Cybersecurity’s Human Factor: Lessons from the Pentagon

https://hbr.org/2015/09/cybersecuritys-human-factor-lessons-from-the-pentagon

by jackgavigan • 11 years ago

16 4 11 years ago

I stopped reading after the first paragraph:

From September 2014 to June 2015 alone, it repelled more than 30 million known malicious attacks at the boundaries of its networks.

Someone told them about SSHGuard and pf, I presume?

jka• 11 years ago

None of the lessons presented here are necessarily incorrect, but it's very interesting the way this article is attempting to assert a rigid military approach to security in the private sector.

The most creative and effective organizations nowadays are arguably the ones in which traditional rules and protocols are eschewed for newer more fluid processes (agile/rapid iteration instead of waterfall, flatter hierarchies instead of top-down authority, reward for creativity and experimentation rather than pipelined design and production, and so on).

I'd argue that this article is suggesting that large institutions are the ones that need to adopt this rigid approach to security - but they're already likely struggling to attract tech/security talent, and this kind of environment isn't going to foster it (or maybe I misunderstand those talent pools).

In addition, some of the suggested guidance basically eliminates any kind of opportunity for fun or exploration during the job - which might be possible for some small subset of extremely dedicated operations engineers and security staff, but isn't going to work for the other 90% of day-to-day employees.

I'm wondering if there's some kind of disconnect or incorrect perception of the world of IT from the author(s) here. Or it may be a bid/attempt to build some kind of reputation for authority in the area.

dmix• 11 years ago

Excellent response, captured my thoughts exactly.

dsfyu404ed• 11 years ago

I think you're missing the point. The author is advocating for a well defined set of policies and procedures and users that understand and follow them. The point of this is to create an environment where the security people get the info they need (from users) to do their jobs and the infrastructure (including users and policies) are set up in a way that lets them do their jobs.

Big companies have a more to lose and deeper pockets so they're more likely to give big paychecks to security people. Regardless, few organizations pay anyone in support roles well, security is no different.

The main point is that you need users who aren't afraid to say "hey WTF is this?" and a system that can back that up by evaluating $this and taking appropriate action across the entire network.

Speed is key but the waterfall/agile models are way too simple to apply at a high level. The workflow bears more resemblance to this: http://franklinstreetwebserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/0... because you've got a different path of actions taken for each event and making the decisions at each point as quickly as possible is key but there's often so many moving parts that a very rigid set of procedures is needed to ensure consistency.

If someone's workstation crypyo-walls a network share there's how many different moving parts involved in the cleanup?

Cybersecurity’s Human Factor: Lessons from the Pentagon

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