The security industry has spent a lot of time over the past 30 years thinking of imaginative ways to put lipstick on today’s cybersecurity pig.
It’s like a one hit wonder band who never adapted, playing the same song and putting on the same show over and over, even though their fans, the industry and the zeitgeist as a whole have evolved and transitioned.
We are more distributed and mobile than ever. Yet the security industry remains unevolved, putting on the same show – playing their all-time favorites like “On-Device Security” and their mega-hit “Gateway Security”. Gateway security is an especially nuanced piece with broad range. There’s the firewall, intrusion prevention, VPN gateway, the proxy, url and content filters, and the component that binds them – SIEM. And that’s the consolidated version of a lengthier and more complicated original score.
Compute has changed and continues to change dramatically in front of our eyes. Clouds, SaaS, Mobile devices and the big daddy of them all – IoT – are contorting traditional security models and tools in ways never intended – until something breaks. And today, everything is breaking since security as we know it dates back to the medieval ages.
Let’s Get Medieval On Security.
The king builds a castle (the network), puts a moat and draw-bridge around it (gateway security) and posts sentries at the gate with special instructions (security policy).
Need to operate outside the castle? If you have the strength (compute resources) and are wealthy enough to afford it (budget), you can put on custom armor (on-device security) and head out as a knight (remote user). Being a knight is exhausting though. Yes, you are well protected, but it burns a lot of energy (security team resources).
However, commoners have to assume risk and live in a state of constant vulnerability. Clouds and IoT have driven the vast majority of our functions and users to operate “outside the castle”. In fact, the business of the king’s court is now distributed. Commoners live and work remote, never needing to step foot in the castle.
There are even scenarios where some commoners operate and service other kingdoms near and far. When the court subjects are remote and distributed, the king has two options – insist on keeping the castle, moat and drawbridge or adapt. So far the security industry has bitterly resisted adapting. Why — Tradition? Lack of alternatives? It’s what they know? Or a combination of these.
Gateway security still has its uses, however, the gateway security model is long in the tooth and its use-cases diminishing by the week. And on-device security has been an expensive, ineffective and unsustainable failure. How can you package up an entire data center’s worth of security functions in a $5 sensor with the compute resources of a Timex watch.
What the cloud started, IoTs have finished. In the past compute was network-centric, now it is distributed all over and even mobile. And we like it. Initially CISOs tried to control users by saying no to cloud and SaaS. Users wouldn’t have it. They shrugged, walked away, and did it anyway. There was no putting that toothpaste back in the tube once they got a taste of cloud and SaaS.
Compute and technology has been democratized, however the way we secure is still medieval.
We have offered hackers the overwhelming advantage all the while spending billions and billions on security. Vendors continue to monetize on medieval security tools ill-suited to the new dominant compute model. How does this make sense?
There are a few reasons:
First, it’s what people know and have bought into. There are 30 plus years of approaches and methods, tools and technologies, processes and performance indicators that have been developed around medieval security. It has become muscle memory for many who spent years honing their skills around these approaches.
Just imagine if suddenly, through magical circumstances, the rule of thumb became NOT to apply pressure to bleeding wounds. The countless developed methods, processes, tools, and even tangential functions like billing would be impacted. The result would be chaos! Arguably security is experiencing a mild form of chaos now.
Second, there are a lot of vendor-centric security professionals that know and understand security through the prism of a particular vendor. This is not meant to be derogatory since these professionals are the backbone of the security industry. However many are not security operators, they are security product managers.
In most instances, along with functional and integration capabilities, security is but one of multiple features that security tools sport. Many security professionals are really, really good at keeping the lights on and packets flowing – and rely on the product do its security stuff.
Some vendors are so big and influential that more security professionals than we like to admit are exclusively committed to their tools. These professionals have done the economic calculus and have built their careers around a single brand, strictly based on market opportunity. Many evolve when vendors say it’s time to evolve for job prospect purposes. And the evolution of certain security professionals is curiously bound to the vendor’s business strategy. An arrangement that benefits the vendor and the professional – just not security.
This brings me to the third point: the security of business.
It takes many years for new and emerging approaches or technologies to become mainstream. Large influential vendors are focused on squeezing every last bit of economic value from their existing technology investments, while small innovative companies just don’t have the market megaphone. And pay-to-play analyst firms confuse matters further by offering tilted and skewed recommendations.
Now, let’s talk about the Cyber Hare vs. the Security Turtle.
Hackers are cutting-edge. They are imaginative. They formulate crazy ideas meant to break the rules. The security industry counters with security professionals who are compelled to be conservative – to a fault.
Hackers don’t care about function and performance, whereas organizations prioritize both over security. Hackers can experiment and fail countless times, forging their own path along the way, while organizations identify gaps by virtue of emerging product categories. Often it takes anywhere between three to five years, depending on the organization, to implement new product categories for an emerging threat type. At that point the threat is not so emerging anymore!
Moreover, organizations befuddle themselves by implementing a process, a very organized one at that, developed to assure failure. This includes assessing requirements, assigning budget, talking to Gartner to see who paid them most, evaluating several brands, selecting a technology, negotiating legal, purchasing, implementation, integration, administration, management, monitoring and troubleshooting. Where is the agility?!
Aside from the security functions the product offers, nothing in the process above even comes close to security operations.
What does this mean? It means that hackers have a significant upper hand. This upper hand is so overwhelmingly one-sided that it has evolved from having the ability to impact business, to the ability to devastate economies and undermine democracies.
Cyber – The Longest War.
Today, everyone talks about the war in Afghanistan as our longest running conflict. In the near future this distinction will easily be awarded to the global cyber-war. Every day, much like other security professionals, I see this war from our operations center. I see Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and even some allies wage war against our infrastructure. If not by Name (IP Address), then by reputation (APT).
If we have learned anything from the Afghani and Iraqi conflicts it’s that success does not always require a standing army. Special Operations have radically shifted the methods of war. Not only is this cheaper and faster, but also more effective to achieve many missions around the world. Today the SpecOps model is being employed in the Syrian conflict.
Maybe we should learn from the military and apply seismic shifts to our security approach. Here’s how:
First, let’s eliminate products from the equation. Building one-off security using tools that are ill-fitted to address the emerging distributed and mobile compute model is security suicide. Products are always out-of-date and security teams burn valuable resources performing technology refreshes, managing and troubleshooting products rather than operating security.
Security as a utility is a much more effective approach. It is simpler and much faster to sign up and turn on, than to buy and build out! Make implementation easy and let the development, upgrades, updates and keeping the lights on be someone else’s problem. The time your team is not spending on babysitting products can be put to better use operating security.
Second, fight hackers with (ethical) hackers. Build or train security teams of operators – not product administrators. Make your team critical thinkers who focus on “how to break things” rather than the mundane keeping the lights on tasks. Not all hackers are foul tempered, tattoo laced, twenty-something rock stars with an ego. There are many agreeable, thoughtful and reliable ethical hackers that can serve in foundational roles on your team. Most importantly, empower them and involve them from the beginning at the application design, development and roll out phases.
The traditional medieval security model is not failing, it has already failed spectacularly. Arguably, it was never successful in achieving any of the objectives for which organizations have paid billions of dollars. The product management approach to security is like trying to change the wheels while the car is doing a 100 mph. You won’t be able to do it and you WILL get hurt along the way.
About Acreto:
Acreto is the first cloud-delivered, end-to-end connectivity and security platform that can connect and protect any technology, on any network, anywhere. Acreto SASE+ Plus delivers Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) functionalities for access technologies such as devices, networks, IoT / OT and third-parties; while Acreto Secure Application and Data Interconnect (SADI) connects and protects application delivery infrastructure such as clouds, SaaS, data centers and co-locations. Acreto SASE+ Plus is SASE plus SADI — one platform with one interface from one provider for all of your technologies around the world.
