Which of the following initiatives are likely to be a major telecommunications technology related priority for 2007? Mobility is a huge issue.

We’re starting to see traction with mobility.

• The evolution of enterprise mobility:
  • Voice –> messaging –> e–mail –> web, –> business applications –>  instant messaging/presence –> what’s next?
• Cell phone to Smartphone:
  • 1G –> 2G –> 3G

Converging IT Responsibilities

Collaboration, Web/Internet, Desktop Computer, Deskphone/PBX, Mobile Phone and Applications. All of this is under the umbrella of IT. IT departments are not a single cohesive unit where everyone gets along. They have different motivations, budgets, goals, etc.

BlackBerry manages all of these responsibilities in one, forcing these departments to collaborate and work together. This is key for interoperability between these systems, knowing how they work together.

Desktop capabilities are expected in mobility:

• Information
• Collaboration
• Voice
• Transactions
• Presence
• Application

Mobile devices are fundamentally changing the pace of which we all work. You can reach anybody at anytime. This changes business.

All of this is working with data that is behind a corporate firewall.

The big change in IT is that for almost any industry now, the data that you have and you manage is a core corporate asset. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in manufacturing, logistics, or a bakery. Information is king. This has the benefit of moving IT up to a C-level position. You are a core part of your business success. This has benefits, and also added stress.

Voice is still the “killer app” for mobility. Deskphones and smartphones need to overlap into a mobile voice system.

Another up and coming technology is the mobilization of enterprise applications. This provides the ultimate user experience. For example, Blackberry has mobilized the SAP Business Suite on BlackBerry smartphones. SAP CRM access is as seamless and intuitive as email on BlackBerry and incorporates push, alerting, security, GPS, Wi-Fi and media.

Enterprise grade platforms will extend core competencies of enterprise systems to mobile environments.

• Secure
• Reliable
• Manage
• Control
• Administration
• Standardize

Conclusion:

Putting it together: integrating the wireless capabilities of today into the business tools of tomorrow.

The information security field is not yet fully mature; there is a lack of cohesive interoperable framework.   The rapidly evolving landscape adds to the existing problem. There are several examples: Intrusion Detection System (IDS) was quickly overtaken by Intrusion Prevention System (IPS).  On the Firewall arena: the focus has moved from perimeter security to end point security.  There are some security visionaries who are preaching inside-out security approach i.e. building products with information security in mind from the beginning.

Threats are moving higher up in the OSI stack making it harder to detect. Hackers are becoming more sophisticated – there are powerful free open source hacking tools available at their disposal. Security managers driving security initiatives without co-ordination can result in pieces of puzzle that don't fit well. Agency problem i.e. security managers thinking more about their personal advancement rather than security of the company is bad for the company’s security initiative. Security leaders who do not have a clear vision of

security at the component level, the administration level and the strategy level can only make information security even more convoluted. The CISO and acting CIO of US Dept of Veteran affairs resigned after the breach in May, 2006 where personal data of 26 million veterans and more than 2 million service members was stolen. This clearly demonstrates the accountability and visibility of security leadership.

The attitude of IT security leaders and security team members has a significant impact on security.  Reckless buying of information security technology can result in wasteful expenditure and very little gain in efficiency. Not understanding the business perspective of security issues or security perspective of business issues can lead to poor security decisions. Using security as a mechanism to gain control rather than using it as a tool to reduce risk can only diminish the perceived value of security initiative. Implementing security as an afterthought rather than building it into the framework not only result in poor architectural decision. Security investment is more like buying insurance. Thinking security as a vehicle providing an ROI can result in wrong expectation and lead poor decision. The business in which a company operates contributes largely to the perceived importance to security. Financial institutions usually have a higher bar on security because of the very nature of their business and their exposure legal liability. It is a good idea for many technology companies to emulate financial institutions to raise their information security bar.

It could be a pipedream to accomplish complete  information security but accomplishing a well managed information security program is an attainable possibility.

The various components (sub functions) of security organization should align with the business objectives of the IT and the whole organization. There needs to be a cohesive security strategy in order to align the various comoponents. One good way of understanding the business objective is why is the business parting with money for deploying a specific security component. Why is business giving me money for Compliance? Why is business giving me money to implement IDP? Constitutive questions such as these will help you to understand the fundamental concerns for the business and based on these we can come up with a strategy suitably aligned with the business.

One good example is the area of compliance. Attempting to make each every units of your business complaint with certain standards/legal regulations and so on would be a tall order. First define the scope, draw a circle around the units that need to be compliant, then come up with a strategy to make it compliant by formulating your objective - derived from the business objective of why the business gave you money.

Any security implementation effort should have a well defined focus (scope), business objective and strategy to bind the various components cohesively that aligns with the ultimate business objective. By this business will view security organization with dignity else security organization will end up being a spoke in the wheel of business.

In the past, I was involved in discussion about the ROI of information security and security is insurance and so on. After eating the forbidden apple from the tree of paradise, I realize security has neither ROI nor akin to insurance. Information security is way of doing business with due care. Security is way of enhancing the trust of a business among customers and thus enhancing the identity (or brand image of the company). Few years down the line people won't even question why you do security, it will become a part of  your background conversation. Nobody questions why we buy hybrid vehicles anymore right?

If components of security function is not cohesively aligned with business objective it is spoke in the wheel of business else it is a brand enhancer of business.

People pretty quickly realized that plain HTML was not enough, so developers invented CGI/PERL for more dynamic sites. Once they wanted to scale and pool they built out ASP and JSP, then to deliver middle tier components they developed EJB, J2EE, and DCOM. After that there were a lot of heterogeneous systems that needed to talk to each other so SOAP and XML came along to address that. This path diverged into ultra-simple (REST) and more powerful but baroque (SOA), and finally, the user side got some love with Web 2.0 technologies. That's a heck of a lot of engineering and innovation by the software development community for plus or minus 8 years.

Now lets' check in with the developer's brethren over in information security. Well, once the web came along the information security community quickly realized that network address translation was going to be important, and further that encrypting the communication channel between the browser and the web server was also crucial. And then, they addressed all the security issues ASP, JSP, EJB, J2EE, DCOM, SOAP, XML, REST, SOA, and Web 2.0 with....umm...more of the same!

That's a pretty poor showing for innovation considering the enterprise investment into information security. Sure the software developers' have a bigger budget, but come on infosec - show some pride!

Infosec types like to throw developers under the bus for security issues, but its a collective failure. Sure developers need to learn more about secure coding, but as the table above shows - security is not keeping pace, and the gap is getting bigger.

Here is another dimension to the problem - attackers *do* evolve. The new technologies provide far greater attack surface (data, method and channels) for the attacker's to exploit and/or launch attacks from.

Because the defenses have not evolved its a simple evolutionary adaptation for attackers to go around or through the 1995 defenses. Its not about SOAP going through the firewall, its about never bothering to secure the apps and the data. Its like saying to your opponent, remember the how the Detroit Lions played defense in a certain game in 1995, we were just going to do that.

So with the software developer's latest evolution we get Mr. O'Reilly's famous Web 2.0 meme map

but where is the co-evolution in infosec? there is non. There is co-evolution in the attacker space. here is a sample web 2.0 attacker meme map

So the firewall offers great protection if your adversary is using Visio, but otherwise its mostly useless.

So we would want to see two things happen - developers start writing more high assurance code and second - infosec needs to evolve its security services to form fit to that which they are protecting. Hint - it ain't a Visio diagram.

The thing is - we are getting getter tools. Static analysis is a very powerful tool to improve your software security from a bottom up perspective and it can scale. These tools continue to get better. We are are getting better standards - WS-Security, WS-Trust, and company enable fundamentally new security architectures. And we're getting better primitives, especially in the identity space - SAML, Cardspace, and friends will one day let us live in a world where users are not typing username and password into a web browser to do online banking.

So maybe the innovation tide is turning, but there is a lot of ground to catch up, infosec about a decade behind the developers and probably close to that far behind the attackers. Its going to take something special to catch up, but is there any other way? I think a big part of catching up is putting together a realistic pragmatic blueprint to evolve your security architecture - a roadmap that addresses your people, processes, and technology. There are standards, primitives, and tools to leverage, but by themselves they are just pieces, they have to be brought together into a cohesive design. Its not an overnight thing to realize this, but the point is for infosec to *begin* the evolutionary process. Now. For real use cases. Using the security protocols, mechanisms, and skills we have available now.

The Road goes ever on and on,

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

-J.R.R. Tolkien,The Hobbit