Ally in our defences

My organization is responsible for the protection of the computing infrastructure of The Boeing Company. This can be a monumental task.

Information is a strong ally in our defences. It is our lifeblood for details about computer threats, impact and activity. The sooner we know of any new threat and its exact payload, the sooner we can implement mitigation strategies. We already employ best practices to keep malware threats outside our company, but we back that up with additional countermeasures. We promote a defence-in-depth strategy that ensures multiple detection points for any new threat. This approach has proved beneficial, particularly on those rare occasions when a product fails to do its job, or when a security vendor does not get timely updates to us.

We monitor numerous anti-virus vendor websites, security vendor websites and alert streams, and other forums literally every hour of every day, screening for new information about computer threats. This constant search for new information allows us to implement protection measures even when the vendors we use are not publishing information or do not have detection available yet.

Our extensive monitoring has shown that many discrepancies exist between vendor write-ups. All security vendors must have current and correct information regarding all viruses listed on their web sites. There is always a concern that if the exploit information is not correct or complete, then the detection may not be correct or complete either. The integrity of the information you publish reflects the integrity of your products.

Sometimes a vendor will not publish new exploit information until an update is available. This is a disservice to customers who may be able to use that information to implement blocking measures to keep the threat out until the vendor can provide the detection updates. A top concern for us is getting information about exploits targeting vulnerabilities in products or operating systems that may not have patches available.

Two details we find valuable that are often missing from virus information are alias names and timestamps that reflect data changes. Providing alias names on all threats would allow the group that provides our monitoring service to correlate the information amongst vendors more easily. We are not suggesting that vendors provide every single alias name available, but provide at least a fair sampling. Of course having a Common Malware Enumeration (CME-ID) identifier for all threats would be the optimum situation. When vendors use a timestamp to reflect changes to their write-ups, we can peruse their sites more easily. Because we seek so much information, we need to be able to find new information quickly, without having to re-read the original details.

Some security providers seem apprehensive about sharing the complete details of threat propagation with corporate customers. I understand concerns regarding publishing links that give access to downloadable malware. For that reason, I advocate creation of two information streams: one for the general public, which does not include the entire malicious URL, and another for your corporate security analysts, who can handle that information correctly.

Some excellent sources of information have been instrumental in getting new threat information into our hands quickly. AVIEN and AVIEWS are grass roots forums that address information sharing. Both forums have given us critical and timely intelligence around exploits.

AVIEN and AVIEWS have also helped build collaboration between customers and security vendors. We really can do more together than we ever can alone. Just as these forums took information sharing to a new level, they are expanding the possibilities yet again with the inaugural webcast conference on January 18. This webcast is one more example of customer-led change.

We all need to continue to understand each other's information needs and work together to provide solutions. As Henry Ford stated 'Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.'