I would like to comment on RSA’s use of the term Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) in their Open Letter to RSA Customers. From my perspective, any company’s trade secrets are subject to APTs from someone. There is always some competitor or government that can benefit from your trade secrets. All APT means is that someone is willing to focus on your organization with resources of approximately the value of a penetration test plus the cost of acquiring a 0-day attack.
This means that you must assume that you are or will be compromised and therefore you must invest in “detection controls.” In other words, your security portfolio must include detection as well as prevention controls. Important detection controls include intrusion detection, behavior anomaly detection, botnet command & control communications detection, and Security Information & Event Management (SIEM). If you don’t have the resources to administer and monitor these controls then you need to hire a managed security services provider (MSSP).
Furthermore, organizations must take a close look at their internal access control systems. Are they operationally and cost effective? Are you compromising effectiveness due to budget constraints? Are you suffering from “role explosion?” A three thousand person company with 800 Active Directory Groups is difficult to manage, to say the least. Does your access control system impede your responsiveness to changes in business requirements? Have you effectively implemented Separation of Duties? Can you cost effectively audit authorization?
