80/20 Rule of Information Security

After my earlier this post about the SDIM project, several people on Twitter also asked me to do the same for the 80/20 Rule of Information Security project we completed several years ago. 

It is a list of key security projects, their regulatory mappings, maturity models and such. Great for building a program or checking yours against an easy to use baseline.

Thanks for reading, and here is where you can learn more about the 80/20 project. Click here.

Remember the Stolen Data Impact Model (SDIM)

Just a quick reminder about the work we did a few years ago on the Stolen Data Impact Model (SDIM) project. 

Many clients continue to use the project, the analysis sheet and the insights across their incidents. 

To learn more, here is quick and easy category search with the relevant links. Click here.

As always, thanks for reading and a huge thanks for supporting MSI! 

Quick Poll on Social Media and Compliance

Our team is putting together some blog posts and other content on social media policies and compliance. Can you please help us with our research work by spending just 3 minutes to complete the following quick 3 question poll?

You can find the poll here.

Thanks, in advance, for your insights. We will be publishing the results of the poll, along with our other content in the coming weeks. Thanks again for your kindness!

MSI Contributes to Criminal Underground Report

MSI is proud to announce that a Rand report that we contributed to is now available. The report details the underground economy and provides insights into the operation, intelligence and flow of the underground markets.

You can download a free copy of the report here.

We are happy to support research projects such as these and they represent yet another way that MSI fulfills our promise to give back to the security community. If you have questions about this project or about our other contributions, please reach out to me on Twitter (@lbhuston).

Code of Conduct Research

We have begun working on another project around helping organizations better protect their information assets and the reputations of both their employees and their firms at large. As part of that project, we would like to solicit some feedback from the readership of the blog. 

Does your organization have a code of conduct for employees? Does is have a written code of conduct for management, board members and/or public relations campaigns? 

Is it a living code of conduct or is it a stagnant piece of policy? How often is it updated? Does it cover social media presence, community engagement and/or public perception of the firm or individual?

Who audits the code of conduct and how is it monitored for violations? 

Please feel free to give us your thoughts on the code of conduct and which industry you are in. We are taking responses via email (info <at> microsolved <dot> com) or via Twitter (@lbhuston). 

Thanks for responding. Responses will be entered into a random drawing for a Starbucks gift card, so respond for a chance to win some java goodness. 🙂

SDIM Project Update

Just a quick update on the Stolen Data Impact Model (SDIM) Project for today.

We are prepping to do the first beta unveiling of the project at the local ISSA chapter. It looks like that might be the June meeting, but we are still finalizing dates. Stay tuned for more on this one so you can get your first glimpse of the work as it is unveiled. We also submitted a talk at the ISSA International meeting for the year, later in the summer on the SDIM. We’ll let you know if we get accepted for presenting the project in Nashville.

The work is progressing. We have created several of the curve models now and are beginning to put them out to the beta group for review. This step continues for the next couple of weeks and we will be incorporating the feedback into the models and then releasing them publicly.

Work on phase 2 – that is the framework of questions designed to aid in the scoring of the impacts to generate the curve models has begun. This week, the proof of concept framework is being developed and then that will flow to the alpha group to build upon. Later, the same beta group will get to review and add commentary to the framework prior to its initial release to the public.

Generally speaking, the work on the project is going along as expected. We will have something to show you and a presentation to discuss the outcomes of the project shortly. Thanks to those who volunteered to work on the project and to review the framework. We appreciate your help, and thanks to those who have been asking about the project – your interest is what has kept us going and working on this problem.

As always, thanks for reading, and until next time – stay safe out there! 

SDIM Project Update

Just a quick update on the Stolen Data Impact Model project for today. Basically, we have reached a point where have created an idea that the impact of stolen data should be a curve. We have decided to implement that curve across two axis measured in the following:

Risk to the organization – 0 – 10, obviously subjective.

Those values will be plotted across four time segments: Immediate, Short Term, Intermediate Term and Long Term. Some folks are still discussing if we need a Residual catch all for things that don’t ever go away. If you have thoughts on it, please weigh in.

Thus far, we are leaving the term definitions to the consumer. But we are generally working with them as variable as we run scenarios with variety.

The next step will be to build and publish a couple of quick and dirty sample curves for some common stolen data scenarios. Then, we will begin to generate the scoring mechanism and perhaps a questionnaire for doing the scoring on a more repeatable basis.

If you have thoughts, please weigh in via the comments or touch base with us on Twitter. I will be the main conduit for feedback (@lbhuston). 

Thanks for reading and this process is already proving helpful for some folks, so we enjoy working on it.

New Project: Stolen Data Impact Model (SDIM)

This is just a quick announcement about a new project we are starting at MSI. The name of the project is the Stolen Data Impact Model (SDIM).

The goal of the project is to identify a methodology for scoring the impact of data stolen in a breach. We believe the scoring mechanism will be some kind of curve, based on the impact of the loss over time. Currently, we are spreading that loss over four time frames: immediate, short term, intermediate term and long term.

We also believe that there are more than one facet of impact that could be in play and we are currently discussing how to handle the multiple facets.

We are just starting the project, and plan to work through it with the input f the community. We searched for models to address this, but were unable to identify any. If your organization has a model, methodology or process for this and you are open to sharing, please get in touch. You can always contact us in the comments or via Twitter (@lbhuston) or (@microsolved).

Thanks and we hope to present more on this topic shortly.