Posts Tagged ‘Risk’

In our first post on accurately measuring & scoring risk, we examined the holistic network approach many enterprises take around managing risk. This approach is to run vulnerability scanners against parts of their network or the network in its entirety at some predetermined interval. In both cases, scans are run, vulnerabilities are identified and possibly prioritized based on asset value, patching activities are scheduled over the next month or quarter, and the event repeats itself. As we noted, this approach over-simplifies the complex task of risk, as different threats and different assets define different risks.

The answer to this dynamic risk challenge is clear. Organizations need to operationalize risk into their daily security activities, and not make risk management simply a set event that occurs at predetermined intervals. As changes occur to the organizations risk posture based off of the business activities noted in our last post, or larger corporate events such as M&A or moving to the cloud, security organizations need to be able to dynamically and easily analyze this change to their risk posture in real time. To effectively do so, a tool that provides the ability to create different risk scenarios is required. Scenarios enable an organization to address each different threat to their assets as changes occur.

In the previous post, we provided the example of a business unit requesting VPN access to a new business partner after the predetermined scan had already been run. Leveraging a tool that provides the ability to create different risk scenarios, the security team would be able to create a new scenario to identify the new connectivity from the business partner into their network. To truly be effective, the tool would not only need to be able to identify this new connection, but have the contextual awareness of the firewall policy, network topology and any other network security devices that might be traversed between the front and back end systems involved in this new connectivity to accurately identify any potential vulnerabilities that are introduced from this new partnership.

FireMon Risk Analyzer is just that tool. Risk Analyzer enables administrators to create different scenarios: VPN connectivity to new business partners, connectivity to a cloud provider, a new data center coming online. Combined with Risk Analyzer’s full network topology and security policy awareness (which can be continually updated in real time via FireMon Security Manager), end users are able to identify new risk scenarios, proactively identify the new risk introduced from the scenario, and virtually apply remediation to ensure that the most effective remediation is completed with the least amount of effort. Multiple scenarios can be created as different threats or business events are identified, and as changes occur to the configuration or connectivity within the scenarios, end users can easily and immediately re-run the scenario within Risk Analyzer to asses how these changes affect the true risk posture of the organization. Risk Scenarios enable organizations to achieve the goal of operationalizing risk into their everyday activity.

The most recent post on our blog noted that understanding your organization’s exposure to risk is no small task. I have seen enterprises attempt to manage risk through feel or intuition, or simply reacting when executive leadership has read about the latest breach of the week and wants assurance that they aren’t at risk for the same calamity.  Fortunately, enterprises today are attempting to analyze and measure risk under a more formal process. Many attempt to do so by running vulnerability scanners against parts of their network or the network in its entirety at some predetermined interval. In both cases, scans are run, vulnerabilities are identified and possibly prioritized based on asset value, patching activities are scheduled over the next month or quarter, and the event repeats itself. Some organizations might even take the results of these efforts and assign a score, value or state to their risk posture.

Image via Wikipedia

The holistic measurement of risk described above simplifies risk within today’s networks. Truly understanding your actual risk posture is much more complex. Different threats and different assets define different risks. Risk is also constantly changing, constantly in flux in the enterprise environments we work in today. With M&A activity, strategic partnerships being formed or abandoned, new data centers being brought up, data centers being consolidated or IT functions being moved into the cloud, risk is a never ending moving target in most enterprise environments. Considering the standard process where an organization runs a vulnerability scanner at set intervals and scores their risk posture based off the actions completed from this event, it’s easy to see how this score is not truly reflective of the true state of the organizations risk.

Consider the example where a security group may run an enterprise scan at the beginning of each month and then schedule remediation actions for the next three weeks. In the second week of the month, a business group requests a new VPN connection to a newly formed business partner. This access requires connectivity from the new partner network to a DMZ web server farm that is protected by a firewall cluster. The web farm is a front end to an internal financial database that is protected by another cluster of firewalls. The monthly process that the organization follows does not allow them to react to the new variable that has been created within their risk posture. Furthermore, even if the organization were to scan against this newly created connection, the scanner would simply be blocked by the firewall clusters. The scanner does not have awareness of the firewall configuration policy and the context of how data flows through the networking devices, firewall and any other subsequent network security controls related to the web server front end and the back end database servers. This speaks to the importance of factoring the full context of network security controls and data connectivity when analyzing risk, as we have previously covered in this blog.

Analyzing and scoring risk based solely off the enterprise wide scanning or patching efforts doesn’t provide an organization the most accurate measurement of what their true risk posture is. In the second part of our post, we will discuss a better approach to gain a more accurate and real-time awareness into what an organizations risk state truly is.

I read a quick blog post this morning from Rick Holland at Forrester. In fact, part of my title is borrowed from a line in his post. As security professionals, I think it is important to recognize that despite our best efforts, many of the network security controls that have been deployed have still failed to prevent breeches and attacks from occurring. Holland along with John Kindervag have published a new report called “Planning for Failure”. They note that this years headlines have not been encouraging for the security world, as evidenced yet again yesterday by the Steam website hack and the take down of Estonian hackers in Operation Ghost Click.

The deluge of news around breeches and incidents that have occurred this year should not cause us to throw our arms up and head for the exits. It should ultimately galvanize those of us in the security world to be more proactive about assessing the risk posture of our organizations, identifying the areas of weakness we have, and fixing them before an incident occurs. As Holland notes in his post “An ounce of preparation is worth a pound of remediation”. The full Planning for Failure report also stresses the importance of testing. We at Firemon could not agree more. Our new Risk Analyzer technology enables organizations to test their entire network topology, factoring in the network security controls that are in-place, and identify exactly where attackers could breach your network. Risk Analyzer will even highlight systems that are susceptible to client-side vulnerabilities that attackers could gain access to despite effective network security controls, and identifies where the attackers could further penetrate into the network by pivoting off these assets. Risk Analyzer’s patented analysis engine provides real-time analysis, and graphically shows you where in your topology you are vulnerable. Risk Analyzer also helps you to laser focus on what remediation steps will reduce the greatest amount of risk with the least amount of effort by providing a prioritized list of remediation actions, and allowing a user to virtually apply said patches, graphically showing the impact that remediation effort has on the networks risk posture.

We are excited to release Risk Analyzer this month, and believe it is the key part of a proactive testing process that all security organizations should implement as part of their overall Incident Management plan. Risk Analyzer will allow you to substantially reduce your risk posture, prioritize your remediation efforts, and to measure the effectiveness of the security controls you have put in place.