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You're reading from Information Security Handbook

Product typeBook

Published inDec 2017

Publisher

ISBN-139781788478830

Edition1st Edition

Concepts

Information Security

Author (1)

Darren Death

Chapter 6. Continuous Testing and Monitoring

Vulnerabilities are part of the life cycle of the modern information system. Software and hardware are rushed to market with often inadequate testing, resulting in an organizational information system that is a patchwork of potentially highly vulnerable systems. It is important for the information security professional to understand that vulnerabilities in information systems are a fact of life that is not going away anytime soon. The key to protecting the modern information system is continued vigilance through continuous technical testing.

In this chapter, you will learn:

Technical testing categories at your disposal
Testing integration into the SDLC
Continuous monitoring considerations
Vulnerability assessment considerations
Penetration testing considerations

Types of technical testing

Vulnerability assessment: Vulnerability scanning serves to interrogate a specific information system or an entire network to discover weaknesses in their security posture.
Web application vulnerability assessment: A specific type of vulnerability assessment that is targeted at web-based applications versus servers and networks. This type of assessment attempts to find weaknesses in application code and logic.
Static code analysis: Static code analysis inspects the source code of an application and attempts to determine whether flaws exist that could be exploited by an attacker.
Penetration testing: Penetration testing takes the results of vulnerability assessments and validates that an identified weakness is an exploitable vulnerability.

SDLC considerations for testing

Security testing fits into all parts of the SDLC/SELC and plays a vital role in ensuring the security of the information system, from project initiation until the information system has reached the end of its useful life and it is disposed of.

Project initiation

Conduct analysis of business needs: The information security professional must work closely with the business/mission users and the information technology staff to have a firm grasp of the solution that is required by the business and proposed by IT. This is an opportunity for the information security professional to add value to the project team by providing alternatives and ensuring that a secure proposal is developed.

During this phase, you will typically be conducting solution reviews versus outright technical testing. This is a very important part of the overall project life cycle, since this is where key project decisions are made from a business vision and technical direction perspective. These...

Continuous monitoring

The concept of continuous monitoring comes from the idea that an information system that is not checked often will begin to develop exploitable weaknesses. The IT and information security team can do an amazing job in developing, securing, and testing a new information system. However, this work is a point-in-time activity and becomes stale very rapidly. As new patches come out or new exploit techniques are developed, the information system must be updated to reflect these new threats.

Continuous monitoring lives in the operations and management phase of the system development life cycle. A well-developed continuous monitoring program should be established within your organization to ensure that security controls around people, processes, and technologies are effectively monitored and continue to be well defending against the ever-changing information security threat landscape. Key concepts to consider as you begin to plan and implement a continuous monitoring program...

Vulnerability assessment

Vulnerability assessment is a methodology used to determine whether an exploitable weakness exists on an information system. This is important to stress as vulnerability assessment is not a tool. While performing a vulnerability assessment, you will use many tools. While good tools are required for a successful vulnerability assessment, it is the skill of the tester and the adherence to process that ensures a high-quality vulnerability assessment.

Business relationship with vulnerability assessment

The vulnerability assessment that you perform will most likely find hundreds of vulnerabilities in your environment and could very easily find thousands. The modern information system, due to its complexity and the fact that software is not designed in a secure manner, will develop many vulnerabilities over time. Without an effective means of triaging the vulnerabilities that you discover, you may find it very difficult to effectively secure your organization. Understanding...

Penetration testing

Penetration testing is a planned attack on an information system that attempts to simulate what an actual information system would experience if it was being attacked by a hacker. The types of penetration tests that the organization can choose to implement include:

Social engineering: This type of test attempts to lure a user into revealing information that would benefit an attacker in further exploiting the organization. Information that the attacker would look to gain from a user includes:
- Client-side: This type of test serves to test the end user environment by testing applications on the desktop environment.
- Wireless security: This test attempts to discover and exploit and organization's wireless networking capability.
- Network services: This type of test looks to exploit systems and services located on the enterprise network.
- Physical security: This type of test looks to exploit the physical security of the organization, such as locks and alarms.

Phases of a penetration...

Difference between vulnerability assessment and penetration testing

As you can see, there is a significant difference between a vulnerability assessment and a penetration test. The vulnerability assessment's primary purpose is to determine whether vulnerabilities exist on the target device being assessed, while the penetration test is concerned with understanding whether those vulnerabilities can be used to gain access to that system and in turn gain access to sensitive organizational information.

The difference of the two types of test is clearly observed by reviewing their workflows. The vulnerability assessment ends at the scanning phase of the penetration test. Where you would begin to work with your technical team to remedy vulnerabilities in the vulnerability assessment, the penetration tester continues testing to compromise the target system, resulting in control of that system.

A penetration test is also about being able to show that information security vulnerabilities present in...

Examples of successful attacks in the news

The reason that we perform so much testing is to ensure that the organization's information systems are protected from attack. Here are some examples of publicized attacks. These attacks could have been prevented if their organizations had tested and mitigated these vulnerabilities. If this had occurred, the attacker would not have had a vulnerability to exploit.

Point of sale system attacks

The point of sale (POS) systems are cash registers. You may be thinking what is the big deal about cash registers and how can people break into my network by attacking a cash register? The reality is that modern POS systems are typically fully functioning operating systems that expose services that can be exploited by an attacker.

Summary

The introduction of vulnerabilities into the information system is clearly part of the life cycle of the modern information system. Organizations rush information systems into production without adequate testing, resulting in potentially highly vulnerable systems. The key to protecting your organization's information system is continued vigilance through continuous technical testing.

In this chapter, we learned:

The categories of technical testing and how to take advantage of them
How to integrate the various categories of information security testing into the SDLC
Considerations related to vulnerability assessment, penetration testing, and continuous monitoring

In the next chapter, we will learn about business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) planning. We will discuss the many considerations around how to implement a successful BCDR plan, leading to continued business operations in the event of a disaster.

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Author (1)

Darren Death

Darren Death is ASRC Federal's Chief Information Security Officer. He is responsible for managing the enterprise cybersecurity program across a 3 billion-dollar portfolio of business sectors, including financial services, government contracting, and construction. A proven technology leader with over 20 years of experience deploying enterprise systems for large private and public organizations, Darren Death has led, designed, and implemented large-scale, organizational-wide enterprise IT systems with far-reaching impact. Before joining ASRC Federal, while at the Department of Justice, he was responsible for creating a nationwide enterprise processing capability across the US Attorney, Marshalls Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms divisions. At the Library of Congress, Darren was responsible for all emerging technologies related to information security. He holds a doctoral degree in information technology, specializing in information assurance and cybersecurity.
Read more about Darren Death

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Vendor	Date reported	Settlement amount	URLs
Target	December 19, 2013	$18.5 million	http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-target-credit-settlement-20170523-story.html
Home Depot	September 8, 2014	$19.5 million	https://threatpost.com/home-depot-agrees...