Source: http://www.guerilla-ciso.com/index.php?s=S.773
Timestamp: 2020-04-08 21:11:42
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S.773 | The Guerilla CISO
Posted May 4th, 2009 by rybolov
Rybolov Note: this is part 4 in a series about S.773. Go read the bill here. Go read part one here. Go read part two here. Go read part three here. Go read part four here.
Themes: I’ve read this thing back and forth, and one theme emerges overall: We’ve talked for the better part of a decade about what it’s going to take to “solve” this problem that is IT security, from an internal Federal Government standpoint, from a military-industrial complex standpoint, from a state and local government standpoint, from a private-sector standpoint, and from an end-user standpoint. This bill takes some of the best though on the issue, wraps it all up, and presents it as a “if you want to get the job done, this is the way to do it”.
Missing: The role of DHS. Commerce is highly represented, over-represented to my mindset. Looking at the pieces of who owns what:
Commerce security organizations:
NTIA–Technically not a security organization, but they manage the DNS root and set telecom policy.
NIST–They write the standards for security.
FTC–They regulate trade and have oversight over business fraud.
DHS Security organizations:
NPPD–They are responsible for critical infrastructure and national risk management.
NCSD–They do the security operations side of our national cybersecurity strategy and run US-CERT. (BTW, hi guys!)
Secret Service–They have the primary responsibility of protecting the US Currency which also includes computer crimes against financial infrastructure.
Science and Technology Directorate–They are responsible for research and development, including IT security.
DOJ Security Organizations:
FBI–Surprise, they do investigations.
So you see, some of the things that are tasked to Commerce are done by DHS and DOJ. This is probably the nature of the bill, it was introduced in the Commerce committee so it’s understandable that it would be Commerce-centric.
Cost: One thing kept nagging me in the back of my head while going through this bill is the cost to do everything We’re asking to do a lot in this bill, now what’s the total cost? Typically what happens when a bill makes it out of committee is that the Congressional Budget Office attached a price to the legislation as far as the total cost and then what’s the breakdown for the average American household. That data isn’t published yet on the bill’s page, so we’ll see in the next iteration.
In-Your-Face Politics: Really, this bill is showing us how to do the full security piece. It includes everything. It’s challenging people to come up with alternatives. It’s challenging people to delete the sections that don’t make sense. It’s challenging people to fix the scope issues. Like it or hate it, it definitely stirs up debate.
Final Thoughts: S.773 is a pretty decent bill. It has some warts that need to be fixed, but overall it’s a pretty positive step.
Capitol photo by bigmikesndtech.
Tags: cashcows • comments • dhs • government • infosec • infosharing • itsatrap • law • legislation • management • moneymoneymoney • NIST • publicpolicy • risk • S773 • scalability • security • stategovernment
Posted May 1st, 2009 by rybolov
Rybolov Note: this is part 4 in a series about S.773. Go read the bill here. Go read part one here. Go read part two here. Go read part three here. Go read part 5 here. =)
SEC. 18. CYBERSECURITY RESPONSIBILITIES AND AUTHORITY. This section needs to be reviewed line-by-line because it’s dense:
“The President–
(1) within 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, shall develop and implement a comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy, which shall include–
(B) a plan that encompasses all aspects of national security, including the participation of the private sector, including critical infrastructure operators and managers;”
OK, fair enough, this calls for a cybersecurity strategy that includes the agencies and critical infrastructure. Most of that is in-play already and has overlap with some other sections.
Declaring an emergency is already a President function for natural disasters, this makes sense, except where you militarized cybersecurity and indirectly give the President the authority here to declare a cyberwar, depending on how you interpret this paragraph.
The cutoff authority has been given much talk. This part pertains only to Government systems and critical infrastructure. Note that the criteria here is that the part being cutoff has to have been compromised, which makes more sense. The part that I’m worried about is when we preemptively cut off the network in anticipation of pwnage.
This is interesting to me because it leaves the designation up to the President. Remember, we have all this debate as to who should “own” cybersecurity: DHS, DoD, NSA, FBI, and even Commerce have been proposed here. I don’t think Congress should leave this designation to the President–it needs to be decided before an incident so that we don’t fight over jurisdiction issues during the incident. Ref: Cyber-Katrina.
This is good. What it means is stockpiling or contracting for equipment in advance of an attack… think DDoS response teams and you have a pretty good idea. And hey, this also works in disaster recovery, which I’ve never understood why we don’t manage some DR at the national level. GSA, are you paying attention here?
Enumeration is good, depending on what we’re using the information for. If you use it to beat up on the agency CISOs and the critical infrastructure owners/operators, then we have better things to spend our time doing. If you do this and then use the information to help people Ref: security metrics, architecture support, Federal Enterprise Architecture. I also have a problem with this because you can map vulnerabilities but how do you get the information to the right people who can fix them?
OK, this gives the President authority over private networks. And fo-shizzle, I thought the President already had disconnect authority over Government networks. If I was an owner of critical infrastructure I would be sh*tting bricks here because this means that the President has disconnect authority for my gear and doesn’t have to give me an answer on why or a remediation plan to get it turned back on–Ref: National Security Letter. I think we need the disconnect authority, but there has to be some way for people to get turned back on.
Good stuff, I would be surprised if this isn’t happening already, what with Congress providing the budget for cyber technology research.
This paragraph is interesting, mostly because it could go anyway. If we get a Cybersecurity Advisor, this will most likely be dedicated to them, meaning that they get the authority to determine what’s national security information. This also works in conjunction with quite a few sections of the bill, including all the information-sharing initiatives and paragraph 6 above.
I had to read this paragraph a couple of times. Really what I think we’re doing is establishing a case for agency executives to be found negligent in their duty if they do not ensure security inside their agency–think CEO liability for negligence.
There are 2 parts of this paragraph: Federal personnel and contractors. This is a sanctions part of the legislation. Note that there is not a penalty and/or authority for anybody outside of Government. The problem with this is that proving negligence is very hard in the security world. Combined with Paragraph 9, this is a good combination provided that the professional responsibilities are written correctly. I still think this has room for abuse because of scoping problems–we already have rules for sanctions of people (personnel law) and contracts (cure notices, Federal Acquisition Regulations), only they don’t have much teeth up to this point because it’s hard to prove negligence.
I had to search around for a description here. I found some people who said this paragraph pertained to the certification of professionals as in section 7. This is wrong. Basically, what happens is that the Department of Justice issues a “certification of legality” when somebody (usually inside the Government) asks them if a certain act is legal to perform. Think legal review for building a wiretap program: the President has to go to DoJ and ask them if the program is legal under existing laws.
What this paragraph really does is it institutes Congressional oversight on a “FYI-basis” over Executive Branch decisions on policy to keep them from overstepping their legal bounds.
Verdict: This section is all over the map. Like most things in S.773, it has some scope issues but overall this section establishes tasks that you can expect the Cybersecurity Advisor or DHS under the Cybersecurity Advisor’s auspices to perform.
Capitol Rotunda photo by OakleyOriginals.
SEC. 19. QUADRENNIAL CYBER REVIEW. This section mandates a review of the cyberstrategy every 4 years.
Verdict: We’ve been doing this so far on an ad-hoc basis, might as well make it official.
SEC. 20. JOINT INTELLIGENCE THREAT ASSESSMENT. This section mandates an annual report on the bad guys and what they’re doing. This is similar to the Congressional testimony we’ve seen so far on the subject. If we’re going to expect Congress to make good public policy decisions, they need the information.
Verdict: OK, I don’t see much wrong with this as long as it’s done right and not abused by politics.
SEC. 21. INTERNATIONAL NORMS AND CYBERSECURITY DETERRANCE MEASURES. This section authorizes/mandates the President to cooperate with other countries about “cybersecurity stuff”.
Verdict: Not specific enough to mean anything. If we keep this section, we need to enumerate specifically what we want the Executive Branch to do.
SEC. 22. FEDERAL SECURE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES ACQUISITIONS BOARD. This section creates a board to review large IT purchases. Yes, that slows down the purchasing process horribly, as if it isn’t bad enough by itself. Um, I thought we were supposed to do this with the Federal Enterprise Architecture.
Verdict: This is a macro-scale solution for a micro-scale problem. Sorry, it doesn’t work for me. Make FEA responsible for the macro-scale and push good, solid guidance down to the agencies for the micro-scale. Replace this section with the NIST checklists program and a true security architecture model.
Tags: comments • dhs • government • infosec • infosharing • itsatrap • law • legislation • management • publicpolicy • pwnage • risk • S773 • scalability • security
Posted April 30th, 2009 by rybolov
Rybolov Note: this is part 3 in a series about S.773. Go read the bill here. Go read part one here. Go read part two here. Go read part four here. Go read part 5 here. =)
SEC. 13. CYBERSECURITY COMPETITION AND CHALLENGE. This section of the bill creates a series of competitions for a range of ages and skills… with cash prizes! Mostly it’s just the administration of competitions–cash prizes, no illegal activities, etc.
This goes back to the age-old discussions of glorification of illegal activities, giving tools to people who are too young to know how to stay out of jail.
But then again, I know why this section of the bill is in there. If we want to grow enough security professionals to even remotely keep up with demand, we need to do a much better job at recruiting younger techies to the “security dark side”. Competitions are a start, the next step is to get them into formal education and apprenticeships to learn from the gray-hairs that have been in industry for awhile.
Once again, the same verbiage about tasking Commerce with leading this effort… I’m not sure they’re the ones to do this.
Verdict: Already happening although in ad-hoc fashion. I’m not sold on teaching high school kids to hack, but yeah, we need to do this.
SEC. 14. PUBLIC-PRIVATE CLEARINGHOUSE. Although the title of this sounds really cool, like super-FOIA stuff, it’s really just information-sharing with critical infrastructure owners and operators.
One interesting provision is this:
“The Secretary of Commerce–
(1) shall have access to all relevant data concerning such networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access”
In other words, all your critical infrastructure information belong to Feds. This is interesting because it can run the range from the Feds asking power grid operators for information and getting what they get, or it can be stretched into justification for auditing of privately-owned critical infrastructure. I’m pretty sure that they mean the former, but I can see the latter being used at a later stage in the game.
One thing I thought was interesting is that this section only refers to information sharing with critical infrastructure. There is a big gap here in sharing information with state and local government, local (ie, non-Federal) law enforcement, and private industry. I think other sections–most notably section 5–deal with this somewhat, but it’s always been a problem with information dissemination because how do you get classified data down to the people who need it to do their jobs but don’t have any level of clearance or trustability other than they won an election to be sheriff in Lemhi County, Idaho? (population 5000) Also reference the Homeland Security Information Network to see how we’re doing this today.
Verdict: Really, I think this section is a way for the Feds to gather information from the critical infrastructure owners and I don’t see much information flow the other way, since the means for the flow to critical infrastructure owners already exists in HSIN.
Capitol photo by rpongsaj.
SEC. 15. CYBERSECURITY RISK MANAGEMENT REPORT. This small section is to do some investigation on something that has been bouncing around the security community for some time now: tying security risks into financial statements, cyberinsurance, company liability, etc.
Verdict: Seems pretty benign, hope it’s not just another case where we report on something and nothing actually happens. This has potential to be the big fix for security because it deals with the business factors instead of the symptoms.
SEC. 16. LEGAL FRAMEWORK REVIEW AND REPORT. This section requires a review of the laws, national-level policies, and basically what is our national-level governance for IT security. As weird as this sounds, this is something that needs to be done because once we have a national strategy that aligns with our laws and policies and then is translated into funding and tasks to specific agencies, then we might have a chance at fixing things. The one caveat is that if we don’t act on the report, it will become yet another National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, where we had lots of ideas but they were never fulfilled.
Verdict: Some of this should have been done in the 60-day Cybersecurity Review. This is more of the same, and is a perfect task for the Cybersecurity Advisor when the position is eventually staffed.
SEC. 17. AUTHENTICATION AND CIVIL LIBERTIES REPORT. This section is really short, but read it verbatim here, you need to because this one sentence will change the game considerably.
“Within 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the President, or the President’s designee, shall review, and report to Congress, on the feasibility of an identity management and authentication program, with the appropriate civil liberties and privacy protections, for government and critical infrastructure information systems and networks.”
So my take on it is something like REAL-ID and/or HSPD-12 but for critical infrastructure.
My personal belief is that if you have centralized identity management, it runs contrary to civil liberties and privacy protections: the power of identification lies with the group that issues the identification. Hence the “rejection” of REAL-ID.
If I operated critical infrastructure, I would definitely protest this section because it gives the Government the decision-making authority on who can access my gear. Identity and access management is so pivotal to how we do security that there is no way I would give it up.
On the bright side, this section just calls for a feasibility report.
Verdict: Oh man, identification and authentication nation-wide for critical infrastructure? We can’t even do it in a semi-hierarchical top-down world of Government agencies, much less the privately-owned critical infrastructure.
Tags: catalogofcontrols • comments • compliance • dhs • government • infosec • infosharing • itsatrap • law • legislation • management • moneymoneymoney • NIST • pii • privacy • publicpolicy • pwnage • risk • S773 • security • stategovernment
Posted April 16th, 2009 by rybolov
Rybolov Note: this is part 2 in a series about S.773. Go read the bill here. Go read part one here. Go read part 3 here. Go read part four here. Go read part 5 here. =)
SEC. 7. LICENSING AND CERTIFICATION OF CYBERSECURITY PROFESSIONALS. This section has received quite a bit of airtime around the blagosphere. Everybody thinks that they’ll need some kind of license from the Federalies to run nessus. Hey, maybe this is how it will all end up, but I think this provision will end up stillborn.
I know the NIST folks have been working on licensing and certification for some time, but they usually run into the same problems:
Do we certify individuals as cybersecurity professionals?
Do we certify organizations as cybersecurity service providers?
What can the Government do above and beyond what the industry provides? (ISC2, SANS, 27001, etc)
NIST does not want to be in the business of being a licensure board.
Well, this is my answer (I don’t claim that these are my opinion):
Compulsory: the Government can require certifications/licensure for certain job requirements. Right now this is managed by HR departments.
Existing Precedent: We’ve been doing this for a couple of years with DoDI 8570.01M, which is mandatory for DoD contracts. As much as I think industry certification is a pyramid scheme, I think this makes sense in contracting for the Government because it’s the only way to ensure some kind of training for security staff.If the Government won’t pay for contractor training (and they shouldn’t) and the contractor won’t pay for employees to get training because their turnover rate is 50% in a year, it’s the only way to ensure some kind of training and professionalization of the staff. Does this scale to the rest of the country? I’m not sure.
Governance and Oversight: The security industry has too many different factions. A Government-ran certification and license scheme would provide some measure of uniformity.
Honestly, this section of the bill might make sense (it opens up a bigger debate) except for one thing: we haven’t defined what “Cybersecurity Services” are. Let’s face it, most of what we think are “security” services are really basic IT management services… why should you need a certification to be the goon on the change control board. However, this does solve the “problem” of hackers who turn into “researchers” once they’re caught doing something illegal. I just don’t see this as that big of a problem.
Verdict: Strange that this isn’t left up to industry to handle. It smells like lobbying by somebody in ISC2 or SANS to generate a higher demand for certs. Unless this section is properly scoped and extensively defined, it needs to die on the cutting room floor–it’s too costly for almost no value above what industry can provide. If you want to provide the same effect with almost no cost to the taxpayers, consider something along the 8570.01 approach in which industry runs the certifications and specific certifications are required for certain job titles.
SEC. 8. REVIEW OF NTIA DOMAIN NAME CONTRACTS. Yes, there is a bunch of drama-llama-ing going on between NTIA, ICANN, Verisign, and a cast of a thousand. This section calls for a review of DNS contracts by the Cybersecurity Advisory Panel (remember them from section 3?) before they are approved. Think managing the politics of DNS is hard now? It just got harder–you ever try to get a handful of security people to agree on anything? And yet, I’m convinced that either this needs to happen or NTIA needs to get some clueful security staffers who know how to manage contracts.
Verdict: DNSSEC is trendy thanks to Mr Kaminski. I hate it when proposed legislation is trendy. I think this provision can be axed off the bill if NTIA had the authority to review the security of their own contracts. Maybe this could be a job for the Cybersecurity Advisor instead of the Advisory Panel?
SEC. 9. SECURE DOMAIN NAME ADDRESSING SYSTEM. OK, the Federal Government has officially endorsed DNSSEC thanks to some OMB mandates. Now the rest of the country can play along. Seriously, though, this bill has some scope problems, but basically what we’re saying is that Federal agencies and critical infrastructure will be required to implement DNSSEC.
Once again, though, we’re putting Commerce in charge of the DNSSEC strategy. Commerce should only be on the hook for the standards (NIST) and the changes to the root servers (NTIA). For the Federal agencies, this should be OMB in charge. For “critical infrastructure”, I believe the most appropriate proponent agency is DHS because of their critical infrastructure mission.
And as for the rest of you, well, if you want to play with the Government or critical infrastructure (like the big telephone and network providers), it would behoove you to get with the DNSSEC program because you’re going to be dragged kicking and screaming into this one. Isn’t the Great InfoSec Trickle-Down Effect awesome?
Verdict: If we want DNSSEC to happen, it will take an act of Congress because the industry by itself can’t get it done–too many competing interests. Add more tasks to the agencies outside of Commerce here, and it might work.
Awesome Capitol photo by BlankBlankBlank.
SEC. 10. PROMOTING CYBERSECURITY AWARENESS. Interesting in that this is tasked to Commerce, meaning that the focus is on end-users and businesses.
In a highly unscientific, informal poll with a limited sample of security twits, I confirmed that nobody has ever heard of Dewie the Webwise Turtle. Come on, guys, “Safe at any speed”, how could you forget that? At any rate, this already exists in some form, it just has to be dusted off and get a cash infusion.
Verdict: Already exists, but so far efforts have been aimed at users. The following populations need awareness: small-medium-sized businesses (SMBs), end-users, owners of critical infrastructure, technology companies, software developers. Half of these are who DHS is dealing with, and this provision completely ignores DHS’s role.
SEC. 11. FEDERAL CYBERSECURITY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT. This section is awesome to read, it’s additions to the types of research that NSF can fund and extensions of funding for the existing types of research. It’s pretty hard to poke holes in, and based on back-of-the-envelope analysis, there isn’t much that is missing by way of topics that need to be added to research priorities. What I would personally like to see is a better audit system not designed around the accounting profession’s way of doing things. =)
Verdict: Keep this section intact. If we don’t fund this, we will run into problems 10+ years out–some would say we’re already running into the limitations of our current technology.
SEC. 12. FEDERAL CYBER SCHOLARSHIP-FOR-SERVICE PROGRAM. This is an existing program, and it’s pretty good. Basically you get a scholarship with a Government service commitment after graduation. Think of it as ROTC-light scholarships without bullets and trips to SW Asia.
Verdict: This is already there. This section of the bill most likely is in to get the program funded out to 2014.
Posted in NIST, Public Policy, What Doesn't Work, What Works | 2 Comments »
Tags: awareness • certification • cybercorps • dhs • government • infosec • infosharing • law • legislation • management • NIST • omb • publicpolicy • risk • S773 • security • training