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13 IT security myths
Some generally-assumed and oft-repeated notions about security may not necessarily be true and we asked security experts to tell us their favourite "Security Myths" and what they think of them.
1. More security is always better
Bruce Schneier, security expert and author of 'Liars and Outlier': "More security isn't necessarily better. First, security is a always a trade-off,and sometimes security costs more than it's worth. For example, it's not worth spending £100,000 to protect a donut."
2. The DDoS problem is bandwidth-oriented
Carl Herberger, vice president of security solutions at Radware: It's an "urban myth" that distributed denial of service attacks would just "go away with more bandwidth." Over half of DDoS attacks are not characterised by bandwidth at all but are application-oriented. Only a quarter of DDoS attacks are mitigated by adding bandwidth.
3. Regular expiration strengthens passwords
Ari Juels, chief scientist, RSA: "In fact, recent research suggests that regular password expiration may not be useful," and that if an organisation is going to expire passwords, "it should do so on a random schedule, not a fixed one."
4. You can rely on the wisdom of the crowds
Bill Bolt, vice president of information technology for the Phoenix Suns basketball team: "Employees claim lots of people they know are telling them about a new virus or other imminent threat, but upon investigation, these notions don't pan out."
5. Client-side virtualisation will solve BYOD security problems
John Pescatore, Gartner analyst: The idea of the 'work' virtual machine and the 'personal' virtual machine for BYOD is going to be "a big waste of money". The NSA tried this years ago with VMware for intelligence use with VMs for Secret, Top Secret and so on, and it wasn't practical then and it's not practical now.
6. IT should encourage staff to use new and random passwords every 30 days
Kevin Haley, director Symantec security response: This has disadvantages because completely random passwords are usually difficult to remember and a better alternative is often to create strong passwords formulated as an easy-to-remember phrase.
7. Any computer virus will produce a visible symptom on the screen
David Perry, president of G Data Software North America: The typical man in the street believes a virus will be visible in the computer, showing files melting away and the like. And the lack of visible trouble means that a system is obviously malware-free.
8. We are not a target
Alan Brill, senior managing director for the cyber security and information assurance practice at Kroll: "Mostly I hear it from victims and they are usually wrong."
9. Software today isn't any better in terms of security holes
Gary McGraw, chief technology officer at Cigital: We have gotten way better and the density ratio is going down because of safe-coding practices in comparison to decades past. It's just that there is so much more software code being written.
10. Sensitive information transfer via SSL is secure
Rainer Enders, CTO, Americas, NCP engineering: There are a lot of doubts about SSL session security based on both real-world incidents and research. The best assurance would be never use the same key stream to encrypt two different documents.
11. Endpoint security software is a commodity product
Jon Oltsik, analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group: The majority of enterprise security professionals apparently agree with this statement about endpoint security products, but it's not true because products are vastly different in terms of level of protection and feature/functionality and most organisations aren't even aware of what they have.
12. Of course we are protected because we have a network firewall
Kevin Butler, information technology security analyst at the University of Arkansas for medical sciences: The myth that a properly configured firewall will protect you from all threats overlooks the fact that nothing says hello like malicious content encapsulated over an SSL connection infecting your workstations.
13. You should not upload malware samples as part of a targeted attack to reputable malware vendors and services
Joe Stewart, director of malware analysis for Dell SecureWorks: this is flawed advice that security managers follow thinking attackers are watching for evidence they've been found out or worry the malware will reveal their organization was attacked. Stewart says this isn't frequently the case and there's a great benefit to the community in sharing malware samples.
12. Of course we are protected because we have a network firewall
Kevin Butler, information technology security analyst at the University of Arkansas for medical sciences: The myth that a properly configured firewall will protect you from all threats overlooks the fact that nothing says hello like malicious content encapsulated over an SSL connection infecting your workstations.
