I have been preaching for some time about what I call complete NAC. That is a complete network access control solution, not just network admission control and certainly not end point access control.  It is not an evil plot to extend Cisco/Microsoft dominance and most importantly Richard, no one and let me say this again, no one has ever said that NAC negates the need for a layered security model.  NAC is just another layer in that model.  Richard’s comments deriding the .edu and .mil markets were also laughable.  Richard, have you ever heard the term military grade?  Are you seriously trying to say that enterprises take security more seriously than the military does?  Come on now Richard.

The bottom line is Joel Snyder is not only a sharp dude technically, but is street savvy enough to run circles around my friend Richard.  He made Richard stay focused on the question at hand, did not let him wander and so Richard had to face reality a bit. I am sure Richard will still say NAC is useless and will admonish people about hanging out with the likes of the StillSecure crowd, but I guess some things will just never change.  Except, I don’t think Richard will be in anymore of these bouts.  Maybe he can start selling a grill that takes the fat out of meat or perhaps a reality TV show like the other washed up palookas ?

I know many of you think I am like a pavlovian dog the way I respond to Richard Stiennon's anti-NAC vitirol.  After my last article, I really decided to just lay off Richard.  But just to show you that it is not me, I wanted to point out Richards recent attack on Grant Hartline, CTO of Mirage Networks.  Grant blogs and put up an article regarding the latest exchange between Richard and I.  Both Richard and I commented.  Check out Richards expective laced reply that I think shows just how unhinged he has become on this subject.  Richard rambles and stumbles taking shots at anyone he can.  I am telling you, he is really losing it.

In the meantime based on this, I am going to change my prediction on the great debate and say Joel Snyder in 2!

I am not sure what it is with Richard Stiennon.  Maybe his mom beat him with a NAC stick when he was young.  Hence his Jack Nicholson looks (more like the Joker in Batman, than Col Jessep in A Few Good Men) and his total disdain for NAC.  In any event Richard never seems to miss a chance to take a pot shot at NAC.  I have fired back and debated him many times on this.  In fact I am convinced that Richard's problem with NAC is that like Uncle Joe, he is just moving a little slow.  Richard still thinks of NAC as Cisco???s network admission control, circa Dec ???03.  He has not gotten up to speed on anything happening with NAC since.  Richard is going to debate NAC with Joel Snyder according to this article by Tim Greene today. My prediction is Snyder by a knockout in 3 rounds or less.

Richard???s latest NAC knock comes on a comment to an excellent article by the Hoff.  Chris takes a bold stand for someone working for a vendor and calls BS on the whole analyst thing (I will write more about that later in this article). Richard being an ex-analyst himself (lets face it, with Richard you can take the man out of the analyst job, but you can???t take the analyst out of the man), takes exception to Hoff???s ???whining??? (Richards words, not mine) and tries to tell Hoff that giving up is not the answer and the way to show up analysts, is to prove them wrong.  Great Richard you try to prove them wrong, when because of what they report you don???t have a market, can???t get any capital and have no visibility.  I guess that is when it is time to move on to the next gig, right? Then Richard has a bad NAC deja vu and feels it necessary to write this:

???Look how easy it is to one up the analyst firms, who as near as I can tell support Network Admission Control universally. Everyone except the folks at Updata Ventures know how seriously flawed NAC is with only one viable market, edu.???

I assume Richard is referring to Updata recently leading the Bradford Networks VC round. But more importantly Richard it is time to call a code red on you and give you the cold hard truth.  Richard the fact is that the edu market is not the only viable market for NAC.  In fact, one of the biggest customers of NAC is the DoD.  That is right Richard at least 3 of the 4 armed forces use NAC in helping to secure their networks. To paraphrase my friend Col Jessep - Richard, you want the truth, you can???t handle the truth!  You sleep securely under the blanket of protection that NAC provides.  If it is good enough to help ???clean the sand??? out of laptops coming home from SWA (that is SouthWest Asia, like in Iraq and Afghanistan, in case you don???t know Richard), it should be good enough for you. Think about that next time you are about to bad mouth NAC.

Let me give you some other truths you may not like Richard.  Why do you think every switch vendor (of which we partner with many of them) is lining up and bringing out NAC solutions?  Why has Microsoft put such a big push on NAP?  Why despite the Luddites like you does NAC still draw crowds at conferences like Interop (ask Joel about that).  Richard we are still signing new major OEM partners.  I am afraid you are the one sadly out of touch on this one Richard.  Just as you are out of touch in missing Hoff???s point in his article.

As to Hoff???s article, as I said I give Chris credit for speaking his mind. I spend an ungodly amount of my time speaking with analysts and trying to ???learn??? from them while at the same time trying to educate them.  I am constantly amazed that so many analysts (and press for that matter) just take a vendors word as gospel. I have seen research reports from analysts big and small, that I am sure did not have any more research done than calling a handful of vendors and listening to their spiel. Too many of these vendors if they do speak to customers, base their findings on such a small sample that it is impossible to have an accurate picture.

Personally, like Hoff says, who watches the watchers is the truth. I would like to see a code of conduct among analysts. I would start by dictating that vendors cannot pay analysts.  Take the payola out of the equation the way they did to the DJ/Radio business in the late 50s. Next analyst reports have to come with metrics to back up the findings. I want to know how many customers they spoke to, how big they were, how they were found, etc.  A vendor giving an analyst a real live???pet??? customer is not real research. I want to know if the customer pays the analyst. It is a dirty business.

Hey let me be clear, I play the game as well as the next guy.  But I agree with Hoff we need to clean up the rules to make the whole analyst thing more fair, viable and valuable.

I am not sure what it is with Richard Stiennon.  Maybe his mom beat him with a NAC stick when he was young.  Hence his Jack Nicholson looks (more like the Joker in Batman, than Col Jessep in A Few Good Men) and his total disdain for NAC.  In any event Richard never seems to miss a chance to take a pot shot at NAC.  I have fired back and debated him many times on this.  In fact I am convinced that Richard's problem with NAC is that like Uncle Joe, he is just moving a little slow.  Richard still thinks of NAC as Cisco’s network admission control, circa Dec ‘03.  He has not gotten up to speed on anything happening with NAC since.  Richard is going to debate NAC with Joel Snyder according to this article by Tim Greene today. My prediction is Snyder by a knockout in 3 rounds or less.

Richard’s latest NAC knock comes on a comment to an excellent article by the Hoff.  Chris takes a bold stand for someone working for a vendor and calls BS on the whole analyst thing (I will write more about that later in this article). Richard being an ex-analyst himself (lets face it, with Richard you can take the man out of the analyst job, but you can’t take the analyst out of the man), takes exception to Hoff’s “whining” (Richards words, not mine) and tries to tell Hoff that giving up is not the answer and the way to show up analysts, is to prove them wrong.  Great Richard you try to prove them wrong, when because of what they report you don’t have a market, can’t get any capital and have no visibility.  I guess that is when it is time to move on to the next gig, right? Then Richard has a bad NAC deja vu and feels it necessary to write this:

“Look how easy it is to one up the analyst firms, who as near as I can tell support Network Admission Control universally. Everyone except the folks at Updata Ventures know how seriously flawed NAC is with only one viable market, edu.”

I assume Richard is referring to Updata recently leading the Bradford Networks VC round. But more importantly Richard it is time to call a code red on you and give you the cold hard truth.  Richard the fact is that the edu market is not the only viable market for NAC.  In fact, one of the biggest customers of NAC is the DoD.  That is right Richard at least 3 of the 4 armed forces use NAC in helping to secure their networks. To paraphrase my friend Col Jessep - Richard, you want the truth, you can’t handle the truth!  You sleep securely under the blanket of protection that NAC provides.  If it is good enough to help “clean the sand” out of laptops coming home from SWA (that is SouthWest Asia, like in Iraq and Afghanistan, in case you don’t know Richard), it should be good enough for you. Think about that next time you are about to bad mouth NAC.

Let me give you some other truths you may not like Richard.  Why do you think every switch vendor (of which we partner with many of them) is lining up and bringing out NAC solutions?  Why has Microsoft put such a big push on NAP?  Why despite the Luddites like you does NAC still draw crowds at conferences like Interop (ask Joel about that).  Richard we are still signing new major OEM partners.  I am afraid you are the one sadly out of touch on this one Richard.  Just as you are out of touch in missing Hoff’s point in his article.

As to Hoff’s article, as I said I give Chris credit for speaking his mind. I spend an ungodly amount of my time speaking with analysts and trying to “learn” from them while at the same time trying to educate them.  I am constantly amazed that so many analysts (and press for that matter) just take a vendors word as gospel. I have seen research reports from analysts big and small, that I am sure did not have any more research done than calling a handful of vendors and listening to their spiel. Too many of these vendors if they do speak to customers, base their findings on such a small sample that it is impossible to have an accurate picture.

Personally, like Hoff says, who watches the watchers is the truth. I would like to see a code of conduct among analysts. I would start by dictating that vendors cannot pay analysts.  Take the payola out of the equation the way they did to the DJ/Radio business in the late 50s. Next analyst reports have to come with metrics to back up the findings. I want to know how many customers they spoke to, how big they were, how they were found, etc.  A vendor giving an analyst a real live“pet” customer is not real research. I want to know if the customer pays the analyst. It is a dirty business.

Hey let me be clear, I play the game as well as the next guy.  But I agree with Hoff we need to clean up the rules to make the whole analyst thing more fair, viable and valuable.

Had a great time Sunday with Rob Newby. We solved the world’s problems over deep fried whitefish and french fries (fish & chips to him).  It was a very good time, even if my driving did make him a bit uneasy.  If I may quote myself (said in an attempt to soothe Rob’s uneasyness about being lost in the car of a complete stranger in a strange country):

If your life doesn’t imitate the surreal aspects of a Douglas Adams book at least once a day, you’re just not living right.

Aside:  Bruce Scheier already has too many awards and too much recognition, so go vote for Rob instead :)   :  http://robnewby.blogspot.com/2008/07/award-up-for-grabs.html

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND (CURRENT) STATE

Rob and I spent some time discussing risk and security,  and our conversation circled around the (now) recurring blogo-topic concerning the State of the Practice.  It’s a favorite topic of mine, so I’ve been delighted that it has reappeared in blogodom.

Rob writes about it some here in PCI the Priest.  LonerVamp’s and Richard Bejtlich’s blogs talk about Galileo, his confrontation with his church, and lessons we can learn from history (there’s nothing wrong with them recycling the meme, IMHO - because I, for one, never got closure the first time). Jon added a nice quote from Feynman today that’s also inline with the meme.

I’m not going to belabor the analogy, the “art vs. science” misnomer, nor discuss the problems with our various canon (PCI, ISO, CoBTI, COSO, blah, blah, blah).  Rather I’d like to talk about some essential things I think our industry needs to “sort out”  before it can move on towards a more scientific view of the world.  And by “sort out” of course, I mean agree with me on

CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?

1 - Can we agree that risk is a probability issue?
Now obviously, you can retreat in probability theory a century or so and claim that risk is a Knightian uncertainty and that we just can’t “know” it.  Have fun.  But you should know that there’s the catch - “security” is also a probability issue.  So I’m betting that you can’t know “secure” for much of the same reasons Frank Knight would argue we can’t know “risky”.

But if risk (and security) is a probability issue, however, then we’re going to have to do better than “A’s in three college courses in statistics” to address the problem.  We will have to do as Curphey (and others) suggest and bring elements of other disciplines to bear on our problem space.  Let me suggest probability theory and economics as fine, fine places to start.

2 - Can we agree to stop measuring stupidly?
We have to agree that Ordinal Scales are not measurements, and Interval Scales are not useful measurements?

I had a post titled “More Ways To Confuse Your Auditor/Assessor” but it turned out to be a pretty cruel discussion about how we tend to try to act like our calculations based on ordinal or interval scales are useful (hint:  insist that your auditor/assessor/consultant replace the label “one” with the label “zero”).

Note that if risk is a probability issue, then we’re going to have to throw out the concepts of measuring in any scale other than a ratio anyhow.

3 - Can we agree on a (good) taxonomy?
We’re going to have to do (much) better than ISO 27005 (nudge, nudge).

4 - Can we agree we need to do a better job with our data?
We’re going to have to do better with measurements, metrics, models and testing.

It’s a shame that honeypots tend to be under appreciated.

5 - Can we agree to test that data and share it with each other?
We may not need to share specific data, but we will need to share when a model falls down.

I’d like to be as idealistic as some of my fellow ‘New Schoolers’ and suggest we’ll someday all be sharing data together, but I’m skeptical.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t demonstrate where results from the models we use are not repeatable, consistent or logical.   One thing Rob and I talked about at length yesterday was the ability to disprove a model using realistic but “substitute” or sanitized data.  There’s gonna be a TON of work to be done here, and that work will take not years but careers.  Which begs a great question:

Is it the sharing of data that we need, or the sharing of models?

HELP ME OUT, HERE
That’s my list of 5 fundamental concepts I wish we could move past.  Let me ask you - what else am I missing?  What’s it going to take to get past our current malaise?  How does the New School reach critical mass?  Who is going to help us agree in a centralized manner?

Your comments or own blog posts are most welcome (please include a trackback or post here)

• Report itself [PDF] and brief on it from Verizon (and two fun follow-ups, this and this here)
• "90% of all statistics can be made to say anything… 50% of the time, aka my thoughts on the Verizon report"
• "Data Breach Post Mortem Offers Surprises" (well, to some people, they are surprises ...)
• "Insider Threat Exaggerated, Study Says" (not, it doesn't, BTW)
• "Verizon Business Report Speaks Volumes" (from Richard, thus a MUST read)

And of course, here is my favorite part: "In 82 percent of cases, our investigators noted that the victim possessed the ability to discover the breach had they had they been more diligent in monitoring and analyzing event-related information [AC - i.e. logs] available to them at the time of the incident." and this  "Furthermore, a crime scene devoid of any network and system logs, a key resource for computer forensics, is a disturbingly common occurrence."

What can I say? Back to battle stations for me - to fight the war of making logs more popular! :-)