Security Ripcord

I am sitting here in the Hilton Austin Airport Hotel. Unfortunately my stay here is contributing to Paris’ defense and I can only hope if is not helpful. But, as they force you to pay for parking and the beers are $5 I have a feeling she can afford the best.

To be more accurate, however, I have actually performed a hostile takeover of Microsoft. Their representative is not in their booth and it has a power outlet so I figured Stepto and the boys wouldn’t mind. I did get a chance to meet the Microsoft representative yesterday during one of the session breaks. I made it up here just in time to get a book on securing Vista. It should be an interesting read after an upcoming article by Ed Skoudis on the subject. I forget which online publication he wrote the article for but I believe it will be at TechRepublic.

So, TRISC is a nice little conference with lots of vendors and a couple good speakers. I haven’t made any real contacts yet but all the attendees seem eager to talk and exchange ideas. I have met one of my colleagues from Corpus Christi and I should be meeting up with Martin McKeay and Michael Farnum some time today.

Howard A. Schmidt started the conference off with a good keynote speech. Mr. Schmidt is an interesting man and reading his BIO shows how much people can accomplish and how much of an impact they can have on this industry in just a short period of time. Every time I have seen him he has been very personable and professional and I made it a point to introduce myself.

Mr. Schmidt took an interesting approach to his speech. He basically pointed out on of the short comings of the news, public, and (I’ll add) executives. This short coming is the focus on incidents that negatively impact the information technology and the breaches of security. Nobody likes to point out that every minute attacks are getting turned away because of our advances in perimeter security and internal controls. Certainly there are instances where there are failures or unforeseen events but these are really the minority of every day occurrences. That said, he did review a few of the issues that we will need to research and pay particular attention to in the future. Here is a brief list of those issues:

• Mobile devices that have extended are perimeter and are storing more data in the forms of emails and corporate documents.
• Human error is always a problem and will continue to be a problem. Actually, it will not go away no matter what protections, policies, or procedures we have in place.
• Application security is one of our biggest challenges to date and it is going to take improvements in development life cycles to make securing these entrance points cost effective.
• The proliferation of wireless devices from the standpoint of rogue devices in a companies internal environment.
• Peer 2 Peer networks are still exposing an extrodinary amount of sensitive personal information as well as sensitive corporate and government documentation.

His solution for taking care of these things was simple: security basics. He did not call it that but it is fairly easy to summarize the reset of his talk with that statement. And he is absolutely correct. This theme is cropping up in many of the forums and listservs that I monitor. We know how to security our businesses and our environments we just have to be sure that we are doing the covering the basics. Certainly there are going to be situations that call for unique protections and there are going to be attacks that force us to change how we approach our defenses. But with good security basics it is much easier to detect, prevent, contain, and respond to just about any event.

Fred Burton followed Mr. Schmidt with a talk about counter terrorism within the corporate environment. His talk was not a feel good talk and he was quick to point that out at the beginning. Basically, if people want to perform terroristic activities there is very little people can do about it. In fact, many people expect the federal and local governments to specifically protect them and their businesses when the reality is that these organizations are busy protecting the overall infrastructure of our country (the United States) and they are not going to directly address specific protections. I stated that it is up to corporations that are at high risk as targets to be proactive and hire the resources to do information gathering and counter surveillance to determine if they are specifically being targeted. Once they identify these activities then it is much easier to get the authorities involved.

Now, it can be argued that Mr. Burton is just trying to scare up traffic for his business, Stratfor. But I truly believe that he is just a man who is use to presenting bad news to lots of people. He is use to dealing in the harsh realities and some of the unfortunate products of global social interactions. And I am willing to bet that the companies that require his services appreciate his style and direct approach to their physical security.

He did point out one interesting fact that should not be over looked. His company provides security for corporate executives and their families as well as the companies themselves. His observation is that many corporate executives are more than willing to obtain the best protections for themselves and their families but they are reluctant to spend the same within their organizations. He pointed out several times that employees have to take a look at how their companies are approaching their protections. His talk really tied into the points I make over and over. Personal protection is the responsibility of each individual. We all have to be aware of our surroundings and be wary of things that are out of the ordinary.

That’s it for the first day. I’ll have more on some of the vendors and Day 2 of TRISC tonight or tomorrow morning.

Go forth and do good things,
Cutaway

TRISC, Microsoft, Stratfor, Stepto, Skoudis, Security Ripcord, Howard A. Schmidt, Fred Burton, Austin Airport Hotel

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