"Security" is still seen as reactive controls & ignores IAM

Originally posted on identitysander on WordPress: "Security" is still seen as reactive controls & ignores IAM. This Ghost site is now the canonical home for this material. But you should only go to see it there if you want a laugh about how silly websites looked then. It's a time capsule now.

There was an excellent article at Dark Reading the other day about data leaks focusing on insider threats. It did all the right things by pointing out "insiders have access to critical company information, and there are dozens of ways for them to steal it" and "these attacks can have significant impact" even though "insider threats represent only a fraction of all attacks--just 4%, according to Verizon's 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report." The article goes on to discuss how you can use gateways, DLP for at rest and in flight data, behavioral anomaly detection, and a few other technologies in a "layered approach using security controls at the network, host, and human levels." I agree with every word.

Yet, there is one aspect of the controls that somehow escapes mention - letting a potentially powerful ally in this fight off the hook from any action. There is not one mention of proactive controls inside the applications and platforms that can be placed there by IAM. A great deal of insider access is inappropriate. Either it's been accrued over time or granted as part of a lazy "make them look like that other person" approach to managing entitlements. And app-dev teams build their own version of security into each and every little application they pump out. They repeat mistakes, build silos, and fail to consume common data or correctly reflect corporate policies. If these problems with entitlement management and policy enforcement could be fixed at the application level, the threats any insider could pose would be proactively reduced by cutting off access to data they might try to steal in the first place. It's even possible to design a system where the behavioral anomaly detection systems could be consulted before even handing data over to a user when some thresholds are breached during a transaction - in essence, catching the potential thief red handed.

Why do they get let off the hook? Because it's easier to build walls, post guards, and gather intelligence than it is to climb right inside of the applications and business processes to fix the root causes. It's easier to move the levers you have direct control over in IT rather than sit with the business and have the value conversation to make them change things in the business. It's cheaper now to do the perimeter changes, regardless of the payoff - or costs - later. Again, this is not to indict the content of the article. It was absolutely correct about how people can and very likely will choose to address these threats. But I think every knows there are other ways that don't get discussed as much because they are harder. In his XKCD comic entitled "The General Problem," Randall Munroe says it best: "I find that when someone's taking time to do something right in the present, they're a perfectionist with no ability to prioritize, whereas when someone took time to do something right in the past, they're a master artisan of great foresight." I think what we need right now are some master artisans who are willing to take the heat today for better security tomorrow.