How do you design secure systems that meet business goals?

To design secure systems that meet business goals: 1. Identify Assets 2. Risk Assessment 3. Security Controls 4. Compliance 5. Regular Updates 6. Training 7. Monitoring 8. Response Plan 9. Testing:(penetration testing). 10. Cost-Effectiveness

Neglecting Context in Security Architecture: A Cautionary Tale In cybersecurity, "prevention is better than cure," yet proactive measures can fail without context. Let's explore a real incident Incident: Imagine a client panics, reporting a leaked confidential doc to users from an unknown source. Swift actions are taken, but questions linger: How? Who? Why? The trusted logging system failed to collect vital data for alerts, reports & forensics Lesson: This incident underscores the importance of context Missed elements: Business Goals: Secure with objectives Stakeholders' Roles: Responsibilities & Accountability Risk Assessment: Solutions with risk tolerance Legal Compliance: Ensure legal aspects Context in security is key to foresight.

Organizations may share similarities like sector or size or location but their business dynamics and risk appetites will differ. Security design goes beyond protecting physical assets or meeting compliance but to also protect the individual using the asset like a CEOs phone or Board meeting conversations. Understanding the business and their sector will identify most constraints related to regulations for prioritization of controls as well as the defense in depth focus. Being aware of how the organization's Revenue streams and their team dynamics is just as critical to establishing context to focus on. Once critical processes and assets are identified, guiding the teams towards securing them becomes easier from a buy-in perspective.

A secure design framework is a set of principles, processes, and considerations related to the development of information systems, applications or networks that focus on and implement security measures from the ground up. Security is not an afterthought, but rather an integral part of every development lifecycle. Secure design helps identify and mitigate vulnerabilities and threats, thereby minimizing the risk of security incidents and data breaches.

IT professionals often say, "The backups are happening, but I'm not sure if we can restore them" With the increasing threats in cyberspace and the financial & and reputation damage that data breaches can cause, it is more important than ever to ensure that security objectives are well-defined, documented, communicated, & and practiced. We must also consider the confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA) triad when developing our security strategies. Additionally, ensure that the objectives & outputs are communicated to all stakeholders & that investments are made in the right areas to achieve our goals. To conclude, SMART security objectives are vital to ensure resilience & alignment, safeguarding critical assets & processes.

With context and areas of focus in hand, defining the success factors to achieve the security objective should be detailed, make sense and be attainable. A lot of the security objectives will be derived from Laws and Regulations but most organizations will have additional ones for corporate governance. Defining the security objectives and prioritizing them may require asking the executive board for more funding as you may require additional staff, technologies and materials to deliver on the strategy.

Ideally, the system owner and their delegates will have security relevant objectives that affect their individual performance evaluations. Without this “hook”, it’s easier for security requirements to be deprioritized. In a perfect world, security requirements also tie directly to immediate business objectives, eg: the availability requirements of the system support the business goal of “anytime anywhere customer capability”. This helps non-technical business people understand the value of a “technology requirement” and to see it as an organic requirement rather than an external imposition.

When defining and applying security principles, it's essential to align with governance, risk, and compliance standards such as ISO, NIST, PCI, GDPR, and more. Ensure that product and solution choices are made in harmony with these standards and principles, in line with your overall security strategy. Without these standards and principles, securing anything is akin to navigating a ship without a compass.

Double-edged sword because when you increase the work factor for attackers you inherently do it to yourself. Additionally, many functional and technical teams may not be as familiar with security principles as security minded individuals. Securing buy-in from the directors, lead engineers and subject matter experts helps with adoption as the addition of security controls can be overwhelming. Security awareness training tailored to individual teams will help bridge the communication gap and establish channels with different groups where they can be coached throughout the process. Use relatable examples like single points of failures and how defense in depth helps across the CIA triad. Don’t preach, Teach. ??

I would add 'Strategic' in addition to the defined administrative, technical, and physical controls. Without the ability to align your strategic objectives with your policies and controls, you may face challenges in matching against a baseline pillar. Well-defined strategic controls, with the support of the business, always facilitate the successful rollout of security across departments and functions, resulting in a better outcome as envisioned

Inherently additional security controls will come with pain in terms for experience for the user. Whether having to sign-in at the gate, then badge in to the office and use pin codes to enter certain gates, Security controls should fit the level of protection the asset needs and mitigate risks from the identified threat actors. When defining policies, it is important to highlight the penalties that violations carry and damage they can do. When chosing technical, administrative and physical controls, and defining the parametric values, please consider the level of effort required and whether it hinders staff's ability to operate effectively while providing them the ability to be quick on their feet in a Response scenario.

Begin the evaluation from the physical layer and follow the ISO OSI Layer model for a strong foundation. Align with business goals, choose appropriate solutions, establish metrics and frameworks, troubleshoot issues, and conduct regular reviews, audits, monitoring, and maintenance. As Benjamin Franklin once said, 'By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.' This end-to-end approach ensures a robust security architecture.

Implement a robust incident management plan to quickly address security breaches, like a company using a dedicated team to handle data leaks effectively. Patch Management: Regularly update software to fix vulnerabilities. A financial institution applying security patches immediately after release. Configuration Management: Maintain consistent system configurations to prevent unauthorized changes, exemplified by a tech firm using automated tools to enforce settings. Risk Management: Identify and assess risks continuously, like a healthcare provider evaluating patient data security threats regularly. Compliance Management: Ensure adherence to industry regulations, like a retail business implementing PCI DSS standards for payment security.

Maintaining and improving security architecture is a continuous process that considers new threats, technological advancements, and the organization's business environment. It would help if you focused on Continuous monitoring Patch management Security testing Security policy reviews technology research Security policy review Regulatory compliance updates

Security is a business requirement Systems are too complex to be error-free. Therefore, security engineering is risk-driven, meaning that each secure IT system is built to stand against a defined threat model evaluated through a context aware security risk analysis of how the identified threats can impact the business requirements of the system. In this context, a security risk describes how a threat exploiting some vulnerabilities can impact some business requirements. Moreover, it is not feasible to create a universally secure system that can stand against all security threats given that new threats are still unknown and that security controls are costly (time, money, and, performance) and should be relevant to the business requirements.