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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: FW: Cost of Worm Attack Protection
There is one common rule - if you react on something (worm, for example), never overreact. This means that, yes, in many cases it is much more effective _do absolutely nothing_ vs. _ proactive and aggressive prevention_. few examples from other areas: - Medicine - Allergy can kill; and allergy is overreaction; - Politics - 9/11 - if USA did absolutely nothing, even if no one airway company changed their security procedures, it could be more effective, than what was done (full time paranoia, 2 wars, huge loses in industry; huge inconvenience for travellers...). The same approach works here. Some level of prevention is useful. It was useful to block bad ports on the week of last worm. It could help (and helped) updating desktop systems, installing rate limit for a few kinds of traffic, blocking fraud SRC addresses. But, if someone installed numerous restrictive filters (for example, forbidding all file sharing between desktops, allowing it for servers only) - the cost of such thing could be much more, than the cost of _doing almost nothing_. In many cases, security updates was more dangerous, than worm itself... There are cases, when such _proactive activity_ required. This are cases, when harm of the worm / virus can be unlimited - leaking of the yodlee.com (for example) database can effectively ruin the whole company, so no any cost of prevention looks too high. We can always find another examples. Unfortunately, in 90% cases we just see different kinds of paranoia, which makes cost of _prevention_ higher than cost of possible damage. Alexei Roudnev ----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 1:40 PM Subject: Re: FW: Cost of Worm Attack Protection > > It would be great not to spend any money and let the worms run their course. But when you have to deal with downed production at the cost of give or take possibly 500K per attack it unfortunately cannot be done without one loosing their job. The last worm that spread throughout enterprises mentioned having to reinstall the entire server. If that server is a critical production server what would you do? > > Would spending 100K prevent the attack, very likely not. Would spending 100K help track the offending machine(s) and enable someone to remove them from the network until they are serviced, possibly? > Would this help keep production rolling, possibly? > > The installation management and response time needed to implement an IDS solution does have to be investigated to see if the ROI comes in line with the cost. The ROI would need to include any saved downtime. If someone has this information please pass it along. > > A nicer solution would be an operating system that does not need a critical patch every other week, due to it's exploitable nature. > > Yes I am dreaming :) > > Kim > > > > > From: "Braun, Mike" <[email protected]> > > Date: 2003/11/13 Thu PM 03:02:59 EST > > To: "'[email protected]'" <[email protected]> > > Subject: FW: Cost of Worm Attack Protection > > > > > > The old saying of "you get what you pay for" seems to be well directed when > > it comes to this topic. If you're willing to allocate $100K more than you > > currently spend to mitigating the effects from Worms and Viruses, I'm sure > > you will have some increased success. If you allocate 1 mill more, your > > success will increase substantially. The true cost really boils down to > > what you are trying to protect, such as how many servers, users, network > > segments, and other critical devices you are willing to encompass in your > > protection plan. Also, you may be able to mitigate the cost by using the > > functionality built into devices you may already own. A good protection > > schema needs to address the use and benefits from the following: Firewalls, > > VPN tunnels and policies, HIDs, NIDs, Antivirus software, and a good network > > security policy that grows with your network. You may already have most of > > this in place and need only a little extra funding allocated to give you the > > protection level you feel comfortable with. > > > > If you're looking for pricing on each component, they will vary widely > > depending on the brand and model you go with. You should shop around for > > components that suit your budget. An example of this price variance can be > > found by looking at a Net Forensics project priced at $500k compared to a > > similar solution going will Network Intelligence at $40K. The Network > > Intelligence solution may not have all the functionality offered by Net > > Forensics, but it may be enough for your needs. > > > > Best of luck in fighting this ever growing problem, > > > > Mike Braun > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] > > Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 7:59 AM > > To: Joel Jaeggli > > Cc: [email protected] > > Subject: Re: Cost of Worm Attack Protection > > > > > > > > Good point - then what is the cost of attempting to mitigate or handle > > attacks vs. doing nothing? > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: Joel Jaeggli <[email protected]> > > Date: Thursday, November 13, 2003 10:14 am > > Subject: Re: Cost of Worm Attack Protection > > > > > I haven't seen any network or customer site that has protected > > > itself from > > > worms... only mitigated them. > > > > > > joelja > > > > > > On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 [email protected] wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I was hoping to get some estimates from folks on the costs of > > > defending> networks from various worm attacks. It is a pretty > > > wide open question, > > > > but if anyone has some rough estimates of what it costs per edge, > > > > manpower vs. equipment costs, or any combination thereof it > > > would be of > > > > great assistance. We are doing some simulations of attack and > > > defense> strategies and looking for some good metrics to plug into > > > a cost benefit > > > > model. We'd be happy to share the results if anyone is > > > interested as > > > > well. > > > > > > > > Thanks in advance, > > > > > > > > sean > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > ------- > > > Joel Jaeggli Unix Consulting > > > [email protected] > > > GPG Key Fingerprint: 5C6E 0104 BAF0 40B0 5BD3 C38B F000 35AB > > > B67F 56B2 > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > "MMS <firstam.com>" made the following > > annotations on 11/13/2003 12:03:21 PM > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- > > "THIS E-MAIL MESSAGE AND ANY FILES TRANSMITTED HEREWITH, ARE INTENDED SOLELY FOR THE USE OF THE INDIVIDUAL(S) ADDRESSED AND MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL, PROPRIETARY OR PRIVILEGED INFORMATION. IF YOU ARE NOT THE ADDRESSEE INDICATED IN THIS MESSAGE (OR RESPONSIBLE FOR DELIVERY OF THIS MESSAGE TO SUCH PERSON) YOU MAY NOT REVIEW, USE, DISCLOSE OR DISTRIBUTE THIS MESSAGE OR ANY FILES TRANSMITTED HEREWITH. IF YOU RECEIVE THIS MESSAGE IN ERROR, PLEASE CONTACT THE SENDER BY REPLY E-MAIL AND DELETE THIS MESSAGE AND ALL COPIES OF IT FROM YOUR SYSTEM." > > ============================================================================ == > > > > >
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