“How I can communicate the value of an ISO implementation to non-security management?”

This question came to me after one of the posters on the ISO Google Group asked about KPIs for ISO implementation.  Got great responses in email, blog comments, and on Twitter from current/former CISO folks and consultants and analysts.  Some really great thought and effort, by the way - thank you.  It’s really great to be able to have these sorts of conversations online.

First, I have to point out some resources Brian Honan linked to from Gary Hinson, just because they’re so cool.  Gary has invested gobs of time and effort to become one of the defacto resources on the ISO (you might also want to read or re-read Gary’s web post on the 7 myths of metrics).   Brian links to an implementation guidance document(pdf) and a metrics example(pdf) document.

As full of awesomeness as they are, though, these are simply metrics “mapped” to the ISO (i.e. the ISO isn’t a pre-requisite for generating this information).  They are not KPI’s that express the value of ISO implementation.  Problem is the metrics created here still require some level of “translation” in order to create some value statement that data owners can understand.  As Myrcurial twittered me “27001 is orthoganal to process” meaning (I hope) that metrics have their foundation in events that are generated by processes.  27001 by itself was never meant to create metrics (see above), and so we’re asking a question the ISO can’t answer.  But the desire, the need to measure still exists.  To that extent we can google “ISO compliance” (whatever that means) and if something can be certifiable or deemed “compliant” we can and are “measuring”.  But does that have value? Rybolov (my favorite Guerilla CISO) wrote:

“Whatever you do, don’t start measuring percentage of compliance. Eventually, that’s what all metrics efforts around a framework devolve into.”

I have to agree.  Being ISO “compliant/certified” has little expressive business value prima facia. I find that one KPI that absolutely asserts value when expressed properly is risk - and similarly  Shrdlu wrote:

“I really have no idea. I personally wouldn’t try to justify an ISO implementation by itself. If I could show traceability on how it affected our overall security risk, then that’s what I’d do.”

And that’s a delightful answer.  That “traceability” (geeze-louise Shrdlu - what a word!) is absolutely what I’m after here.  How do I get that?  

If you’re going to do something with corporate budget (time, money - and goodness knows an ISO implementation is time & money) you better be able to communicate the value.  And while the zealotry for ISO implementation differs from person to person, I have yet to come across someone who says that ISO adoption is totally without value.  It’s just not apparent what that value of adoption is and how we can measure (metrics) and express it (KPIs).

Jenean Paschalidis wrote what he thought that value was in a very nice email in which he puts a qualitative name on the value of adoption:

“Transparency and accountability-this is what all executive/senior management (the company) is on the hook for. ISO provides that. If you want to understand and have confidence in your operations as supported by security (because you will know the who, what, where, when, why and how of a system (human, technical etc.) and you want to be able to trace back why a decision (risk-vetted) had been made - then adoption of this best international practice will assist in providing these answers.”

So working with our above thoughts a little here - if we agree with Shrdlu that the only value of an ISO implementation can only be expressed if we can say how said implementation affected our overall security risk - and we agree with Jenean that the primary benefit is an ability to have confidence in operations as supported by security, then….

The value of the ISO should be expressed as a KPI or set of KPIs that cleary explain how the confidence it generates helps us understand (and then reduce) our risk.

If risk is a probability issue,  ISO adoption helps generate confidence in our predictive analytics.  The dollar value the ISO generates (the ultimate KPI) is part of the cost of being able to make wise risk decisions.

So what is that (making wise risk decisions) worth to you?

SOME CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

First, it occurs to me that this is a real shame.  In a sense, an inability to generate a quantitative value statement for ISO use is simply more witch-doctory (“use it because we, the wise men of the tribe say you should”).  In some future version, the ISO should include some mechanism for measuring and expressing the worth of adoption to the organization (a better reason to use the ISO than “because we said so”).

Second, It should be noted that of Jack Jones’ 3 true value statements from which all metrics/KPIs should point to - we’re only talking about one of those value statements - the ability to reduce risk.  Using the ISO in an organization most certainly could create operational efficiencies (help us do more with less) - but the ISO isn’t a standard that creates operational efficiencies as a primary goal, nor does it give implicit direction on how to create operational efficincies.    The ISO folks do, however, play fast and loose with the idea of “risk” and “risk management” so it’s within this context that I interpreted our conversation.

Finally if you’re going to hire someone to help you with ISO adoption in your organization, the deliverables you ask for in your RFP/SOW/what-have-you should include quantitative (probability) statments about risk reduction and the creation of operational efficiencies.  If the firms answering can’t tell you what value their work will be to your company, then drop me a note and I’ll gladly point you to some friends of RMI’s that know FAIR & all our Risk Management frameworks and also do great ISO work.

The latest set of miscreants operates under the brand “goodeyeforlinks.com” and claim to “use white hat SEO techniques in order to get high quality, do-follow links to your website”. They also claim to be “professional” which in this case must mean you pay for their services, since sending out bulk unsolicited email is anything but professional.

Nevertheless, although their long term aim may indeed be to make money from legitimate, albeit foolish, businesses seeking a higher profile, the sites they have been promoting so far are anything but legitimate. In fact they’ve been fake sites covered with Google adverts (so-called “Made for AdSense” (MFA) sites).

They started by asking me to link to “entovation.net” which they claim is “page rank 3″. In fact it is page rank 3 (!) and a blatant copy of http://www.acentesolutions.com which appears entirely genuine (albeit only page rank 1). They have also been promoting “poland-translation-services.com“, which claims to be a site offering “A large team of 2,500 translators specializing in each sector, located in over 30 countries” …

However, this site is clearly fake as well. I haven’t tracked down where it all comes from, but much of this page comes from this Argentinian page, the text of which has been pushed through Google’s Spanish to English translation tools… which sadly (for example) renders

Comentarios: Se considera foja al equivalente a 500 palabras. Si el documento a traducir es menor a una foja, se lo considerará como una foja.

into

Comments: foja is considered the equivalent of 500 words. If the document is translated to a lesser foja, we will consider as a foja.

which makes the 2500 translators look more than a little bit foolish!

The fake websites are hosted by EuroAccess Enterprises Ltd. in The Netherlands (which is also where the email spam has been sent from). I’m not alone in receiving this type of email, further examples can be found here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and even here (in Spanish).

EuroAccess have a fine ticketing system for abuse complaints… so I’m able to keep track of what they’re doing about my emails drawing their attention to the fraudsters they are hosting. I am therefore fully aware that they’ve so far marked my missives as “Priority: Low”, and nothing else is recorded to have been done… However, the tickets are still “Status: Open”, so perhaps a little publicity will encourage them to reassess their prioritisation.

First, here is what my early endorsement for the book said (can be found on the inside cover of the book):

“Amazingly useful (and fun to read!) book that does justice to this  somewhat esoteric subject - and this is coming from a long-time  visualization skeptic! What is most impressive that  this book is  actually 'hands-on-useful," not conceptual, with examples usable by  readers in their daily jobs. Chapter 8 on insiders is my favorite!”

What else do I think of the book, apart from the fact that it is awesome? :-)

First, I have to admit that I used to argue with Raffy about usefulness of visualization. I was burned by having to look at bad “visualization” tools and would take an ugly, meaningful table over an ugly, meaningless picture any day now. Thus, I was a visualization skeptic. Buy you know what? The book does justice to visualization really well, and it explains when to use it and when not to use it.

The book gives just the right amount of visualization theory, which is not onerous to read at all (unlike some other books), as well as other visualization basics. The fun starts at Chapter 4, where he covers  the process from data to useful pictures. This actually explains why some visualization are useful and some are not; if you just jam data into a graphing program, there is a good chance that it would not be too useful. If you follow the ideas from Ch4, it is more likely to be useful.

Ch5 and 6 cover network data analysis: logs, packets, flows. This is what most people usually try to visualize; this book goes beyond “worms and scans” into nice visuals of email traffic, wireless and even vulnerability data (I found the latter slightly confusing). Ch7 covers “compliance”, which, in this case, covers all sorts of fun things, from risk assessment to database log visualization.  As I said, Ch8 is my favorite: I agree that insider tracking MAY be the area where visualization tools and approaches beat others. In Ch9, the book covers a few visualization tools; obviously, including the author’s AfterGlow.

So, to summarize, get the book if you have any connection to security AND data analysis. In fact, it is very likely that if you are doing security, you’d have to do data analysis at some point and so will benefit from reading the book. And, yes, it does come with a CD full of visualization tools (DAVIX).

BTW, I am posting it at Amazon as well.

That’s the question the Consumerist asked readers today, with a story about a Florida grand-dad whose gardener is supposedly fleecing him for over $10k / month, allegedly to help an ailing friend:

Shaun says his 80+-year old grandfather, Steve, is being scammed out of over $10,000 a month. It seems Steve recently hired a female gardener who introduced him to a “wealthy friend,” and now he’s loaning them money to pay for groceries, cable, home upkeep, and, get this, bodyguards to protect her from an ex-husband and son who to want to kill her. When the family tries to intervene, Steve says the family is trying to put him in a nursing home and steal his money. Shaun is at a loss. How can he help his grandfather, who doesn’t want to be helped?

Another question that might be relevant in the IT Security community is, are the elderly more prone to these scams, and if so why? In the tech world it’s widely assumed that the older generation just has a harder time learning and grasping how to use technology so may not understand what is risky and what isn’t.

But perhaps there’s a deeper problem, either with some form of dementia and paranoia in the older years, or just a purer vulnerability associated with being alienated from the new, cutting edge and modern world as we age, or some kind of unwillingness to be suspicious because of the need to have caring people around you?