RE: Is IDS/IPS worthless?

["Brian Taylor" <drak3 () attbi com>]

Andrew and all,

It's funny.  This has been an age-old argument in security--both in
physical and information security.  For the few American football fans
out there, I describe it as the job of an offensive lineman. He protects
the quarterback hundreds of times a game, but generally, you only get to
recognize his value when he gets beat for a sack.  Unfortunately, that
is not how we would like to justify IDS/IPS.  Good security should be
transparent, invisible and should not disrupt the core business.  

However, like Andrew said in his post, business performance is usually
measured in terms of revenue.  Sales organizations generates revenue and
attains new customers. Development and engineering create the products
that are used to generate revenue.  Hell, even Technical Support has a
business case about customer retention and satisfaction.  You can see an
actual product which is tied to sale.  IT makes sure that the daily
operations are able to happen.  Security sits there silently.  Doing
everything on the inside, but outwardly appearing to do nothing.  It is
very hard to measure how this positively affects revenue until something
bad happens.  And IMHO, a catastrophic incident should NEVER be used as
a primary business case except as a last resort.  Still, it is tempting
to say "let's remove the IDS/IPS for a year and see what happens"...
:-)

When Code Red and Nimda dropped, it was good to be able to say "we did
not lose a single day or productivity, nor was our business disrupted".
Other companies could not say that.  But again, who publicizes such a
thing?  I was at an Infragard meeting and heard the worst-cases from
other security pros as well as CIOs CISOs, etc...  However, how often do
you really get to hear things like this on a daily basis.

I remember in the warehouse days, there were safety programs initiated
(after several costly accidents by the employees there).  There
instituted these safety awareness programs and had several prominently
displayed signs that said something to the order of "45 days without an
accident".  This was updated daily.  Did it prove that the safety
program worked?  Maybe.  Was it some sort of way of justifying the costs
and effectiveness of the program?  I believe so. But we go back to the
problem.  Safety awareness wasn't an concern until the company lost
revenue due to lost wages, workman's comp, etc.  It was very easy to
justify the costs of the program after something bad happened.  

If I had the answer to this question, I probably wouldn't be sitting
here bemoaning the fact that I forgot to play the lottery last night!!
But I think we all have to agree that this is probably the biggest
challenge that we face as security professionals.  How do we show and
justify the benefits of IDS/IPS when good security should be
transparent?  

Great post, Andrew.  I simply wish I had a better answer to it....

--BT

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Plato [mailto:aplato () anitian com] 
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2004 11:32 AM
To: focus-ids () securityfocus com
Subject: Is IDS/IPS worthless? 



I've noticed something lately and I wonder if anybody else has
experienced this. At a meeting recently, I was told by a number of
people that IDS/IPS is a "worthless waste of IT resources" and
"providing no real value to an organization."  The speaker at this
particular meeting challenged me to say "what business goals did the
implementation of an IDS/IPS achieve?"  I responded that an IDS gives
insight to what is happening on a network and provides critical data to
more effectively focus resources on real problems. An IPS builds a level
of trust and protection from intrusions as well as insight into the
function and behavior of a network. (Okay, it was a vanilla answer, I
admit.)
 
So this speaker then challenged me to come up with verifiable metrics. I
replied that he would have to define what metrics he wants? What does he
consider a "viable metric" for performance.  He said "did they sell more
products, make more money?"  I replied "why is that the only metric that
businesses can understand?  A lot of complex things go into 'making
money' and IT operations is a small part of that. Marketing, strategic
vision, and many other factors have a much more profound impact on
'making money' than a single IT security solution. However, insight into
operations and security is a critical component of IT. How do you know
you have been broken into if you don't have any mechanisms to detect
those intrusions? There is clear value in investment in locks and
security cameras, why not have similar investments into the digital
equivalents."  
 
This shut him up, for a while, but it highlighted a growing trend I am
noticing. It seems like there are a lot of people with an agenda right
now to shoot down the value of IPS/IDS technologies. IPS in particular
seems to be painted as a "marketing ploy."  I also hear the story "they
bought and IDS and it just sat in a rack and did nothing"  a lot
(usually from people who don't even know what an IDS does.) 
 
What is happening here?  Anybody have any idea why there is a growing
"anti-IDS" attitude. Is it the failure of IDS to produce value in an
organization? Is the Gartner "IDS is dead" report having THAT much
affect on the industry?  Are the IDS vendors victims of their own
over-marketing?  Am I a paranoid moron? 
 
I am curious to hear other people's ideas on and strategies for dealing
with these objections. 
 
 
___________________________________
Andrew Plato, CISSP
President/Principal Consultant
ANITIAN  ENTERPRISE  SECURITY

3800 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Suite 298
Beaverton, OR 97005
503-644-5656 Office
503-214-8069 Fax
503-201-0821 Mobile
www.anitian.com
___________________________________

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public key available at: http://www.anitian.com/corp/keys.htm 

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