Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

What Boards Want in Security Reporting

Recently, some of my friends were talking about a report by Bay Dynamics, “How Boards of Directors Really Feel About Cyber Security Reports.” In that report, we see things like: More than three in five board members say they are both significantly or very “satisfied” (64%) and “inspired”(65%) after the typical presentation by IT and […]

 

PCI & the 166816 password

This was a story back around RSA, but I missed it until RSnake brought it up on Twitter: “[A default password] can hack nearly every credit card machine in the country.” The simple version is that Charles Henderson of Trustwave found that “90% of the terminals of this brand we test for the first time […]

 

Analyzing The Army's Accidental Test

According to Wired, “Army Practices Poor Data Hygiene on Its New Smartphones, Tablets.” And I think that’s awesome. No, really, not the ironic sort of awesome, but the awesome sort of awesome, because what the Army is doing is a large scale natural experiment in “does it matter?” Over the next n months, the Pentagon’s […]

 

Compliance Lessons from Lance, Redux

Not too long ago, I blogged about “Compliance Lessons from Lance.” And now, there seems to be dramatic evidence of a massive program to fool the compliance system. For example: Team doctors would “provide false declarations of medical need” to use cortisone, a steroid. When Armstrong had a positive corticosteroid test during the 1999 Tour […]

 

Compliance Lessons from Lance

Recently, Lance Armstrong decided to forgo arbitration in his fight against the USADA over allegations of his use of certain performance enhancing drugs. His statement is “Full text of Armstrong statement regarding USADA arbitration.” What I found interesting about the story is the contrast between what might be termed a “compliance” mindset and a “you’re […]

 

Checklists and Information Security

I’ve never been a fan of checklists. Too often, checklists replace thinking and consideration. In the book, Andrew and I wrote: CardSystems had the required security certification, but its security was compromised, so where did things goo wrong? Frameworks such as PCI are built around checklists. Checklists compress complex issues into a list of simple […]

 

Kudos to Ponemon

In the past, we have has some decidedly critical words for the Ponemon Institute reports, such as “A critique of Ponemon Institute methodology for “churn”” or “Another critique of Ponemon’s method for estimating ‘cost of data breach’“. And to be honest, I’d become sufficiently frustrated that I’d focused my time on other things. So I’d […]

 

Block Social Media, Get Pwned

At least, that’s the conclusion of a study from Telus and Rotman. (You might need this link instead) A report in IT security issued jointly by Telus and the Rotman School of Management surveyed 649 firms and found companies that ban employees from using social media suffer 30 percent more computer security breaches than ones […]

 

Microsoft Backs Laws Forbidding Windows Use By Foreigners

According to Groklaw, Microsoft is backing laws that forbid the use of Windows outside of the US. Groklaw doesn’t say that directly. Actually, they pose charmingly with the back of the hand to the forehead, bending backwards dramatically and asking, “ Why Is Microsoft Seeking New State Laws That Allow it to Sue Competitors For […]

 

Gunnar's Flat Tax: An Alternative to Prescriptive Compliance?

Hey everybody! I was just reading Gunnar Peterson’s fun little back of the napkin security spending exercise, in which he references his post on a security budget “flat tax” (Three Steps To A Rational Security Budget).  This got me to thinking a bit  – What if, instead of in the world of compliance where we […]

 

Showing ID In Washington State

Back in October, I endorsed Pete Holmes for Seattle City Attorney, because of slimy conduct by his opponent. It turns out that his opponent was not the only one mis-conducting themselves. The Seattle PD hid evidence from him, and then claimed it was destroyed. They have since changed their story to (apparent) lies about “computer […]

 

FTC Delays Red Flags Enforcement Yet Again

I missed this when it hit the newswires two weeks ago, but the FTC has delayed enforcement of the Red Flags Rule. This change was in response to the American Bar Association successfully suing the FTC and being granted an injunction to prevent the Red Flags Rule being applied to lawyers. Similarly, the American Institute […]

 

Dear ChoicePoint: Lying like a cheap rug undercuts all that

ChoicePoint was supposed to take steps to protect consumer data. But the FTC alleged that in April 2008 the company switched off an internal electronic monitoring system designed to watch customer accounts for signs of unauthorized or suspicious activity. According to the FTC, that safety system remained inactive for four months, during which time unauthorized […]

 

Quick Thoughts on the New Blogging Regulations

I want to congratulate the folks at the FTC, who’ve decided we all need to follow some rules about what bloggers can say. See for example, “ Epicenter The Business of Tech FTC Tells Amateur Bloggers to Disclose Freebies or Be Fined” at Wired. These new rules are documented in an easy to read 81 […]

 

Security is About Outcomes, FISMA edition

Over at the US Government IT Dashboard blog, Vivek Kundra (Federal CIO), Robert Carey (Navy CIO) and Vance Hitch (DOJ CIO) write: the evolving challenges we now face, Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) metrics need to be rationalized to focus on outcomes over compliance. Doing so will enable new and actionable insight into agencies’ […]

 

More on Privacy Contracts

Law Prof Dan Solove took the A-Rod question I posted, and blogged much more in depth in A-Rod, Rihanna, and Confidentiality: Shostack suggests that A-Rod might have an action for breach of contract. He might also have an action for the breach of confidentiality tort. Professor Neil Richards and I have written extensively about breach […]

 

A-Rod had a privacy contract, and so did you

In 2003 the deal was simple: The players would submit to anonymous steroid testing, and if more than 5 percent tested positive, real testing with real penalties would begin in 2004. But in 2003, the tests were going to be (A) anonymous and then (B) destroyed. Those were the rules of engagement, and in any […]

 

Why Didn't SOX Catch The Bank Failures?

Iang recently indicted the entire audit industry with “Two Scary Words: Sarbanes-Oxley”. I’ve excerpted several chunks below: Let’s check the record: did any audit since Sarbanes-Oxley pick up any of the problems seen in the last 18 months to do with the financial crisis? No. Not one, not even a single one! Yet, the basic […]

 

Abuse of the Canadian Do Not Call List

The Globe and Mail and the CBC each report that Canada’s Do Not Call list is being used by telemarketers both good and bad (where each term is relative). This is a bit sad for Canada. The US’s DNC list has been very successful, and one of the very few places where the US has […]

 

Rethinking Risk

Now it’s no secret to those of you who know me that I’m a big believer in using risk management in the security space. Iang over at Financial Cryptography think’s it is “a dead duck”: The only business that does risk management as a core or essence is banking and insurance (and, banking is debatable […]

 

Canadian Privacy and Private Action

In reading Arthur’s post on “Canadian PM FAIL,” I was thinking of the odds that this would be investigated and dealt with under Canadian privacy law. Now, I’m not an expert on that, but my recollection is that the main private sector law, PIPED complements a Federal Privacy Act which would likely be the relevant […]

 

Regulations, Risk and the Meltdown

There are obviously a large set of political questions around the 700+ billion dollars of distressed assets Uncle Sam plans to hold. If you care about the politics, you’re already following in more detail than I’m going to bother providing. I do think that we need to act to stem the crisis, and that we […]

 

Supreme Court Narrows "Money Laundering"

The Supreme Court narrowed the application of the federal money-laundering statute on Monday, ruling for criminal defendants in two cases in which prosecutors had employed broad definitions of two of the law’s major provisions. The two rulings are likely to crimp the government’s ability to bring money-laundering cases, although not necessarily to the degree that […]

 

The Costs of Security and Algorithms

I was struck by this quote in the Economist special report on international banking: There were navigational aids to help investors but they often gave false comfort. FICO scores, the most widely used credit score in America, were designed to assess the creditworthiness of individual borrowers, not the quality of pools of mortgages. “’Know your […]

 

HSPD-12 Does Not Require JPL Background Checks

Adam writes about the brouhaha at NASA over HSPD-12 background checks. A friend of a friend who is in the business of implementing HSPD-12 sent me a tidbit about it, along with a link so that you can read the primary source — something always needed when you get emails from FOAFs. In paragraph 3, […]

 

Wretched Term of the Week: Best Practice

This is a peeve I learned from the great Donn Parker. The term “Best Practice” should be avoided. It is inaccurate. misleading, and self-defeating. Here’s why: Best is a superlative. By using it, one implies that there a single choice that surpasses all others. Rarely is this the case in real life. Security gurus are […]

 

U.S. versus E.U. Audits

Speaking of the differences between how security gets managed in the U.S. versus the E.U., CSO magazine has a light-hearted and somewhat irreverent article on the differing goals and priorities of audits on either side of the Atlantic. In spite of its tone, it does highlight some important issues to keep in mind. In particular: […]

 

New PCI DSS is out

The Payment Card Industry Digital Security Standard, version 1.1, has been released [pdf].  This was widely anticipated, and has been remarked upon here at EC. A noteworthy change is that stored card numbers needn’t be encrypted: Compensating Controls for Requirement 3.4 For companies unable to render cardholder data unreadable (for example, by encryption) due to technical […]