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Managing Information Security Risks
Authors Alberts and Dorofee are the principal developers of OCTAVE and are staff members at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where CERT has offices. As such, they're the right people to describe OCTAVE. The CERT OCTAVE website area explains the process in more detail. Needless to say, OCTAVE is a very large, complex, heavy process for an organization to go through, with some arguable benefits. Very few organizations have done so to the best of my knowledge -- most of them are scared off by the complexity of the whole undertaking.
This brings up a very important point. It's important to state the difference between a critique of the OCTAVE method and the book itself. OCTAVE is interesting in that it's an attempt to formalize the complex process of information security evaluations. Despite its shortcomings and turnoffs, it has a purpose, and I wont dispute it for the most part. The book, instead, covers an abbreviated format of OCTAVE. It's important to focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the book and not the topic.
The books is organized into three main parts. Part 1 (covering chapters 1 and 2) is an introduction to the principles being discussed in the book. The method itself, and therefore these chapters, focus on a formal evaluation of information security risks and how to manage them. The principles focus on enumeration of assets, their threats and vulnerabilities, and then remediation of the threats to minimize the risk. The section introduces the core concepts to this philosophy.
Part 2 of the book, covering chapters 3 through 11, server two main purposes, preparation and then execution of the method. Chapter 3 introduces the fundamentals of the OCTAVE method, specifically how the three phases (asset-based threat profiles, vulnerability identification, and security strategy planning) fit together. The inputs of the method and its outputs are then described; you'll be using them in later chapters. Chapter 4 helps you prepare for the approach in your organization, including how important it is to get management buy-in, who will participate, and how to organize the evaluation. Project managers will adore this chapter.
The next few chapters cover the meat of the OCTAVE method. Chapter 5 covers processes 1 to 3, where assets are enumerated and the current state of the security profile is captured, as well. This step is crucial for building a baseline and knowing what you'll have to cover. Chapter 6 leads you through the threat profile, where you examine assets that you've identified as critical and the security requirements for them. And finally, in Chapter 7, the basic identification steps are done as you identify critical infrastructure components to examine later on. This is done so that you can work efficiently, as opposed to studying every asset in depth. By studying classes of assets you can (hopefully) achieve the same coverage without spending valuable time repeating the process.
Chapters 8 and 9 deal with the commonly understood parts, the actual vulnerability and risk analysis. Chapter 8 discusses vulnerability assessment tools and some basic questions to ask about them, but leaves the actual evaluation of those tools up to another text. Chapter 9 then helps you undertake the actual risk analysis, such as the impact of any threat being realized or the probability that one would be encountered. This is what most people think of when they think of an information security audit.
This gets to what is perhaps my biggest complaint about the book. It doesn't teach you how to think creatively about threats to information security. Instead, you're told to enumerate assets and threats against them via brainstorming, as though you'll somehow "get it" the first time (or every time). For someone new to the field, this can be hard, because not all assets are obvious -- and not all threats are understood. It's a hard skillset to teach, but it should have been attempted with more gusto.
Chapters 10 and 11 close the big circle of an information security audit, by developing an information security protection strategy. It's basically a series of outlines of meetings and their agendas as you present the findings of the evaluation but are (obviously) vague in the absence of any concrete findings.
This is probably a good time to raise another objection to this book. My second biggest complaint is that the authors never cut to the heart of what the OCTAVE method is trying to do. Sure, the book covers a stripped-down version of OCTAVE, but it doesn't ever get at how you can really adapt this to your organization. Instead, it's a series of rigid steps in the OCTAVE method. If you attempt to do something different for whatever reason, you're on your own. Again, an attempt to work in some flexibility beyond what is present in Chapter 12 (An Introduction to Tailoring OCTAVE, the start of part 3) would have been welcome. This chapter just keeps you inside the narrow confines of the OCTAVE approach.
Chapter 13 attempts to bring this home by discussing the practical applications for an organization. They attempt to discuss how a small company would utilize OCTAVE, but to be honest it's so heavy and time-consuming it's hard to see how they would employ anything but the barest of concepts to their workflow. Three other examples are given: a very large distributed organization, an integrated Web portal service provider (which faces unique threats), and large and small organizations. Again, while this chapter attempts to show how to tailor OCTAVE to anything but the largest and most diligently staffed of organizations, it falls to get to the salient points of the method. Instead, it tries to foist the process on them.
Finally, chapter 14 tries to bring it all home and discuss the information security life cycle of analysis, monitoring, control, and implementation (not in that order). They hope that OCTAVE has become a part of this process and show how it complements and matures this process. Instead, I wonder if an organization will think about the effort they just expended and be reluctant to do this again. The appendices are piles of worksheets, charts and workflows to go through with OCTAVE. You can make photocopies and use them if you implement the OCTAVE approach. It's very hard to take consider these methods strong enough when you read about the report card government agencies received for information security. While they may have not been following OCTAVE, it's hard to see how a book that so superficially treats the subject matter can help anyone do better. Almost everything is just a high-level line-item risk-and-mitigation strategy. Things like "Our organization cannot deliver effective or efficient health care without PIDS" and an impact of "High" are, to put it mildly, interesting in their superficiality. So many things are simply glossed over, yet so many worksheets remain. On the other hand, if a fair treatment of threats, assets, and the like were fully discussed the book would be many more volumes, a significantly more tedious tome, and too sensitive to the shifting sands of time.
Overall the book does a decent job of covering OCTAVE's core premises, but doesn't really provide much beyond that. It's a complex process that doesn't work well for a number of organizations. Instead of helping organizations see how to use it, the authors simply keep presenting OCTAVE for what it is, which makes me question the value of this book beyond someone who has already decided to implement OCTAVE. It doesn't seem like it has a lot to offer anyone who doesn't have a large body of knowledge in information security management and a staff to deploy with worksheets in hand. The book simply fails to contribute greatly beyond the very narrow specifics of OCTAVE.
You can purchase Managing Information Security Risks: The OCTAVE Approach from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
For some security intrusions windows itself is at fault. But in most security risks, I must admit, it is usually the USER's stupidity that has caused a catastrophe. Windows can't control itself, a user must guide it. And when that user is not experienced, windows cannot protect itself, therefore creating a security hazard.
Does Sarbanes-Oxley cover security at all? I was under the impression that it didn't.
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you do raise a good point, OCTAVE is a business process that addresses technical interests.
:)
OCTAVE meetings are loooooong. (coming from someone who skips meals if the code is especially beautiful) If you are more interested in reviewing logs, staying up to date on the latests cracks and vulnerabilities, and being a good geek, It's not too interesting.
If your security jobs involve scanning the TPS reports for possible disclosure info, well then this is hot shit
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I'm hired and paid to make the company money.
Read that again.
Now my talents are in computer programing, and it is a waste of everyone's time if I spend more than a few moments balancing my companies accounts. An accountant can do that better and faster. However it is also a waste for me to call an accountant when I need a USB cable or some such. It is a better use of everyone's time if I just order the cable and enter it into the books. (Best Buy is just around the corner, I can be back before the purchasing guy reads my request) The accountant will check the math latter, but the data is there.
However to give me that ability means the books need to be open to me. I should not have access to accounting data, but it is easier for everyone if I have full access.
Even in the small 10 person company I work for I don't get to know how much money my co-workers make. It means that the books are closed, so I can't enter my USB cable myself, I have to get someone else to enter it. (and in fact someone else ends up buying it)
Don't forget the other big downside. If the company officers are keeping two sets of books I don't know that. Therefore I can't blow the whistle on them. (If there is fraud and you are an officer in the company this is good, to the investors which might include my retirement account this is bad) I also have no clue if my stock options (I wish...) that seem high today will pull and Enron before they vest.
I work in healthcare and the HIPPA rules are just starting to come into effect. The vast majority of the rules are fairly common sense, though sometimes the legal and operational implications are complex.
For example, one of the tenants is that people have access to only what they need to do their job. While it sounds easy to manage, there's huge issues with tracking temps, contractors, and people shifting job responsibilities when tens of thousands of people have access to your systems.
Then there's the auditing piece, making sure that people are using their security appropriately. I'm in the process of building a database that pulls in the 2 million records each day of people looking at patient information. Another group of people audit the information, making sure that people aren't looking up coworkers, friends, or family inappropriately.
We're also drafting new policies that cover everything from sending patient information in e-mail (only if encrypted) to protecting physical access to computers, backups, PDA's and so on.
Basically, it's a lot of work but it's been effective getting people thinking more seriously about these issues.
Nobody cares.
Read that agian.
Regulators, auditors are not concerned with real risk. What they want is a stack of documentation they can point to as an example of how they are doing what they need to do.
Senior Mgmt only cares that the regulators and auditors are happy. Who cares if it's dragging the company under.
I'm working under CFR 21 Part 11. This piece of crap does nothing to protect my company. The things it asks for are basic IT functions wrapped up in a layer of paperwork. It costs my company $$$.
I've worked under BS-5750 & ISO-9000 wonderful systems for producing paperwork and employing admin assistants. Useless for protecting systems.
To sum up. I'm pretty certain that only a few IT workers think about these matters in any depth. If that is the case how can we reasonably expect any other business function to think about them. The problem is that the people who came up with the various regs weren't thinking very deep, the business users didn't think and only one or two IT folks were thinking.