Security and the theory of constraints
Security management is tricky. It’s not only about technical controls and good software development practice. It’s also about management responsibility. If you remember TOC ( Theory of Constraints, invented by Dr. Eli Goldratt about 40 years ago) there is only 1 key constraint that limits system (or company) performance to achieve it’s goal. So – what […]
The Tao of GRC
I have heard of military operations that were clumsy but swift, but I have never seen one that was skillful and lasted a long time. Master Sun (Chapter 2 – Doing Battle, the Art of War). The GRC (governance, risk and compliance) market is driven by three factors: government regulation such as Sarbanes-Oxley, industry compliance […]
Risk analysis of legacy systems
A practical, proven methodology for practical risk assessment and security breach risk reduction in enterprise software systems. Click here to download the article
SOX IT Compliance
A customer case study – SOX IT Compliance We performed a Sarbanes-Oxley IT top down security assessment for a NASDAQ-traded advanced technology company. The objectives for the study were to evaluate the internal and external threats that impact the company’s information assets. Using the Business threat modeling (BTM) methodology, a practical threat analysis PTA threat model was constructed and a number […]
Will security turn into a B2B industry?
Information security is very much product driven and very much network perimeter security driven at that: firewalls, IPS, DLP, anti-virus, database firewalls, application firewalls, security information management systems and more. It is convenient for a customer to buy a product and feel “secure” but, as businesses become more and more interconnected, as cloud services […]
Practical security management for startups
We normally associate the term “small business” or SME (small to medium sized enterprise) with commercial operations that buy and sell, manufacture products or provide services – lawyers, plumbers, accountants, web developers etc… However – there is an important class of small business operations that is often overlooked when it comes to information security and […]
The cloud concierge
The Israeli ISPs are really really bad. Just abysmal. It hurts me just to think about the level of customer service and data security incompetence that would make an Iraqi ISP running an operation in a store front beam with pride. I assume that we are not the only business to suffer from Netvision (and […]
The importance of data collection in a risk assessment
A risk assessment of a business always starts with data collection. The end objective is identifying and then implementing a corrective action plan that will improve data security in a cost-effective way, that is the right fit for the business. The question in any risk assessment is how do you get from point A (current […]
How to convert a web application to a multi-tenant SaaS solution
Of course, putting an application into a cloud data center is not enough. You have to think about application security, data security and compliance such as PCI DSS 2.0 or HIPAA if you are in the life science space. But – in addition to cloud security, you need to make sure that your Web application […]
How to assess risk – Part I: Asking the right questions
It seems to me that self-assessment of risk is a difficult process to understand and execute, primarily because the employees who are asked to assess the risk in their business process, a) don’t really understand the notion of risk and b) don’t really care. Let’s face it – risk is difficult to understand, since it […]
