The fine folks at Securosis are starting a blog series on “Fact-based Network Security: Metrics and the Pursuit of Prioritization“, starting in a couple of weeks. Sounds pretty New School to me! I suggest that you all check it out and participate in the dialog. Should be interesting and thought provoking. [Edit -- fixed my [...]
In two recent blog posts (here and here), Chris Wysopal (CTO of Veracode) proposed a metric called “Application Security Debt”. I like the general idea, but I have found some problems in his method. In this post, I suggest corrections that will be both more credible and more accurate, at least for half of the [...]
Symantec’s new Norton Cybercrime Index looks like it is mostly a marketing tool. They present it as though there is solid science, data, and methods behind it, but an initial analysis shows that this is probably not the case. The only way to have confidence in this is if Symantec opens up about their algorthms and data.
If a CISO is expected to be an executive officer (esp. for a large, complex technology- or information-centered organization), then he/she will need the MBA-level knowledge and skill. MBA is one path to getting those skills, at least if you are thoughtful and selective about the school you choose. Other paths are available, so it’s not just about an MBA credential.
Otherwise, if a CISO is essentially the Most Senior Information Security Manager, then MBA education wouldn’t be of much value.
I have fundamental objections to Ponemon’s methods used to estimate ‘indirect costs’ due to lost customers (‘abnormal churn’) and the cost of replacing them (‘customer acquisition costs’). These include sloppy use of terminology, mixing accounting and economic costs, and omitting the most serious cost categories.
The visual metaphor of a dashboard is a dumb idea for management-oriented information security metrics. It doesn’t fit the use cases and therefore doesn’t support effective user action based on the information. Dashboards work when the user has proportional controllers or switches that correspond to each of the ‘meters’ and the user can observe the effect of using those controllers and switches in real time by observing the ‘meters’. Dashboards don’t work when there is a loose or ambiguous connection between the information conveyed in the ‘meters’ and the actions that users might take. Other visual metaphors should work better.
I’d like some feedback on my data analysis, below, from anyone who is an expert on spam or anti-spam technologies. I’ve analyzed data from John Graham-Cumming’s “Spammers’ Compendium” to estimate the technical capabilities of spammers and the evolution path of innovations.
There seems to be no notification that these files are publicly available and no web page listing all the submissions. Therefore, unless you know they are there, you won’t find them. But you can find them all through Google using this search string “NOI site:http://www.nist.gov/itl/upload/”
This GAO Report is a good overall summary of the state of Federal cyber security R&D and why it’s not getting more traction. Their recommendations (p22) aren’t earth-shaking: “…we are recommending that the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, in conjunction with the national Cybersecurity Coordinator, direct the Subcommittee on Networking and [...]
If you are developing or using security metrics, it’s inevitable that you’ll have to deal with the dimension of time. “Data” tells you about the past. “Security” is a judgement about the present. “Risk” is a cost of the future, brought to the present. The way to marry these three is through social learning processes.