Sep 21 2010

ArcSight offers $49.00 entry-level audit logging package

Category: Security ComplianceDISC @ 9:25 am
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Security Log Management: Identifying Patterns in the Chaos

Arcsight offer $49 entry level logging solution – a monumental change from the SIEM vendors, since they were trouncing their clients at price of 200K and up.

Data security and compliance specialist ArcSight has taken the wraps off a slew of product updates – Enterprise Security Manager 5.0, Identityview 2.0 and Logger 5.0 – with the offer of a $49.00 version of Logger, its universal log management software.

For more detail on the article: ArcSight offers $49.00 entry-level audit logging package

Tags: ArcSight, Consultants, General and Freelance, Identityview 2.0, Logger 5.0, Security, Security event manager


Jul 05 2010

Risky business

Category: hipaaDISC @ 11:02 pm
Information Security Wordle: NIST HIPAA Securi...
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By Mary Mosquera

Last year’s HITECH Act toughened the rules and enforcement penalties health information handlers must follow to protect patient privacy.

Under the new policy regime, providers will have to pay more attention to the confidentiality and safety of patient information as they move more of their operations toward electronic health record-keeping.

Without sound security policies and practices, privacy “will be just a principle,” said Sue McAndrew, deputy director for privacy in the Office of Civil Rights, the Health and Human Services Department office that was given responsibility for health privacy and security policy under the new law.

OCR-draft-guidelines-for-security-risk-analysis

“We want it to be a reality for consumers,” she said at a recent privacy and security conference sponsored by OCR and the National Institute for Standards and Technology.

One of the most basic requirements is that providers must now perform a security assessment, a first step in understanding systems and electronic data over which they are temporary stewards.

OCR recently drafted guidance to help providers and payers figure out what is expected of them in doing a risk assessment. While it might sound onerous, a risk assessment might not be as difficult or costly as some providers might believe, even for small practices, privacy.

“When you say, ‘do a security risk assessment’, people’s eyes glaze over,” said Lisa Gallagher, security director of privacy and security for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. “But really, it’s asking, ‘what are the risk areas?’, ‘how could someone get to it?’ and ‘what controls can you put in place to protect it.’”

In its guidance, OCR said organizations should identify and categorize their data collections, document threats to information that might lead to a disclosure of protected data and check to see if their current security measures are adequate.

“For a small organization, it sounds overwhelming and time-consuming, but in a lot of ways, it’s things that they already do,” said Pat Toth, a computer scientist in NIST’s computer security division.

“What small providers need to do is get an understanding of the framework and break down each step,” she said. “It is something that’s going to be living in their organization, so if they do their categorization and get that right, it will set the correct tone for the rest of the process.”

NIST has developed a quick-start guide, a “Cliff’s Notes” of its security publications detailing its risk management framework and risk assessment, in addition to frequently asked questions, to help providers, especially small practices.

For large organizations, risk management starts in the planning and architecture of systems across the enterprise and system life cycle, Toth said.

Besides a risk assessment, OCR is planning stricter reporting of disclosures of health information when electronic health records are used, even when the disclosure is for treatment and billing purposes. Providers will also have to give the reason for the disclosure. In May, OCR published a request for comments on its rulemaking.

The most effective method of accounting for disclosures is by using automated logging features in electronic health records and other computer systems, according to Mac McMillan, chief executive officer of Cynergistek Inc., an IT security consulting firm.

System logs are used to document and maintain a permanent record of all authorized and unauthorized access to and disclosure of confidential information so providers can recover evidence of that access.

“A lot of the difficulty to get accounting of disclosures in place is because of a lack of industry auditing capabilities,” he said at the OCR and NIST conference. “Most systems don’t have the functionality.” Moreover, IT security folks he works with have logging activated, “but they are still manually digesting them,” McMillan said, adding that manual audits are a time-consuming and imprecise process.

Even so, such practices must now be the order of the day under the new privacy and security framework. “The security rule says wherever you have electronic health information, you need to protect it,” said HIMSS’s Gallagher. “You may not even apply for meaningful use incentives. But if you’re keeping data in electronic form, you have to comply with the security rule.”

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Tags: arra and hitech, Civil and political rights, Computer security, Consultants, Electronic health record, General and Freelance, hipaa security, hitech, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Risk management, Security


May 25 2010

Tips for building security organization

Category: Security organizationDISC @ 5:54 pm

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By: Brian Prince

Businesses have increased expectations on the security team in recent years, sometimes producing a disconnect between what is expected and what the security team can deliver. In a new report, Forrester Research lays out some advice for building an effective security organization.

As IT security has become a bigger part of business discussions, security teams have increasingly shifted their focus from operations to strategic business objectives.

For businesses building their security groups, there needs to be a balance between fulfilling operational and strategic goals, and a new report from Forrester Research offers advice on how businesses can find it.

“In a few cases we found that the strategic aspect of security was so important or was so highlighted in terms of the CISO [chief information security officer] role that the CISO was sometimes moved outside the IT organization, [and] sometimes wasn’t as connected with the operation [of] the IT…[but] much more connected with the business side and the strategy side,” explained Forrester analyst Khalid Kark. “What that does is basically creates an ivory tower for the chief security officers, and then they are not able to operate.”

To avoid that, there are several steps Forrester recommends organizations take. Here are a few of them.

— New Roles: To make your security practice more strategic, add these three positions: a business liaison to advocate for the business unit within the security team and communicate the security perspective to business; the third-party security coordinator to address outsourcing, assessments and cloud computing; and a security engineer focused on working with the enterprise architecture team to build security into the architecture and integrate specific infrastructure security components into the architecture.

— Understand IT security vs. information risk: “Many security organizations fail to get management attention because they’re always focused on the IT security activities, which the business doesn’t understand,” according to the report. “On the other hand, the business understands risk well, and if you articulate those same problems in the risk context, the business is much more likely to react and respond to them.”

— Develop a cross-functional security council: “Focus on ‘who’ not ‘how.’ Forrester has long professed the benefits of a security council, but one thing that is absolutely essential for the success of this council is its composition,” the report continues. “The trick is not to aim for the highest ranking businessperson but the one most interested in security and risk issues who has a reasonable level of visibility in the business. When you have a passionate team working on the security issues, the ‘how’ will be easy to determine.”

— Equip the business to perform risk assessments: “To meet the security and risk obligations effectively, you have to delegate, and risk assessments are ideal for this,” Forrester said. “Provide the checklists and basic training to the business to perform the basic risk assessment tasks so that it takes the pressure off your resources. Make it easy and seamless for the business to incorporate these into its existing processes.”

Complicating things is today’s economic environment in which businesses may be forced to reshuffle or even cut their security personnel. When that happens, organizations may have to refocus their attention from strategic projects and get back to basics, the report noted.

“As security organizations get leaner, delegation, formalized and documented processes, and good monitoring and metrics become key,” said Forrester analyst Rachel Dines, who worked on the report with Kark. “Security organizations don’t need to have direct ownership of all security-related processes, but they do need to monitor and control them.”

How to create a security culture in your organization: a recent study reveals the importance of assessment, incident response procedures, and social engineering … article from: Information Management Journal

Tags: Business, Chief Information Security Officer, Cloud computing, Consultants, Forrester Research, General and Freelance, Information Security, Security