Re: RE: In defense of non standard ports

["Paul D. Robertson" <paul () compuwar net>]

On Tue, 24 Jan 2006, Tim Shea wrote:

> I've been monitoring this discussion and I have issues with two
> assumptions being made.  The first is that all organizations have security
> professionals with some pull with management.  Politics plays a big part

Trust me, if your organization has security professionals, then they have 
pull with management.

> and unless you can sell a solution or are hacked sideways nothing will be
> done.  This is the frustration of many technical security professionals.

Deploying IDS doesn't help this issue long-term.  Long-term we need to be 
able to quantify (and if Avashai ever de-htmls his response, we'll have 
great data for this.)

> Lets take the above issue  - all tcp ports outbound are open.  Throwing in
> an IDS is an quick way to gather appropriate information to help sell to
> management that they have a real problem.  Just telling them "all ports

No, your risk analysis should show them it's the right thing to do, if 
you're attempting to build credibility based on shiny graphs and vendor 
gear reports, then ultimately you're setting yourself up to fail.

> outbound bad" does not work.  In addition - the log output from [insert
> whatever firewall here] is either not detailed enough or the volume is so
> high that it is not always practical to run analyze on the output.

What?  Not show them how valuable their firewall investment is?  Are you 
kidding?  "So much protection we can't even report on it!  C'mon, you're 
missing a great chance here...

> Second issue I have is that running IDS's takes a lot of time.  That is
> bull.  I had a vendor in today that was going off about such nonsense. It
> is just like any other service.  You plan, implement, and manage that
> service appropriately.  If you are spending all your time updating rules
> and keeping things in sync - your problem is not the ids but your
> operational processes.

Doing it in a way that elimates false positives and keeps it up-to-date 
enough to highlight your failed security implementation does take time, 
time better spent teaching executive management that you're professionals 
that sholdn't be ignored any more than they'd ignore the financial guy's 
take on the books..

> IDS have their place as any other service but saying they are useless or
> offering a negative opinion on an organizations internal controls (or lack
> of them) does not help that individual solve a problem.

My main message is that we need to focus our efforts on using what we 
already have installed and in achieving results rather than spending it 
furthing vendor hype for half-baked products that don't advance the state 
of the art over AV.

Paul
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Paul D. Robertson      "My statements in this message are personal opinions
paul () compuwar net       which may have no basis whatsoever in fact."
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