five practical steps - it weekly · information security program is directly proportional to their...

WHITEPAPER

Q1Labs.com

FIVE PRACTICAL STEPS To Protecting Your Organization Against Breach

How Security Intelligence & Reducing Information Risk Play

Strategic Roles in Driving Your Business

2Q1Labs.com

Executive SummaryMost security professionals agree that the maturity of an organization’s

information security program is directly proportional to their ability to

protect information. This white paper will provide fi ve practical steps

to protecting an organization from breach, as well as guidance for

implementing a comprehensive, well-designed information security

program. These steps are based on collective knowledge and best

practices learned from many of Q1 Labs’ global customers.

Top Causes of BreachWhile there are many statistics and anecdotal reports from respected

industry research organizations on the primary causes of information

breach, the data in this paper is taken from actual use cases in real

situations and implementations of Q1 Labs customers using QRadar for

total security intelligence.

Top reasons organizations’ networks are successfully breached include:

Organizations have not invested in core information

security infrastructure technology, including, but not

limited to, switches, fi rewalls, IPS, VPNs, vulnerability

scanners, and identity/access management.

Organizations have not gained suffi cient security

intelligence on the network.

Organizations haven’t properly leveraged the information

security technology they already own, this includes having poorly

confi gured network and security devices.

Organizations have not addressed key vulnerabilities

in their infrastructure.

Organizations cannot eff ectively minimize risk because

of organizational and/or technology silos.

The reality is that addressing these issues does not happen overnight.

Some organizations take years to get all of these areas under control.

The good news is that even minor incremental improvement in an

organization’s security practices will result in a greatly impoved ability to

protect information.

Five Practical Security Intelligence Steps to Protecting Your Organization Against BreachKnowing that achieving operational security maturity takes time and is

constantly evolving, what follows are fi ve incremental security eff orts

that can be made to signifi cantly improve an organization’s ability to

protect itself against breaches.

STEP 1: Deploying the Right Technology

Enumerating all of the information security technologies that an

organization should consider is beyond the scope of this paper;

however, the basics are fundamental. Organizations should look to

deploy technology that meets their need to:

Control the fl ow of information across the network.

This could be as basic as implementing fi rewalls, or might

require the use of more advanced gates like Intrusion Protection

Systems (IPS) or application layer switches. In many cases there

will be multiple layers to how this technology is deployed in

the network.

Control access to information. This could typically be achieved

with a central authentication system. In some organizations this

may require more advanced key management.

Implement common sense security technologies that protect

end systems, including anti-virus, DLP, host intrusion

prevention, and fi le integrity monitoring. Many organizations

have had this for years. Reevaluate it regularly to ensure it continues

to meet your needs.

Obtain visibility into the security posture. The fundamental

CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, AND CISOs HAVE A FORMIDABLE TASK — instituting programs that span

people, technology, and processes, to minimize “risk”. The term “risk” will have a different meaning

depending on an individual’s area of responsibility and industry in which they work. From an

information security perspective, one of the top concerns for C-Level Executives, IT Executives

and Security Professionals is reducing the risk of potential breach of information. Protecting your

assets from industrial cyber espionage demands a top-down strategy.

FIVE PRACTICAL STEPS TO PROTECTING YOUR ORGANIZATION AGAINST BREACH

1

4

5

2

3

3Q1Labs.com

technology required here is the implementation of a centralized

log management and/or security information and event manage-

ment (SIEM) solution that integrates native anomaly detection and

content capture.

Encrypt information wherever necessary or required.

Organizations might include VPN technology to help

with this area.

Look for holes in the security infrastructure. This typically

will include one or more Vulnerability Assessment (VA)

scanners and possibly other tools.

Meet more advanced security requirements, including,

but not limited to, data loss prevention. Deploy advanced

technology that enables full security intelligence lifecycle:

before, during and post exploit.

In the end, the requirements of the business will drive the technologies

deployed and the depth to which the technologies are leveraged.

A major lesson that has been learned by Q1 Labs’ customers is that,

more times than not, leveraging compliance creates budget to enable

the investment in a security technology that will pay dividends in the

end, provided enough thought is invested all through the process of

technology selection and implementation.

STEP 2: Use Information to Your Benefit

By working with more than 1600 customers, Q1 Labs has learned that the

more information an organization analyzes from the network, the better

off they will be in their ability to minimize and quantify information risk.

Fundamental to this premise is that a solution has been deployed that

can eff ectively make sense of all the data collected. There are varying

degrees to which an organization might need to collect and analyze

information.

At one end of the spectrum there might be the need for basic log

management to manage information risk for a single application

as required by some compliance regulation. At the other end of the

spectrum is a comprehensive end to end security intelligence solution

that looks at events from every imaginable networked system.

When selecting a log management, SIEM and/or total security

intelligence solution there are a few important considerations, including:

How straight-forward is the technology to acquire, deploy,

and maintain? This seems like a no-brainer, but it is amazing

how many organizations pick solutions that require an army of

staff and professional services. Do you want to maintain a

science project?

How well does the solution normalize and categorize

the information? This is often overlooked during a SIEM

evaluation, but may be the single most important consideration.

The reality is that event data is complex, and why would you

want a solution that can’t deliver a common taxonomy across

all data collected?

How well does the solution deliver secure log collection,

storage, and archival? These features should be considered

mandatory requirements in any security intelligence solution.

How good is the solution at turning potentially billions

of events into a useful and actionable assessment of

security incidents? This one can be tricky because every

solution claims to provide a detailed assessment of the

security posture. The reality is that many correlation engines

fail because they only look at data within a single silo – they

don’t correlate across data silos (applications, user identity,

assets, content, etc.) or they can’t see the depth or breadth of

information required to properly detect incidents.

How easy is it to customize the solution to meet unique

business requirements of the organization, including

analyzing data from unique or custom event sources?

Organizations that are looking at security intelligence

solutions should ensure they meets both short and long term

data collection needs.

How well does the solution scale? Scale requirements come

in many forms – ranging from high event rates in a data center

to meeting distributed scale considerations. It is important

that the solution scales without introducing unnecessary

complexity.

There are countless log management and SIEM success stories.

Organizations that use data, or intelligence, to their advantage via

an eff ective security management solution will be in a much better

position to minimize risk of breach on their network.

STEP 3: Ensure Ongoing Proper Device Configuration to Stay Ahead of the Threat

Ensuring ongoing proper device confi guration sounds great, but in

reality it can be quite challenging. The fundamentals here are pretty

basic – ensure all the doors on the network are locked except when


4Q1Labs.com

necessary to meet specifi c business requirements. This requires being

able to continually assess the eff ectiveness of the confi gurations that

are deployed on the network. There are automated confi guration

audit solutions that can assist in meeting this objective. Important

considerations when assessing tools to help in this area include:

How well does the solution automate the collection

of confi gurations?

How well does the solution ensure consistency of

confi guration across diff erent types of devices, potentially

from diff erent vendors?

How well does the solution interpret how traffi c is allowed to

traverse the network based on confi gurations and how easy is it

to analyze and understand?

Can the solution accurately portray network confi guration when

devices are mis-confi gured or there are gaps in data collection?

Can the solution automate the monitoring and notifi cation

of risky changes to confi guration in a timely fashion?

The essential thing to consider in this step is having tools that help lower

the barrier to entry to eff ective analysis of complex device confi guration

and provide exceptional automation that can quickly determine, and

notify, when risky confi gurations are deployed on the network.

STEP 4: Ensure Top Vulnerabilities Are Addressed

Vulnerability scanners have become an important tool in the security

administrator’s tool chest to ensure that devices on the network are not

susceptible to well-known vulnerabilities. Historically there have been

challenges with vulnerability scanners because they typically report

vulnerabilities without context of the world around the device. This can

result in numerous false positives and information overload. There is

little doubt that systems that are exposed to well-known vulnerabilities

are the fi rst line of attack from those that wish to do harm.

Organizations that wish to ensure top vulnerabilities are addressed

should look to expand their capabilities with solutions that can:

Eff ectively normalize vulnerabilities to a common framework

Assess the risk of vulnerabilities in conjunction with how the

network is confi gured. It is important to be able to prioritize

systems that may be easily breached because network

confi gurations would allow specifi c vulnerabilities to be

compromised

Analyze vulnerabilities from many angles, including results

from multiple vulnerability scanners, passive vulnerability

analysis, and behavior analysis

Automate the detection of confi guration changes in the network

that would introduce new risk of vulnerabilities to be compromised

What’s important here is not looking at vulnerabilities in a vacuum,

but rather taking a more holistic risk-based approach that takes a

much more relevant network and security analysis into account.

STEP 5: Implement An Integrated, Risk-Based, Security Intelligence Framework

Over the years, Q1 Labs has learned that many organizations struggle

to gain the necessary security visibility because of the existence of

organizational and/or technology silos. A rule of thumb with most

any security management deployment is that the more information

provided to the solution, the better off the organization will be at

detecting and minimizing risk.

Breaking down silos often requires organizational and/or operational

changes, but in the end when the right hand fi nally learns what the left

hand is doing, the results can be tremendous and budget savings can

also be realized through consolidation.

Organizations that wish to introduce an integrated security intelligence

framework should look to acquire and deploy a solution that can:

Break down technology silos through the integration

and analysis of a broad spectrum of information, including

network, virtual network, security, vulnerability, asset,

application, and confi guration data, among others

Break down operational silos and deliver the most

appropriate security functions to meet the requirements of a

broad spectrum of users, including operators, analysts, auditors,

managers, and executives, among others

Prioritize the risk of a security incident based on the overall

impact to the business

Automate the detection and notifi cation of newly

introduced risks on the network.

Deliver an integrated security intelligence framework

for assessing risk across all relevant information

The key to this step is understanding that total security intelligence


5Q1Labs.com

is all about adding context and correlating that information together

across the entire security intelligence lifecycle. A security intelligence

solution should be able to help an organization understand:

What risks does an organization have and how can risks be

reduced or prevented from happening in the fi rst place

What is happening right now and how to detect threats with

intelligence and visibility

What happened post-exploit and how to understand the

impact or cost with forensics to determine how an event

spread or what was stolen

NEXT STEPS

These fi ve steps have outlined many considerations for how to build

a more mature information security management program. An

important consideration along the way is partnering with a security

intelligence provider that can deliver a range of solutions that meets

the requirements of an organization no matter where they are in their

path to a comprehensive risk-based approach.

Q1 Labs QRadar® Security Intelligence PlatformQ1 Labs provides a family of security intelligence solutions that assist

organizations of all sizes and across multiple industries to meet a

broad spectrum of information security requiments. In addition, the

QRadar® Security Intelligence Platform provides a future-proof family

of products that allows organizations to grow their level of security

intelligence in alignment with the state of their individual information

security program. The diagram below provides a high-level overview of

the QRadar Security Intelligence Platform and the product path many of

our customers have taken to meet their growing security requirements:

Utilizing security intelligence solutions from Q1 Labs, organizations

can eff ectively mature their security program to meet many of the

information security considerations discussed earlier with the most

intelligent, integrated and automated solution available:

Scalable, enterprise-wide log management provides the

ability to:

Centralize the collection and secure storage of events

and logs across an entire multi-vendor organization.

Easily meet compliance mandates.

Gain visibility into log data for actionable IT operations and

security forensics.

Easily upgrade with a future-proof growth path to full SIEM.

Deep visibility with security information and event

management (SIEM) delivers the:

Ability to improve the eff ectiveness of infrastructure

investments through advanced analysis of network behavior

and security information

Comprehensive visibility into an organizations’

information security posture to detect threats

Power to turn billions of events into a priortized list of

security incidents that need to be addressed

Automated detection of threats typically missed by solutions

that have not integrated operational or technology silos

Comprehensive, risk-based security management for:

Automating collection of confi gurations from network

and security infrastructure

Timely detection of the introduction

of risky confi gurations

Powerful risk prioritization that

leverages a broad spectrum of risk

indicators, including network activity,

network topology, and vulnerability

scan results

Advanced threat modeling and

simulation


1

2

3

How Customers Transition from Log management to Total Security Intelligence

6Q1Labs.com

Summary: Considerations for a Long-Term StrategyThere are many considerations that span people, process and

technology that organizations should consider to improve their ability

to protect valuable information assets. Thinking about the fi nish

line, when just starting the race, can seem overwhelming to any size

organization. When planning a long-term strategy it is imporant to

understand that incremental improvements in a security program will

return signfi cant dividends, provided enough thought and planning

has gone into defi ning and implementing these improvements. Q1

Labs’ experience with customers has shown there are a few tried and

true steps that should be considered that will greatly reduce the risk

from information breach, including:

Deployment of suffi cient network and security technologies that

can properly gate access to sensitive information

Implementation of an eff ective log management and/or

SIEM solution that can leverage a broad spectrum of

security data to properly monitor, detect, and remediate

signifi cant security incidents

Taking a proactive, risk-based approach to security

management that can minimize risky network confi guration

and system vulnerabilities

A reality in today’s world is that there are criminals out there that are

doing everything they can to steal the valuable data of almost any

organization they can breach. Companies that leverage total security

intelligence solutions to mature their security program - utilizing many

of the methods described above - will be less likely to be breached by

these criminals, inside or outside the organization.


Q1 Labs

890 Winter Street, Suite 230

Waltham, MA 02451 USA

1.781.250.5800, [email protected]

Copyright 2011 Q1 Labs, Inc. All rights reserved. Q1 Labs, the Q1 Labs logo, Total Security Intelligence,

and QRadar are trademarks or registered trademarks of Q1 Labs, Inc. All other company or product

names mentioned may be trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of their respective hold-

ers. The specifi cations and information contained herein are subject to change without notice.

WP5SPOB0211

five practical steps - it weekly · information security program is directly proportional to their...

Documents