Tuesday, August 04, 2015

Your SOC Nuclear Triad [BACKUP FROM DEAD GARTNER BLOG]

 Let’s talk modern SOC tools. The analogy I’d like to use is that of a “Nuclear Triad” – a key cold war concept. The triad consisted of strategic bombers, ICBMs and missile submarines (strictly speaking, submarine missiles – SLBMs) and sought to “significantly reduce the possibility that an enemy could destroy all of a nation’s nuclear forces in a first-strike attack.”

b-52 https://flic.kr/p/kXwSiYICBM https://flic.kr/p/cboYVNsub https://flic.kr/p/bbGz7Z

Your SOC should have its own nuclear triad of visibility:

  1. SIEM – if I need to explains this, please read something else instead ðŸ™‚
  2. Network Forensics (NFT) – tools that can capture all network traffic (full packet capture), extract metadata (including application layer, L7 metadata such as HTTP user-agent, DNS query response, FTP username, email subject, etc) and payloads, retain some raw traffic and metadata, enable searching and analysis. There are several commercial tools, and then there are moloch and OpenSOCBro sort of fits in as well. [See more details here and in this GTP document]
  3. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR, formerly ETDR) – typically agent-based tools to capture execution, local connections, system changes, memory activities, etc. There are a lot (A LOT!) of commercial tools, and then there are GRRMIG (update: not really MozDef, as I mentioned in the previous version)  as osquery, sort of. [See more details here and in this GTP document]

Similar to the above, your “SOC triad” seeks to significantly reduce the chance that the attacker will operate on your network long enough to accomplish their goals.

Of course, your SOC will make use of other tools and capabilities, such as threat intelligence (TI) data, malware sandboxes and reversing tools [to push the above analogy a tad too far, maybe this is like a suitcase nuke? Very much an auxiliary weapon, but also very cool? :-)] as well as some workflow system to organize all your work [strategic forces undeground command center?]. However, I always think of SIEM + NFT + EDR as “SOC nuclear triad” of visibility!

There you have it! Enjoy!

Monday, August 03, 2015

Monthly Blog Round-Up – July 2015

Here is my next monthly "Security Warrior" blog round-up of top 5 popular posts/topics this month:
  1. Why No Open Source SIEM, EVER?” contains some of my SIEM thinking from 2009. Is it relevant now? Well, you be the judge.  Current popularity of open source log search tools, BTW, does not break the logic of that post. Succeeding with SIEM requires a lot of work, whether you paid for the software, or not. That – and developing a SIEM is much harder than most people think  [291 pageviews]
  2. Top 10 Criteria for a SIEM?” came from one of my last projects I did when running my SIEM consulting firm in 2009-2011 (for my recent work on evaluating SIEM, see this document) [133 pageviews]
  3. My classic PCI DSS Log Review series is always popular! The series of 18 posts cover a comprehensive log review approach (OK for PCI DSS 3.0 as well), useful for building log review processes and procedures , whether regulatory or not. It is also described in more detail in our Log Management book and mentioned in our PCI book (just out in its 4th edition!) [120+ pageviews to the main tag]
  4. Simple Log Review Checklist Released!” is often at the top of this list – the checklist is still a very useful tool for many people. “On Free Log Management Tools” is a companion to the checklist (updated version) [114 pageviews]
  5. “New SIEM Whitepaper on Use Cases In-Depth OUT!” (dated 2010) presents a whitepaper on select SIEM use cases described in depth with rules and reports [using now-defunct SIEM product]; also see this SIEM use case in depth and this for a more current list of popular SIEM use cases. [62 pageviews of total 4862 pageviews to all blog pages]
In addition, I’d like to draw your attention to a few recent posts from my Gartner blog:

Current maverick research on AI/smart machines risks:
Past research on cloud security monitoring:
Past research on security analytics:
Miscellaneous fun posts:

(see all my published Gartner research here)
Also see my past monthly and annual “Top Popular Blog Posts” – 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014.
Disclaimer: most content at SecurityWarrior blog was written before I joined Gartner on Aug 1, 2011 and is solely my personal view at the time of writing. For my current security blogging, go here.

Previous post in this endless series:

Dr Anton Chuvakin