Security Through Penetration Testing: Wrap Up
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Throughout this book we have outlined and described many of the techniques we have found to be successful during penetration testing. As you perform penetration testing, you will develop new techniques and your own favorite tools. One of the most important points for performing adequate penetration testing is keeping your skills and tool kit current. The tools and techniques you use during testing need to be the latest and most up-to-date ones available. The people attacking your networks will be using the latest tools and techniques, so if you are not aware of such tools and have not tested your environment against them, you may be exposed. In this chapter we describe some ways to keep current on the latest tools and techniques in the industry.
Another important key to keeping your systems safe is the use of countermeasures. Throughout the book we have described countermeasures to specific tools or exploits. These countermeasures are on a more micro-scale; they address specific issues. While these types of countermeasures are important, there are larger, more broad-based countermeasures that can help prevent the smaller issues from occurring in the first place. A proper security architecture is a key element for keeping an organization secure. A security architecture includes policies and procedures, baseline standards, data classification, compliance and monitoring programs, and security awareness training.
22.1 Countermeasures
Throughout the book, we have identified countermeasures for many specific vulnerabilities. Closing specific holes, such as applying a patch to a Web server, addresses a real threat to security but does nothing to prevent a similar vulnerability from arising again in the near future. Often we perform penetration tests for clients and provide them with a long list of recommendations for fixing the issues we discover during testing. Frequently, the clients take action on the short-term, quick-fix issues but do little to address long-term problems. In these scenarios, the client's systems are relatively secure shortly after the testing was performed, but if we returned six months later, we would find many issues similar to those we discovered during the first test. Countermeasures must address both long- and short-term problems. Looking at the long-range picture, there are many tools for avoiding and preventing vulnerabilities, such as developing a security architecture as described above. We do not cover security architecture in depth since it is outside the scope of this book. However, we do highlight the importance of security architecture elements as countermeasures to computer security attacks.
Policies are important because they instruct personnel on proper procedures and acceptable use. Hopefully, the policies standardize procedures so that there is consistency in the environment. In addition, policies provide a basis for holding personnel accountable when they do not follow the standard set by the policy. You cannot expect personnel to act in a secure manner unless you define what you mean by "secure manner." One system administrator may think a "secure manner" includes writing passwords on sticky notes and keeping them on his or her desk. Another system administrator may think "secure manner" means users cannot connect to the Internet. Therefore, as much as possible, policies should define normal computer operations, acceptable uses, monitoring procedures, incident response procedures to follow in case of an actual incident, and other procedures. In addition, policies should be specific to groups. A system administrator and a normal user should not be governed by the same policies. Policies intended for system administrators should not be made available to the general population because they may reveal information that could be useful to an attacker. Finally, policies need to be updated regularly. Many times clients show us policies and procedures that are years out of date and the systems for which they were written no longer exist.
Minimum baseline standards are similar to policies. Baseline standards are specific configuration documents that delineate minimum configuration requirements that need to be in place on a specific type of system. Baseline standards should be developed for each system within the environment. For instance, an organization should have a minimum baseline standard for NT servers. Each NT server should be configured with a minimum account policy enforcing account lockouts, minimum password lengths, and other security settings. Each server should be built in accordance with these baseline standards or should have a waiver excusing the server from meeting the standard for a specific reason. Each type of system should have a baseline standard. Standards should exist for NT servers, NT workstations, UNIX systems, Web servers, and any other type of system. Different parameters with each standard should pertain to different classification levels. For instance, a high-risk asset may have an account lockout threshold of three attempts, whereas a low-risk asset's account lockout may be configured for ten attempts. Baseline standards start to bring consistency to an environment and help ensure security procedures are in place to prevent attack.
It is unrealistic to expect a company to protect a document containing a job-posting announcement as it would a directory containing the company's trade secrets. Organizations still need to operate effectively. If the security measures in place to protect an unimportant asset are too stringent and hamper productivity, the security measures are ineffective. Conversely, if the organization decreases security on the server containing the trade secrets to reduce the inconvenience to users, the measures are also ineffective. Data classification is important to determine which assets are critical and cannot afford to be compromised and which assets are less important and do not need to be guarded as closely. There are many means of data classification, but one common method includes classifying assets as high, medium, or low risk. The security procedures in place to protect each category of asset are different. This way the organization can concentrate on protecting critical assets and can loosen security requirements on less critical assets to help improve efficiency. Different policies and baseline standards should be tailored to correspond to each different level.
The use of data classification, policies, and procedures becomes less effective if the organization has no way to verify that the procedures are actually being followed. Compliance and monitoring programs involve verification through manual or automated means that standards and policies are being followed. The systems being tested should be compared against standards developed from the organization's policies, procedures, and baseline standards. Traditional methods of compliance and monitoring involve the use of an audit department. Many organizations' audit departments have neither the resources nor the expertise to conduct the highly technical audits necessary to ensure compliance with standards. Many automated tools are available to help with compliance and monitoring. Host-based assessment tools can help compare system configurations to standards and report deviations from standards. Many host-based assessment tools use an agent to review file permissions, open services, network settings, system policies, and other configuration settings that could affect the configuration of the systems. If, for example, a system administrator opens FTP on a critical server, the tool would report this change to the party responsible for compliance monitoring. Automated assessment tools can greatly decrease the personnel resources needed for a proper compliance program. However, automated tools can be costly and difficult to implement without proper expertise. Whether the methods used are automated or manual, a proper compliance and monitoring program is essential to an organization's security posture.
Security awareness training is another key element of a security architecture. Users and systems personnel need to be trained in proper procedures and the reasons for those procedures. Training should be tailored to the audience. Users should not receive the same security awareness training as system administrators. User training should focus on the key measures users need to take to increase the security of the organization, for example, areas such as password management, incident reporting, physical security measures, viruses and malicious code, and other security threats. Training for system administrators should concentrate on areas that they can influence: topics such as system standards, recognizing and reporting incidents, compliance and monitoring, and proper system procedures (for example, adding users, opening services, and applying patches). There are many other topics that should be included in training for users and administrators, but they are beyond the scope of this book. Without proper security awareness training, personnel may unknowingly create situations that harm the security of the organization. In addition, security awareness training helps the organization hold personnel accountable for violating security policies. Perpetrators will have trouble using a defense that they did not know the proper procedure or were not aware of a policy since the organization will have documentation that the person attended security awareness training.
However, security awareness training goes only so far. If an organization's security procedures are difficult to follow and significantly inconvenience the user, they will not be followed. For example, organizations that require users to remember ten different passwords for multiple systems are the ones that lead users to write their passwords on sticky notes and leave them on their desks. A single sign-on solution or other means of centralized authentication could make password management easier for users and thereby decrease the number of exposures created by users deviating from security procedures. Therefore, when an organization is designing a security solution, it should seek to implement procedures that are easy to follow and enforce. Such procedures will decrease user and administrator security exposures more than the greatest security awareness training for difficult security procedures.