confirmation bias - how to stop doing the things in it security that don't work
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However, what’s interesting is that the CISOs we spoke with say neither of these approaches effectively solves the problem. Quantitative risk analysis isn’t the end all, be all. Just because a risk is scored at 98 out of 100 doesn’t mean it will be remediated. Besides cost, the business significantly influences the decision of whether to spend money. And most surprising to us, in the end, many CISOs told us they ignore all their own data, vendor input and pundit whitepapers and made a gut decision. Let’s be clear: Gut decisions are not useful. Very often they’re based on a confirmation bias, also called confirmatory or “my side” bias. That’s the tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses, regardless of whether the information is true. If you have a confirmation bias that laptop theft is the largest concern, whether it is or not, you will find a way to get disk encryption to be the highest-priority project. Avoiding confirmation bias can be difficult. The first step is to realize that we’re all prone to it. If you have a tendency to collect a lot of information and then ignore it, or always find yourself debating the rest of the organization on which threats are most imminent, you may be more susceptible than average. Try this exercise: Ask your peers to honestly assess whether they think you frequently make decisions based on gut instinct. Listen to what they say, and understand that it’s almost impossible to build trust with an information source—such as your risk assessment team—if you have this tendency.TRANSCRIPT
Copyright © 2010-2011 IANS. The contents of this presentation are confidential . All rights reserved.
Confirmation BiasHow to Stop Doing the Things in
Security That Don't Work
November 2011
2Copyright © 2010-2011 IANS. The contents of this presentation are confidential and may not be distributed without IANS’ permission. All rights reserved.
Who am I?
» Michael A. Davis
– CEO of Savid Technologies
• IT Security, Risk Assessment, Penetration Testing
– Speaker
• Blackhat, Defcon, CanSecWest, Toorcon, Hack In The Box
– Open Source Software Developer
• Snort
• Nmap
• Dsniff
» Savid Technologies
– Risk Assessments, IT Security Consulting, Audit and
Compliance
3Copyright © 2010-2011 IANS. The contents of this presentation are confidential and may not be distributed without IANS’ permission. All rights reserved.
Author
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The Issue
“Single biggest security related problem is a lack of Senior
Level commitment to enterprise wide security policies.“
Source: 2011 InformationWeek Strategic Security Survey, June 2011
5Copyright © 2010-2011 IANS. The contents of this presentation are confidential and may not be distributed without IANS’ permission. All rights reserved.
Execs Are Paying Attention
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
Exec Involvement Budget Constraints
2010
2011
Source: Information Week Data Survey, 2011
6Copyright © 2010-2011 IANS. The contents of this presentation are confidential and may not be distributed without IANS’ permission. All rights reserved.
We Protect, They Are Criticized
According to Bloomberg News, Sony has been subpoenaed by New
York attorney general Eric Schneiderman, who is "seeking information
on what Sony told customers about the security of their networks, as
part of a consumer protection inquiry." (Source: informationweek.com)
Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), the subcommittee chair, said that
Sony should have informed its consumers of the breach earlier and
said its efforts were “half-hearted, half-baked.” She was particularly
critical of Sony’s decision to first notify customers of the attack via its
company blog, leaving it up to customers to search for information on
the breach. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
7Copyright © 2010-2011 IANS. The contents of this presentation are confidential and may not be distributed without IANS’ permission. All rights reserved.
We All Do Them
Source: 2011 InformationWeek Analytics Strategic Security Survey
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
Yes No Don't Know
% that perform Risk Assessments
2011
2010
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The Reality
Source: 2011 InformationWeek Analytics Strategic Security Survey
Very30%
Somewhat67%
Not At All3%
Risk AssessmentEffectiveness
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Complex IT Projects Fail - A lot
Out Of 200 Multi-nationals:
� 67% Failed To Terminate Unsuccessful Projects
� 61% Reported Major Conflicts
� 34% Of Projects Were Not Aligned With Strategy
� 32% Performed Redundant Work
1 In 6 Projects Had A Cost Overrun Of 200%!
Source: 2011 Harvard Business Review – Berlin Univ Technical survey
10Copyright © 2010-2011 IANS. The contents of this presentation are confidential and may not be distributed without IANS’ permission. All rights reserved.
T-Mobile CISO On Metrics
“Security experts can't measure their success without security metrics, and what can't be measured can't be effectively managed.”
~ Bill Boni, VP of IS, T-Mobile USA
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Why Do We Care?
�Management Asks:
–“Are We Secure?”
�Without Metrics:
–“Depends How You Look At It”
�With Metrics:
–“Look At Our Risk Score Before This
Project, It Dropped 15%. We Are More
Secure Today Than Yesterday”
12Copyright © 2010-2011 IANS. The contents of this presentation are confidential and may not be distributed without IANS’ permission. All rights reserved.
Metrics, We need metrics!
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Where/What to measure
Strategy/Governance
Code Reviews, Project Risk Assessments,
Exceptions/Waivers
Tactical/Sec Ops
Vuln Management, Patch Management, Incidents, etc.
IS Budget
Spending/employee
Policy gaps in existence
Industry Standards Adopted
Awareness Plan
% projects going through assessment process
# of policy exceptions
# of risk acceptances
% project doing code reviews
Error rates
Freq of vuln assessment
# outstanding vulns
Rate of fixing
Trend of incident response losses
14Copyright © 2010-2011 IANS. The contents of this presentation are confidential and may not be distributed without IANS’ permission. All rights reserved.
Who are you?
TCO
Patch
Latency
SPAM/AV Stats
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Examples of metrics
� Baseline Defenses Coverage (AV, FW, etc)
– Measurement of how well you are protecting your enterprise
against the most basic information security threats.
– 94% to 98%; less than 90% cause for concern
� Patch Latency
– Time between a patch’s release and your successful
deployment of that patch.
– Express as averages and criticality
� Platform Security Scores
– Measures your hardening guidelines
� Compliance
– Measure departments against security standards
– Number of Linux servers at least 90% compliant with the Linux platform security standard
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Phishing Still Works
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Stop With The Confirmation Bias
� Risk Perception Is Bad
–Tornado V. Kitchen Fire
–Less Familiar Are Perceived As Greater Risk
� Favor Info That Match Preconceptions
� Cause And Effect Processing
� Correlation Does Not Equal Causation
� We Manage Risk Using Metrics That Don’t Matter
18Copyright © 2010-2011 IANS. The contents of this presentation are confidential and may not be distributed without IANS’ permission. All rights reserved.
19Copyright © 2010-2011 IANS. The contents of this presentation are confidential and may not be distributed without IANS’ permission. All rights reserved.
The Formula Of Successful Risk Management
PBL = λ1 x p1 + λ2 x p2 + λ3 x p3
20Copyright © 2010-2011 IANS. The contents of this presentation are confidential and may not be distributed without IANS’ permission. All rights reserved.
Hazard vs. Speculative Risk
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Linking to Business Goals
Copyright Carnegie Mellon SETI MOSAIC Whitepaper
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Outcome Management
Copyright Carnegie Mellon SETI MOSAIC Whitepaper
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It Is About Risk MANAGEMENT
Effective Metrics Catalog Define:
�Category
�Metric
�How To Measure
�Purpose Of This Metric
�Target Audience
�Reporting Frequency/Period
24Copyright © 2010-2011 IANS. The contents of this presentation are confidential and may not be distributed without IANS’ permission. All rights reserved.
5 Signs You Have a Confirmation Bias
�Using Quantitative Risk Scores To
Make Decisions
�Look At Security Events Instead Of
Probability Of Vulnerabilities
�Talk About Risk In Terms Of
“Industry Data”
�Lack Of Risk Management
�Inability To Communicate Risk
25Copyright © 2010-2011 IANS. The contents of this presentation are confidential and may not be distributed without IANS’ permission. All rights reserved.
Security Metric Gotchas
� Not Tracking Visibility
–What % is the metric representing?
–Develop baseline for acceptance
� Not Trending
–Provide at least 4 previous periods and trend
line
� Not Providing Forward Guidance
–Red, Green, Yellow (Worse, Better, Same)
� Not Mapping To A Business goal
� Focusing on Hazard Risk
� Not Using Qualitative Metrics
26Copyright © 2010-2011 IANS. The contents of this presentation are confidential and may not be distributed without IANS’ permission. All rights reserved.
Contact Information
Michael A. [email protected]
708-532-2843
Twitter: @mdavisceo