Post on 18-Dec-2014
description
Academic Perspective
Some Security Activities at University College Cork
Simon FoleyDepartment of Computer Science,University College Cork, Irelandwww.cs.ucc.ie/~s.foley
Overview of Computer Security Activities
User CenteredSecurity
Business CenteredSecurity
Federated Security
2 / 15
Advance foundational results in security by
considering the application of security in practice.
Research
➣ Security policy models and mechanisms
➣ Federated and distributed systems security
➣ Security risk management and governance
Teaching
➣ Computer security (undergraduate)
➣ Network security & Mobile systems security (postgraduate)
➣ Final year BSc and taught MSc projects in Security.
User Centered Security
User CenteredSecurity
Business CenteredSecurity
Federated Security
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Security Policy Requirements Elicitation
User CenteredSecurity
Business CenteredSecurity
Federated Security
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Policy elicitation often driven by technical concerns.
➣ Technical policies designed by technical people.
➣ Based on the system artifacts with which users interact:groups, roles, transactions, etc.
Should consider needs of individuals and their relationships.
➣ Balance individuals’ requirements [eg, Multilateral Security].
➣ Include human issues.
How can we address this?
Trust Management Policy Elicitation
User CenteredSecurity
Business CenteredSecurity
Federated Security
6 / 15
Use qualitative analysis methods from social sciences to elicit trustmanagement policy for photograph sharing.
➣ Explore user-experience through semi-structured interviews.
➣ Qualitative analysis elicits policy requirements.
➣ Model the result in a Bayesian Network.
User requirements more complexthan basic access controls.
[S.N. Foley, V.M. Rooney. Qualitative Analysis for Trust Management. International Security Protocols Workshop,Cambridge, 2009. Springer LNCS.]
Business Centered Security
User CenteredSecurity
Business CenteredSecurity
Federated Security
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Managing Security
User CenteredSecurity
Business CenteredSecurity
Federated Security
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Siloed security driven by technical concerns.
➣ Technical mechanisms designed by technical people.
➣ Based on the system artifacts: groups, roles, transactions, etc.
Should align security with business strategy.
➣ Secure critical business processes, not just technologies
➣ Security threats are inevitable, need to manage the risk.
Security Risk Management
User CenteredSecurity
Business CenteredSecurity
Federated Security
10 / 15
Use Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) to manage (operational)risks related to security:
➣ security mechanisms as controls that mitigate known risks inmeeting objectives of business process,
➣ tests that audit efficacy of risk mitigation.
Security as an ongoing process:
➣ measure, prioritize, mitigate,
➣ security risk metrics and aggregation.
[S.N. Foley. Security Risk Management using Internal Controls, Proceedings of ACM Workshop on InformationSecurity Governance (held at ACM-CCS), 2009;S.N. Foley, H.B. Moss. A Risk-Metric Framework for Enterprise Risk Management, IBM Journal of Research andDevelopment, to appear 2010.]
Risk Management of Network Access Controls
User CenteredSecurity
Business CenteredSecurity
Federated Security
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Security controls should be compliant with best practice.
➣ 1.2.1.a Verify that inbound and outbound traffic is limited to
that which is necessary for the cardholder data. [PCI-DSS]
Semantic configuration models facilitate automated reasoning:
➣ Analysis of n-tier network for shadowing, redundancy, etc.
➣ Encode catalogues of best practice [PCI-DSS, NIST-800-41,NIST-800-44, RFC-3330, RFC-1918].
➣ Autonomic configuration based on catalogue search.
[W.M. Fitzgerald, S.N. Foley, M O’Foghlu. Network Access Control Interoperation using Semantic Web Techniques, InProceedings of 6th International Workshop on Security in Information Systems, (WOSIS 2008), June 2008;S.N. Foley and W.M. Fitzgerald. An Approach to Autonomic Security Policy Configuration using Semantic Threat
Graphs. IFIP WG 11.3 Working Conference on Data and Applications Security 2009. Springer LNCS 5645.]
Federated Security
User CenteredSecurity
Business CenteredSecurity
Federated Security
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Security Policy
User CenteredSecurity
Business CenteredSecurity
Federated Security
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Centralized policy, closed system.
➣ Centralized authority, controlled by administrator.
➣ Principle of no privilege.
➣ Opportunity to subvert administrator usually small.
Decentralized policy, open system.
➣ Decentralized authority across multiple stakeholders.
➣ Principle of flexible privilege
➣ Opportunity to subvert stakeholder intentions?
Secure Coalitions
User CenteredSecurity
Business CenteredSecurity
Federated Security
15 / 15
Federation as coalition of principals/federations.
➣ coalition policy govern actions,
➣ coalition formation governed by participants,
➣ policy decentralized/distributed across PKI,
➣ principal of governed flexible privilege.
In the absence of a centralized authority,the actions of a malicious principal/coalitionshould not be able to circumvent policy.
[ S.N. Foley and H. Zhou, Authorisation Subterfuge by Delegation in Decentralised Networks In Proceedings ofInternational Security Protocols Workshop, Cambridge UK 2005. Springer Verlag LNCS;H. Zhou and S.N. Foley, A Framework for Establishing Decentralized Secure Coalitions. IEEE Computer SecurityFoundations, 2006.]