US DOJ Lays Out Cybersecurity Basics Every Company Should Practice 58
coondoggie writes "The mantra is old, grant you, but worth repeating since it's obvious from the amount of cybersecurity breaches that not everyone is listening. Speaking at the Georgetown Cybersecurity Law Institute this week, Deputy Attorney General of the United States James Cole said there are a ton of things companies can do to help government and vice-versa, to combat cyber threats through better prevention, preparedness, and incidence response."
... like closing your anchor tags? (Score:2)
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In other news... (Score:2)
Not working well? Do it EVEN MORE! (Score:5, Interesting)
The article advocates more passwords, and stronger passwords, saying it is less of a pain than having everything stolen by hackers.
But....
When your password rules are too onerous, people start rebelling against them out of practical necessity. People write them down on post-its or store them in files on the hard drive because there are too many to remember (and they are too hard to remember). The few people who don't do this suffer frequent lock-outs, costing the company time and money (over and over again) in password resets. And, invariably, your CEOs exclude themselves from the policies. These same CEOs tend to have way more access than they actually need, and as such are the primary targets for hackers.
So, rather than requiring a few more special characters in the min of 20 character passwords that lock out after the second failed attempt, must be changed every 10 days, have an infinite history to prevent re-use, and each of which grants you access to between five and ten percent of the subsystems you use on a daily basis...perhaps we should work smarter instead of harder.
Use two factor authentication for the core systems (everyone has a cell phone these days, and good systems can work on the employee's office landline anyway). Passwords lock out after 10 attempts (seriously, those extra 7 attempts are NOT what will give a dictionary attack its edge). Require long passwords with a minimum "variety factor" in the letters rather than specific number and special character minimums (the variety factor and length are far more cryptographically strong than adding a 123 at the end). Train employees to recognize phish. And, of course, don't give people access to stuff they don't need.
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Key passwords (maybe mail, the password managers ones, places where you must type your password frequently) should be easy to remember, and hard to crack (hint [xkcd.com]), the rest (there are always a lot of them) should be in one or more password managers (i.e. your browser, with a master password, but also more portable ones like KeePassX [keepassx.org]) where as are not meant to be remembered are easier to change, to put hardest complexity, and of course, to have all different. And try to avoid automated password trying, special
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Meantime, I'll keep my passwords in encry
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The article advocates more passwords, and stronger passwords,
Why do companies have archaic password limitations? Must be less than 12 characters (or 16 or some other arbitrary short length) Must NOT be the following characters... Why is there a limit on the characters I use? Whenever I see boneheaded rules like this, I assume someone is incompetent, and I wonder what other security holes there are.
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One of my banks has "eight digit, numbers only, cannot repeat numbers", and each time I change it, it no digits must me replaced in the same place as the last password. No three digits must be consecutive numbers, or consecutive in reverse order. Amongst other conditions.
Generating a rememerable password is extremely hard. Even random numbers are of little use, since they tend to be rejected as well.
This results in me having to use keepassx (instead of MY BRAIN) to store my passwords.
Meanwhile, I can easily
Incentives (Score:5, Insightful)
Making a book of "best practices" is a good first step, but incentives are also needed.
For example, suppose the government set penalties for security breaches which result from not following best practices. The penalties would not trigger until an actual breach, but if one *does* happen then the company is fined for breach of trust.
The fines should be structured to encourage businesses to reduce risk, by artificially creating proportional risk.
If someone steals CC numbers because the company kept them in the clear, and kept them beyond the time necessary to complete a transaction, the company is fined $5 each number. If passwords are not encrypted and salted, $1 for each stolen password. If web form data is not sanitized and customer information is stolen, $3 for each record. If the power station control computers are on the net with default passwords - half a mil.
The government could also set up incentives and rewards for white-hat hackers who find vulnerabilities. If 1/10 of the potential fine goes to the white-hat hacker who discovers it, security practices would come into line very quickly. Perhaps with a cap of $50,000: enough for incentive to the hacker and the company, but not enough to affect the business.
(... tempered by common sense. The company can argue that a different action is just as secure as "best practice" - but this should be done in court as response to a data breach investigation. Also, security breaches which are the result of something not covered by "best practices" are exempt.)
Government can tweak and tune things for the betterment of society, but it has to be structured in the manner of game theory. People have to want to follow procedures.
Re:Incentives (Score:4)
Many of the things you suggest with regards to CC info are already in place due to PCI-DSS compliance specs, but I don't disagree in general.
yeah.. but you know what? BIG COMPANIES ARE NOT PENALIZED AS THEY SHOULD BE FOR BREACHING THOSE TERMS/CONTRACTS! was stratfor put into it's place for hoarding the numbers? fuck no. ..and well, we get just vague "your information may be compromised" messages from companies instead of them fessing up that they stored the information in plain text.
Re:Incentives (Score:4, Interesting)
There have been firms who have suffered breaches directly after audits demonstrating compliance that have been fined for non-compliance. Why? Because they were breached so they can't have been in compliance. Nice example of ex-post facto there. Then there have been firms undergoing and audit that have been breached and therefor fined, even when the breach was discovered after the audit was completed and compliance was assured. Pure and simple, if you are breached, you must not be in compliance.
If I were the only one dealing with security saying this, it might be personal. I'm not. It's just one of those meaningless standards that exist solely to provide butt-cover. As for government doing the job, I used to ensure compliance with all the various safety regulations (military, environmental, OSHA,... that list is almost endless) and I literally lost count. Counting is something I do real good. That and an eidetic memory. It was simply impossible to comply with them all, not from the standpoint of time and money; it was impossible as they often contradicted themselves. If you fed them all to an expert system it would have a seizure. Me? I used to laugh out loud, a lot, and everyone thought I was weird for laughing at the regs.
The only way to get things right is to vote with our wallets but that's damn hard to do when dealing with a duopoly. And impossible when you're dealing with government. Corps have much bigger wallets than ours. They ought to since any costs they incur come out of our wallet.
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As I was reading the article I saw many references to companies and shareholders; the only reference to customers was regard their perception of the company. Nice priorities. Was time a company understood that with no customers there was no company. Now they presume the presence of plenty of unthinking consumers.
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Oh, I see. You want to monetize security breaches and have the government provide price supports, sort of like the DEA does with drugs.
Then a whole army of bureaucrats and police will be created to make sure security breaches remain a profit center for their continued existence.
That will solve the problem!
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You need to live in the States to understand this, it's unlike any other country. In America Time is Money - seriously, every waking minute is either spent making or spending Money.
A few years ago I read an article in a Canadian paper that compared media regulations in Canada and the States. It basically said that if a Canadian tv or radio station broadcasts something offensive they not only get their hands slapped but also risk not getting their license renewed, not a good thing. If an American station doe
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Yes, "best practices" book is good step, specially if they are agnostics about the used solutions (is something that could be easily exploited by their "rulers" to force some particular providers or patented technologies).
The penalties should go in the hand with consumer protection. If a company or government office stores passwords in plain text [slashdot.org] and is breached, then the users should be able to sue them. And the government maybe should be proactive finding and reporting to the responsible people about vul
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Make up their damned mind. (Score:4, Insightful)
Do I secure my network or backdoor it to comply with the demans of the Surveillance State?
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Very lame (Score:2)
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Kinda like you should brush your teeth before going to bed. You dont see articles written about that! Well, it's because you don't brush your teeth ON A COMPUTER!!!! Move along nothing to see here (That slashdot crowd dont already know!).
http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/dentalhealth/Pages/Teethcleaningguide.aspx [www.nhs.uk]
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1) The Association of Dental Care Providers will lobby the government to NOT tell the people to brush their teeth.
This is very close to the truth. The ADA (American Dental Association) did lobby the government to try to stop them from promoting dental sealants [wikipedia.org]. They were partially successful, and the CDC only promoted sealants for low income children. The dentists that worked on the low income children on behalf of the government recommended sealants at four times the rate that they used on their paying customers, where extra cavities mean extra income.
Number one rule... (Score:2)
Don't trust the DOJ on what it states as "best rules."
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Don't trust the DOJ on what it states as "best rules."
there wasn't actual rules list in the article.
it just said that there's going to be an inevitable cyber incident sooner or later and you better get ready! oh and build firewalls because that's how you keep cyber incidents in the bay, since hackers can't go through firewalls (no mention of actually putting sensitive information off-network.. or defining what's a firewall in this case).
and that government has some cyber security help program you can ask help from.
CYBER! LAYER EIGHT!!!!! fucking fat bastard
Becomes the law (Score:2)
Thanks for suggesting I go bankrupt (Score:2)
It'd probably cost the equivalent of $50'000 per year for my small business to implement all of those. Thanks for the suggestions. I can't do any of them and remain profitable at all. So I'm going to do none of them.
Instead, I've got a suggestion for you. How about making it illegal to hack into my property; and then why don't you go about aresting and prosecuting criminals? In other words, how about you, my government, go about doing your job, instead of making me into a security task force unto mysel
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How about making it illegal to hack into my property; and then why don't you go about aresting and prosecuting criminals?
It is, and they do... But there is also only so much they can do to arrest and prosecute foreigners.
Do you have locks on your doors at home? Do you use them, or do you expect the government to make trespassing illegal and to arrest and prosecute criminals?
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Yeah, I live a neighbourhood where I don't need to use the locks on my doors, the alarm system, bars on the windows, neighbourhood watch, guard house, nor a private security company.
And how dangerous is your neighbourhood? Ever thought of living somewhere safer?
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Yeah, I live a neighbourhood where I don't need to use the locks on my doors, the alarm system, bars on the windows, neighbourhood watch, guard house, nor a private security company.
And how dangerous is your neighbourhood? Ever thought of living somewhere safer?
I live in a similar town. People often leave there cars unlocked and their doors unlocked. Most of them also own guns. Very quiet.
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... Welcome to laws. You don't want me to protect myself against criminals. That's not what we call a civilized society. I don't keep a suit of armour in the garage. I don't have a shield on-hand. I don't have chain-mail shirts -- ok, I do have one, but it's a halloween costume, and it's heavy.
The government and the police have no legal requirement to protect any individual. (Much as most want to, and do the best they can.) The police are tasked to apprehend criminals. That's different. The citizens are expected to protect themselves, at least as long as it takes for the police to get there. Be warned...
A place where the police are tasked with protecting all citizens, individually, is called a "police state". It is generally agreed that no one really wants to live there.
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and what would you call individuals who hack into and steal from multiple systems routinely? Last I checked, someone who commits crimes is a criminal. English is funny that way.
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and what would you call individuals who hack into and steal from multiple systems routinely? Last I checked, someone who commits crimes is a criminal. English is funny that way.
True. But the police only go get them after the crime has occurred, and that is often too late for the individual victim. All citizens need to take at least some precautions for themselves. How much, is a personal choice...
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you're talking about detective work. "go get them". It's the penalty afterwards that's supposed to act as a deterant to others in-advance of those crimes. As an individual, I can't really deter future criminals. That's what the judicial system is for -- long after police are done with the man-hunt.
But it's not a personal choice. I don't get the choice to spend $50K / year on security and still stay in business.
The fact that I'm small means that I'm difficult to see, difficult to target, and not worth t
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Secure what you can, leave what you can't. Ever little bit helps, nothing is ever perfect protection. Hope the police can catch them after other crimes, before they get around to you. That's how it is.
And, hope that the government doesn't decide, that not following all of the recomendations is grounds for some penatly... Yikes!
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every little bit doesn't help. there's no use in having a rubber padlock. in this case, there's no use in resisting the amatuer hacker who won't be able to find me in the first place.
and the government does have those penalties, that's why we're complaining now. things like making it illegal to NOT lock your car doors when it's parked on the street. what the hell?
Don't forget (Score:2)
Aussies Did it Better (Score:1)
The Australian Department of Defense Top 35 Mitigation Strategies is a pretty good start for a corporate infosec framework.
http://www.dsd.gov.au/infosec/top35mitigationstrategies.htm [dsd.gov.au]
Trust the Government? (Score:1)
The DOJ (Score:3)
The DOJ, which illegally seizes domains from foreign holders? The DOJ which orchestrates illegal raids in New Zealand? The DOJ which is the bully of the Content Mafia?
It seems that these are not really the most technical-minded people, and you expect them to advise on Computer Security?
I'd rather follow the NSA Guidelines http://www.nsa.gov/ia/mitigation_guidance/security_configuration_guides/operating_systems.shtml [nsa.gov]