Why do we put brakes on cars? Perhaps not for the reason you think.

Leave a comment February 23, 2015 Thom Langford

I have never liked the analogy;

Why do we put brakes on cars? So we can go faster. Therefore we put security controls in place so we can do riskier things.

I mean, I get it, the analogy makes sense, but like many analogies, if we are not careful they are likely to become a little too one dimensional. We also have brakes on cars to slow down for traffic lights, to ensure we don’t go too fast and run into the back of the car in front, and also to stop the car quickly to avoid someone crashing into us. I am sure with a squeeze and a shove we could fit these analogies into an infosec analogy, but why bother?

I was reminded of this particular analogy and why I don’t like it this morning as I read my paper. The headline really resonated with me;

‘Living rooms’ on wheels put drivers at risk

The Times, Monday 23rd February 2015

The article discusses how the increase in technology in cars has actually led to an increase accidents in recent years. The anti-lock brakes, stability control etc. is creating complacency amongst users, and putting them and others at risk.

If we are not careful we are shifting towards this in our industry. It is of course a good thing to focus on secure coding practises, OWASP, secure by design etc., because that is as important as a seat belt and an air bag in a car (oops, see how easy it is?!), but if we try and put everything into those particular controls, we are abdicating responsibility away from the user more and more. By creating an insulated and isolated environment in which they operate there is no positive/negative feedback loop, no opportunity to learn from mistakes, near misses or even dumb good luck. They quite literally are on their own being guided only by what their immediate vicinity is reporting to them. Another quote;

They are as uninvolved in the process as they can possibly be

This could be describing our users and clients who we are removing more and more responsibility from when it comes to making sensible, thought out decisions about basic security. We are removing their perceived responsibilities as they say to themselves “if the system is letting me do this, it must be alright” as they download malware specifically designed to undermine so called built in security. (Actually the quote is from Peter Rodger, chief examiner for the institute of Advanced Motorists commenting on cars being turned into living rooms.)

Let us continue to understand how mature our security development framework is, let’s observe the OWASP top ten, but let’s also continue to establish clear guidelines, education and expectations of our people at the same time. If we don’t, we may be congratulating ourselves little too early for running a good security programme.

If we do that, we risk going back over a century in time, and putting the cart before the horse, let alone putting better brakes on the car.

(If you want good analogies however, that can help your people truly understand the information security environment they are operating in, head over to the The Analogies Project.)

Securi-Tay IV

I will be spending the end of week with the Abertay University Ethical Hackers at their Annual Securi-Tay conference in Dundee. It’s a great conference so if you are at a loose end for Friday and in the area make sure you rock up and say hello to the lovely folks up there!

Are you one of “them”? Damaging your information security efforts without even knowing it

Leave a comment February 2, 2015 Thom Langford

It was ten to six in the morning, and I was on the station platform waiting for my train to arrive to take me to London. As I walked past two people who were talking, one of them was earnestly telling the other about problems in his office that were caused by “them”:

they’ve changed the heating in the office to make it more consistent apparently but what they don’t realise is that it is sending us all to sleep. They just don’t get it, they’re idiots, and it’s a waste of money

It seems the faceless bureaucrats and management just don’t get it at this gentleman’s place of work and are doing everything they can to hinder the company’s ability to work effectively! But scratch a bit deeper and you may see a slightly different story of trying to deal with complaints from parts of the building that are too cold, using antiquated heating systems that don’t balance heat well the further from the heat source they are, or even just trying to make everyone feel more comfortable in the cold winter months.

The unfortunate impact of their actions though is that productivity has dropped in some areas, and the impression of the team and people behind it has dramatically reduced.

I have regularly stressed the importance of information security ultimately contributing to the success of the business, allowing it to sell more beer if you will, but that is only possible if you understand the business, collaborate with the people on the ground, and align your efforts to their goals. By treating risks in isolated parts of the business without looking at the wider impacts you run the risk of overheating other parts of the business. What initial makes sense in one place does not make sense in another, and the quick win you thought you had really turns out to require a far more nuanced approach.

If what you are doing is simply unavoidable and impacts to the other parts of the business will be felt, then collaboration and communication is vital. Explaining the complaints, challenges, risks etc. and allowing them to voice their feedback is important to ensure people remain bought into your plans. Who knows, you may actually get some better ideas from them that you hadn’t even considered. This approach requires nerves of steel and the skin of a rhino though, as many will see the opportunity to take a swipe at you, but seeing the process through is far more effective in the long term.

Asking for feedback afterwards, chatting to individuals and leadership about what they think about what you have done, and putting that feedback to work to improve your next iteration of the programme all help bring people on side and improve the effectiveness of your information security stance.

Once you are seen to be working in the long term interests of the company and the people who work there, decisions you take and implement will be seen in that wider context, and not just as the actions of someone just “doing their job” and being one of… them.

“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.

Getting Ahead in Information Security

Leave a comment November 3, 2014 Thom Langford

(Originally Posted on the VIA Resources Blog here.)

Advancing your career in information security, let alone getting a job in it in the first place is challenging and sometimes overwhelming at best. It can often feel like an exclusive club that is hard to break into, and the “elder statesmen” of the community distant and aloof. With these kind of barriers where do you even start to try and network and make contact with people who could not only progress your career but also start it?
The real answer at first appears flippant; if you want to be a part of a community you need to engage with it and join in. Obviously, that is harder than it seems, so here are three ways you can help yourself to getting ahead in Information Security:

1. Start attending the many free events that are held every week.
There are plenty of these around, you just have to look for them, such as (ISC)2 and ISACA events, plenty of sponsor driven events and community driven events. Europe’s largest information security event, Infosecurity Europe is a free three day event which not only gives you access to all of the vendors out there, but also an excellent education programme. Traditionally on the same week there is also BSides London, a free one days event, although this one is ticketed. Not in London? Then consider BSides Manchester, SteelCon and SecuriTay. Seek them out and you will find them. Not in the UK, then Google is your friend.

2. Attend some of the bigger, paid for conferences.
Obviously this is not always easy, especially given the price of the tickets and the whole reason you are reading this is that you need a job! All of these conferences require a huge amount of effort and willpower to get them to run smoothly on the day, and many of them require… volunteers. 44CON has one of the best volunteer crew programmes I have come across, with plenty of perks available. By volunteering for these events you are not only showing yourself to be a stand-up member of the community, willing to help out and contribute, but you will also get unprecedented access to the attendees, speakers and organisers. They are yours for the networking!

3. Contribute to the community.
This could be anything from volunteering (above), blogging, tweeting, offering to speak, writing articles for the various community news outlets, in fact anything that gets your name out there. Submit in the variety of Call for Papers (CfP) and you normally get a free ticket, and sometimes travel expenses paid too. Depending upon your grammatical and public speaking skills, this could be very tough but who said progressing your career was easy? Being able to articulate your personal opinions on the often very contentious issues in the industry is an excellent way of improving your ability to assimilate, process and form your own opinions and views for the benefit of the community. What better way of getting known in the industry?

All of the above require time dedication and effort, but since this is your career we are talking about, are these too much to ask?

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