• Obviously:  http://chuvakin.blogspot.com/search/label/PCI   :-)
• PCI DSS News and Information at http://www.treasuryinstitute.org/blog 
• PCI Answers at http://pcianswers.com/
• Branden Williams' Security Convergence Blog  at http://blogs.verisign.com/securityconvergence/ 
• SecuriTIM on PCI DSS at http://www.securitim.com/blog.html
• Payment Card Security & IT Controls Explained at http://pcidss.wordpress.com/ 

If I missed anybody, sorry, please add below and I will update my list!

Just FYI.

Unfortunately, there's not really anything to his response. It's obvious he doesn't want to admit that they've been checking ID's all this time to no purpose whatsoever, so he just emits vague generalities like a frightened squid filling the water with ink. Yes, some of the stunts in article are silly (who cares if people fly with Hezbollah T-shirts?) so that gives him an opportunity to minimize the real issues.

Watch-lists and identity checks are important and effective security measures. We identify dozens of terrorist-related individuals a week and stop No-Flys regularly with our watch-list process.

It is simply impossible that the TSA catches dozens of terrorists every week. If it were true, the administration would be trumpeting this all over the press -- it would be an amazing success story in their war on terrorism. But note that Hawley doesn't exactly say that; he calls them "terrorist-related individuals." Which means exactly what? People so dangerous they can't be allowed to fly for any reason, yet so innocent they can't be arrested -- even under the provisions of the Patriot Act.

And if Secretary Chertoff is telling the truth when he says that there are only 2,500 people on the no-fly list and fewer than 16,000 people on the selectee list -- they're the ones that get extra screening -- and that most of them live outside the U.S., then it is statistically impossible that the TSA identifies "dozens" of these people every week. The math just doesn't make sense.

And I also don't believe this:

Behavior detection works and we have 2,000 trained officers at airports today. They alert us to people who may pose a threat but who may also have items that could elude other layers of physical security.

It does work, but I don't see the TSA doing it properly. (Fly El Al if you want to see it done properly.) But what I think Hawley is doing is engaging in a little bit of psychological manipulation. Like sky marshals, the real benefit of behavior detection isn't whether or not you do it but whether or not the bad guys believe you're doing it. If they think you are doing behavior detection at security checkpoints, or have sky marshals on every airplane, then you don't actually have to do it. It's the threat that's the deterrent, not the actual security system.

This doesn't impress me, either:

Items carried on the person, be they a 'beer belly' or concealed objects in very private areas, are why we are buying over 100 whole body imagers in upcoming months and will deploy more over time. In the meantime, we use hand-held devices that detect hydrogen peroxide and other explosives compounds as well as targeted pat-downs that require private screening.

Optional security measures don't work, because the bad guys will opt not to use them. It's like those air-puff machines at some airports now. They're probably great at detecting explosive residue off clothing, but every time I have seen the machines in operation, the passengers have the option whether to go through the lane with them or another lane. What possible good is that?

The closest thing to a real response from Hawley is that the terrorists might get caught stealing credit cards.

Using stolen credit cards and false documents as a way to get around watch-lists makes the point that forcing terrorists to use increasingly risky tactics has its own security value.

He's right about that. And, truth be told, that was my sloppiest answer during the original intervied. Thinking about it afterwards, it's far more likely is that someone with a clean record and a legal credit card will buy the various plane tickets.

This is new:

Boarding pass scanners and encryption are being tested in eight airports now and more will be coming.

Ignoring for a moment that "eight airports" nonsense -- unless you do it at every airport, the bad guys will choose the airport where you don't do it to launch their attack -- this is an excellent idea. The reason my attack works, the reason I can get through TSA checkpoints with a fake boarding pass, is that the TSA never confirms that the information on the boarding pass matches a legitimate reservation. If all TSA checkpoints had boarding pass scanners that connected to the airlines' computers, this attack would not work. (Interestingly enough, I noticed exactly this system at the Dublin airport earlier this month.)

Stopping the ‘James Bond’ terrorist is truly a team effort and I whole-heartedly agree that the best way to stop those attacks is with intelligence and law enforcement working together.

This isn't about "Stopping the 'James Bond' terrorist," it's about stopping terrorism. And if all this focus on airports, even assuming it starts working, shifts the terrorists to other targets, we haven't gotten a whole lot of security for our money.

FYI: I did a long interview with Kip Hawley last year. If you haven't read it, I strongly recommend you do. I pressed him on these and many other points, and didn't get very good answers then, either.

Based upon talking with Microsoft customers over the past five years, they are always looking for that little bit of extra information to help make prioritization decisions.  An obvious example of this is the severity attached to the vulns.  However, as explained by Mike Reavey of the the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) over on the Ecostrat blog today, customers are also very interested in which vulnerabilities already have exploit code or sample exploits available.

According to our analysis in the most recent Security Intelligence Report (SIR), only about 30 percent of the vulnerabilities we fix each year have exploit code released.  Why is it not 100% ?  Some are not interesting to attackers, sure, but some are simply more challenging to develop a consistent exploit against.  It seems like it would be practically useful if this sort of information could be analyzed and published for customers.

How does one come up with an Exploitability Index?

• The MSRC will analyze the vulnerability and explore what it would take to exploit it, with the support of our Security Vulnerability Research & Defense (SVRD) team.  This will include leveraging methodologies from the broad researcher community.
• We will also ask security researcher members of the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) (download FAQ) to review the vulnerabilities and check our analysis before releasing the index.

The idea of the Exploitability Index is to provide more information to help customers prioritize Microsoft security updates. This Index will reflect our best estimate, scrutinized by MAPP partners, of the likelihood of a functional exploit being developed for a given vulnerability.

If you are interested, I did an interview with Mike Reavey a while back, where we discuss what sort of information customers want that isn't yet in Security Bulletins.  FYI, the video is about 15 minutes long and the early part focuses on Mike, how he got into security and how he ended up at Microsoft before we get to the Security Bulletin discussion ... if you want to get right to the Security Bulletin discussion, skip forward to about 08:40.

If you like these sorts of videos, click on
SecurityGuy 001 - Interview with MSRC Leader Mike Reavey and it'll take you to the edge.technet.com site and you can check out the related videos.

Regards ~ Jeff

• Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) : http://www.isaca.org/cisa/
• Certified Information Systems Security Professional : https://www.isc2.org/cissp

Are You Ready ?
A few basic questions to ask yourself to gauge how ready you are:

• Do I meet the spirit, and not just the letter, of the experience requirements ?
• Has there been sufficient diversity in my experience ?

Five Step Approach to CISA or CISSP Exam Preparation

1. Perform an initial benchmark and assessment of your readiness
2. Read a “survey” level preparation guide cover to cover
3. Perform a secondary benchmark, and compare your readiness
4. Review official, or “deep dive”, preparation materials on areas identified as your weaknesses
5. Re-benchmark, and repeat targeted reviews until ready

CISA and CISSP Preparation

to a new, fuller-featured platform. 

I did want to make sure you have a couple of important links and info! There are a couple of don’t-miss webcasts and events this week if you’re interested in NAC technologies.

• Live Debate from Network World: Snyder vs Stiennon- Duel of the NAC Experts
  Tuesday, July 22nd, 3:00pm Eastern More info

• 2008 NAC Survey from Information Week: Mike Fratto reviews the 2008 Report
  Wednesday, July 23rd, 2:00pm Eastern More info

If you want to read the report, you can download the entire Information Week 2008 NAC Report by Mike Fratto free, for a limited time. The report covers all the main NAC vendor offerings and contains a variety of interesting survey results. You’ll be hearing from me soon about the contents of the report and my thoughts on the product details, roadmaps and features. 

Enjoy!

# # #

With over 4.5 billion mobile and fixed phones out there as of November 2007, the phone represents the most ubiquitous user interface out there. As ???mashups??? on the Web let us quickly and easily access information from multiple data sources, how do we extend those mashups to the world of the phone? How do we bring the old world of voice and telephony into the new world of the Web, social networks, and social media? And how do we do that using open source tools and open standards?

If any of you will be attending, please do drop me a note as I always enjoy meeting up with people who read this blog. If you are not attending but are interested, it's not too late... you can still register at the OSCON site. Should be a great convention for those interested in open source development. The schedule is pretty amazing as it truly has a collection of some of the best folks out there in the open source world. (The convention starts on Wednesday with Monday and Tuesday being for tutorials.) I'm definitely looking forward to the event!

Technorati Tags: open source, conferences, oreilly, development, python, voicexml, ccxml, sip, portland, dan york

With over 4.5 billion mobile and fixed phones out there as of November 2007, the phone represents the most ubiquitous user interface out there. As “mashups” on the Web let us quickly and easily access information from multiple data sources, how do we extend those mashups to the world of the phone? How do we bring the old world of voice and telephony into the new world of the Web, social networks, and social media? And how do we do that using open source tools and open standards?

If any of you will be attending, please do drop me a note as I always enjoy meeting up with people who read this blog. If you are not attending but are interested, it's not too late... you can still register at the OSCON site. Should be a great convention for those interested in open source development. The schedule is pretty amazing as it truly has a collection of some of the best folks out there in the open source world. (The convention starts on Wednesday with Monday and Tuesday being for tutorials.) I'm definitely looking forward to the event!

Technorati Tags: open source, conferences, oreilly, development, python, voicexml, ccxml, sip, portland, dan york

Sometimes I’m the queen of analogies (likely a trait I inherited from my Dad). Quite often my analogies are pretty silly, but they almost always get the point across.

So I was trying to work out an analogy to explain how we can use logs, events and searching and why these are advantageous. I was in the shower and it hit me! And… here it is.  FYI- If you’re a techie, just stop reading now… (I warned you).

The analogy. Imagine a house… actually, imagine your house. Let’s say that your house is like a network. The house and all the major appliance and structures of the house are like infrastructure devices- switches and servers, for example. Of course, the people living in your house are users. In addition you have ‘gateways’ from your house to the outside world, in the form of doors, windows, vents, etc. These house gateways are like our WAN devices- firewalls, IDS/IPS and other gateway appliances.

Let’s say you live in the house with your spouse and family. You’re going to be the wife for now, so imagine you, your husband, three kids and a dog (only because that amuses me). Each of your house users have a key to get in.

Your major appliances- the TVs, refrigerator, oven, the family computers and alarm system are all creating logs when anything happens and they’re all giving their logs to the toaster. (The toaster is greatly under appreciated so I’m giving him a big role here- yes- your toaster is the Syslog server). The doors, windows and other ‘portals’ to the outside are also creating events and logging each time they’re opened, closed, locked or broken and, they too, are sending their info to the toaster.

Here’s where life in your house gets interesting. Let’s figure out what’s normal… it’s probably normal for your husband to come home, do some work on the computer while you cook, and then everyone watch TV. The kids are doing their homework, playing on the computer and probably rummaging around the fridge for an after-school snack. You see your syslogging toaster shows you…  

• the src= Refrigerator was opened multiple times in a short period of time between 3:43pm and 4:16pm by multiple users
• the src= Kids Computer was logged off the Internet at 4:30 by user: Kid2
• the src= Front Door was opened at 5:20pm by user: Husband
• the src= Oven was turned on Bake at 350 at 5:32pm by user: You
• the src= LivingRoom TV was turned on at 5:56pm by user: Husband
• the src= LivingRoom TV channel was modified multiple times in a short period of time between 5:56pm and 6:02pm (your husband was probably looking for the ball game)

These are all things you expect to see. So, what’s not normal? Some things your toaster may tell you that would be out of the ordinary…

• the src= Refrigerator was opened at 02:40am by user: Kid1
  What does this mean? Someone’s late-night snacking, no big deal.
• the src= Kids Computer was logged onto the Internet at 02:45am by user: Kid1
  Uh-oh, Kid1 is gallivanting on the Internet in the middle of the night un-chaperoned. Might need to check that out.
• the src= Front Door was attempted to be opened unsuccessfully 14 times in a short period of time beginning at 10:15am by user: UNKNOWN. The toaster logged the key code attempts tried by user UNKNOWN.
  Kids were at school, you were at work- someone’s trying to break in.
• the src= Front Door was opened the next day at 1:20pm by user: ROOT
  You were still not home- someone just broke into your house.

Maybe we want to be alerted when these things are happening, or have happened. With some log search and correlation tools, in conjunction with your toaster syslog, we can get immediate alerts when something unexpected is happening. We could tell the log search to keep talking to the toaster and immediately send us a text message if the toaster sees the front door or any windows being accessed between 09:00am and 3:00pm on any weekday, by any user. If the toaster saw something happening, we would know immediately and could take appropriate actions- maybe call the police to notify them of a break-in.

Now, back to the network. Now that you have an idea of how we can use logs and events in the house to identify what’s going on and spot abnormal activity, we can port that over to our network. Go back and again think of the house and its appliances as resources on the network. We can see when someone- inside or outside- is trying to or has successfully accessed something and we can alert, take action, or keep logs and reports for future use and accounting.

Replaying events. If you’re using a super-nifty tool, you may be able to replay specific events back in a visual format- almost like a video into the network. Let’s take our Kid1’s midnight snacking. If we replayed all the events that contained user= Kid1 from time 10:00pm (bedtime) to 07:00am (gettin’ up time) we could see Kid1 go from the bedroom down to the kitchen, opening the fridge, watching TV for a bit before going back to the room and surfing the Internet for an hour. We could actually ‘watch’ these events happening with a re-constructed timeline. A great example (and my favourite toy) to do this is Splunk’s Replay application.

That’s the basic gist of it all. There are some other detailed ‘things’ we can do with these technologies, and I may elaborate on those another time. We all have A.D.D. and this one is long enough already!

# # #

All provisioning solutions provide some facilities for:

• Reduction of paper-based processes in favor of electronic requests and work flows
• Reduction of manual updates in favor of automated entitlement updates

All provisioning solution providers strive to have a compelling story for these items. Additionally, these were the focus of the first generation of solutions which emerged in the ’90s.

For the Identity Management programs with which I have been involved, automation and risk management have been equally important. This is somewhat reflected in the definition I use for provisioning:

Provisioning is the processes and systems which:

• Manage the entire Lifecycle of an Entitlement from request, through approval processes, onto issuance, and eventual revocation

• Provide transparent views of the status and history of each step in the Entitlement Lifecycle through the creation of durable and detailed records, which include all the information required to provide non-repudiation and event reconstruction for each step in an Entitlement Lifecycle

Note: Fulfilling these objectives always involves a mix of manual and automated activities, technical and procedural controls.

Based on my experiences, having prepared several product selection scorecards in this space, there are two major approaches (philosophies), that provisioning products take in this space:

The provisioning system “sees itself as”…

• Coordinating identity and entitlement activities among systems with the objective of providing automation

- - - OR - - -

• Maintaining a single centralized record of reference for identity and entitlement, as well as providing tools to automate approval, issuance, revocation, and reconciliation

The “Centralized Record of Reference” concept is the watershed between these two. The systems that are designed purely for automation tend to focus on “Coordination” of external events. These systems often do not contain an internal store of entitlements. The systems that maintain a “Centralized Record of Reference” approach have the ability, through reconciliation, to validate that the entitlements in the “wild” (e.g., in AD, LDAP, within local applications, etc.) match the “official” state (which they maintain). This enables these systems to detect changes and take action (e.g., drop the privilege, report the discrepancy, trigger a follow-up work flow, etc.)

Which system is right for you?

This really depends on what percentage of your systems require tight oversight. If you are in an industry with low-IT regulation, and the data of your core business is low risk, then it may make more sense to invest in routine manual audits of a few systems, rather than monitoring your entire IT world. On the other hand, if you are in an industry that is highly regulated, with high-risk data, then the automated oversight and reconciliation capabilities are likely a good fit for you.

FYI, last week I co-taught a one-day class on Identity and Access Management Architecture at RSA 2008. For the last 3rd of the class, Dan Houser and I had a list of advanced topics for the class to vote on. I prepared a module on Provisioning, but alas it was number 4 out of 7 options, and we only had time to cover 3… As a result, a Provisioning slidecast is “coming soon” to the Art of Information Security podcast.

Cheers, Erik

Art of Information Security would love your feedback !

Risk ROI for –Some– Provisioning Solutions…