“Compromise” is not a dirty word

1 Comment November 12, 2014 Thom Langford

If it wasn’t for the users we could secure the company much more easily.

They just don’t get it, we are doing this for their benefit.

We often hear statements like this being made, and sometimes even uttered by ourselves. In fact I daresay they are often made by people in very different support industries, not just information security, but it seems that we harbour these feelings more than most.

Effective security is security that is understood, adhered to and respected. Ineffective security is either too lax, or so tight that individuals do their level best to work around it. They are not working around it because they are subversive elements in our organizations, but rather because it is restricting them from getting their day jobs done; it has become a barrier.

Each organization will have it’s own unique requirements, and even within that organization unique requirements will come about. The finance and legal teams are likely to require a different level or type of security around their work than a creative or IT team. If you have ever observed a creative team in full flow you will understand that the concept of a “clear desk” policy is not only laughable but also extremely restrictive to the very fundamentals of their craft. That same policy however will be more easily understood and accepted by the aforementioned finance and legal teams.

So in this example do you enforce an organisation wide clear desk policy? Probably not. It may make sense to have a departmental one, although in some circumstances this would be harder to police. Or you could implement clear desk “zones”, i.e. areas where it is not necessary to have a clear desk because of other measures. The measure may be soft, such as background checks on cleaning staff or hard, such as supervised cleaning staff.

Variations to blanket policies always cost money, but if you ascertain the potential financial value of that loss and compare it to the cost of the measures you can help your business to understand, adhere and respect the measure you are proposing.

This doesn’t just apply to physical security (although it very frequently does!) but also to technical and administrative controls too. Policies have to be very carefully written and reviewed by the various stakeholder of your organisation to ensure the right balance is struck. Technical controls also have to have this balance. Data Loss protection (DLP) is a marvelous technology that when implemented correctly can reap huge rewards and avoided risks, but it is expensive and time consuming to install and run. Who should ultimately make that decision, you, or the business. (clue, it’s not you).

Don’t be afraid to compromise in your dealings with your organisation. If they disagree with your approach, they either get it and feel it is simply the cost of doing business, in which case go off and look at other ways to support them. Or they don’t get it, which means you need to do a better job of convincing them of the risk in which case, go off and look at other ways of making your point. A good compromise is made when each party respects and aligns to the other parties point of view, not when each party is on fundamentally different sides.

Help your business respect and align to the information security ideals you hold dear, and do the same for theirs and you will always get more effective security.

An open letter to Apple – a change of heart

1 Comment October 30, 2014 Thom Langford

Dear Apple,

I wrote to you back in 2012, deriding your decision to remove the lock lead security hole on your laptops. I may even have been a little rude.

An epiphany of sorts has happened to me at some point over the last few years though, and I think it stemmed from your decision to remove the security hole. Back then, I argued that physical loss of an asset was still bad, even with encryption enabled, because of downtime, replacement costs etc.. It also, I argued, helped to instill a culture of security in people as the physical act of locking their laptop would also remind them of their other security obligations, a constant reminder pif you will.

I was wrong.

The lock lead has been seen as barrier to productivity as our workplaces have changed and our people have become more mobile. People have avoided using them, or evened cursed them because their offices didn’t take the relevant logical step of ensuring there were adequate anchor points to be used. People were moving from one room to another on a regular basis for their meetings, and locking and unlocking their laptop reminded them of how out of touch security was with the realities of daily life.

I even did a back of a napkin calculation; a company with 10,000 laptops would spend (roughly) about $500k USD every three years on lock leads. That same company may experience thefts that could have been prevented by a lock lead that would total less that $10k a year. Financially this no longer makes sense. My inner chimp was scared that laptops would simply be stolen regularly from our offices and if I didn’t do anything about it I would get fired. In fact, decisions like this are costing our companies hundreds of thousands of dollars off the bottom line. So much being a “business enabler”.

So I take it back, all of it, and I want to thank you for setting me on the right path (and saving us all lots of money).

Your sincerely,

Thom “with regret” Langford

Risk, Rubble and Investment

Leave a comment October 16, 2014 Thom Langford

Originally written and posted October 13th 2014 on the InfoSecurity 2014 Blog (and reiterating a pet core message of mine again!).

Risk is a bad thing. Therefore risk needs to be reduced to rubble, or even better to dust and then swept away under the carpet never to be seen again.

This is the attitude that many of us have, and then pass onto our senior leadership when it comes to information security programs. “Invest £10 million and we will buy technology that will make us safe” we have often said in the past. “My blinky boxes will soon find your risks and reduce them to nothing!”. It should be no surprise for so many of our industry therefore that CISO stands for “Career Is So Over”.

What we often fail to appreciate is that the senior leadership and boards of virtually all organizations understand risk far better than us. They deal with financial, legal, HR and international risk on a regular basis, and know how to take advantage of it to their benefit. Their advisors in the various fields know how to communicate their unit risks in a way that makes sense to business, be it financial, reputational or whatever else makes sense in their industry. The leadership do not require specialist knowledge of these areas because the risk is being translated into terms they understand.

The information security industry however still often talks in terms of “APT’s”, “DLP”, “TLS” and other obscure TLA’s* while trying to explain why more money is needed to “secure all the things”. What is the benefit to the business? What is the real risk in terms everyone can understand? Translating these technical issues and risks into business risks has always been a challenge and has often resulted in information security being perceived as the “expensive part of IT” asking for more money with little positive influence to the business.

If you work in a brewery, the ultimate goal of everyone who works there should be to sell more beer. If you work for Oxfam, the ultimate goal is to get aid to those that need it as quickly, effectively and efficiently as possible. If you work in a publicly listed company, the ultimate goal is to make more money for the shareholders. The role of information security within any organization is not exempt from this; security doesn’t get a special pass because it is, well, security. The role of the information security function is to support the ultimate goal of the organization it operates in.

Understand what your ultimate goal is. Focus your strategy on ensuring you are helping meet that goal. Be willing to compromise in certain areas of security if it helps meet that goal. Ensure you senior leadership understand the risks (in their language, not yours) involved in those compromises. if you don’t get what you want then move onto the next piece of work that supports your ultimate goals (or be prepared to fight harder and more lucidly for your original cause).

If it was that easy you wouldn’t be reading this, but surely it is easier than the ongoing battle for investment that we ultimately never win anyway?

*Three Letter Acronyms (surely you know that?)

Note: Many of you know I was up for the “Personal Contribution to IT Security” Award at the recent Computing Security Awards. I was (un)fortunately Runner Up in this category, but thank you again to all of you who not only may have voted for me but also nominated me in the first place. It was a wonderful evening with good friends from my work and InfoSec life, and a good excuse to dress up in my best party frock. Here’s to next year!

What My Tailor Taught Me About Value

Leave a comment September 9, 2014 Thom Langford

Do you really understand the value of the data in your organisation? Some of it is fairly straightforwards, such as personally identifiable information (PII) and/or credit card information ($188 USD per record in direct and indirect costs to the organisation for every record lost was the figure I last heard and used).

What about your intellectual property though? Or client RFP’s and and pre-sales work left on the train? Salary information? Internal network architecture diagrams? Sometimes, when this information is lost it is difficult to ascertain its value, impact to you and your organisation and therefore the scale of your response.

I was reminded of this value quandary while I was having a second fitting on a suit I was having made at the shop of Charlie Allen in Islington. Before anyone makes a judgement on my salary, the suit was a very welcome prize from my time at the InfoSecurity show in April, from the good folks at Sestus. I have had suits made before, normally in India, but this was my first suit to be made wholly in England and knew there would be a difference in price if i were to pay for it myself. After the fitting I asked to be measured up for some new shirts; I thought I would treat myself and take advantage of the time in Charlie’s studio. I checked the price of £200 with a minimum order of three. Good value I thought, three shirts for £200. It was only after the fabric selection, design, measurements etc the invoice came… The shirts were £200 each, a total of £600. I very nearly handed over my credit card simply to avoid the humiliation of admitting my mistake and exposing myself as someone who quite obviously shops in Top Man.

Blustering my apologies, I mentioned something about obviously not understanding the true value of these shirts, asked for the quote to be put on file for “later” (i.e. when I win the lottery) and made a quick exit. However, as I walked back to the office I realised that it was obviously going to be £200 each; a good quality short from Thomas Pink off the peg costs between £80 and £100 each, therefore how can three made to measure shirts cost £200? I had woefully underestimated the value of something that was actually quite obvious in hindsight.

So what? Understanding your information assets, and their value is a table stakes exercise. Doing this will allow you to do two things;

Understand the total value of your assets and use the figure to work out what kind of exposure your organisation is likely to experience in case of a breach.
Subsequently use this information to build a realistic business case for protective and preventative measures to avoid that breach in the first place.
Ensure the scale of your response when those assets are compromised is commensurate to their value.

There are plenty of good resources to help guide you on this, but one of the most important pieces of the puzzle is to understand the financial value of your assets in the first place, and certainly not after a breach.

Woof Woof, Bark Bark (or how to not support security in your organization).

1 Comment August 18, 2014 Thom Langford

I recieved the email below from a colleague at work. At first glance it is funny, the chief security officer being represented by a dog… Hilarious! Of course security is just about being able to bark at people and occasionally bite them. This role isn’t about corporate responsibility or even enterprise risk management, it is about wagging your tail and barking at people and getting them to do things because you have barked it so.

I’m having second thoughts about my growth plan if this is where it leads to.

If I am honest, I am guilty of this too. I have often described myself as an “overpaid security guard” to people who haven’t a clue about information security, and they nod knowingly at me, thinking they understand InfoSec policy, enterprise risk and even DLP.

The above example of belittling the security function of an organisation has steeled me into action; if I can’t explain the role of a CISO/CSO to my Mother, then I need to re-evaluate what it is I am doing and the impact it has on the business. It also annoys me that the role of CISO is so easily belittled. I don’t think I have ever seen a CFO role boiled down to an image of a coffee bean, or even the CIO image reduced to a mouse or keyboard. What makes this worse is that this product offers “the highest security for your files in the cloud” and yet this is how seriously they take security.

A fundamental part of this is down to us as CISO’s and security people to ensure we don’t belittle ourselves to ingratiate ourselves. It is extremely difficult for us to ensure we are valued and respected in our organisations as it is, and sometimes the somewhat subservient/comedic route feels easiest. This is not the best way; it is the longest and hardest route to acceptance and understanding because the role is by it’s nature seen as a frivolity and a hilarious side act.

(We should note however that there is a place for humour in security, and if used correctly it is extremely effective. The point I am making above is that security as a serious subject should not be presented as a humourous aside.)

I recall a situation where I noticed someone working at a hot desk who had no visible identification. I asked around if anyone knew who the individual was, and nobody did. As I approached the individual I was met with a chorus of “get him Thom” and “tackle him mate!” etc. with much hilarity ensuing. None of it was meant meanly of course, but it was synonymous with the simplistic attitude of security. If any of the people who had spoken those words had any real idea of the security implications of having someone in their office without any idea of who they are, then their response may have been a bit more serious. The best part is of course that I had plainly failed in my security education and awareness with this group of people.

We are not guard dogs. We are not security guards (although they are an important part of the security function). We are not bouncers. We are not doing security for theatrical effect.

We are here to protect your revenue, your reputation and your bonus payouts. We are here to ensure we maintain good relationships with our clients, and allow our organisations to take on greater risk and therefore reap greater reward. We are here to help inform the business of security risk and advise as required.

What’s so funny in that?

Note: I have been extremely quiet on here these last few months; my role has changed dramatically at work requiring more travel and less time for the frivolous acts of blogging. Combine that with a busy schedule with Host Unknown and my other info sec commitments I have neglected this blog site somewhat. Hopefully this post sees me back in the saddle again, and you can always catch up with me on Twitter. Oh, and the holiday was good too!