Security Should Pay, Not Cost

1. Security --A Cost of Doing Business
There is a television commercial in the U.S. that shows an automobile mechanic. In one hand
he has some worn piston rings. In the other he holds an oil filter. The mechanic looks from
hand to hand and says, "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later." The point of the
commercial is that friction is inevitable. It is a cost of running an automobile. It is
inescapable. You will pay. The only choice that is open to you is how you pay. You may pay
in a regular and orderly manner, or you may pay in a destructive and unpredictable manner,
but you must pay.

So it is with information protection. It is a cost of doing business. It is unavoidable. You will
pay. The only choice that you have is how you pay. You can pay in a regular, orderly, and
business-like manner, or you can pay in an irregular and unpredictable manner, but you must
pay.

Now, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that those rings came from an
American car, not from a Mercedes or a BMW. You are thinking of all those stories that you
have heard about the little old lady who drove her 500 SEL for a million kilometers without
ever changing the oil, much less the filter. Perhaps you can get away with not changing your
oil filter. Perhaps you will be lucky.

But the mechanic in our advertisement portrays himself as a friend, giving friendly advice. He
is trying to help us understand our choice so that we will make the one that is best for us. He
too has heard the story about the little old lady; he's even seen some of those cars. But he
understands that those cars are the exceptions. While one driver may get away with it, for
most drivers and cars, periodic changes of oil filters is a smart and efficient policy.
While one department or manager within your organization may get away with poor security,
taken across all departments and all managers, security can pay and its absence will put the
health ofthe business at risk. You are in the role of the friendly mechanic. It is your job to

convince management in general and managers in particular to change their oil filters. 

2. Security Should Pay; not Cost 

Security should pay, it should not cost. Management has a fundamental responsibility to 

conserve and protect the assets and interests of the institution and its constitutents. However, 

it should spend no more to do that than will contribute to the objectives of the institution, at 

least across the whole institution and across time. Security is a means, not an end. As with 

safety programs, personnel programs, recognition programs, and the like, we have security 

programs because they contribute to the bottom line. 

3. Efficiency 

Some of you, with keen ears for English, might have noted that I said "security can pay." It 

does not necessarily do so. As with anything else, it is possible to pay too much for security. 

Of course, if you do, then it will not pay. Courtney's second law says, "You should spend no 

more to deal with a risk than tolerating it will cost you." 

Security must be efficient. That is, it must be effective without waste. A security measure is 

efficient when it costs less than the alternatives, including the alternative of doing nothing. A 

collection of security measures is efficient over time when the sum of the cost of losses and 

the cost of the measures is at a minimum. Infinite security means infinite cost, and zero 

security means intolerable losses. 

Of course, there is part of the problem. This is a difficult number to know. While we can 

measure the cost of security measures, the frequency of large losses is low and the period 

long. The cost of frequent, but controllable, losses is often beneath our notice and, when 

noticed, is not seen as related to the cost of security. Therefore, it is difficult to identify the 

value of our day-to-day activity, to convey it our management, and to motivate our peers and 

colleagues. 

We have a saying in English, "No one promised you a rose garden." No one promised that 

management was easy. If it were easy, it might not pay so well and offer such nice working 

conditions. 

One important form of efficiency is consistency. It is important that security measures result 

in a similar level of security across like parts of the institution and similar resources. We do 

not want to spend a great deal of money to raise the average height of a fence by greatly 

increasing the height of one section while leaving most of it alone. Therefore, efficiency 

requires that like resources receive similar protection. It requires that all resources receive the 

appropriate protection, while reserving expensive measures for only those resources that need 

them. 

4. Efficient Management Systems 

Having said that, we can now begin to identify efficient management systems and efficient 

measures. 

It may be that there are some institutions that are so homogeneous that one level of protection 

would serve for all but a small, easily identified, set of their resources. I have not encountered 

one in my 25 years in this field. It may also be that there is a management system, other than 

classifying resources by their sensitivity or according to the protection measures that they 

measures that they should get, that will ensure that everything is properly protected but 

expensive measures are reserved. Again, I have not encountered one, but wonders never 

cease. In the meantime, I do not expect to see an institution the size of those represented here 

that has an efficient security program that does not require management to classify and label 

information resources. 

5. Efficient Measures 

While we tend to focus our attention on the effectiveness of security measures, efficiency is 

inversely proportional to effectiveness. That is to say, the most effective measures are rarely 

efficient. Either they cost too much, or they have too large a negative impact on our ability to 

accomplish other objectives. The most important factor in efficiency is the breadth of the 

measure. Those measures that are most efficient are those that address the largest set of risks, 

including: 

• Direction to employees 

• Management supervision 

• Physical security 

• Access control 

• Encryption 

• Data base backup 

• Contingency planning . 

Tell your people what you expect and what you rely upon them for. When employees fail to 

do what we expect, it is far more often the result of a failure to communicate on our part than 

of any failure of motive or intent on theirs. 

‘Supervise. Note variances from intent or expectation and take timely corrective action. 

Management supervision is the most general, flexible, and effective of all controls. We use 

others only to the extent that they are more efficient. 

Provide a safe environment. The test should be that what is safe for people will generally be 

safe for computers and information. The skills and special knowledge of your people makes 

them irreplaceable, while property is cheap, and information easily copied. 

Limit access to sensitive and valuable resources. The more valuable the resource, the more 

layers of control and the fewer the number of people with access. 

When you cannot limit access to information, then record it in codes that only the intended 

parties can read. Modem cryptography can be fully automated and arbitrarily strong. It 

enables us to protect infonnation independent of the media on which it is recorded or the 

environment through which it must pass. We can implement both logical envelopes and 

logical signatures. We can compose these to simulate any control that we have ever been able 

to implement with paper. Using the computer, we can do these things in a manner transparent 

to the user and too cheap to meter. 

Create multiple copies of important data and distribute them over space such that not all 

copies are vulnerable to the same event. Consistent with the needs to keep the copies current 

and confidential, the more the better. 

Use slack time and resource before a disaster to reduce the cost and duration of the outage. 

You will survive and recover from most disasters. The issue is not whether you will survive 

but, rather, of how much it will cost and how long it will take to return to nonnal. Do not 

focus on tactics that might fail, or might not apply, but on strategies that must succeed. 

None of these measures is one hundred percent effective against any hazard; all involve some 

residual risk. Therefore, their efficiency does nol result from their effectiveness versus their 

cost. Rather, it results from the number of hazards that they address. While not completely 

effective against any exposures, they are efficient because they marginally reduce our exposure 

to a large number of risks and vulnerabilities, some of which we cannot even identify in 

advance. 

Now, that is all there is to it. That is half a century of experience in a nutshell. That is 

all you really need to know. But it is only the beginning of what you must do. 

Note that what is good for one security objective may be bad for another. The more copies of 

the data, the lower the likelihood that they will all be destroyed, but the greater the chance 

that one will be disclosed. Security is the act of balancing the cost of security measures 

against the cost of losses. The balance is not stable; It requires the continual application of 

experience and judgment. 

6. The Price of Security 

So we see how we should manage and what measures we ought to employ. All of this begs 

the question of how much we ought to spend. It may be that what I have said so far is all that 

can be confidently said on the issue. On the other hand, my experience suggests that these 

answers are not satisfying. To say that "you should spend less than it would cost to do 

nothing" is unsatisfying ifthe cost of doing nothing cannot be readily known. 

Most organizations cannot tell you with much confidence how much they spend on security. 

Their books are not set up to measure things so small. Neither can they tell you much about 

the cost oflosses; the books are not set up to track things that occur so seldom. 

Early in my career, I used to respond to this question by saying that if you were spending 

more than three percent of your budget on security, then you were not likely to be efficient. 

The longer I am in the business, the lower the number gets. Perhaps it is as little as one-tenth 

of one percent. That is to say, perhaps one employee in a thousand works full-time in 

security. 

How much you spend may be a measure of intent, but it is not a measure of accomplishment. 

Accomplishment is measured by how well you spend. We maximize our chances of spending 

wisely by spending on the efficient measures. Now it is time to get on with it. 

You can pay me now, or you can pay me later. 

Open Letter to my Congressman

Sir:

In my forty years in information security I have come to have many colleagues in the intelligence community.  I find them to be brilliant and noble.  I have also found them to be myopic, artful, and zealous.  I have watched their testimony before both the House and Senate judiciary committees.  While I have been impressed by their testimony, I have been less impressed by the questioning.   The testimony has been carefully rehearsed and very consistent.  Where the questioning has not been sympathetic, it has been inept.  Even those legislators who recognize that the testimony is misleading are prevented by secrecy and decorum from asking the questions that might really inform the citizens or even saying so when a witness lies under oath. 

·         Here is a short list of questions that I would like put to the administration to answer under oath.

• Does GCHQ target American citizens on behalf of the US government?  What did we get for our $152M? 
• Does the NSA target citizens of the United Kingdom?  Does it do so on behalf of the UK government? 
• What programs, besides the collection of all telephone call records, does the NSA operate under USA Patriot Act, Section 215?  What programs, other than PRISM, does it operate under the FISA, Section 702?  Are we going to be surprised by more revelations?   
• NSA has admitted that a query to the call records database implicates not only those connected directly to the "seed" number but all those associated with it to "three hops."  What is the largest number of phone numbers implicated by any single query?  How many subscribers have been implicated by the hundreds of queries made since the inception of the program?  Is it possible that there is any American citizen  that has not been swept up in this huge drag net?
• Given the density of modern digital storage, e.g., a terabyte in a shirt pocket for $100, what is NSA storing that requires 24 acres of floor space in Utah?  
• What percentage of the e-mail that crosses our borders does NSA collect?  Store?  Analyze?  Disseminate to other agencies of government?  
• Given the demonstrations by Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning as to the breadth and depth of their access, how can we rely upon the assurances of NSA  that they can protect us from abuse of the information they collect?  Doesn't the mere collection of all this information invite, not to say guarantee, abuse?
• Doesn't the mammoth budget ($75B in 2t012?) of NSA justify the conclusion that NSA operates on the premise that "Because we can, we must," and without any regard for efficiency?   Are they not spending far more than doing nothing would cost?
• Does not the Bush "Warrantless Surveillance Program" demonstrate that citizens cannot rely upon bureaucrats and spies to protect us from over-zealous, not to say rogue, politicians?  Are we building capabilities now that will empower politicians of the future? 
• Does the NSA require a warrant before they target US citizens on behalf of the FBI?  Secret Service? DEA?  MI5?  MI6?  
• Does the NSA protect American citizens from surveillance by their peers and colleagues in other nations?  
•  Is information passed to the FBI by NSA ever, usually, sufficient for the issuance of a wiretap warrant?  A National Security Letter?  
•  Do the intelligence agencies selectively share intelligence with legislators in order to curry support?
• 
  

The Coming Quantum Computing Crypto Apocalypse

Modern media, both fact and fiction, loves the Apocalypse and the Dystopian future.  The Quantum Apocalypse is just one example but one close to the subject of this blog.  It posits that the coming revolution called quantum computing will obsolete modern encryption and destroy modern commerce as we have come to know it.  It was the hook for the 1992 movie Sneakers starring Robert Redford, Sydney Poitier, Ben Kingsley, and River Phoenix.

This entry will tell the security professional some useful things about the application of Quantum Mechanics to information technology in general, and Cryptography in particular, that will help equip him for, and enlist him in, the effort to ensure that commerce, and our society that depends upon it, survive.  Keep in mind that the author is not a Physicist or even a cryptographer.  Rather he is an octogenarian, a computer security professional, and an observer of and commentator on the experience that we call modern Cryptography beginning with the Data Encryption Standard.

For a description of Quantum Computing I refer you to Wikipedia.  For our purpose here it suffices to say that it is very fast at solving certain classes of otherwise difficult problems.  One of these problems is to find the factors of the product of two prime numbers, the problem that one must solve to find the message knowing the cryptogram and the public key or the private key knowing the message, the cryptogram, and the public key in the RSA crypto systems.

This vulnerable algorithm is the one that we rely upon for symmetric key exchange in our infrastructure.  In fact, because it is so computationally intensive, that is the only thing we use it for.

In theory, using quantum computing, one might find the factors almost as fast as one could find the product, while the cryptographic cover time of the system relies upon the fact that the former takes much longer than the latter.  Cryptographers would certainly say that, by definition, at least in theory, the system would be "broken."  However, the security professional would ask about the relative cost of the two operations.  While the former can be done by any cheap computer, the latter can only be done quickly by much more rare and expensive "quantum" computers.

Cryptanalysis is one of the applications that has always supported cutting edge computing. One of the "Secrets of ULTRA" was that we invented modern computing in part to break the Enigma system employed by Germany.  ULTRA was incredibly expensive for all that.  While automation made ULTRA effective, it was German key management practices that made it efficient.    On the other hand, the modern computer made commercial and personal cryptography both necessary and cheap.

One can be certain that NSA is supporting QC research and will be using one of the first practical implementations for cryptanalysis.  They will be doing it literally before you know it and exclusively for months to years after that.

Since ULTRA, prudent users of cryptography have assumed that, at some cost, nation states (particularly the "Five Eyes," Russia, China, France, and Israel) can read any message that they wish. However, in part because the cost of reading one message includes the cost of not reading others, they cannot read every message that they wish.

The problem is not that Quantum Computing breaks Cryptography, per se, but that it breaks one system on which we rely.  It is not that we do not have QC resistant crypto but that replacing what we are using with it will take both time and money.  The faster we want to do it, the more expensive it will be.  Efficiency demands that we take our time; effectiveness requires that we not be late.

By some estimates we may be as much as 10 years away from an RSA break but then again, we might be surprised.  One strategy to avoid the consequences of surprise is called "crypto agility."  It implies using cryptography in such a way that we can change the way we do it in order to adapt to changes in the threat environment.

For example, there are key exchange strategies that are not vulnerable to QC.  One such has already been described by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).  It requires a little more data and cycles than RSA but this is more than compensated for by the falling cost of computing.  It has the added advantage that it can be introduced in a non-disruptive manner, beginning with the most sensitive applications.

History informs us that cryptography does not fail catastrophically and that while advances in computing benefit the wholesale cryptanalyst, e.g., nation states, before the commercial cryptographer, in the long run they benefit the cryptographer orders of magnitude more than the cryptanalyst.  In short, there will be a lot of work but no "Quantum Apocalypse."  Watch this space. 

4 June, 2025

"A 4096-bit RSA key, while currently considered very secure, could potentially be broken by a quantum computer in a matter of days or weeks, depending on the number of qubits and the specific algorithm used. Google's research suggests it could be broken in 10 days using 1.4 million noisy qubits. "

Ask yourself how many RSA keys we create in a week for TLS alone.

 

 

The Next Great Northeastern Blackout

It has already been more than thirteen years since the last great northeastern blackout.  The mean time between such blackouts is roughly twenty years.  

Blackouts are caused by a number of simultaneous component failures that overwhelm the ability of the system to cope.  While the system copes with most component failures so well that the consumer never even notices, there is an upper bound to the number of concurrent failures that it can tolerates. In the face of these failures the system automatically does an orderly protective shutdown that assures its ability to restart within tens of hours to days.

However, such surprising shutdowns are  experienced by the community as a "failure."  One result is finger pointing, blaming, and shaming.  Rather than being seen as a normal and predictable occurrence with a proper and timely response, the Blackout is seen as a "failure" that should have been "prevented."  

These outages are less disruptive than an ice storm.  However, even though they are as natural and as inevitable as weather related outages, they are not perceived that way.  The public and their political representatives see weather related outages as unavoidable but inevitable technology failures as one hundred percent preventable.

Security people understand that perfect prevention has infinite cost.  That as we increase the meantime between outages, we stop, at about twenty years, way short of infinity.  This is in part because the cost of the next increment exceeds the value and in part because we reach a natural limit. We increase the resistance to failure by adding redundancy and automation. However, we do this at the cost of ever increasing complexity.  There is a point, at about twenty years MTBF, at which increased complexity causes more failures than it prevents.

Much of the inconvenience to the public is a function of surprise.  Since they have come to expect prevention, they are not prepared for outages.  The message should be that we are closer to the next Blackout than to the last.  If you are not surprised and are prepared, you will minimize your own cost and inconvenience.

Internet Vulnerability

On March 24, 2017 Gregory Michaelidis wrote in Slate on "Why America’s Current Approach to Cybersecurity Is So Dangerous."

He cited an article by Bruce Schneier.

In response, I observed to a number of colleagues, proteges, and students that "One takeaway from this article and the Schneier article that it points to is that we need to reduce our attack surface.  Dramatically.  Perhaps ninety percent.  Think least privilege access at all layers to include application white-listing, safe dcfaults, end-to-end application layer encryption, and strong authentication."

One colleague responded "I think one reason the cyber attack surface is so large is that the global intel agencies hoard vulnerabilities and exploits..."  Since secret "vulnerabilities and exploits" account for so little of our attack surface, I fear that he missed my point.

While it is true that intelligence agencies enjoy the benefits of our vulnerable systems and are little motivated to reduce the attack surface, the "hoarded vulnerabilities and exploits" are not the attack surface and the intel agencies are not the cause.  

The cause is the IT culture. There is a broad market preference for open networks, systems, and applications. TCP/IP drove the more secure SNA/SDLC from the field. The market prefers Windows and Linux to OS X, Android to iOS, IBM 360 to System 38, MVS to FS, MS-DOS to OS/2, Z Systems to iSeries, Flash to HTML5, von Neumann architecture [Wintel systems] to almost anything else.  

One can get a degree in Computer Science, even in Cyber Security, without ever even hearing about a more secure alternative architecture to von Neumann's [e.g. IBM iSeries. Closed, finite state architecture (operations can take the system only from one valid state to another), limited set of strongly-typed (e.g., data can not be executed, programs cannot be modified) objects, single level store, symbolic only addressing, etc.)]

We prefer to try and stop leakage at the end user device or the perimeter rather than administer access control at the database or file system. We persist in using replayable passwords in preference to strong authentication, even though they are implicated in almost every breach. We terminate encryption on the OS, or even the perimeter, rather than the application. We deploy user programmable systems where application only systems would do.  We enable escape mechanisms and run scripts and macros by default.

We have too many overly privileged users with almost no multi-party controls. We discourage shared UIDs and passwords for end users but default to them for the most privileged users, where we most need accountability. We store our most sensitive information in the clear, as file system objects, on the desktop, rather than encryptied, in document management systems, on servers. We keep our most sensitive data and mission critical apps on the same systems where we run our most vulnerable applications, browsing and e-mail. We talk about defense in depth but operate our enterprise networks flat, any to any connectivity and trust, not structured, not architected. It takes us weeks to months just to detect breaches and more time to fix them.  

I can go on and I am sure you can add examples of your own. Not only is the intelligence community not responsible for this practice, they are guilty of it themselves. It was this practice, not secret vulnerabilities, that was exploited by Snowden. It is this culture, not "hoarded vulnerabilities and exploits," that is implicated in the breaches of the past few years. It defies reason that one person acting alone could collect the data that Snowden did without being detected.  

Nation states do what they do; their targets of choice will yield to their overwhelming force. However, we need not make it so easy. We might not be able to resist dragons but we are yielding to bears and brigands. I admit that the culture is defensive and resistant to change but it will not be changed by blaming the other guy. "We have seen the enemy and he is us."

All "Things" are not the Same

My mentor, Robert H. Courtney, Jr.  was one of the great original thinkers in security.  He taught me a number of useful concepts some of which I have codified and call "Courtney's Laws."  At key inflection points in information technology I find it useful to take them out and consider the problems of the day in their light.  The emergence of what has been called the Internet of Things (IoT) is such an occasion. 

Courtney's First Law cautioned us that "Nothing useful can be said about the security of a mechanism except in the context of a specific application and environment."  This law can be usefully applied to the difficult, not to say intractable, problem of the Internet of things (IoT).  All "things" are not the same and, therefore do not have the same security requirements or solutions.

What Courtney does not address is what we mean by "security."  The security that most seem to think about in this context is resistance to interference with the intended function of the "thing" or appliance.  The examples de jour include interference with the operation of an automobile or with a medical device.   However, a greater risk is the that general purpose computer function in the device will be subverted and used for denial of service attacks or brute force attacks against passwords or cryptographic keys.

Key to Courtney's advice are "application" and "environment."  Consider application first.  The security we expect varies greatly with the intended use of the appliance.  We expect different security properties, features, and functions from a car, a pacemaker, a refrigerator, a CCTV camera, a baby monitor, or a "smart"  TV.  This is critical.  Any attempt to treat all these things  the same is doomed to failure.  This is reflected in the tens of different safety standards that the Underwriters Laboratories has for electrical appliances.  Their list includes categories that had not even been invented when the Laboratories were founded at the turn of the last century.

Similarly our requirements vary with the environment in which the device is to be used.  We have different requirements for devices intended to be used in the home, car, airplane, hospital, office, plant, or infrastructure.  Projecting the requirements of any one of these on any other can only result in ineffectiveness and unnecessary cost.  For example, one does not require the same precision, reliability, or resistance to outside interference in a GPS intended for use in an automobile as for one intended for use in an airliner or a cruise ship.  One does not require the same security in a device intended for connection only to private networks as for those intended for direct connection to the public networks.

When I was at IBM, Courtney's First Law became the basis for the security standard for our products.  Product managers were told that the security properties, features, and functions of their product should meet the requirements for the intended application and environment.  The more things one wanted one's product to be used for and the more, or more hostile, the environments that one wanted it to be used in, the more robust the security had to be.  For example, the requirements for a large multi-user system were higher than those for a single user system.  The manager  could assert any claims  or disclaimers that she liked; what she could not do was remain silent.  Just requiring the manager to describe these things made a huge difference.   This was reinforced by requiring her to address this standard in all product plans, reviews, announcements, and marketing materials.  While this standard might not have accomplished magic, it certainly advanced the objective.

Achieving the necessary security for the Internet of things will require a lot of thought, action and, in some cases, invention.  Applying Courtney's First Law is a place to start.  A way to start might be to expect all vendors to speak to the intended application and environment of his product.  For example, is the device intended "only for home use on a home network; not intended for direct connection to the Internet."  While the baby monitor or doorbell must be able to access the Internet, attackers on the Internet should not be able access the baby monitor.

"Women and Children First"

As we approach autonomous cars, some have posed the question "In accident avoidance should the car prefer its passenger or the pedestrian?"  It is posed as a difficult ethical dilemma.  I even heard an engineer suggest that not only does he not want to make the decision but that he would like Congress to make it as a matter of law.  

This is really just another instance of an ethical dilemma that humanity has faced forever.  It has many illustrations but one that has been used in teaching ethics is called the "life boat" problem.  If there is not enough room in the lifeboat for everyone, who gets in?  If there is not enough food and water, who gets preference?

The simple answer is "women and children first."  Human drivers will steer away from a woman with a baby carriage even if they do not have time to evaluate the alternative.  It is built into the culture, all but automatic, but the reason is that it is pro life.  Children are the future of the species.  Women can nurture and reproduce.  Men can sow but they cannot reap.  While the male role takes minutes, the female role takes months.  Life needs more females than males.

The reason that we do not apply this pro life rationale to the autonomous automobile is that we assume that the consideration is beyond its capability.  However, most of what one expects of an autonomous car today was beyond its capability a decade ago.  For the moment, most may not be able to consider all the factors we might like.  For example, they may not recognize age and gender, much less consider them.  Ten years from now, they certainly will.  

In this context it is useful to consider how such systems make a decision.  They identify a number of scenarios, depending upon the time available, assign an outcome and a confidence level to each, and choose statistically.  The kind of ties implied by the strawman dilemma will be vanishingly rare, even more so as the computers become faster and the number of things the can consider increases.  

Compare the autonomous car to the human driver.  In the two tenths of a second that it takes a young adult to recognize and react, the autonomous car will evaluate dozens of possibilities with as many considerations.  Like the human driver, the autonomous car may confront instances when there are simply no good options but the whole reason for using them is that they are less likely than the human driver to overlook the least damaging.