Re: FW: Cost of Worm Attack Protection
I guess the hypothetical would be if you were in charge of security for an AS what would be the cost to put a best-effort worm mitigation system in. The second question being how would you scale that cost with the size of the AS. Maybe it is a case that there is not a best practice to fix a cost to, too much variability in the market and theories of how best to defend, if defend at all. Just figured it would be prudent to ask before we made something up - usually not such a good idea. ----- Original Message ----- From: kgraham@rogers.com Date: Thursday, November 13, 2003 4:40 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" <MBraun@firstam.com> Date: 2003/11/13 Thu PM 03:02:59 EST To: "'nanog@merit.edu'" <nanog@merit.edu> Subject: FW: Cost of Worm Attack Protection
The old saying of "you get what you pay for" seems to be well
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
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: sgorman1@gmu.edu [mailto:sgorman1@gmu.edu] Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 7:59 AM To: Joel Jaeggli Cc: nanog@merit.edu 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 <joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu> 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 sgorman1@gmu.edu 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
directed when protection> schema needs to address the use and benefits from the following: Firewalls, 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 joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu GPG Key Fingerprint: 5C6E 0104 BAF0 40B0 5BD3 C38B F000 35AB B67F 56B2
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On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 sgorman1@gmu.edu wrote:
I guess the hypothetical would be if you were in charge of security for an AS what would be the cost to put a best-effort worm mitigation system in.
What kind of AS? An AS used by a military organization that has authority over its users and can through them in the brig for failing to follow commands and policy? An AS used by a commercial enterprise that has authority over its users and can fire them for failing to follow commands and policy? An AS used by a university enterprise that has authority over its users and can expell them for failing to follow commands and policy? An AS used by a service provider that has authority over its users and can terminate their network access for failing to follow commands and policy? An AS used by a public agency that is required by law to permit all citizens access to information until proven beyond reasonable doubt the access was misused?
participants (2)
-
Sean Donelan -
sgorman1＠gmu.edu