Israeli Software

Are we in the same valley of death that held  content management applications in the 90s?  Where companies spent 6-7 figures on content management from companies like Vignette and over 50% of the projects never got off the ground?

Tell me what you think in this Linked In poll – DLP success or failure

Reading through the trade press, DLP vendor marketing collateral and various forums on information security,  the conventional wisdom is that the key threat to an organization is trusted insiders. This is arguable – since it depends on your organization, the size of the business and type of operation.   However -

This is certainly true at a national security level where trusted insiders that committed espionage have caused considerable damage.  MITRE Corporation – Detecting Insider Threat Behavior

There are three core and interrelated problem in modern data security:

You may say – fine, let’s spend more time observing employee behavior and educate supervisors for tell-tale signs of change that may indicate impending involvement in a crime.

However – malicious outsiders (criminals, competitors, terrorists…) that may exploit employees in order to obtain confidential data is just another vulnerability in a whole line of business vulnerabilities.  Any vulnerability must be considered within the context of a threat model – the organization has assets that are damaged by threats that exploit vulnerabilities that are mitigated by countermeasures.   The organization needs to think literally  outside the box and at least attempt to identify new threats and vulnerabilities.

The issue is not that employees can be bought or manipulated, the issue is that government and other hierarchical organizations use a fixed system of security controls.  In reducing the organization’s security to passive executives of defense rules in their procedures and firewalls, we ignore the extreme ways in which attack patterns change over time. Any control policy that is presumed optimal today is likely to be obsolete tomorrow.  It is a fair assumption that an organization that doesn’t change data security procedures frequently – will provide an insider with  enough means, opportunity and social connectivity to game the system and once he or she has motivation – you have a crime.

Learning about change and changing your security systems must be at the heart of day-to-day security management.

A talk I give recently at one of our Thursday online workshops on data security

Sophos has announced that they will soon include endpoint data loss prevention functionality in their anti-virus software. Developed in-house, Sophos will have an independent offering – unlike Websense, RSA, Symantec, Trend Micro and McAfee (who all purchased DLP technology) and have integrated it into their product lines with various levels of success (or not).

The Sophos move to include agent DLP functionality for free is a breath of fresh air in a data security industry long known for long-winded, heavy-handed, clumsy and frequently amateurish attempts at exploiting the waves of data breaches into a franchise that would drive sales of products purchased from visionary DLP startups.

Sophos is known to be independent and may not be inclined to partner with other pure-play  data security vendors like the network DLP company – Fidelis Security Systems. They may not have to partner if the play works well.

Beyond strategic speculation, the Sophos move should give customers a very good reason to ask why they should spend $80-150 for a Verdasys Digital Guardian agent, or $40-80 for  McAfee agent DLP software.

If Sophos can do a solid job on detecting and preventing loss of digital assets such as credit cards or sensitive Microsoft Office files at the point of use, then free looks like an awfully good value proposition.

With the recent deal that Trend Micro did at Israel Railroads for almost free ($10/seat) for 2500 seats (Trend can’t be making money on that transaction); but free or almost-free is not a bad penetration strategy if it gets your agent on every desktop in the enterprise and you get footprint and recurring service revenue for anti-virus.

I know I will be taking a close look when the software is released.

The Burton Group have released the results of their research that concludes that Symantec (Vontu), RSA (Tablus) and Websense (Port Authority) are the leading DLP vendors.

Burton’s choice is indicative of the Americanization of the information security space, where government compliance regulation and large security vendor marketing agendas appear to drive US customer security decisions. (Note that compliance is not equivalent to security  for several fundamental reasons as I noted in my post Compliance is the new security standard)

Outside the US, the story is a bit different.

We hardly encounter RSA in EMEA as a DLP solution – RSA Security have the largest development group dedicated to data loss prevention and that counted for a lot in the Burton study. I’m not sure why. Great software today is usually written by small teams, I would not equate number of programmers with quality of software.

I recently met Bill Nagel from Forrester and he told me that in a seminar that Forrester ran recently (September 09) in Holland – none of the CISO’s at the seminar were planning a DLP implementation this year and only 20% were considering a DLP implementation in 2010.

Clients I speak with in EMEA are less interested in enterprise information protection (although the advantages are patently clear, the technology is patently not there yet…) and more interested in exploring tactical solutions like DLP “Lite” – monitoring SMTP and HTTP channels for data security violations and using that information to enforce business process and improve employee behavior.

Read more…

Yesterday, I gave a talk at our Thursday security Webinar about data security for SMB (small to mid-sized businesses).

I’ve been thinking about DLP solutions for SMB for a couple of years now; the market didn’t seem mature or perhaps SMB customer awareness was low, but with the continued wave of data security breaches, everyone is aware.  The DLP vendors like Verdasys, Fidelis and Vontu (now Symantec) have focused traditionally on Global 1000 companies, but Infowatch is now preparing a product specifically tailored for the SMB market business requirements and pocket.  There are about 10 million SMBs in the world so this would be appear to be a fertile market for both attackers and defenders.

Read more…

A recent Ponemon survey found 71% of companies don’t consider PCI as strategic though 79% had experienced a breach. Are these companies assuming that a data security breach is cheaper than the security?

How should we understand the Ponemon survey.  Is PCI DSS a failure in the eyes of US companies?

Let’s put aside the technical weaknesses, political connotations and commercial aspects of the PCI DSS certification franchise for a second.

Consider two central principles of security – cost of damage and goodness of fit of countermeasures

a) The cost of a data security breach versus the cost of the security countermeasures IS a bona-fide business question. If the cost of PCI certification is going to be 1M for your business and your current Value at Risk is only 100k – then PCI certification is not only not strategic, it is a bad business decision.

b) Common sense says that your security countermeasures should fit your business not a third-party checklist designed by a committee and obsolete by the time it was published.

The fact the Ponemon study shows that 71% of businesses surveyed don’t see PCI as strategic is an indication that 71% have this modicum of common sense. The other 29% are either naive, ignorant or work for a security product vendor.

Common sense is a necessary but not sufficient condition
If you want to satisfy the two principles you have to prove 2 hypotheses:
Data loss is currently happening.

• What data types and volumes of data leave the network?
• Who is sending sensitive information out of the company?
• Where is the data going?
• What network protocols have the most events?
• What are the current violations of company AUP?

A cost effective solution exists that reduces risk to acceptable levels.

• What keeps you awake at night?
• Value of information assets on PCs, servers & mobile devices?
• What is the value at risk?
• Are security controls supporting the information behavior you want (sensitive assets stay inside, public assets flow freely, controlled assets flow quickly)
• How much do your current security controls cost?
• How do you compare with other companies in your industry?
• How would risk change if you added, modified or dropped security controls?

If PCI is a failure, it is  not because it doesn’t prevent credit card theft (there is no such animal as a perfect set of countermeasures) but PCI is a failure because it does not force a business to use it’s common sense and ask these practical, common-sense business questions

Danny Lieberman
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Richard Stiennon is a well known and respected IT analyst – he has a blog called IT Harvest.

A recent post had to do with Trusted insider threats.Despite the length of the article, I believe that the article has a number of fundamental flaws:

• Overestimating  the value of identity and access management in mitigating trusted insider threats
• Lacking  empirical data to support the claim that “the insider threat actually outweighs the threats from cyber criminals, hackers and the malware”
• Missing a basic management issue of accountability

The role of identity and access management in preventing trusted insider security violations

Stiennon writes that IAM (Identity and access management) “is the single most valuable defense you have against the insider threat.”. I beg to disagree – and I will attempt to explain by using the model of a crime.

Like any other crime, in order to steal or disclose assets, a person needs a combination of means, opportunity, and intent

IAM provides the means for the trusted insider. Companies issue users legitimate user accounts with the rights to access certain data, applications, databases and file services. Insiders have knowledge of how the system works, the business processes, the company culture and how people interact. They know who manages the rights management systems and who grants systems permissions. With the right knowledge and social connections, means can be obtained even if they were not originally granted by design in the IAM system.

A trusted insider is an employee who is motivated by self-interest, influenced by personal preferences, social context, corporate culture and her aversion to risk taking compared with the premium gained by stealing data.   There is little in the traditional access control model to mitigate any of these threats once access has been granted.

In 100 percent of the cases we investigated in our data security practice – the client’s permissions systems were working properly, the trusted insiders involved all had been granted appropriate rights, they did not perform any elevation of privilege exploits – they took data that they had appropriate access to. Directors of new product development, system managers, sales managers – each and every one that took and/or abused data did so with appropriate permissions.

Lacking empirical data

“While often overlooked, the insider threat actually outweighs the threats from cyber criminals, hackers and the random malware that most organizations concentrate on”

Stiennon doesn’t bring any evidence for this populistic statement. As a research analyst, I would expect some independent numbers behind the statement. Au contraire Richard – according to our data security practice of over 5 years in Europe and the Middle East (and according to the Verizon Business report, the past 2 years),  insider events are a rare, high-impact event that are a complex interplay of agents ( criminals, competitors, business partners) and vulnerabilities (human and application software).

Missing a basic management issue of accountability
Stiennon talks about HR and IT. The truth is that there is a fundamental management disconnect between HR and IT (HR hires but has no accountability when an employee is involved in a security breach and gets fired) IT has some of the data and almost never shares it with HR. I suggest higher levels of HR accountability and involvement in data security together with their audit, IT and information security management colleagues.

I wrote about the great IT-management divide last year in my post on the 7th anniversary of the Al Queda attack on the US

I think fragmentation of knowledge is a root cause of data breaches.

It’s almost a cliche to say that the  security and compliance industry has done a poor job in preventing data breaches of over 245 million personal records in the past 5 years.

It is apparent that government regulation is  ineffective in preventing identity theft and major data loss events.

Given: direct data security countermeasures go a long way;  data loss prevention and network surveillance work well inside a  feedback loop to improve security of systems, increase employee awareness and support management accountability.

However: I believe that even if every business deployed Fidelis XPS Extrusion Prevention system or Verdays Digital Guardian or Websense Data Security suite – we would still have major data loss events.

This is because a major data loss event has three characteristics:

1.Appears as a complete surprise to the organization
2.Has a major impact to the point of maiming or destroying the company
3.Event, after it has appeared, is ‘explained’ by human hindsight.

The root cause of the surprise is, in most cases, a lack of knowledge – not knowing what is the current range of data security threat scenarios in the wild or not even knowing what are the top 10 in your type of business.

The root cause of the lack of knowledge is fragmentation of knowledge.

Every business from SME to Global 2000 deals with security issues and amass their own best practices and knowledge base of how to protect their information.  But, the knowledge is fragmented, since business organizations don’t share their loss data, and the dozens or maybe hundreds of vendor web sites that do disclose and categorize attacks don’t provide the business context of a loss event.

Fragmentation leads to waste and duplication, as well as frustrating, expensive and sometimes dangerous experiences for companies facing a data loss event.

So what’s the solution?

With our clients, we see growing evidence that the more organized a company is with their security operation – having a single security organization responsible for digital assets, physical security, permissions management and compliance – the better security they deliver. What’s more, they may be able to reduce value at risk at lower costs due to higher levels of competence, knowledge and economy of scale.

The concept of sharing best practices  and  aggregating support so that companies of all sizes can access knowledge and support resources is not new, it’s a common theme in  industrial safety and Free Open Source worlds – to name two. I imagine that there are a few more examples I am not familiar with.

But what’s in it for security professionals? In addition to the satisfaction and prestige in helping colleagues, how about learning from the biggest and best practioners in the world; having access to resources to improve your own systems and procedures and having the ability to analyze the history of a data loss event from disclosure to analysis to remediation? How about having peers with a common goal of providing the best security for customers?

It’s time for policymakers and large commercial organizations to support organized security knowledge sharing systems, starting with compensation to employees and independent consultants that rewards high-quality, coordinated, customer-centric security  across the full continuum of security, not just point technology solutions or professional regulatory services. And it’s time for firms to recognize that sharing some data may be worth the benefits to them and their customers.

That’s my opinion. I’m Danny Lieberman.

I recently saw an article on Computerweekly that asks – “Is data loss prevention possible?”

I think that a more relevant question is “Is information protection possible?”

The  author correctly identifies that it’s easier to access data (and leak it) than to modify or delete data.  However, the notion that data is out of control in the corporate world is an over-reaction and does a mis-justice to most businesses.

Data is out of control in the corporate world…I think… the only way that we can have influence on the likelihood of (data loss) occuring is through a couple of fundamental controls, namely

1. Reduce and limit access to data

2. Control the “copyability” of data

Companies already manage access and control “copyability”. This is not new, nor is it effective against the threat of a major data loss event.

Organizations from SME and up to Global 2000 use Microsoft networks based on Active Directory with planned (not always well executed) group policies and permissions management.  Controlling access and copyability in the service of business objectives is precisely the objective of these systems.

If you need finer-grained copy protection – there are dozens of endpoint security products – from Checkpoint, Mcafee and Symantec to Controlguard.

If you need finer-grained rights management, there are products like Microsoft DRM and Oracle IRM. Personally, I don’t think that DRM is effective for enterprise information protection. DRM changes the user experience and depends on user behavior, it can be broken and or bypassed and DRM systems are difficult to deploy on a large scale because of the above constraints.

However – permissions and rights access management and lately, removable device management have not prevented major data loss events like Heartland or Hannaford. The reason for this is that once rights are granted – the user is trusted and can move the data anywhere he  or she wants.

We need information protection,  not copy protection; and in a way and at a cost that is a good fit for the business.

Information protection is possible by taking a value-based approach that integrates with the business operation.   Analyze your business requirements and threat scenarios – and only then – consider data loss prevention solutions like  enterprise information protection from Verdasys, agent DLP from Mcafee or a gateway DLP solution from  Fidelis Security.