VUL

1. » Vulnerability Management for the Real World
» Successful Approaches
» What is Vulnerability Management?
» Challenges to Effective VM
» The Problem
Contents:
George Kurtz
Chief Executive Officer
Foundstone

2. » The Problem

3. 3
Question
» What won’t you see in this presentation?
Answer: Another CSI /FBI slide!
We all know the problem, what about a solution!

4. 4
VA Is Dead…..
They Just Haven’t Buried The Body!
Proclamation

5. 5
Organizations are Feeling the Pain
1. What causes the
damage?
95% of breaches target
known vulnerabilities
2. How do you prevent the
damage? What are your
options?
RISK=
Assets x Vulnerabilities x Threats
You can control vulnerabilities.
3. How do you successfully
deal with vulnerabilities?
Vulnerabilities
Business complexity
Human resources
Financial resources
4. How do you make the
best security decisions?
Focus on the
right assets, right threats,
right measures.

6. » What is Vulnerability Management?

7. 7
What Is Vulnerability Management
A process to determine whether to eliminate,
mitigate or tolerate vulnerabilities based upon
risk and the cost associated with fixing the
vulnerability.

8. 8
What Is Vulnerability Management
» At a high level, the ”intelligent confluence” of…
Assessment
What assets?
Analysis
What to fix first?
Remediation
Fix the problem
+ +
• Component of Risk Management
• Balance the demands of business goals and processes

9. » Challenges to Effective VM

10. 10
Challenges – Assessment
» Traditional desktop scanners cannot handle large networks
» Provide volumes of useless checks
» Chopping up scans and distributing them is cumbersome
» Garbage In- Garbage Out (GIGO)– volumes of superfluous data
» Coverage at all OSI layers is inadequate
» Time consuming and resource intensive
» Finding the problem is only half the battle

11. 11
Challenges – Analysis
» Manual and resource intensive process to determine
– What to fix
– If you should fix
– When to fix
» No correlation between vulnerabilities, threats and assets
» No way to prioritize what vulnerabilities should be addressed
– What order
» Stale data
– Making decisions on last quarter’s vulnerabilities
» No credible metrics

12. 12
Challenges – Remediation
» Security resources are often decentralized
» The security organization often doesn’t own the network or
system
» Multiple groups may own the asset
» Presenting useful and meaningful information to relevant
stakeholders
» Determining if the fix was actually made

13. 13
Challenges – Time
Asset
Criticality
Vulnerability
discovered
Exploit
public
Automated
exploit
Discovery Remediation
Cost to ignore vulnerability is greater
than the cost to repair
Threat Level
Risk Threshold

14. 14
Challenges – Time
Vulnerability
discovered
Cost to ignore vulnerability is greater
than the cost to repair
Exploit
public
Automated
exploit
Discovery Remediation
Goal = compress time from discovery to remediation
Cost to ignore vulnerability is greater
than the cost to repair
Threat Level
Asset
Criticality
Risk Threshold

15. 15
Challenges – Time
Vulnerability
discovered
Cost to ignore vulnerability is greater
than the cost to repair
Exploit
public
Automated
exploit
Goal = compress time from discovery to remediation
x 15 new vulnerabilities
per day across many
assets
Discovery Remediation
Threat Level
Asset
Criticality
Risk Threshold

16. » Vulnerability Management Lifecycle

17. 17
Vulnerability
Management
Lifecycle

18. » Successful Approaches:
Implementing An Effective VM Strategy

19. 19
Successful Approaches
» Focus on four key areas:
– Prioritize Assets
– Determine Risk Level (assets, threats, vulnerabilities)
– Remediate Vulnerabilities
– Measure

20. 20
Asset:
Any function, task, capability, equipment or
information that has value to the organization
or supports the ability of the organization to
conduct business

21. 21
Threat:
Any person, circumstance or event that has
the potential to cause damage to an
organizational asset or business function

22. 22
Vulnerability:
Any flaw in the design, implementation or
administration of a system that provides a
mechanism for a threat to exploit the
weakness of a system or process

23. 23
Prioritize
Assets

24. 24
Asset Prioritization
» Identify assets by:
– Networks
• Logical groupings of devices
• Connectivity - None, LAN, broadband, wireless
– Network Devices
• Wireless access points, routers, switches
– Operating System
• Windows, Unix
– Applications
• IIS, Apache, SQL Server
– Versions
• IIS 5.0, Apache 1.3.12, SQL Server V.7

25. 25
Asset Prioritization
» Network-based discovery
– Known and “unknown” devices
– Determine network-based applications
– Excellent scalability
» Agent-based discovery
– In-depth review of the applications and patch levels
– Deployment disadvantages
» Network- and agent-based discovery techniques are optimal
– Agents - Cover what you already know in great detail
– Network - Identify rogue or new devices
» Frequency
– Continuous, daily, weekly
– Depends on the asset

26. 26
Correlate
Threats

27. 27
Correlate Threats
» Not all threat and vulnerability data have equal priority
» Primary goal is to rapidly protect your most critical assets
» Identify threats
– Worms
– Exploits
– Wide-scale attacks
– New vulnerabilities
» Correlate with your most critical assets
» Result = Prioritization of vulnerabilities within your environment

28. 28
Determine
Risk Level

29. 29
Risk Calculation
» The Union of:
– Vulnerabilities
– Assets
– Threats
» Based upon the
criticality of VAT
» Focus your
resources on the
true risk

30. 30
Remediation

31. 31
Remediation / Resolution
» Perfection is unrealistic (zero vulnerabilities)
– Think credit card fraud – will the banks ever eliminate credit card fraud?
» You have limited resources to address issues
» The question becomes:
– Do I address or not?
» Factor in the business impact costs + remediation costs
– If the risk outweighs the cost – eliminate or mitigate the vulnerability!

32. 32
Remediation / Resolution
» Apply the Pareto Principle – the 80/20 rule
– Focus on the vital few not the trivial many
– 80% of your risk can be eliminated by addressing 20% of the issues
– The Risk Union will show you the way
• Right assets
• Relevant threats
• Critical vulnerabilities

33. 33
Remediation / Resolution
» Patch or Mitigate
– Impact on availability from a bad patch vs. the risk of not patching
– Patch or mitigate
– Recommendations:
–QA security patches 24 hours
–Determine if there are wide spread problems
–Implement defense-in-depth

34. 34
Measure

35. 35
Measure
» Current state of security metrics
– You can’t manage what you can’t measure
– No focus on quantifying “Security”
• What is my real risk?
– Only a relative scale of risk, not an absolute
– Return on Security Investment (ROSI) is extremely difficult to calculate
– No accountability in security

36. 36
Measure
» Future Look:
– Accountability
– A universal standard to quantify risk
– Common nomenclature
– Dashboard view of risk and vulnerabilities across disparate organizations
– Technologies that will help answer the questions:
• Am I secure?
• Who is accountable and by when?
• Am I getting better or worse?
• How am I trending over time?
• How do I compare to my peers?
• How do I compare outside my industry?

37. 37
Summary
» All assets are not created equally
» You cannot respond to or even protect against all threats
» An effective vulnerability management program focuses on Risk
– Vulnerabilities
– Assets
– Threats
» The hardest step in a 1000 mile journey is the first –
start somewhere
» Strategically manage vulnerabilities using a comprehensive
process

38. 38
10 Steps to Effective Vulnerability
Management
1. Identify all the assets in your purview
2. Create an Asset Criticality Profile (ACP)
3. Determine exposures and vulnerabilities
4. Track relevant threats – realized and unrealized
5. Determine Risk - union of vulnerabilities x assets x threats
6. Take corrective action if risk > cost to eliminate or mitigate
7. Create meaningful metrics and hold people accountable
8. Identify and address compliance gaps
9. Implement an automated vulnerability management system
10. Convince someone with a budget that vulnerability
management is important

39. 39
Don’t Spend Another Dime On Security Until
You Understand How To….
Protect The Right Assets
From The Right Threats
With The Right Measures

40. » Contact Information
George Kurtz
949-297-5600
george.kurtz@foundstone.com
www.foundstone.com

41. 41
Questions?
Submit your questions to George
by clicking on the Ask a Question link
on the lower left corner of the screen.
George’s answers will be sent to you by e-mail.

42. 42
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