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- A security assurance can be defined as the confidence that a system meets its security requirements and is resilient against security vulnerabilities and failures. The confidence indicated by the security assurance represents the level of trust we give to a system that is safe to use.
Measure of confidence that the security features, practices, procedures, and architecture of an information system accurately mediates and enforces the security policy
Ground for confidence that the set of intended security controls in an information system are effective in their application
Security assurance is an umbrella term for several processes aimed at ensuring individual system components can adequately protect themselves from attacks. Doing so requires not just a one-time effort, but actually spans the complete system lifecycle. After all, what is considered an acceptable security posture may change over time depending on, for example, newly emerging threats or changes to how the system itself is utilized.
We summarize the key processes that should be part of every security assurance program as follows:
- Security Hardening
- Security Testing
- Vulnerability Management
In the remainder of this article, let’s take a closer look at what these individual processes entail.
Security hardening describes the minimization of a system’s attack surface and proper configuration of security functions. The former may be achieved by disabling unnecessary components, removing superfluous system accounts, and closing any communication interfaces not in use – just to name a few. The latter configuration task focuses on security controls within the system itself and ensures that these can perform their functions as intended. This can include the configuration of host-based firewalls, intrusion detection/ prevention capabilities, or operating system controls, such as SELinux.
Security hardening is particularly important before a system is deployed, but should be verified regularly thereafter to confirm that the system still meets the defined hardening standard in the context of its current operating environment.
Security testing aims to validate a system’s security posture by trying to identify any weaknesses or vulnerabilities possibly remaining after security hardening. This activity can take many different forms, depending on the complexity of the system under test and the available resources and skills. In its most basic form, it may comprise an automated vulnerability scan from the outside as well as an authenticated scan from the perspective of a user on the system. More advanced tests would go a step further by analyzing the system’s responses and reasoning about communication flows that may afford an attacker with a way into the system. Established best practices, such as the OWASP Top 10, can serve as a useful guide here to focus the test activities on the most common vulnerabilities. Beyond that, fully manual test could dig even deeper, for example, trying to discover vulnerabilities in the systems source code if available.
Similar to hardening of the system, security testing should also be performed before and during a systems operation. Regular, automated security scans can be a great tool to identify new vulnerabilities early on
Vulnerability management takes the results of the security tests performed and attempts to mitigate them. This includes the analysis of each finding (Is this actually an issue in the context of this system?), prioritization (How big of an issue is it?), and mitigation (How can it be fixed?). While the last part should be fairly obvious, the first two are just as essential since it is important to take a risk-based approach to vulnerability mitigation. No system will ever be completely free of vulnerabilities, but the goal should be to avoid the ones that are critical and easily abusable
So, what are some ways we can work towards improving security assurance and prepare our systems for the threats to come in the future?
As mentioned, with secure development and maintenance of products, organizations can do a great deal of work toward ensuring the product’s security. This should be considered in the evaluation, providing a more integrated and holistic approach. Assurance measures in the development cycle should be better recognized, and assessments should promote development assurance.
To achieve a more balanced approach as described above, we need to see more communication and training so that developers and evaluators can understand each other better and work together to optimize the process. Software engineers often build in many layers and at high levels of complexity, meaning evaluators with little or no development background will be poorly equipped to evaluate the value of the developers' contributions. However, it’s important to remember that requirements like development expertise for evaluation will come with a higher cost.
Regardless of the approach, when undertaking evaluation, developers need to be transparent and communicative. Tell evaluators what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. Don’t try to create an alternative reality for auditing – if the evaluators offer suggestions for improvement, they want to improve your real processes and not artificial ones that have been submitted.
If security assurance is to take a more holistic approach, we need to find a compromise that accommodates the needs of both the developers and the evaluators, while remaining efficient and cost-effective for the level of assurance required. We need to clarify what the roles and responsibilities should be in this process. Right now, confusion remains over who should do the testing or vulnerability analysis. But both sides must be involved – they just have different roles to play in the process.
The sophisticated attackers we face today are constantly looking to inject vulnerabilities or malware into the supply chain. Unfortunately, many companies aren’t currently putting enough emphasis on supply chain security. While it isn’t cost-effective for most companies to build up their own supply chain for complex systems, leaving them reliant on third-party components or software, diversity can offer a work-around solution. You shouldn’t put trust in just one service or component, but you might be able to achieve sufficient security assurance by combining different security layers from different suppliers or nations – one from the US, one from China, for example. For your system to be broken, they then need to talk to each other – and most likely, they won't.
The same can apply to encryption, where even commercial products can be used for classified systems by combining layers, such as using an SSH layer together with a TLS layer. Right now we have a monoculture of open SSL, a monoculture of Windows, even all the web browsers have more or less the same core engine in them. This means they share some of the same vulnerabilities, and if one is breached, they all are – we have a whole infrastructure problem. Designing systems with combined layers can provide a realistic alternative. The system can be trusted up to a certain point, then you build a service on top of that to add more complex functionality. Doing this not only can result in less work to achieve the assurance, but you may also find fixes are more readily available because you are using commercial products.
Newly emerging technology like cloud and virtualization – which will become commonplace as 5G rolls out across industries – means applications could be running in the cloud, at the edge, at the core data center, or even be distributed across all of these. Control will become more diluted, impacting security assurance across the telecom industry and adding to the complexity of an already complex problem.
To resolve this challenge, we need to address the interactions between different layers of the products: hardware, software and virtualization. We need to build trust in a different way, making sure we don't have any critical side effects. With this new infrastructure, hardware developers don't necessarily know what will run on top of it. So they try to optimize it, and as a result end up with optimizations that could be exploited by an attacker. Of course, this can be fixed, but it won’t be fixed in the hardware, only in the software. The important thing is when you're building an application at one level, you make assumptions about what will run on top of it. And these assumptions may not be completely valid, as we don’t know for sure how these things will behave.
We mentioned multiple layers of encryption and security services earlier – we have to do the same thing here. You add a layer that can verify its integrity and protect itself on top, but you should have a clear understanding of what assumptions you’re making on what is underneath. If you understand this well, you can do it securely. The real problem will be if people are rushing too fast and don’t take the time to consider the impact and side effects it may have on their systems.
It can all seem overwhelming, so it’s important to remember that an organization doesn’t always need to (and often shouldn’t) go for the highest possible assurance level from the start. It depends on the customer and the domain where the product is being deployed. If it’s in critical infrastructure, and it’s the networking equipment or the sensing or control capability, then you might not have a choice but to go for the higher level. Either way, you should ensure it's not negatively impacting the security of your critical infrastructure.
The assurance level must also be meaningful and relevant for the customer. You don't want to buy equipment intended for high-security use and carry out low assurance, as potential (or even worse, exploited) vulnerabilities can tarnish your reputation. Of course, a company may choose a high assurance level in a premium product, to impress the customer or to leverage in marketing to instill confidence and trust. But in general, a better approach is to learn by doing – starting at the lower end, and ensuring you have requirements that can scale.
A company looking at non-critical infrastructure might be looking to start with assurance level four, for example, which means reviewing source code. But looking at it, an evaluator might suggest that level two is a better place to start from, taking into account the effort and the cost involved. The higher levels can be considered later. Not only will the company learn for future development, they’ll also be in a better position to take on additional evaluation and assurance levels as needed.
There are always tradeoffs when it comes to security assurance, and one of the biggest is that if you want to do a thorough security inspection of any device or any software, it's costly – especially at the higher assurance level. The tools at hand are also costly because of a lack of automation – and now with virtualization, it's becoming even more complex.
The good news is that in recent years we’ve seen a surge of interest in vulnerability research. People are producing more advanced techniques to handle vulnerabilities, to find security vulnerabilities in firmware, in software and so on. We need to see more of this kind of research, as the results are what will enable us to introduce much more automation and leverage AI. These technologies will be crucial for handling vulnerabilities in increasingly complex systems, and making the security assurance process more cost-effective, efficient and scalable.
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