Security industry has created its own problems: Cisco CSO

Speaking at the Australian Information Security Association (AISA) 2011 conference in Sydney, Cisco's US chief security officer, John Stewart, said the industry was guilty of repetition, building complex systems and relying too much on old practices such as patching.

“Patching and anti-virus [programs] are the number one way that the majority of the population across the world protects themselves and that’s a dilemma,” he said.

This was because there were a number of fake anti-virus products on the market, which could lead to consumer back lash if they were compromised.

Another problem, according to Stewart, was the industry created its own mess.

“When we built information systems over the past 20 years we made decisions that meant the company absorbed the risk,” he said.

This became clear to Stewart when the Cisco security team mapped its US network and router configurations. The diagram, which he showed to delegates, was called `the bug splat’ because that is what it looked like, according to Stewart.

“It was not what I would call a very well organised system. This problem was created because when you’re building networks, engineers suck at documenting,” he said. “They’re frequently not going to care about it so you won’t have a full picture [of the network].”

His final lesson was that over the last 20 years it had created what he termed ‘asymmetrical problems’ where a USB thumb drive could be used to take out the computer security and infrastructure of billion dollar networks. A USB key was rumoured to be the attack vector used to spread the Stuxnet worm inside an Iranian nuclear facility two years ago.

“When something that costs US$2.65 can take over entire networks we have a real problem,” he said.

Stewart also conceded that the industry was fighting an unfair fight where the hackers were winning.

“The penalties for hacking need overhauling because the consequences for hacking in a malicious way are trivial in comparison to what they need to be,” he said. “So, it’s no big surprise that they [hackers] are going to continue doing it.”

Average computer users were also a hindrance as Stewart said most did not know much about security and would not care – unless they got hurt.

“We’re still going to try through awareness programs and they [users] will care for about a couple of minutes before going back to what they were doing before,” he said.

However Stewart, who also spoke about bring your own device (BYOD) security at a Cisco BYOD panel in Sydney, said the majority of office staff try to safeguard their devices but are not equipped with the knowledge to secure them effectively.

To combat these problems, he had some recommendations for the industry.

The first was to “get mad” with the hackers by getting in touch with the “offensive lines” such as AusCERT, Australian Federal Police (AFP), The Australian Department of Defence and overseas agencies like Interpol.

His second piece of advice was patching the service, rather than all computers in the system.

“Make sure what you are rendering in your data centre is safe, not every single piece of it, because you need to focus on the basics and do better.”

Got a security tip-off? Contact Hamish Barwick at hamish_barwick at idg.com.au

Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick

Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

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