http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/06/25/26FEdataprotection_1.html
By Matt Hines
June 25, 2007
Long ago, when businesses kept sensitive information locked away in file
cabinets and safes, it was relatively cheap and easy to store valuable
data and control who had access to it. Today, enterprises invest
millions in security, storage, and compliance technologies -- all in the
name of increasing visibility into where vital electronic information
lives and how it is being defended.
Despite those efforts, most experts and customers admit that in most
companies the process of tracking down every piece of valuable company
data -- and applying the appropriate tools to shield information from
unwanted access or misuse -- remains in its beginning stages.
The heart of the matter is visibility. Enterprises feel uncertain
whether todays technologies are providing an accurate sense of where
things stand or are merely creating a false sense of security.
Seeing blind spots
When forensic experts called in by businesses to investigate external
data breaches and insider threats tell their stories, the traumatic
events that lead to brand-trashing headlines and regulatory punishment
are most often based in the business lack of knowledge of where its
sensitive data is.
Enterprises are improving their ability to safeguard the stockpiles of
sensitive information they know about, admit investigators, but many
remain blind to additional stores of important data or the flawed
processes they use to transmit information electronically. Both problems
leave them vulnerable to leaks and attacks.
"In almost every case we've investigated where companies have
experienced a serious data breach, the reality is that the companies
didn't know they had the information where it was stolen from until it's
too late and the data has been taken," says Bryan Sartin, vice president
of investigative response at Cybertrust, a provider of managed security
services that lists risk assessment among its specialties.
"We end up telling companies where they store their sensitive data after
doing forensics when they've already had a breach," Sartin says. "In
some cases it's clear that companies are only doing the bare minimum in
terms of protection before one of these incidents, but the truth is that
even with companies that are employing a lot of sound technologies and
process they're still missing a lot of the important data repositories."
Making the job of such professionals even more difficult, Sartin says
that clever hackers are already using anti-forensics techniques to hide
their footprints and make it harder for investigators to trace ongoing
data theft schemes.
Other security breach experts agree that businesses seem overwhelmed by
the task of hunting down and protecting valued information.
"It's not that good companies aren't making an effort in this area; it
just seems that they can't seem to find a way to locate the information
and manage it in a way that allows them to do business and guard the
data from every conceivable threat," says Kevin Mandia, chief executive
of security service provider Mandiant.
"Even worse, in many companies it's clear that they are doing the bare
minimum to try and meet regulatory demands for data protection, or
simply to prove that they're doing enough to avoid having to report a
breach publicly when it happens," he says.
The perils of self-diagnosis
In survey results to be published on June 25, analysts at Enterprise
Strategy Group (ESG) found that one third of the 102 large companies
they interviewed admitted a loss of sensitive data in the previous year,
with another 11 percent uncertain whether or not their data stores had
been violated.
In a nod to the challenge of engaging security processes that go beyond
protecting networks from outside attacks, 58 percent of the IT workers
surveyed by ESG say they believe that the most significant threat to
their sensitive information comes from insiders, through both malicious
and careless activity.
"The good news is that we are finding that people are recognizing the
problem around identifying, protecting, and classifying confidential
data and intellectual property, and are willing to dedicate more money
to those efforts, but the bad news is that this is still very much a
manual process," says Jon Oltsik, the ESG analyst who authored the
report (which was sponsored by data protection technology vendor
Reconnex).
"Many companies clearly believe they are doing a good job, but the
evidence of breaches and holes in their processes leads you to believe
that there are many inaccurate delusions out there," Oltsik says.
"When you dig a little deeper and show them what type of data is stored
on people's desktops and on file servers, most companies are surprised
at the size of the problem," says the analyst. "The common thread in
these companies is a lack of cooperation between different business
constituencies. It is not just an IT problem, or a legal problem, or a
business problem; and unless people view it as a corporatewide problem,
their situation isn't going to improve."
IT consultants who are helping enterprises solve these problems concede
that even the best companies are struggling to comprehend the scale of
the data security issue.
As the volumes of information being maintained by large companies
continue to grow exponentially -- in some case driven by compliance
regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and HIPAA -- businesses are
challenged to stay abreast of the issue and gain true visibility into
their operations.
"In general we find that companies have applied a lot of great
technologies and feel that they are secure, but there's a general
problem of not having enough of a budget to invest in even more tools
that can be used to dig down further and gain better visibility into
their operations," says Steve Suther, a senior information risk
strategist at IT consultancy Getronics Business Solutions.
Before joining Getronics, Suther served as director of information
security management at credit card giant American Express. Data security
was a "huge problem" for Amex during his decade there, Suther says, as
the company tried to protect itself and its customers while dealing with
millions of service providers and merchants who processed its
information and accessed its records.
Policing business partners is a monster challenge on its own. "One of
the hardest areas to enforce your own information risk management
programs, no matter how sound, is with third parties; even when
companies can effectively map out all their internal business processes
and identify who controls what, Suther says. It's still very difficult
to get information about processes employed by third parties that may be
touching the data."
Making progress
Despite all the hurdles, enterprise customers are moving forward and
discovering tools and processes that will help them improve data
security. Gus Tepper, vice president of software development at real
estate financial services provider First American, says that incremental
progress is important, even if it does not solve every data security
headache overnight.
One of the first steps, says Tepper, is to get a better grip on which
workers can access which repositories of sensitive information and to
automate the process of granting and removing entitlements using more
intelligent tools. This has proven vital in a company with close to
40,000 employees, many of whom tend to shift responsibilities on a
regular basis.
"We think that we've done a good job of making sure that data is secure
from this perspective of access. Where most failures occur is around
human process," Tepper says. "To the extent that you can automate and
minimize threats via controlling access, this is some of the most
important work I think any company can do.
First American installed encryption technology on all of its laptops to
prevent someone from gaining data access if the machines are lost or
stolen. It is also employing similar tools to obscure data stored on
tape drives in offsite locations, and the company has bought into
entitlement management software made by Securent to help its data
governance efforts.
"When you're in a large company like ours with hundreds of applications
and people moving between divisions, there is a lot of cleaning up that
has to happen, as its easy to lose track of access privileges without a
tool that gives you centralized management," Tepper says. "As far as the
outside world having access, we really want to make sure that doesn't
happen, and we have a lot of security technologies in place to address
that. But by getting a better handle on internal access and all the
processes needed to allow for that, we think our standing has improved
significantly."
The company also hired its first chief information security officer in
2006 to give data protection a more prominent role in the overall
management of its operations, he says.
Many large companies wish that they could start from scratch as they
rearchitect their data protection strategies, but even those who can
afford to concede that the nature of protecting the information they
gather is daunting.
Marty Hodgett, chief information officer at Orchard Supply Hardware, a
California-based retail chain with headquarters in San Jose, has been
tasked with introducing IT into the company, which is hoping to grow
into a national presence in the next few years
As the hardware chain brings workstations and new data harvesting
systems into its operations -- which Hodgett classifies as lagging in
the use of most modern IT equipment -- it will be an ongoing balancing
act to empower the company with more data about its customers,
employees, and suppliers while keeping a lid on sensitive information,
he says.
Retail giant Sears currently owns roughly 80 percent of OSH, but the
hardware chain is also working toward a spin-off from its parent
company. "We've been relying on Sears for a lot of things, so now we're
putting in our own financials, payment, and human resources systems,
among others, on this journey to become independent and expand across
the country," Hodgett says. "Today this process is all about risk
mitigation. We know we're never going to get to zero, and you can go
crazy if you try to consider everything at once, but a key part of
building this IT foundation is considering data security at every turn."
One of the tools Hodgett has already employed is data leakage prevention
software made by Provilla, to help safeguard sensitive employee and
customer data against potential breaches, both intentional and
accidental.
"As we are moving up the technology curve and adding capabilities, we're
trying to augment everything we do with additional mitigation techniques
for risk," Hodgett says. "We're low-tech today, so the risk is low, but
as we push the envelope and do things like introduce consumer credit
cards, there will lots of demand to secure everything we have, as well
as compliance demands."
Expert advice
With everyone from hardware makers to services providers trying to inset
their wares into the enterprise security buying cycle, there is no
shortage of strategic advice. For starters, Nick Mehta, senior director
of product management at Symantec, suggests blending anti-malware
applications with data discovery systems.
Mehta leads a team responsible for developing and marketing Symantec's
Enterprise Vault technologies, a package of data archiving and security
tools. "There will always be ways to circumvent protections, and
companies will always have incidents, but you can get rid of a lot of
the accidental issues such as missing encryption and broken business
processes by employing technologies that identify and block those types
of incidents," Mehta says.
On the hardware side, Intel has begun loading its products with
additional security features, including the company's recently announced
Active Management Technology, which is designed to help IT
administrators remotely fix devices that have crashed due to malware or
other attacks.
"From an IT operational level, I do think things are getting better, but
there will always be a need for continued evolution in the nature that
information is stored and protected," says Malcolm Harkins, an IT
security director at Intel. "Protection starts with the classification
of data and its criticality to a business. Once you do that you can
specify controls based on tolerance for risk."
Executives at Imperva, a provider of security and compliance
technologies used in corporate datacenters, say that past security
investments make it tough to convince business leaders that new tools
will actually solve the information protection problem.
"For the last 10 or 15 years, customers have been throwing technologies
at these problems, and senior leadership often feels that these
solutions haven't proven adequate, so every purchase needs to be
defended over and over again," says Robin Matlock, general manager at
Imperva. "IT departments need to show leaders where the problems exist
and what new options are open to them to address the problems they have.
And security vendors really do need to help customers continue to make
their business case."
Received on Tue Jun 26 00:11:20 2007