content in different categories. The one thing that OpenDNS often gets a bad rap for, however, is DNS redirection on non-existent domains. Like many ISPs, OpenDNS treats every failed lookup as an opportunity to redirect you to a search page with advertisements. Since many other applications (Twitter clients, Skype, VPN, online gaming, etc…) use DNS, if you are using OpenDNS with the standard configuration you could potentially leak login credentials to the network, as a bad request will fail to get back a standard NXDOMAIN response. This can result in sending authentication credentials to OpenDNS, as your confused client software sees the response as a successful NOERROR and proceeds, rather than aborting as it would if it got back the ‘proper’ NXDOMAIN. You can disable this behavior, but doing so forfeits some of the advertised features that rely on it. OpenDNS is a great option for home users who want all the free security protection they can get, as well as for organizations interested in outsourcing DNS security and gaining a level of control and insight that might otherwise be available only through on-site hardware. Until your kid figures out how to set up their own DNS, you can use it to keep them from visiting porn sites. Not that your kid would ever do that. DNSResolvers: A simple no-frills DNS resolution service. All they do is resolve addresses – no filtering, redirection, or other games. This straight up DNS resolution service also won’t filter for security (phishing/botnet/malware). DNSResolvers is a great fast service for people who want well-maintained resolvers and are handling security themselves. DNSResolvers effectively serves as an ad demonstrating the competence and usefulness of parent company easyDNS), by providing a great free DNS service, which encourages some users

On Friday I asked a simple question over Twitter and then let myself get dragged into a rat-hole of a debate that had people pulling out popcorn and checking the latest odds in Vegas. (Not the odds on who would win – that was clear – but rather on the potential for real bloodshed). And while the debate strayed from my original question, it highlighted a major problem we often have in the security industry (and probably the rest of life, but I’m not qualified to talk about that). A common logical fallacy is to assume that a possibility is a probability. That because something can happen, it will happen. It’s as if we tend to forget that the likelihood something will happen (under the circumstances in question) is essential to the risk equation – be it quantitative, qualitative, or whatever. Throughout the security industry we continually burn our intellectual capital by emphasizing low-probability events. “Mac malware might happen so all Mac users should buy antivirus or they’re smug and complacent”. Forgetting the fact that the odds of an average Mac user being infected by any type of malware are so low as to be unmeasurable, and lower than their system breaking due to problems with AV software. Sure, it might change. It will probably change; but we can’t predict that with any certainty and until then our response should match the actual (current) risk. Bluetooth attacks are another example. Possible? Sure. Probable? Not unless you’re at a security or hacker conference. There are times, especially during scenario planning, to assume that anything that can happen will happen. But when designing your actual security we can’t equate all threats. Possible isn’t probable. The mere possibility of something is rarely a good reason to make a security investment. Share:

My Friday post generated some great discussion in the comments. I encourage you to go back and read through them. Rocky in particular wrote an extended comment that should be a blog post in itself which reveals that he and I are, in fact, in violent agreement on the issues. Case in point, his first paragraph: I think we’re on the same page. As an industry we need to communicate more clearly. It wasn’t my intent to fault any information professionals as much as I’m hoping that we all will push a bit harder for the right conversations in the future. We can’t just let the business make poor decisions anymore, we need to learn their language and engage them in more meaningful dialogue. We’re yelling in the wrong language. We just need to put that effort into learning their language and communicating more effectively. How is it that we can read HEX in real time but can’t converse with a MBA at any time? Read the last sentence again. It is that important. This is something I’ve been fighting for for a long time. It’s not about bits and bytes and until we get that through our heads, the rest just doesn’t matter because no one in command will listen to us. Rocky closed out his comment with this though: What would IT security look like if we spent as much time on those thoughts as we do on compliance tools, dashboards and monitoring? I think it’d be much more business centric and hopefully significantly more respected in the C-suite. What do you think? Share:

Jaikumar Vijayam has posted an article at ComputerWorld regarding the Express Scripts Data Breach class action suit. This is the case where, in 2008, Express Scripts received a letter demanding money from the company under the threat of exposing records of millions of patients. The letter included personal information on people covered by Express Scripts, including birth dates, Social Security numbers and prescription information. Many of the insured were seeking damages, and the judge has thrown the case out citing lack of evidence. Without any actual harm being done, there can be no damages sought. To me, this means that privacy is worthless. “Abstract injury is not enough to demonstrate injury-infact,” Judge Buckles wrote. “The injury or threat of injury must be concrete and particularized, actual and imminent; not conjectural or hypothetical.” and … “Plaintiff alleges that he would be injured “if” his personal information was compromised, and “if” such information was obtained by an unauthorized third party, and “if” his identity was stolen as a result, and “if” the use of his stolen identity caused him harm.” These multiple “if’s” put his claims in the realm of the hypothetical, Judge Buckles noted. I get the argument. And I get that laws don’t protect our feelings. But Express Scripts has been entrusted with the data, and they earn revenue from having this data, which means they inherit the custodial responsibility for the security and privacy of that information. Not being able to quantify damages should not be considered the same as not being damaged. Should the burden of proof on this point fall on the person who had their information stolen? Considered in light of credit card processors, health insurers, 3rd party service providers, and law enforcement not sharing information about breach specifics, it will be neigh on impossible for average citizens to gather information necessary to demonstrate the chain of events that led to damages. Damages and costs come in many forms, most of which are not fully quantifiable, so it becomes a quagmire. This sets a bad precedent, IMO, and does not promote or incentivize companies to secure data. When it gets bad enough, consumers will push for legislation to curb the behavior, and we have seen how that works out. Share:

Rocky DeStefano had a great post today on FudSec, Liberate Yourself: Change The Game To Suit Your Needs, which you should read if you haven’t already. It nicely highlights many of the issues going on in the industry today. However, I just can’t agree with all of his assertions. In particular, he had two statements that really bothered me. Information Security Leadership. We need to start pushing back at all levels here. It’s my opinion that business’s need to care much less about being compliant and more about being fundamentally secure – or if you prefer having better visibility into real risk. Risk to the mission, risk to the business not the risk to an asset. We continue to create irrelevant measurements – irrelevant because they are point in time, against a less-than secure model and on a playing field that is skewed towards the success of our adversary. In a perfect, security and risk oriented world, I would agree with this 100%. The problem is, that from the business perspective, what they have in place is usually sufficient to do what they need to do safely. I’m a big fan of using risk, because it’s the language that the business uses, but this isn’t really a compliance versus security vs risk issue. What needs to be communicated more effectively is what compliance to the letter of the law does and doesn’t get you. Where we have failed as practitioners is in making this distinction and allowing vendor and marketing BS to convince business folks that because they are compliant they are of course secure. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had folks tell me that they thought being compliant with whatever regulation meant they were secure. Why? Because that’s the bill of sale they were sold. And until we can change this basic perception the rest seems irrelevant. Don’t blame the security practitioners; most of the ones I know clearly express the difference between compliance and security, but it often falls on deaf ears. But what really got my goat was this next section: As information security professionals how on earth did we let the primary financial driver for security spending be compliance initiatives? We sold our souls because we lacked the knowledge of the business and how to apply what we do in a meaningful way to the business. We let compliance initiatives that promised “measurable” results have their way because we thought we could tag along for the ride and implement best possible solutions given the situation. As I see it we are no better off for this and now our teams have either competing agendas or more work to drive us away from protecting our organizations. Sure we’ve created some “building codes” but do “point in time” snapshots matter anymore when the attacker can mold his approach on a whim? I don’t know who Rocky has been talking to, but I don’t know a single security practitioner who thinks that compliance was the way to go. What I’ve seen are two general schools of thought. One is to rant and rave that everyone is doing it wrong and that compliance doesn’t equal security, but then engages in the compliance efforts because they have no choice. The other school is to be pragmatic and to accept that compliance is here to stay, and do our best within the existing framework. It’s not like we as an industry ‘let’ compliance happen. Even the small group of folks who have managed to communicate well with the business, be proactive, and build a mature program still have to deal with compliance. As for Rocky’s “buildng codes” and “point in time” snapshots, for a huge segment of the business world, this is a massive step up from what they had before. But to answer Rocky’s question, the failure here is that we told the business, repeatedly, that if they installed this one silver bullet (firewalls, AV, IDS, and let’s not forget PKI) they’d be secure. And you know what? They believed us, every single time, they shelled out the bucks and we came back for more, like Bullwinkle the Moose “This time for sure!” We told them the sky was going to fall and it didn’t. We FUDed our way around the business, we were arrogant and we were wrong. This wasn’t about selling our souls to compliance. It was about getting our asses handed to us because we were too busy promoting “the right way to do things” and telling the business no rather then trying to enable them to achieve their goals. Want an example? Show me any reasonable evidence that changing all your users’ passwords every 90 days reduces your risk of being exploited. No wonder they don’t always listen to us. Share:

I had one of those weird moments today where I found an unrelated part of my life unexpectedly influenced by my martial arts background. I was asked to critique a research paper by someone I haven’t worked with before. Without going into details, this particular paper had a fatal flaw. It opened with a negative position, then attempted to justify the positive. It started defensively, and in the process lent credence to the opposing view, as opposed to strengthening the author’s position. In other words, it started with, “here’s what you say about X, and why I think Y” as opposed to, “here is position Y, and why it is correct and X is wrong”. In advising the author, I remembered a lesson I learned when I first started teaching martial arts (traditional taekwondo). I was giving a class on unarmed restraint techniques, which adapted some experiences in physical security to martial arts. They’re similar to police restraint techniques, but adjusted for not having a firearm (police techniques involve protecting the firearm so the bad guy can’t grab it while being restrained) or handcuffs. In the class were two of my instructors, helping me learn to teach. I started by saying something like, “I’m no expert”, and one of them walked off right then and there. At a break he came back and asked if I knew why he had left. He told me to never start a lesson or debate by disqualifying myself as an authority. I essentially told the class they shouldn’t listen to me, because I didn’t know what the frack I was talking about. Self-deprecating humor, applied appropriately, is fine – but never start from a position of weakness. I was trying to be humble, but instead destroyed any reason someone would want to learn from me. Over time I expanded this lesson to “Never start with a negative when your goal is to prove a positive.” Essentially, that places the opposing view ahead of yours and forces you into a defensive position. If I’m writing research to show the value of DLP, I sure as heck better not start it with all the criticisms against DLP. It’s kind of like a fight. If you allow the opponent to control the ring and dictate the pace, your odds of winning are much lower. You can never win on defense alone. One important corollary is that you also shouldn’t expect someone to agree with your position based on your credentials alone. I get seriously annoyed by other analysts/pundits who make pronouncements, yet never back them with evidence. Start from a position of strength (assuming you are the expert), but also lead the reader, with evidence and logic, to reach your conclusions for themselves. Most black belts are crappy martial artists and teachers… if their techniques suck, find another one. Respect still needs to be earned. Enough with the preachy stuff… On to the Summary: Webcasts, Podcasts, Outside Writing, and Conferences Adrian’s Dark Reading article on What IBM’s Acquisition of Guardium Really Means. Rich was quoted on Scottrade regarding Rapid7. Adrian was quoted by Information Security Magazine, PC Magazine, The Boston Globe, Network World, and Dark Reading on IBM’s acquisition of Guardium. Rich was picked up a bunch on the Bit.ly security additions, including this mention at eWeek. Episode 175 of The Network Security Podcast. Favorite Securosis Posts Rich: Adrian on Top Questions Regarding Guardium Acquisition Adrian: Rich’s post on Coming Soon: Bit.ly Adding Real Time Security Scanning for All Links. Mort: Quick Thoughts on the Point of Sale Security Fail Lawsuit Meier: Quick Thoughts on the Point of Sale Security Fail Lawsuit – I’ve personally found a few PoS with card readers wide open at Mom ‘n’ Pop shops. Other Securosis Posts Sign Up To Drop Comment Moderation Cloud Risk Thoughts: Deciding What, When, and How to Move to the Cloud Serious Flaw in Clientless SSL VPNs & Clientless SSL VPN Redux Christmas Wish Guardium Acquired by IBM We Give Thanks M86 Acquires Finjan Microsoft IE Issues Reported Health Net Asked to Explain Disclosure Delay Project Quant for Databases: Project Quant: Database Security Planning, Part 2 (part 3) Project Quant: Database Security Planning (part 2) Project Quant: Database Security Process Framework (part 1) Favorite Outside Posts Rich: What the Black Screen of Death Story Says About Journalism. Serious fail on the part of PrevX – they should be ashamed, and have just destroyed any reason for people to trust them. Adrian: It’s Homeric in length for a blog post, but Hoff’s post The Cloud in Context is a great overview of Cloud computing. Mort: Real Security Is Threat-Centric. Not seeing this change anytime soon, alas. Meier: Used ATM Machines for sale on Craigslist. My new weekend hobby! Pepper: Recommendation: Disable Invisible Flash. Flash cookies are evil. Rich #2: This is a must-read article on how few breaches really get reported. The winning quote: “Of the thousands of cases that we’ve investigated, the public knows about a handful,” said Shawn Henry, assistant director for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Cyber Division. “There are million-dollar cases that nobody knows about.” Top News and Posts Google launches public DNS resolvers. I use EasyDNS for this myself, being a bit paranoid about the power Google is accumulating. But they do have an excellent privacy policy for this service. Researcher busts into Twitter via SSL reneg hole And they said it couldn’t be done! 79 million records exposed in government breaches. We were named one of the top analyst blogs. Two security tools for analyzing relationships in social networks. More on the Rybolov Information Security Management Model. Layer8: BSOFH: the roar of the packets, the smell of the cloud. True stupidity: woman calls in a fake bomb threat to delay a plane. From the TSA blog. Ray Wagner from Gartner on personal security at work. Hackers attempt to take $1.3M from small business account. If you are in security, and don’t understand the ACH system, it’s time to educate yourself. Users aren’t the weakest link if your security sucks. Cool password research from Microsoft. Blog Comment of the Week This week’s best comment comes from David in response to Quick Thoughts on the Point of Sale

Let’s try this again. Obviously I didn’t do a very good job of defining what ‘clientless’ means, creating some confusion. In part, this is because there’s a lot of documentation that confuses ‘thin client’ with ‘clientless’. Cisco actually has a good set of definitions, but in case you don’t want to click through I’ll just reiterate them (with a little added detail): Clientless: All traffic goes through a standard browser SSL session – essentially, a simple proxy for web browsing. A remote client needs only an SSL-enabled web browser to access http – or https web servers on the corporate LAN (or the outside Internet, which is part of the problem we’re talking about). Thin Client: Users must download a small, Java applet for secure access to TCP applications that use static port numbers. UDP is not supported. The client can add security features, and allows tunneling of non-web traffic, such as allowing Outlook to connect to an Exchange server. [Other vendors also use ActiveX.] Client: The SSL VPN client downloads a small client to the remote workstation and allows full, secure access to all the resources on the internal corporate network. It’s a VPN that tunnels all traffic over SSL, as opposed to IPSec or older alternatives. OK, so these definitions are a bit Cisco specific, but they do a good job. By “clientless” we’re stating no Java or ActiveX is in play here. This is key, because both the thin and full client models are immune to the flaw described in the US-CERT VU. The vulnerability is only when using a real, completely clientless, SSL VPN through the browser. Speaking of the CERT VU, I think everyone can agree that it was poorly written. There are vendors in there who have never provided any sort of clientless SSL VPN (i.e., glorified proxy) functionality, so it’s better not to use that list even though most are marked as “Unknown”. At this point if you’ve identified a true clientless SSL VPN in your environment, and are wondering how to mitigate the threat as much as possible, the best thing you can do is to make sure that the device only allows access to specified networks and domains. The more access end users have to external sites, the wider the window of opportunity is open for exploit. That being said, it is still generally a bad idea to use clientless VPNs on public networks, since they always provide a lower barrier against attacks can be provided in a (thin or full) VPN client, especially in light of all the threats to DNS in such an environment. It’s not hard to mess with a user’s DNS on an open (or hostile) network, or perform other man-in-the-middle attacks. Clientless SSL VPNs are ultimately very fancy proxies, and should be carefully in tightly controlled environments. In situations where full control or public access is required there are far more secure solutions, including client-based SSL VPNs (OpenVPN, etc…) and IPsec options. Share:

I’ve been working with the Cloud Security Alliance on the next revision of their official Security Guidance document, and we decided to include a short note on risk in the beginning, to help add some context. Although we are deep in the editorial process, I realized this is the sort of thing I should put out for some public comment, as it’s at the beginning of the document and will help frame how it’s read. With so many different cloud deployment options – including SaaS vs. PaaS vs. IaaS, public vs. private, internal vs. external, and various hybrid scenarios – no list of security controls can cover all circumstances. As with any security area, organizations should adopt a risk-based approach to moving to the cloud and selecting security options. The following is a simple framework to help evaluate initial cloud risks and inform security decisions. This process is not a full risk assessment framework, nor a methodology for determining all your security requirements. It’s a quick mechanism for evaluating your tolerance for moving an asset to various different cloud computing models. There is a full section on risk management in the Guidance, and I’m also working on a data security specific post to mesh with the other cloud data security content I’m developing. Identify the asset for the cloud deployment At the simplest, assets supported by the cloud fall into two general buckets: Data Applications/Functions/Processes We are either moving information into the cloud, or transactions/processing (from partial functions, all the way up to full applications). With cloud computing our data and applications don’t need to reside in the same location, and we can even shift only parts of functions to the cloud. For example, we can host our application and data in our own data center, while still outsourcing a portion of its functionality to the cloud through a Platform as a Service. The first step in evaluating risk for the cloud is to determine exactly what data or function is being considered for the cloud. This should include potential uses of the asset once it moves to the cloud, to account for scope creep. Data and transaction volumes are often higher than expected, and cloud deployments often scale higher than anticipated. Evaluate the asset The next step is to determine how important the data or function is to the organization. You don’t need to perform a detailed valuation exercise unless your organization has a process for that, but you do need at least a rough assessment of how sensitive an asset is, and how important an application/function/process is. For each asset, ask the following questions: How would we be harmed if the asset became public and widely distributed? How would we be harmed if an employee of our cloud provider accessed the asset? How would we be harmed if the process or function was manipulated by an outsider? How would we be harmed if the process or function failed to provide expected results? How would we be harmed if the information/data was unexpectedly changed? How would we be harmed if the asset was unavailable for a period of time? Essentially we are assessing confidentiality, integrity, and availability requirements for the asset; and how those are affected if all or part of the asset is handled in the cloud. It’s very similar to assessing a potential outsourcing project, except that with cloud computing we also have a wider array of deployment options including internal models. Map the asset to potential cloud deployment models Now we should have an understanding of the asset’s importance. Our next step is to determine which deployment models we are comfortable with. Before we start looking at potential providers, we should know if we can accept the risks implicit to the various deployment models – private, public, community, or hybrid and internal vs. external options. For the asset, determine if you are willing to accept the following options: Public. Private, internal/on-premises. Private, external (including dedicated or shared infrastructure). Community; taking into account the hosting location, service provider, and identification of other community members. Hybrid. To effectively evaluate a potential hybrid deployment, you must to have at least a rough architecture of where components, functions, and data will reside. At this stage you should have a good idea of your comfort level for transitioning to the cloud, and which deployment models and locations best fit your security and risk requirements. Evaluate potential cloud service models In this step focus on the degree of control you’ll have at each SPI tier (Software, Platform, or Infrastructure as a Service) to implement any required risk management. If you are evaluating a specific offering, at this point you might switch to a fuller risk assessment. Your focus will be on the degree of control you have to implement risk mitigations in the different SPI tiers. If you already have specific requirements (e.g., for handling of PCI regulated data) you can include them in the evaluation. Sketch the potential data flow If you are evaluating a specific deployment option, map out the data flow between your organization, the cloud service, and any customers/other nodes. While most of these steps have been high-level, before making a final decision it’s absolutely essential to understand whether, and how, data can move in and out of the cloud. If you have yet to decide on a particular offering, you’ll want to sketch out the rough data flow for any options on your acceptable list. This is to insure that as you make final decisions, you’ll be able to identify risk exposure points. Document Conclusions You should now understand the importance of what you are considering moving to the cloud, your risk tolerance (at least at a high level), and which combinations of deployment and service models are acceptable. You’ll also have a rough idea of potential exposure points for sensitive information and operations. These together should give you sufficient context to evaluate any other security controls. For low-value assets you don’t need the same level of security controls and can skip many of