Tag: ISO/IEC 27001

Nobody wants to pay for security, including security companies

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nobody-wants-pay-security-including-companies-beno%C3%AEt-h-dicaire

In theory, consumers and businesses could punish Symantec for these
oversights by contracting with other security vendors. In practice, there’s
no guarantee that products from other vendors are well-secured, either
— and there is no clearway to determine how secure a given security
product actually is.

Too many firms take an “appliance” or “product” (aka ‘technology”) approach to security. There’s a saying that’s been attributed to many security specialists over the years but is quite true:

If you think technology can solve your security problems,
then you don’t understand the problems and you don’t
understand the technology.

Its still true today. Continue reading Nobody wants to pay for security, including security companies

Confusion over Physical Assets, Information Assets – Part Two

So I need to compile a list of ALL assets, information or otherwise,

NO!
That leads to tables and chairs and powerbars.

OK so you can’t work without those, but that’s not what I meant.

InfoAssetsPhysical assets are only relevant in so far as they part of information processing. You should not start from those, you should start from the information and look at how the business processes make use of it.  Don’t confuse you DR/BC plan with your core ISMS statements.  ISO Standard 22301 addresses that.

This is, ultimately, about the business processes. Continue reading Confusion over Physical Assets, Information Assets – Part Two

Does ISO 27001 compliance need a data leakage prevention policy?

On one of the ISO-27000 lists I subscribe to I commented that one should have a policy to determine the need for and the criteria for choosing a Data Loss Prevention mechanism.

The DLP Logo

I get criticised occasionally for long and detailed posts that some readers complain treat them like beginners, but sadly if I don’t I get comments such as this in reply

 Anton
  Data Loss is something you prevent; you enforce controls to prevent data
  leakage, DLP can be a programme, but , I find very difficult to support
  with a policy.

Does one have visions of chasing escaping data over the net with a three-ring binder labelled “Policy”?

Let me try again.

Fly Away

Policy comes first.
Without policy giving direction, purpose and justification, supplying the basis for measurement, quality and applicability (never mind issues such as configuration) then you are working on an ad-hoc basis. Continue reading Does ISO 27001 compliance need a data leakage prevention policy?

Information Gathering and Risk Assessment

On the ISO2700 forum one user gave a long description of his information gathering process but expressed frustration over what to do with it all all, the assets, the threats and so forth, and trying to make it into a risk assessment.

It was easy for the more experienced of us to see what he was missing.

He was missing something very important — a RISK MODEL
The model determines what you look for and how it is relevant.

Continue reading Information Gathering and Risk Assessment

How much Risk Assessment is needed?

In many of the InfoSec forums I subscribe to people regularly as  the “How long is a piece of string” question:

How extensive a risk assessment is required?

It’s a perfectly valid question we all have faced, along with the “where do I begin” class of questions.

The ISO-27001 standard lays down some necessities, such as your asset register, but it doesn’t tell you the detail necessary. You can choose to say “desktop PCs” as a class without addressing each one, or even addressing the different model. You can say “data centre” without having to enumerate every single component therein.

At first. Continue reading How much Risk Assessment is needed?

How to build an asset inventory for 27001

How do you know WHAT assets are  to be included in the ISO-27K Asset Inventory?

SOMF Asset Patterns

This question and variants of the “What are assets [for ISO27K]?” comes up often and has seen much discussion on the various InfoSec forums I subscribe to.

Perhaps some ITIL influence is need.  Or perhaps not since that might be too reductionist.

The important thing to note here is that the POV of the accountants/book-keepers is not the same as the ISO27K one. To them, an asset is something that was purchased and either depreciates in value, according to the rules of the tax authority you operate under, or appreciates in value (perhaps) according to the market, such as land and buildings.

Here in Canada, computer hardware and software depreciates PDQ under this scheme, so that the essential software on which you company depends is deemed worthless by the accountants. Their view is that depreciable assets should be replaced when they reach the end of their accounting-life. Your departmental budget may say different.

Many of the ISO27K Assets are things the accountants don’t see: data, processes, relationships, know-how, documentation. Continue reading How to build an asset inventory for 27001

Control objectives – Why they are important

http://blog.iso27001standard.com/2012/04/10/iso-27001-control-objectives-why-are-they-important/

Let us leave aside the poor blog layout, Dejan’s picture ‘above the fold’ taking up to much screen real estate. In actuality he’s not that ego-driven.

What’s important in this article is the issue of making OBJECTIVES clear and and communicating (i.e. putting them in your Statement of Objective, what ISO27K calls the SoA) and keeping them up to date.

Dejan Kosutic uses ISO27K to make the point that there are high level objectives, what might be called strategy[1], and the low level objectives[2]. Call that the tactical or the operational level. Differentiating between the two is important. They should not be confused. The high level, the POLICY OBJECTIVES should be the driver.

Yes there may be a lot of fiddly-bits of technology and the need for the geeks to operate it at the lower level. And if you don’t get the lower level right to an adequate degree, you are not meeting the higher objectives. Continue reading Control objectives – Why they are important

Help on ISO-27000 SoA

This kind of question keeps coming up, many people are unclear about the Statement of Applicability on ISO-27000.
The  SoA should outline the measures to be taken in order to reduce risks such as those mentioned in Annex A of the standard. These are based on ‘Controls’.

But if you are using closed-source products such as those from Microsoft, are you giving up control?  Things like validation checks and integrity controls are are ‘internal’.

Well, its a bit of a word-play.

  • SoA contains exclusions on controls that are not applicable because the organization doesn’t deal with these problems (ie ecommerce)
  •  SoA contains exclusions on controls that pose a threat (and risks arise) but cannot be helped (ie A.12.2 Correct processing in applications) and no measures can be taken to reduce these risks.

With this, a record must be present in risk assessments, stating that the risk (even if it is above minimum accepted risk level) is accepted

IBM CIO Report: Key Findings

The key to the SOA is SCOPE. Continue reading Help on ISO-27000 SoA

About ISO 27001 Risk Statement and Controls

On the ISO27000 Forum list, someone asked:

I’m looking for Risk statement for each ISO 27k control; meaning
“what is the risk of not implementing a control”.

That’s a very ingenious way of looking at it!

One way of formulating the risk statement is from the control
objective mentioned in the standard.
Is there any other way out ?

Ingenious aside, I’d be very careful with an approach like this.

Risks and controlsare not, should not, be 1:1. Continue reading About ISO 27001 Risk Statement and Controls

Which Risk Framework to Use: FAIR, FRAP, OCTAVE, SABSA …

What framework would you use to provide for quantitative or qualitative risk analysis at both the micro and macro level?  I’m asking about a true risk assessment framework not merely a checklist.


Yes, this is a bit of a META-Question. But then its Sunday, a day for contemplation.

When does something like these stop being a check-list and become a framework?

COBIT is very clearly a framework, but not for risk analysis and even the section on risk analysis fits in to a business model rather than a technology model.

ISO-27K is arguably more technology (or at least InfoSec) focused that COBIT, but again risk analysis is only part of what its about. ISO-27K calls itself a standard[1] but in reality its a framework.

The message that these two frameworks send about risk analysis is

Context is Everything

(You expected me to say that, didn’t you?)

I’m not sure any RA method works at layer 8 or above. We all know that managers can read our reports and recommendations and ignore them. Or perhaps not read them, since being aware of the risk makes them liable.

Ah. Good point.
On LinkedIn there was a thread asking why banks seem to ignore risk analysis .. presumably because their doing so has brought us to the international financial crisis we’re in (though I don’t think its that simple).

The trouble is that RA is a bit of a ‘hypothetical’ exercise. Continue reading Which Risk Framework to Use: FAIR, FRAP, OCTAVE, SABSA …

All Threats? All Vulnerabilities? All Assets?

One list I subscribe I saw this outrageous statement:

ISO 27001 requires that you take account of all the relevant threats
(and vulnerabilities) to every asset – that means that you have to
consider whether every threat from your list is related to each of
your assets.

“All”? “Every”?
I certainly hope not!
Unless you have a rule as to where to stop those lists – vectors that you are going to multiply – are going to become indefinitely large if not infinite. Its a problem in set theory to do with enumberability.

See
http://infosecblog.antonaylward.com/2010/05/19/the-classical-risk-equation/
for a more complete discussion of this aspect of ‘risk’.

See
http://www.bloginfosec.com/2010/08/23/why-the-risk-threats-x-vulnerabilities-x-impact-formula-is-mathematical-nonsense/
in which Jeff Lowder has a discussion of the “utility value” approach to controls

Because its the controls and their effectiveness that really count. Continue reading All Threats? All Vulnerabilities? All Assets?

“Impact” is not a Metric

I never like to see the term ‘impact’.
Its not a metric.

I discuss how length, temperature, weight, are metrics whereas speed, acceleration, entropy are derived values. In the same sense, ‘impact’ is a derived value – “the cost of the harm to an asset”. The value of an asset can be treated as a primary metric, but how much it is “impacted” is a derived value.

This is the same kind of sloppy thinking, the same failure to identify tangible metrics as we see when people treating ‘risk’ as if it were something tangible, never mind a metric! Continue reading “Impact” is not a Metric

Throwing in the towel

I was saddened to hear of an InfoSec colleague who met with overwhelming frustration at work:

After two years of dealing with such nonsense, I was forced to resign
within two months of discovering a serious security issue which possibly
jeopardized overseas operations. I have since found out that they are
selling the company and didn’t want any who knew the problems around.

Hmm.
Thank you.
Speaking as an auditor who occasionally does “due diligence” with respect to take-overs, you’ve just shown another use for LinkedIn – contacting ex-employees to find out about such problems.

Certainly a lot of employees leaving or being fired in the couple of years before the pending acquisition is a red flags, eh?
Continue reading Throwing in the towel

Network Segmentation is Common Sense

On one of the professional forums I subscribe to there was a request for “references” to justify the separation of development and production networks and facilities.  It seems some managers “don’t get it” when it comes to things like change control and undocumented and unplanned changes.  Many guidelines discuss this, but its seems that some key ones like NIST and ISO-27001 do not explicitly mandate it, and some managers use this as a reason to not do it.

Some of us security droids find this frightening.

My colleague Miriam Britt managed to sum up the reasons why one should have separation quite sussinctly and forcefully.  With her permission I have copied her reasoning here and I hope many people will either reference this or copy it to their own blogs.  This kind of straight forward statement needs a wide exposure.

Continue reading Network Segmentation is Common Sense