Volume2 chapter1 security

Security20/20

Chapter 1

Preparing today for tomorrow’s threats I.1 Outlook

I.2 Threats

I.3 Innovation

I.4 Risk management

I.5 Regulation

I.6 Strategies

I.7 Sources

Outlook

I.1 Outlook

When companies hear the word “security,” what concepts come to mind — safety, protection or perhaps comfort? To the average IT administrator, security conjures up images of locked-down networks and virus-free devices. An attacker, state-sponsored agent or hactivist, meanwhile, may view security as a way to demonstrate expertise by infiltrating and bringing down corporate or government networks for profit, military goals, political gain — or even fun.

We live in a world in which cybercrime is on the rise. A quick scan of the timeline of major incidents (See Figure 1, Page 9) shows the increasing frequency and severity of security breaches — a pattern that is likely to continue for years to come. Few if any organizations are safe from cybercriminals, to say nothing of national security. In fact, experts even exposed authentication and encryption vulnerabilities in the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s new state-of-the-art multibillion-dollar air traffic control system1.

I.1 Outlook

Security now, by necessity, must protect all aspects of the enterprise, from the data center to the desktop and beyond the network edge. Seemingly commonplace, yet still nascent, innovations such as cloud services and the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend have only accelerated the need for relevant security at all points in the information lifecycle.

“The Internet of Things is going to allow us to be more connected and very productive,” says Art Gilliland, senior vice president, Software Enterprise Security Products, HP. “But it also creates more areas for adversaries to compromise the environment. Any device can be the attack point or the thing that is attacking.” Over the next decade, this reality is going to challenge our IT environments, our consumer lifestyles and the security industry at large.

“We have very intelligent, highly motivated antagonists who are determined to cause disruption. We don’t think that’s ever going to go away,” says Rebecca Lawson, director, Worldwide Enterprise Solutions Marketing, HP.

Enterprises need to adopt a different approach to security. The game is no longer about locking down the network and blocking every threat. To compete against adversaries who are increasingly sophisticated and well-funded — and in many cases, unknown — companies have to manage the risk that is inherent in doing business in a connected world.

“Any device can be the attack point or the thing that is attacking,” Gilliland says.

In 2020, companies and individuals alike will need to approach security from a holistic mindset as threats to corporate, government and personal information increase. Security professionals will find themselves answering to CEOs and corporate boards as their policies, processes and vulnerabilities become companywide priorities.

In order to reduce technical debt downstream and decrease unplanned downtime, intrusions and business disruption, enterprises will need to embrace a three-step approach to security:

1. Build it in.2. Make it intelligent.3. Protect what matters.

“People do not have a good handle on today’s threats. Pretty much every corporation is suffering breaches, and when they are even aware of what is happening, they are unwilling to talk about it,” says Martin Sadler, director, Cloud and Security, HP Labs. “We do not have today’s threats under control, and we are going to have to work hard to keep it from getting worse.”

Our goal in this chapter is to shed some light on the most likely threats enterprises will face in 2020 and what they can do now to protect their information and networks while enabling agility and privacy. The threats are very real, and they are very damaging. But enterprises can look at them as catalysts for positive change.

I.1 Outlook

“We do not have today’s threats under control, and we are going to have to work hard to keep it from getting worse.”

Martin Sadler, director, Cloud and Security, HP Labs twitter: @hplabs

“Every corporation is suffering breaches, and they are unwilling to talk about it.”

I.1 Outlook

Martin Sadler, director, Cloud and Security, HP Labs

OutlookI.1

I.1 Outlook

Discussion hubDo you believe enterprises are getting smarter about enterprise security?

“Biometrics is flawed. Identity as implemented in enterprise applications doesn’t necessarily align with how identity works in the real world.” — James McGovern

“Identity theft will become much harder to pull off convincingly in this age of connectedness; as soon as someone starts misusing your identity you’re bound to be notified some way or another.” — Horia Slusanschi

Threats

I.2

Combine global technology trends with the emergence of organized cybercrime, add the universal mandate for businesses to make money, and you have an unwinnable game for the enterprise.

Here are some emerging trends and top concerns:

Connected societies: Technology is having a greater influence on society, as seen by the Arab Spring of 2011. And many anticipate that an additional 1 billion people will be online by 2020, with a significant percentage of them from developing countries. “At some point in the near future we will end up with more people having access to the Internet than access to clean water,” Sadler notes. “If you equip people to be a part of this global communications infrastructure when their other needs are not being met, they will turn to the Internet to get access to what they need.”

As a result, kinetic warfare or cyberterrorism has the potential to be an effective means for emerging countries to challenge the developed world on an increasingly level technology playing field. “It is important to think beyond software and system vulnerabilities and understand the wider backdrop that is likely to shape online activity,” Sadler says.

Medical device as vulnerability: Physical security is coming under scrutiny as an increasing number of implanted electronic devices such as insulin pumps and pacemakers are being exposed as vulnerable to hacking. Routinely monitored and interconnected with other devices over wireless networks, they are raising red flags in the security and medical communities as the newest vulnerability due to a lack of regulation and industry oversight. Imagine being held for ransom by someone you never see, who forces you to drain your bank account in exchange for keeping your pacemaker running. A vulnerability was recently reported that could make just this type of scenario a reality2.

The increase in machine-to-machine interactions: As cities adopt smart grid technologies and buildings become more “intelligent,” breaches in security of these interconnected systems will have a cascading effect. Network grids that control traffic lights, railroad crossings and toll bridges, for instance, could become prime targets for terrorists or hackers looking to extort money from governments or individuals.

Our desire to be mobile: Mobile devices, from smartphones and tablets to laptops and ultrabooks, have become primary sources of communication and information. As a result,

Threats

I.2 Threats

web-based applications are proliferating. But how many of them are secure? “Web applications are becoming the preferred method of attacks because they often have vulnerabilities that can be exploited,” Lawson says. “Everyone wants to have a cool web app but they don’t know the potential risks and liabilities based on how that app interacts with other apps. These days, security is still, too often, an afterthought.”

The increase of cloud services: As companies move more of their infrastructure and their data to the cloud, adversaries will be able to take advantage of the trend. “In theory, the cloud services model strengthens security because data will be handled by companies with whole teams that think about nothing but security. But we’re not there yet,” says Joseph Menn, author of Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who are Bringing Down the Internet and an investigative reporter with Reuters specializing in cyber security.

The growing importance of Big Data: For large organizations, keeping up with both the volume and the velocity of information is a huge undertaking. Attackers can exploit immense, distributed Big Data systems, which often have limited security controls, and gain access to tremendous amounts of information at once.

Exploiting the weakest linkThe majority of corporate security spending traditionally has been focused on infrastructure security. However, threats exploit the weakest areas, and for many organizations that weakest area has become the application layer.

“For several decades people have been paying attention to network infrastructure security but not application security,” says John Diamant, secure product development strategist and distinguished technologist, HP. “It’s a house-of-cards situation: Because security is a weakest-link problem and applications are filled with vulnerabilities, a company can have plenty of network-based security but still be exposed.”

What’s more, a disparity exists between the amount of money spent on application security compared to infrastructure and network security, with only 10 percent of the average enterprise security budget spent on application security. However, Diamant notes, more than 70 percent of successful attacks were carried out at the application level3. “Application security is one threat that is seriously under-represented. And it’s one that’s not being well enough addressed,” he says. The lack of spending on securing applications and code is creating a mountain of technical debt for which network and infrastructure security alone cannot compensate.

I.2 Threats

“Application security is one threat that is seriously underrepresented,” Diamant points out.

The power of nation-statesThe motivations behind cyberattacks also have changed. Hackers are getting paid handsomely for zero-day exploits, as nation-states and organized-crime rings fund an emerging cybercriminal market. “There’s an active adversary out there, trying to get around defenses and out-innovate the security controls you put in place,” Gilliland says. “The wealth of an entire marketplace is funding an attack against a single entity.”

Meanwhile, the amount of time between when sophisticated attacks using cutting-edge technology occur and when corporations see that technology materialize on their own networks is shrinking. What starts off as a bespoke attack rapidly becomes industrialized because it can be replicated to be used against any number of available targets.

“The bad guys are using more sophisticated technology and even developing their own supply chains,” Sadler notes. “If you want to know who the users of leading-edge technology are, it’s the people attacking our organizations.”

I.2 Threats

“Security is a weakest-link problem and applications are filled with vulnerabilities, so a company can have plenty of network-based security but still be exposed.”

John Diamant, secure product development strategist and distinguished technologist, HP

I.2 Threats

I.2 Threats

Discussion hubWhat threats do you believe will shape the security landscape in 2020?

“Security threats follow value. Will there be anything significantly more valuable in 2020 that we don’t already value today?” — Horia Slușanschi

“Malicious QRcodes: The ability to place a sticker over a legitimate code with one that takes you to a malware site is cropping up more and more. This is an example of convenience overwhelming security.” ” — Charles Bess

Innovation: Holding threats at bay

I.3

To compete against threats, enterprises must look beyond the all-but-vanished “network perimeter” and focus on securing applications and data while understanding identity and access for users as they move from corporate to hostile networks at will. As threats become more ubiquitous, organized and directed, companies must remain constantly vigilant.

“We have to build better technologies to authenticate and understand who users are, what users should have access to or not and what data matters or doesn’t matter — and put controls directly on the information,” Gilliland explains. “There are components of that technology that exist today, but it has to become more sophisticated and more accurate.”

Smart systems To stay ahead of the bad guys, companies will need to rely more on “smart systems” which should be able to recognize anomalies in a workflow and emit an alert before proceeding with the new request.

Innovation

I.3 Innovation

“By the time people are involved in defending against an attack, it’s too late,” Sadler says. “We want systems that protect themselves — to have multiple layers of defense in much the same way the human body defends itself, and to act autonomously.”

Along with smart systems, current technologies such as virtualization are helping mitigate some of the opportunities for attack by removing the ability for direct communication with critical systems. By using a higher level of abstraction in the way we configure our storage, networking and processing, we can better guarantee that security is being enforced and preventing potential attacks.

Application lifecycle and security Many of the issues surrounding application security can be significantly reduced if developers take a lifecycle approach to security and develop the application with the benefit of protecting it from cradle to grave. The idea is based on the concept of Total Quality Management (TQM), which W. Edwards Deming introduced in the 1950s. In the United States, TQM made its way into manufacturing in the 1970s and into IT software quality assurance in the 1980s, a time when software security was far from an issue.

Today, however, companies are recognizing the need to architect and build security into applications from the start, which is no trivial task. “It has taken us a long time to learn the lessons from Deming,” Diamant says.

“By the time people are involved in defending against an attack, it’s too late.”


I.3 Innovation

Source: HP Comprehensive Applications Threat Analysis (CATA), September 2012

Extending security assurance to meet today’s realitiesOrganizations cannot afford to be reactive in the current threat-filled environment

In post-releasephase

Patching

In testingphase

Integration andpenetration testing

In developmentphase

Code reviews

In requirementsphase

Architectureand design

Retu

rn o

n in

vest

men

t

Historical evolution in security assurance maturity

ProactiveReactive

Innovation

Discussion hubHow can organizations like those in healthcare turn the tides against security breaches?

“Security protocols will adjust, seek out and quarantine perceived threats before the system is compromised.” — Albert Vargas

“A triage approach could focus the scarce resources of security teams on areas that need attention.” — Charles Bess

I.3

Risk management

I.4 Risk management

Most enterprises walk a fine line between agility and security. The simplistic view is that a company can have either one or the other. However, the two are not mutually exclusive. Gilliland explains that migrating to a security approach that protects users and their information instead of the infrastructure and its devices can help enterprises be more agile.

“If you try to control only the infrastructure, it stops you from adopting new platforms and from moving and sharing information more freely. Once you can protect the data, you can actually be more flexible,” says Gilliland.

To achieve the right balance, companies must make security part of the foundation of every technical design process — and understand the business risks they are taking when they make security decisions.

Technologies that focus on mitigating attacks can help an enterprise reduce vulnerability. Solutions that use threat research and correlation of security events and vulnerabilities with contextual data to deliver security intelligence across IT operations, infrastructure and applications will be even more critical as hackers look for new ways to make their attacks more targeted and more destructive. Enterprises need visibility across the entire organization in order to see where there may be threats.

In the shorter term, Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of security research think tank Ponemon Institute, believes a new generation of tools will alleviate many of the problems caused by simple human laziness. “We get lazy and don’t change passwords, and as a result tools are ineffective,” he notes. “I think we will see more solutions that make security invisible to the user and under-the-system-level technologies. Call it ‘security with convenience’.”

Above all, executives need to adopt a risk-management mindset to security policy. “You may have stopped the adversary 5,000 times, but that one breach creates a perception of negligence,” Gilliland warns. He urges enterprises to create the infrastructure, toolsets, processes and controls to minimize damage when the inevitable breach occurs.

I.4

Art Gilliland, senior vice president, Software Enterprise Security Products, HP

“You may have stopped the adversary 5,000 times, but that one breach creates a perception of negligence.”

Risk management

I.4 Risk management

I.4 Risk management

Discussion hubBy 2020, will government entities play a larger role in protecting citizens online?

“The real issue is how much privacy individuals are willing to give up in order to have more security and how much trust they have in the government to behave benevolently.” — Kevin Light

“The economies of global corporate entities in many cases will be greater than the GDP of many countries, and it is this citizenship that will be earmarked for protection.” — Manjit

Regulation

I.5

In the last decade, after a number of high-profile network breaches, state and federal authorities in the United States have enacted stringent legislation to protect user data, such as the payment-card industry’s Data Security Standard, healthcare’s Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and financial services’ Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Government requirements and frameworks have raised awareness of security issues, making it a punishable offense to willingly — and, in some cases, even unwillingly — expose sensitive personal information. Whether we will be more secure with these new laws in place is a subject of much debate.

Some argue that government involvement is essential to protecting individual entities against the military intelligence of nation-states, while others believe self-regulation with properly aligned incentives will prove more effective. It’s important to think about who pays for the cost of security today.

“The economic drivers make it challenging,” Diamant explains. “If the decision-makers aren’t feeling the direct impact of a breach, companies don’t include the optimal amount of security.”

Gilliland suggests governments have a role to play in protecting consumers, but companies won’t win by providing the minimum level of security. “Regulatory requirements set a bar above which everyone must be,” Gilliland

Regulation

I.5 Regulation

explains. “But you’re competing against an adversary that is looking for weakness. So if you are aspiring to the low bar, you’re in trouble. We need to create an ROI model that helps executives truly understand what it takes to be secure.”

Information stewardsSadler says research is taking the view that security is about stewardship. “Our first role is to protect the Internet for everybody,” he says. “We will all be looking after other people’s information. You expect me (as a company) to use your information but not misuse that information. If we put homes online in future smart cities, we will want the service providers to use the information we’ve given them, but for the purposes we expect. The industry is going through a period of feeling our way through what is acceptable use and what is not.”

And when we come under attack, Sadler says, we need to share the nature of that attack in real time with others around us, to better protect everyone. The security operations center of 2020 will be federated with partners, suppliers, customers and even competitors. It will not just be looking inwardly at what is happening on the corporate network.

“It’s about stewardship — our first role is to protect the Internet for everybody.”


I.5 Regulation

I.5 Regulation

Discussion hubWhat can be done to ensure government has a say without stifling innovation?

“Although portrayed as scary in movies, global monitoring could increase our feeling of security if we can prevent misuse of that info.” — Bastiaan van der Water

“Certain governments will also be the attackers, claiming the intent to protect us. Who will protect us from governments going too far?” — Patrick Demichel

Strategies

Innovation can be a tremendous driver in keeping networks and data secure. But it will never be enough. To prepare now for the threats of tomorrow, companies must take a holistic, grassroots approach to security. In order to embrace the kind of transformation that is required to be resilient and defensible in 2020, enterprises must start building security into their cultures.

“Companies must reach out to all their stakeholders and make them aware that damage can happen anywhere in an organization. It needs be a cultural norm around which employees are educated,” Lawson says. And having a breach management plan is critical to dealing with the inevitable. “Companies no longer get a black eye for a breach, they get a black eye for fumbling after the breach,” she adds.

Who will be responsible for driving this kind of change? “The role of the chief information security officer is more important than most people realize,” Menn explains. “This is a battle of ecosystems, and it has to be taken seriously at the highest levels.”

I.6 Strategies

Technology a major driverFor many companies, the use of smart technologies already has begun, with more organizations bringing integrated and context-aware systems into their infrastructures to help protect their data. “Luckily, smart systems implementation is not a Big Bang thing where you have to get everything in place to make it work. It’s more a collection of separate pieces that help a lot, and the more we have the better we will be,” Sadler says.

Ponemon has high hopes for security in 2020. “We will see more interoperability across security technology than we have today,” he predicts. “Today there are literally hundreds of categories of security devices and a lot of them overlap, so it’s difficult for a company to know what it needs. The industry needs to come up with fewer categories and more interoperability.”

Also, he believes more people will be educated about security, acquiring more skill and a higher security intelligence, which alone may mitigate a good number of security issues.

Menn explains that, in the short term, security companies are going back to the drawing board and tying security down to the chip level. They also are

supporting more business rules in their products, which will allow customers to limit the functionality of an application so that certain features might have to be turned on or off depending on the user’s circumstances.

Long-term, Menn believes we will need a new Internet for financial transactions and sensitive information. “I don’t think TCP/IP can be made secure. The Internet was something in beta that escaped from the lab. It was never supposed to be used for banking and government secrets.”

By 2020, many hope the evolution of security technologies and safeguards may finally outpace the threats they have been designed to protect against. Others are frank and anticipate continuing difficulties stemming the swelling tide of attacks. But all agree that the key is in starting today.

“I don’t think TCP/IP can be made secure. The Internet was something in beta that escaped from the lab.”

Joseph Menn, author, investigative reporter with Reuters Twitter: @josephmenn

I.6 Strategies

(Photo credit: Doug Piburn)

I.6 Strategies

Discussion hubHow will technology change the way enterprises approach security in 2020?

“The rise of social media helps to link humans into various digital ‘tribes.’ Such groups or humans will become more resilient to various forms of electronic attack.” — Horia Slușanschis

“BYOD will be widely spread and both applications and corporate data will be virtually stored in the cloud. Professionals will carry their offices in their pockets for use anywhere at any time.” — Bo Carlsson

1 Steve Henn, “Could the New Air Traffic Control System Be Hacked?,” NPR.org, August 14, 2012 2 Homeland Security News Wire, “Pacemakers, other implanted devices, vulnerable to lethal attacks,” November 28, 2012 3 Microsoft, Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, Volume 12, 2012, page 40

I.7 Sources

The views set forth in this publication are not necessarily those of Hewlett-Packard Company or its affiliates (HP), but are the collective views of contributors to this publication, some of which have been curated by HP. Because the content of this publication is future-looking, it, by definition, makes certain presuppositions and assumptions, some or all of which may or may not be realized.

Volume2 chapter1 security

Software

Transcript of Volume2 chapter1 security