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The CISO Handbook
Ben Rothke writes "
Far too many books on
information security focus on security from the product point of view. They
equate security with firewalls, intrusion detection systems, biometrics, and
myriad other hardware and software products. But if security was really about
products, corporate America would be a very safe place because never have there
been so many security products in use. But the reality is that much of today's
computing infrastructure is insecure, and there are plenty of products in use." Read on for Bens' review.
The CISO Handbook: A Practical Guide to Securing Your Company
author
Michael Gentile, Ronald Collette, Thomas August
pages
314
publisher
Auerbach Publications
rating
9
reviewer
Ben Rothke
ISBN
0849319528
summary
A most practical guide
The CISO Handbook: A Practical Guide to Securing Your Company lives up to its title as being a practical guide to security. The book is antithetical approach to the products equal security approach, and takes a pragmatic approach to security.
The authors have extensive real-world experience and approach information security from a holistic perspective. They clearly understand what it takes to build an information security program. One of the biggest mistakes in security is that it is seen as plug and play. Buy a security product, install in, and like magic, you have this thing called data security. But that only works in the world of product brochures and marketing material, not in the real world. The book does not approach security from a plug and play perspective, but as an endeavor that requires a multi-year effort to come to fruition.
The five chapters deal with security from its true source, namely that of risk. The chapters are: Assess, Plan, Design, Execute and Report. These five areas encompass all of information security and those firms that have built an information security infrastructure all done it by focusing on these five areas.
The first area, Access, is all about risk management. Many companies will purchase security products without even knowing what their specific risks are, and have often not performed a comprehensive risk analysis. Without a comprehensive risk analysis, any security product will simply operate in a vacuum. The benefits of a risk assessment and analysis are that they ensure that an organization is worrying about the right things and dealing with real, as opposed to perceived threats. The ultimate outcome of a risk analysis should be to see if the organization can benefit from the security product.
Chapter 1 ends with an assessment checklist of various areas that go into a risk assessment. One of the questions in the checklist that you likely will not see anywhere else is "describe the political climate at your company". Too many security people think only about the technology and neglect the political implications of a security system. Not taking into consideration the politics is a surefire way to potentially doom a project. Similar questions detailed in the checklist will give the reader a good feel for how secure their organization truly is; as opposed to the often perceived view of being much more secure.
Chapter 2 is aptly titled Plan. The planning phase is meant to combine the issues of assessment and to integrate options to mitigate those risks. The way in which a specific security technology or methodology is implemented is dependent on the organization. Rather than using a cookie-cutter approach, effective planning ensures that the security technologies chosen support your security program. Far too many organizations make the mistake of simply buying products without giving enough consideration into the myriad details of how they will be deployed, managed and used.
Chapter 2 emphasizes the need for planning, and the book as a whole emphasizes the need for the use of a methodology when dealing with information security. For many security technologies, the challenges of are not so much with the technology, but rather with ensuring that the technology meets business requirements, is scalable and reliable, etc.
Building a comprehensive information security program is likely to be more complex than previous experience of typical IT projects. As well as project management, technical and operational aspects, there are many policy, legal and security issues which must be taken into consideration. By following a structured methodology based on practical experience, many of the potential traps and pitfalls can be avoided. The risks to the business and the project are reduced and those that remain are quantified at an early stage.
The planning checklist at the end of chapter 2 will helps by ensuring that the solutions identified are deployed in the context of a well designed information security program. It can also be used as a wake-up call to management that often seriously underestimates the amount of time and manpower required to create an effective information security program.
One of the added benefits of planning is that it makes it much easier to integrate new regulatory requirements into the security program. A well-planned network can retrofit new requirements much more quickly and efficiently. This is a critical need given the increasing amount of new regulations that will come into play in the coming years, in addition to current regulations such as HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley and much more.
Chapters 3, 4 and 5 progress in a similar manner with the topics of Design, Execute, and Report. Each chapter details the essentials of the topic and shows how it is critical to the efficacy of an successful information security program.
What the reader may find missing from the book is particulars of the various security technologies. But that is the very function of the book, to show that information security is not primarily about the products, rather the underlying infrastructure on which those products reside on. Any product that is not deployed in a methodology similar to that of The CISO Handbook is likely to find itself lacking. The product might be there and hum along; but the security that it provides will likely be negligible.
The uniqueness of The CISO Handbook is that is shows how to design and implement an effective security program based on real world scenarios, as opposed to product reviews and vendor evaluations.
The CISO Handbook: A Practical Guide to Securing Your Company is indeed a most practical guide, as its title suggests. It is quite helpful to anyone in a security organization, whether they are the CISO, system administrator, or in a different capacity.
Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
The CISO Handbook: A Practical Guide to Securing Your Company lives up to its title as being a practical guide to security. The book is antithetical approach to the products equal security approach, and takes a pragmatic approach to security.
The authors have extensive real-world experience and approach information security from a holistic perspective. They clearly understand what it takes to build an information security program. One of the biggest mistakes in security is that it is seen as plug and play. Buy a security product, install in, and like magic, you have this thing called data security. But that only works in the world of product brochures and marketing material, not in the real world. The book does not approach security from a plug and play perspective, but as an endeavor that requires a multi-year effort to come to fruition.
The five chapters deal with security from its true source, namely that of risk. The chapters are: Assess, Plan, Design, Execute and Report. These five areas encompass all of information security and those firms that have built an information security infrastructure all done it by focusing on these five areas.
The first area, Access, is all about risk management. Many companies will purchase security products without even knowing what their specific risks are, and have often not performed a comprehensive risk analysis. Without a comprehensive risk analysis, any security product will simply operate in a vacuum. The benefits of a risk assessment and analysis are that they ensure that an organization is worrying about the right things and dealing with real, as opposed to perceived threats. The ultimate outcome of a risk analysis should be to see if the organization can benefit from the security product.
Chapter 1 ends with an assessment checklist of various areas that go into a risk assessment. One of the questions in the checklist that you likely will not see anywhere else is "describe the political climate at your company". Too many security people think only about the technology and neglect the political implications of a security system. Not taking into consideration the politics is a surefire way to potentially doom a project. Similar questions detailed in the checklist will give the reader a good feel for how secure their organization truly is; as opposed to the often perceived view of being much more secure.
Chapter 2 is aptly titled Plan. The planning phase is meant to combine the issues of assessment and to integrate options to mitigate those risks. The way in which a specific security technology or methodology is implemented is dependent on the organization. Rather than using a cookie-cutter approach, effective planning ensures that the security technologies chosen support your security program. Far too many organizations make the mistake of simply buying products without giving enough consideration into the myriad details of how they will be deployed, managed and used.
Chapter 2 emphasizes the need for planning, and the book as a whole emphasizes the need for the use of a methodology when dealing with information security. For many security technologies, the challenges of are not so much with the technology, but rather with ensuring that the technology meets business requirements, is scalable and reliable, etc.
Building a comprehensive information security program is likely to be more complex than previous experience of typical IT projects. As well as project management, technical and operational aspects, there are many policy, legal and security issues which must be taken into consideration. By following a structured methodology based on practical experience, many of the potential traps and pitfalls can be avoided. The risks to the business and the project are reduced and those that remain are quantified at an early stage.
The planning checklist at the end of chapter 2 will helps by ensuring that the solutions identified are deployed in the context of a well designed information security program. It can also be used as a wake-up call to management that often seriously underestimates the amount of time and manpower required to create an effective information security program.
One of the added benefits of planning is that it makes it much easier to integrate new regulatory requirements into the security program. A well-planned network can retrofit new requirements much more quickly and efficiently. This is a critical need given the increasing amount of new regulations that will come into play in the coming years, in addition to current regulations such as HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley and much more.
Chapters 3, 4 and 5 progress in a similar manner with the topics of Design, Execute, and Report. Each chapter details the essentials of the topic and shows how it is critical to the efficacy of an successful information security program.
What the reader may find missing from the book is particulars of the various security technologies. But that is the very function of the book, to show that information security is not primarily about the products, rather the underlying infrastructure on which those products reside on. Any product that is not deployed in a methodology similar to that of The CISO Handbook is likely to find itself lacking. The product might be there and hum along; but the security that it provides will likely be negligible.
The uniqueness of The CISO Handbook is that is shows how to design and implement an effective security program based on real world scenarios, as opposed to product reviews and vendor evaluations.
The CISO Handbook: A Practical Guide to Securing Your Company is indeed a most practical guide, as its title suggests. It is quite helpful to anyone in a security organization, whether they are the CISO, system administrator, or in a different capacity.
Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Should go well next to it
The summary alone makes me want to buy that book. Security is not about products, but about safety practices.
planning, whatever next? intelligent managers perhaps
Thats great and all for the digital front, but dont forget about the social front. Thats where most threats come from anyway AFAIK. Art of Deception, covers nearly all social fronts, and how to help defend against social engineers. Not suggesting this as a replacement, but as a supplement.
It's OK, Bender -- there's no such thing as a 9!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
it's spelled CISCO not CISO. you forgot a "C". thank you.
Security is not a destination, it is a road.
No sig for now.
"The first area, Access, ..."
If the first area is Access (i.e. my access of your data), then you DEFINITELY need better security! Should probably be "Assess".
stuff |
You are welcome!
Anyone else read that "CISCO" instead of "CISO"?
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
I think you are trying to say something here. Try again.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Wow, what a shining example of the very knee-jerk, laundry list approach of one-size-fits-all security this book tries to warn against!
Thanks for the illustration.
ACOn the other hand, anybody who makes a living writing books about why it's a bad idea to do it should probably be cock-punched, too.
I've sat through waaaay too many seminars taught by swaggering little ex-cop six sigma management flunkies who vomit out more technical jargon and meaningless acronyms about proccess and procedures and ISO and SOX and their frickin' CISSPs than the most autistic assembler programmer.
I was at one time considering a move toward the coporate network security area versus my current more traditional sysadmin job, but the amount of wanking that goes on at the management level in infosec would probably make me go postal.
Sorry for blathering, but this is kind of a sensitive topic for me lately.
hang brain.
And pray that you never have a crooked insider?
That list left out the need for a shredding policy and a standard for disposing of used hardware that might have sensitive information. Not sure what's sensitive? That's why you need the risk assessment.
Health care is an eighth of the economy and has a specific set of infosec regulations it's required to follow. The financial industry has its own set of legal obligations. One size does not fit all.
That said, I do wish people would follow the advice in the parent post. There would still be plenty of work for people like me but at least it would be less repetitious.
What is this security thing that you speak of? There will never be a secure computing environment as long as we have users
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- Winston Churchill
Lets see: How about we describe the chapter titles, and use big words? Yeah! That'll work.
Examples of the content, especially what they chose to exemplify as risks, would make for a much better review. As it stands, I have no idea if the content rambles for pages and pages about things that I consider to be trivial, or if they really do a good job at covering risk assesment areas I don't know about or want more detail than I have about.
...and i saw it upwards of 10 times
now THAT is great product association
Let's not forget that the audience for this book are C-level execs in charge of information security. If folks at that level need to be told that results need to be measured, that access needs to be controlled, that risks need to be managed, then they aren't fit for the positions they hold.
Consider what an equivalent book would be for CFOs --"It ain't just calculators"
No shit.
Thank you Ben, for taking the time to review our book, and a huge THANK YOU! for your kind words. Our intention was to write something that both IT and security professionals can truly get a lot out of, and to be honest we're very happy with the end result. On behalf of Mike, Ron, the good folks at Auerbach, and everyone else who helped out in putting together The CISO Handbook, thank you very much! Tom August
"There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people." - Thomas Jefferson
Save yourself some money by buying the book here: The CISO Handbook. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!
To answer a question raised by several Slashdot readers, the first section of the methodology in the book is titled "Assess", not "Access". The goal with this section is to first assess all of the external and internal factors driving the need for information security in your enterprise, and then moving forward from there.
Hope that helps!
Tom August
"There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people." - Thomas Jefferson
.. I believe Bruce Schneier already beat this issue to death - security is a process - that can not be gained from a book or a product or a tool or whatever... If the book moves you in the right direction, it's worth a read. Check out his short essay on this.
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
The worst is when the company you work for uses a vital revenue generating application on Windows and it will only work if the user is a member of the local admins group...
When you discuss this with the support from the software company, they will tell you to upgrade.
When you discuss this with management and elaborate on how unsecure this situation is, they say they have the upgrade budgeted for next year and hopefully the validation docs will be written by then...
You see, thats what is so cool about Windows. So much software won't run unless the user is root.
Isn't that just great.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
"social front"? If you mean people, yes, all security issues are due to people. People build the machines, people build the networks, people make the malware, people make mistakes. This is true.
If you are talking about Social engineering, then this is just a fraction of the security issues out there.
Except that Art of Deception reads like a children's book. I doubt it would hold any executive's attention for long. I had to force myself to get through it, and I was actually interested in what Mitkin had to say.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Ah so it *is* just the products thet makes a network secure. Thanks.
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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0849319528
It's really too bad the books cover sucks so bad. I would've expected something a little nicer than a compass. And also.... they didn't capitalize all of CISO on the cover. As you would normally do when using an Acronym.
Since when is Ciso a word?
The Ciso Handbook
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