Friday, April 12, 2013

Best Practices

Great comment in this week's SANS NewsBites (Vol. 15 Num. 029) from Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute.

[Editor's Note (Paller): As organizations discover there is economic liability for lax cybersecurity, and lawyers smell blood in the water, the recognition will dawn on policymakers that their reliance on high level "guidance" was a really bad idea and made government cybersecurity a terrible model for protecting the critical infrastructure and businesses.  This week the Australian Attorney General established a legal requirement that all agencies implement a small number of critical security controls. No company can pretend they don't know the basic controls they must implement. The U.S. government will do that, too, but, as Winston Churchill said so long ago, "Americans will always do the right thing - after exhausting all the alternatives." You can get a head start on doing the right thing if you can get to London on May 1-2 (http://www.sans.org/event/critical-security-controls-international-summit) or listen in on the briefing on April 18.  (http://www.sans.org/info/128297]


I found this comment somewhat ironic, given the recent twitter conversation with @joshcorman:



Maybe "Best Practices" really aren't the absolute "Best" that we can do in every individual situation.  And can they really be called "Practices", if they aren't actually practiced? (i.e. repeated performance or systematic exercise for the purpose of acquiring skill or proficiency). Having cursory familiarity with an established checklist of known good security measures such as the SANS Critical Security Controls, does not qualify as practicing or best.  ;)



Also, check out Cindy's article about being Consumers of Security Intelligence here.

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