Action Plan: Pacific Northwest National Labs Recommends Regular Check-Ups

Technology is good, but the nothing beats the intuition of personal experience.

InformationWeek Staff, Contributor

February 21, 2008

2 Min Read
InformationWeek logo in a gray background | InformationWeek

REGULAR CHECK-UPS

Continuous vulnerability scanning of your entire network is essential. I've talked to some CIOs who believe that having an external party scan a portion of their network once a year is sufficient. That's frightening. Our system scans the entire network for "Top 10" vulnerabilities as fast as it can (about once per hour), and we conduct a credentialed scan of the network for vulnerabilities once per day. No single scanning tool will pick up all vulnerabilities, so consider using more than one and rotating between scans.

Look beyond vulnerability scanning and periodically assess your complete program. Evaluations need to cover both the programmatic and technical aspects of cyberprotection. This is where an independent assessor, either your internal auditing organization or an external consultant, is valuable.

InformationWeek Reports

Becoming overly reliant on technology breeds a false sense of security. Good detection tools are commercially available, but the actual detection of intrusions still depends heavily on the personal knowledge of the analyst. This should not be a part-time job or one given to an entry-level employee. The intuition of experience is important, as well as investments in forensic training.

UNBIASED GUIDANCE

The best source I know for expert, unbiased guidance on cybersecurity is the National Institute of Standards and Technology. More than 250 NIST information security documents are available at www.nist.gov. There's even an online guide to accessing the particular information you need. For example, PNNL uses NIST Special Publication 800-53 Recommended Security Controls for Federal Information Systems to assess the maturity of our cybersecurity program. The NIST publication provides a good template for assessing the robustness of any organization's cybersecurity efforts.

Return to the story:
CIOs Uncensored: Security Smarts

Read more about:

20082008
Never Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.

You May Also Like


More Insights