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Security Analysis Reports for Managers?
chaffed asks: "I've been tasked with translating a security analysis report for our powers that be and ultimately for our auditors. The manager's are not technically savvy, but they aren't PHBs, either. To what depth should one descend into Information Security and Technology topics? More generally, how would a technical person relate to a non-technical person? Should all technical terms be defined or just cryptic ones? What assumptions are reasonable to make about the reader (Non-Technical Managers)? What physical format should an analysis take, bulleted points or in depth discussion?"
I sort the report by severity, and calculate statistics from that. the first few pages are the 10,000' view - i.e.: we have 7 systems with level 5 vulnerabilities, 38 systems with level 4, etc. etc.... Then, on the following pages, I break down the report into the nuts and bolts - that lets the managers that want just the overview to stop reading after the first few pages, and provides detail for the managers that want it. is that what you are looking for? pretty basic, actually...
Make it as graphic as possible. I mean it literally. If there's a way to do it in a chart, do it. Managers also tend to read summaries first, and more often than not, only. So make sure the summary gets the point across.
They don't care about technical issues. They care about cost, threat level and benefit. Make sure you cover that bases. Don't try to construct too many "if" sentences, since they'll be brushed away with "won't happen, don't care" too easily, even if that "if" does actually mean "when".
Explaining terms is fruitless, imo. They will skip over the parts they don't understand rather than look up terms in a glossary. The same is true for a lengthy prolog trying to explain terms. And don't try to create hyperlinked (or otherwise electronic) documents to make looking up things easier. They'll just print it and your time is wasted.
As said before, they don't care about technical details. They don't care where a potential attacker comes into the system. They care about the questions:
How do we prevent it?
How much time (in manhours/mandays) does it take?
How much does it cost?
Make sure you cover those 3 questions. Preferably in the summary.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Everyone is different so I would take a manager and ask for feedback on a draft.
But in general;
>To what depth should one descend into Information Security and Technology topics?
Enough to make it clear as to why the topic is important and what impact it makes on the company. And not too long to make people bored.
> More generally, how would a technical person relate to a non-technical person?
With clear accurate words and descriptive and varied sentences. Interesting examples are good too. One of the best documents about a technical/complex topic I've read is at http://www.torontoinquiry.ca/ It was a long and boring inquiry about computer leasing, goverment procedures and its long and detailed. But reads like a trashy novel and very accessable and understandable. I enjoyed reading it and afterwards I felt I knew what had happened.
>Should all technical terms be defined or just cryptic ones?
Every single one of them in the glossery.
>What assumptions are reasonable to make about the reader (Non-Technical Managers)?
That they have at least a high-school level reading level and they need to know the information contained in your document.
>What physical format should an analysis take, bulleted points or in depth discussion?"
Yes. Use what ever you think you should need to use to clearly covey information. Formatting and layout are just tools.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
"Well, something that you could never comprehend conflicts with something that you'd never understand."
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
It's security, thus you must make the most important points (i.e. those of greatest risk) the most prominent in any report and make them easy to understand. It'd recommend first bullet-pointing each security aspect in categories such as severe, medium and minor issues.
After this categorisation, it would be wise to describe each point in more detail in an after section using non-technical language, but making it obvious what the implications of ignoring these security issues could be. This should again, be priotised on the most major of these points.
If a manager is unable to understand a point or worse misunderstands, he may consider it trivial. And obviously, this could be disasterous over the long-term.
Here's how to write it as if you were an auditor. When it gets to the auditors, they'll eat it up.
First of all, the executive summary. "We are mostly secure/insecure, with (n) critical action items. Of these, (x) can be implemented with little effort or cost, (y) will require substantial effort and/or cost, and (z) will require a fundamental change in the way we do business." Actually, this breakdown might be a bit detailed for an ES. Yes, really.
Then provide the background: "The internet is a scary place. (n)% of security breaches come from inside. Personal laptops can sniff unencrypted traffic. Passwords are easy to hack. Security breaches can undermine us in some specific way, or cost $xxxMM. etc.."
Now the specifics: "Preliminary analysis of our network has uncovered some critical/significant/minor security flaws. These are blah, blah, and blah, in increasing/decreasing order of severity/cost-to-fix. A detailed analysis of these flaws is as follows:
(flaw1)
(flaw2)
(flaw3)
(...)
The analyses should be broken down in a fair amount of detail, with technical terms defined in a glossary at the end of the report. Each one should contain the cost-to-fix and the cost-of-breach if possible, as well as the likelihood of a breach. Having a DMZ mail server taken down by hackers might be a huge pain in the ass, but ask (i)will it actually cost the company that much money in lost productivity, (ii)how likely is it to happen, and (iii)how much will it cost to improve? Alternatively, a disgruntled admin can potentially destroy your data centre--downtime at (d) dollars/hour, plus the cost of lost data since the last tapes. A third alternative is loss of proprietary data to a competitor, which might be bad, or might be enough to shut the company down permanently. Be VERY CAREFUL here, though: If you're writing a security analysis, then don't stray into trying to build an entire DR plan. Seriously. Don't.
Summary: Exactly that--summarise the detailed analysis, ordered by the the cost/benefit ratio. Make sure that the difficulty of implementation or added risks are considered as well. Remember that at this point, you're just summarising the data, not yet doing the...
Recommendations: "Based on the above data, we recommend implementing blah and foo immediately. These provide some/significant improvements in security, can be achieved with a minimum of effort or cost outlay, and carry little/no risk of introducing new problems. In the 1-3month timeframe, 3-6 months, 6-12..." That sort of thing.
Then of course, the glossary.
Don't ever forget: Security weaknesses are the cost of doing business. For example: Moving from telnet to ssh provides a significant benefit, and allows you to keep working. Shutting off all interactive logins doesn't provide much further benefit, and most likely substantially interferes with the company's ability to do work. Limiting ssh access to a few client boxes may provide a security benefit (hard to quantify), but may also increase the administrative overhead enough to make it not worthwhile. All managers and techs much understand that security isn't an absolute goal--it's a degree of risk acceptance. Eliminate all unnecessary risks (security or otherwise) be aware of all the necessary ones, and mitigate the risks as much as possible.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Security is a complex business, but the effect each potential problem has on an organisation can be summed up in simple terms.
Probability: What is the chance of a particular problem actually happening?
Avoidance: What would it take to avoid/reduce the chance of this problem occurring? How much will this cost? What will the effects be on productivity? What about morale?
Resolution: If the problem does happen, what will it take to fix it? How much will that cost? Downtime? Legal liability? Bad press?
Those are the three main variables a manager needs in order to decide whether to take action on a potential security problem. For example, if something costs a lot to mitigate, but is very unlikely to happen, then it probably won't be worth doing anything about unless the costs for fixing the problem are extreme.
You only need to go into the technical stuff in order to explain the above. You don't have to explain how the attack works beyond its immediate ramifications for avoidance etc. In-depth discussion will be skimmed, so break stuff into bulleted lists, charts and tables wherever it makes sense to do so, with a clearly marked summary for each section, so even the laziest PHBs will have an overview.
Oh, and not specifically work related, but if you are going to be writing stuff for other people to read in a professional capacity, then making obvious grammatical errors is unprofessional.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Apart from poor formatting and errors in spelling etc, I have to agree with this.
Having done many such reports (as an independant "audit" process), I just have to add one thing that goes against the general flow of the postings so far. Don't dumb-down the report - people who have management roles are generally literate and have active brain cells. They need to make their own call on how important things are, they are looking for your narrow technical viewpoint and will add that to the other narrow viewpoints from the rest of the organisation.
So you need to make the important issues clear and upfront and with some kind of cost of not-doing. I've never written a report with $ costs, just in expected down-time to fix etc. I've always found this quite effective in getting the point across - there is the list of critical must-do's and then the should-do's with rough time-and-materials costings.
I think most of my "should-do's" were done and the must-do's scared the pants off some of the managers - on the basis that the costs for the lower priority items were so high.
Go here and read: sans.org/rr
They want a few powerpoint slides worth of information in a doc/pdf really... Lots of pictures and graphs. Highlight the risks and list the tasks needed to mitigate them.
Try to cover your own analysis of the products you have in place to protect your company.
I hope you have at least some idea of a plan for each of these areas...
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell
The other method is a rather simple table:
Problem, Risk, Solution, Cost
This is what managers actually care about. A one sentence description of the problem, the risk of missing or stolen data as a percentage risk, a one sentence description of the solution, and the cost of that solution. That gives them what they need to know to work up your budget- and you implement what they want.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.