Security News > 2004 > October > Rise of the CISO

http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,96291,00.html By Jaikumar Vijayan OCTOBER 04, 2004 COMPUTERWORLD As the chief information security officer at General Motors Corp., Eric Litt is in charge of integrating security into every aspect of the company's vast $186 billion business. It's a job that has given him a spot at the executive table, support from the board level down and a chance to implement far-reaching decisions related to information security at the company. "I get plenty of attention, which is a very good thing," Litt says. When it comes to security at the automaker, "resources are not an issue," he says. Litt is one among a small but growing number of executives who say that heightened concerns are driving a gradual evolution of the security function and investing it with more influence than ever before. "Security folks have often been viewed as a necessary evil who always get in the way of your doing business," says Howard Schmidt, CISO at eBay Inc. in San Jose and former White House cybersecurity adviser. But regulatory compliance issues and the increasing losses related to worms, viruses and other hacker attacks are making security a part of the core business process, he says. Kim Milford agrees. "Security is now viewed as a critical requirement in the purchase, design, development and deployment of applications and services," says Milford, information security manager at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "There seems to be a shift from the emphasis on predominantly technical controls to risk assessment, policies and user education," she adds. For instance, Litt has crafted a model under which all security planning at GM starts with an analysis and understanding of the specific threats and risks faced by a business unit. A central security team evaluates and analyzes everything from regulatory requirements to intellectual property protection, inappropriate use, access control and threats such as denial-of-service attacks, worms and viruses. The group then architects a detailed security implementation requirement for each of the business units based on its specific risk profile. Each of the business units is responsible for implementing the needed technology and process measures and is periodically audited for compliance against its requirements. A color-coded security dashboard for senior management at GM rates the performance of each business unit, with green representing full compliance, yellow showing partial progress and red indicating a total lack of compliance. It's an evolving holistic approach to security that includes "the people, the organization, governance, process and, lastly, technology," Litt says. Strategy, Not Tactics A similar focus on high-level concerns such as regulatory compliance, digital rights management, intellectual property protection and application coding standards defines the evolution of the security organization at the Bank of Montreal in Toronto. "Implementing firewalls and hardening systems are not really security issues any longer but operational issues," says Robert Garigue, the bank's CISO. Those are being approached in the same manner that configuration management or capacity management is, he says. Years of fending off worms, viruses and hacker attacks have allowed Bank of Montreal to implement technologies and automate its responses. The bank is now at a point where it's increasingly offloading those tasks to network and system operations teams. The security function is no longer just about "exceptions management" and responding to emergencies, Garigue says. The focus instead is "about understanding where the new risks are coming from and not getting blindsided by them," he says. It's a task that requires security managers to wear several hats, says Christofer Hoff, director of enterprise security services at Western Corporate Federal Credit Union, a San Dimas, Calif.-based company with $25 billion in assets. It means being a "magician, oracle, facilitator, accountant, psychiatrist, stuntman, public relations consultant and prophet," Hoff says. It requires a background that melds "ditch digging and trench warfare with board presentations and business-based strategy planning," he adds. Much of the organizational influence that such security managers have begun to garner is tied to the business value delivered by the information security function, Hoff says. There's a growing realization in the corporation that "information security is not about technology [but] about rational risk management," he says. That shift in perception is resulting in more authority and influence being invested in the security manager or CISO function, University of Wisconsin's Milford says. An increasing number of CISOs are being asked to participate in crucial business decisions at the highest level, eBay's Schmidt says. For instance, in many cases, the CISO's input and approval is required at the very inception of any large IT project, as companies try to build in security instead of bolting it onto business processes as an afterthought, Schmidt says. "There are many projects that just don't kick off without security guidance in the requirements stage," he says. Because responding to security risks is beginning to be viewed as a cost of doing business, the security manager is also being consulted more to help assess costs and benefits, Milford says. And security funding is also getting easier to come by, she says, pointing to her own organization's success in securing funds for an array of worm and attack mitigation technologies soon after a wave of malicious attacks last year. "This shift has, in some cases, moved the security manager function into the highest levels of the IT organization chart and sometimes even completely outside the realm of IT," Milford says. Although CISOs typically report to CIOs, as companies begin taking more of an operational-risk management approach to IT security, some security managers have been advocating functional parity with the CIO. It's not unusual to find CISOs reporting to chief financial officers and CEOs, Milford says. Lagging Behind But the changes aren't happening at all companies. And corporate inertia and political turf battles continue to make the evolution a painful one, security managers readily acknowledge. At many companies, the security organization still remains "out of sight and out of mind" unless there is some sort of a cyber emergency, says Dennis Treece, director of corporate security at the Massachusetts Port Authority in Boston. "Private-sector managers simply want what they've always wanted from their security program - keeping the company out of trouble and [out of] the papers and doing it for as little money possible," he says. As one of the executives in charge of securing Boston's Logan International Airport, three seaports and a major toll bridge, Treece is focused primarily on physical infrastructure protection. But he oversees the information security side as well. "The physical security folks still don't know much about network security, and network people who are given the security mission think of themselves as IT people, not security people," he says. A divide also exists between network operations teams, which are focused on ensuring optimal performance, and network security teams, which are often viewed as a barrier to that goal, Treece says. A more powerful security function also raises political issues at a higher level, Treece says. "Anytime there's a new player at the table, others have to move aside and cede a little turf," he says. And the person who stands to lose the most turf in the battle is the CIO, who has traditionally been responsible for security, he says. The amount of authority the security manager has depends a lot on the organizational culture and structure, Milford says. In top-down, heavily centralized organizations, the authority stems from the CISO's placement within the organization and who he reports to, she explains. "In less heavily structured organizations, the security manager must gain the trust of the decentralized management and technologists," Milford says. Companies that have adopted process maturity frameworks such as the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model are also more likely to be ready culturally to integrate security into every aspect of their business, Garigue says. And Hoff says, "It's all about marketing. If you can't demonstrate your worth, long-term survivability is compromised, and the value you offer the organization remains that of a grudge purchase rather than an enabler. "Our company is enlightened to the value we bring, but only because we go out of our way to relate our successes in business terms" by showing reduction of risk on investment, Hoff says. "To me, it's a simple play." _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/

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