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Outsourcing Information Security
When it comes to the outsourcing of information security functions specifically, the situation is even worse. Far too few organizations know the inherent risks involved with outsourcing security, and don't properly investigate what they are getting into. The same company that makes it nearly impossible for an employee to enter the office supply closet to get much needed toner cartridge will outsource their intrusion detection, email and firewall systems without a blink.
One of the many reasons companies turn to security outsourcing and managed security services providers (MSSP) is to use their limited internal security staff for more interesting areas such as web development, VPN and e-commerce applications. They will then outsource the boring activities such as firewall and IDS monitoring and maintenance to a MSSP.
Given that activities such as firewall monitoring and administering an IDS in large enterprise requires 24/7 support, it is not unusual for a company to want to outsource such activities; monitoring and administering are not core functions of most organizations.
The trouble comes from the lack of due care often given to choosing a MSSP. With that, Outsourcing Information Security is a long-overdue book that asks the questions that are necessary before an organization decides to outsource any information security function.
The author's general tone is against the outsourcing of information security; but provides readers with the various benefits and risks involved in outsourcing security, and let's them ultimate decide if outsourcing security is right for their organization. It is the reader who must define, evaluate and manage those risks and determine if outsourcing is a viable solution. These include technology, business and legal risks.
The book comprises nine chapters and three appendices totaling a bit under 250 pages. The first two chapters provide a good introduction to and overview of outsourcing and information security, and the associated security risks.
Chapter 3 details various reasons why outsourcing information security makes sense. The chapter includes various tables and references to the many reasons why a company would want to outsource security.
Chapter 4 takes the other side and analyzes the risks of outsourcing. The chapter details the traditional risks, in addition to other factors such as hidden costs, broken promises, phantom benefits and more. The book shows that while many organizations hand over information security responsibility to their MSSP, when things go wrong, they can't effectively blame the MSSP. When things go wrong -- and they will -- all of the fingers in the world can be pointed at the MSSP, but the ultimate responsibility falls on the organization itself. With outsourced security, if something goes wrong, those fingers will point back to the company's security manager, not the incompetent firewall administrator in Bangalore.
The chapter provides a balanced look at the risk of outsourcing, and while calm in its overall approach, the chapter should at least make the person considering outsourcing information security think twice. In fact, the author concludes the chapter by stating "when all of the risks of outsourcing are considered, one wonders how anyone ever makes the decision to use a third party." Nonetheless, there is plenty of evidence that many security activities are indeed outsourced to MSSP, and are often satisfactory from both the buyer's and seller's perspective.
Chapters 5 and 6 provide a thorough summary of the costs and benefits of outsourcing, and provides a method with which to categorize them. The chapter is well suited for a CFO with its discussion of direct vs. indirect costs, controllable vs. non-controllable costs, and much more. These two chapters show that creating meaningful financial numbers to see if outsourcing makes financial sense is not such an easy task. It is important to understand that outsourcing sometimes makes financial sense, but certainly not all the time. For those organizations that don't crunch the numbers seriously at the beginning, these costs can later come back to haunt them in a big way.
Chapters 7 and 8 detail the processes involved in commencing an outsourcing project, from requirements gathering to placing policy against the outsourced company. A mistake many organizations make is failure to ensure that the MSSP is abiding by the client's information security policies, rather than their own.
Similarly, one of the most overlooked areas of outsourcing information security functionality is regulation. A U.S. company may be under numerous regulations, from HIPAA to Sarbanes-Oxley, GLBA, SEC and more; when they outsource their security functionality, the remote technician may not be under the jurisdiction of the SEC; but the corporate data still must be protected according to those regulations.
The main part of the book concludes with chapter 9, which provides a 20-step process to determine if an outsourced security solution is appropriate. In seven pages, the author specifies the various events, tasks and steps that make up the typical outsourcing project.
Appendix A provides a breakdown of the various services that can be outsourced, with Appendices B & C providing brief histories of IT Outsourcing and Information Security.
The only downside to the book is its $85.00 price, which is at the high-end for technology and business books. While the price is high, the book is a huge value for anyone considering outsourcing security. The book asks the questions that are often never asked, and details how the outsourcing of information security is not the slam-dunk that the MSSPs often portray it to be.
For those who know what their security issues are and look to outsource their security functionality to a trusted MSSP, Outsourcing Information Security shows how it can be done. On the other side, for those who are drunk with the panacea that outsourcing security is supposed to provide, Outsourcing Information Security will be a sobering wake-up call.
You can purchase Outsourcing Information Security from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
To me all the outsourcing problems can be resumed to a simple allegory : cooking.
Home-cooked and cafeteria; sure you'll eat just fine at the end of the day, but chances are the cafeteria food will taste bad, cost less in the short term (efforts + money) but more in the long term, and doesn't have the nice 'home' feeling.
And you're never sure if the cook is on a bad day and spit in your soup (security allusion, for those who don't get it).
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
cannot be complete without chapter 11.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
My President says so.
Those books should be pretty secure on the bookstore shelves.
That aside though I think its about time people quit whining about how inherently evil outsourcing is. Many companies outsource everything from cleaning and security to payrole and management advise.
Of course if you outsource security there is a risk, just the same as you risk one of your own employees fucking you over if you keep it in house. Proper investigation and dilligence are required. Thats not to say outsourcing is an inherently bad thing. In many cases companies will gain from outsourcing to specialist companies who can offer greater competency than could be achieved inhouse.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Ask yourself this. Were do you want your secrets to reside?
Who do you trust to watch them?
No matter where the seed lies now a days companies have gown much bigger than the nation itself. Companies have become multinational trananational and their products and suppliers are all intetwined spanning multiple countries. So like it or not work is also going to be distributed and spread over many nations. Protection of intellectual properties and the like has to be developed within the organisation in consultation with the service provider or third party vendors. Taking an lazy outsiders look into the internal workings of an multinational company will not help to understand the extent of globalisation in every activities.
If you want to protect yourself, always ask your bank, medical clinic, etc. whether it outsources information processing to China or India. If the answer is "yes", then find another place to do business.
Are you really this naive?
Your bank will answer "Sir, we are doing everything in our power to protect your privacy", or "the contractors with work with are fully accredited by us to handle your personal data" or something sybilline like this. They'd never admit flatly that they outsource to a shitty data center in a third world country. If they did, there'd be no problem since people would walk out the door without a second thought.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
There is a big debate in Canada about outsourcing to US based companies due to the fact that the Patriot Act allows the FBI access to databases. Canada has fairly strict privacy laws and the liability of sending this information to the US could be big since there is no way for a US company to refuse the FBI access. The British Columbian government is still thinking of going ahead with sending of medical information down to the United States. It should be an interesting election day issue come next April when the voters go to the polls for the local elections...
No, nobody wants your data, get that through your head!
You my friend need to do a reality check. People out there want your data. However meaningless items of data. *BAD*.
* Spammers want your email, as you point out
* Marketdroids want your consuming habits
* Health insurance folks want your latest medical checkup and your average cigarette consumption
* Car insurance companies want your tickets and warnings
* Pedophiles want your kids' school timetables
* The IRS want your overseas banking records
* Bubba from da 'hood wants to know when you take holidays
Please get real...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Keep in mind, outsourced security firms aren't domestically regulated like banks or other groups. If you can't "sue", "arrest" or otherwise influence the people watching you, then why give them the keys?
Outsourcing security seems like a good paradigm at first, but trust is earned. Here, we have serious certifications (clearances, CISSP, credit ratings, background checks, bonding, etc.) and there's a definite degree of employer influence over their employees.
Maybe its just me, but whenever someone I don't know says, "Trust me! C'mon, take a chance, live a little, all the cool CEOs are doing it" I'd conclude right away that these guys are going to ruin me. Mostly because, up until now, "TRUST ME" hasn't been too much of a necessity in outsourcing.
Anyway, outsourcing security could be one of the next "Great" phishing scams, after all -- why go for the salad when someone can go for the five course meal.
... I did an outsourcing gig earlier this year. I was flogging my resume trying to find work when this recruiter called me and asked me to do a weekend job doing an upgrade rollout at a major bank.
I was told to show up on Friday afternoon and that I'd be working with a group pretty much all weekend. No one took a look at my ID, or had me sign anything. They believed me that I was eligible to work in the US even though most of my resume was working outside of the states. Asking around I found that this was the case with most of the forty odd nerds they had rounded up for the job.
We were all working for a subcontractor of a subcontractor of a major IT firm from Texas. We were all given pretty much free reign of the executive offices and all shared the same username and password. There was basically no supervision what so ever.
It would have been so easy to install a good deal of malicious software... heck, it wouldn't have been that hard to swap out the master image to take over pretty much every machine on the network.
I don't even want to think of what goes on in third world countries. That weekend really made me second guess what goes on in the US. If the bank had it's own IT staff, seven people who could work together could have done the same job that it took about sixty including supervisors and honchos and I am sure the cost of their salaries for a year was less than was wasted on that crew. The upside was they did buy us good pizza!!!