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Cybersecurity In-Depth

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Edge Ask the Experts

4 MIN READ

The Edge



HOW DO WE TRULY MAKE SECURITY 'EVERYONE'S RESPONSIBILITY'?

When everybody is responsible for a task, sometimes nobody takes ownership. Here
are three steps to distribute cybersecurity throughout your organization.
Lenny Zeltser
Chief Information Security Officer, Axonius
November 02, 2023
Source: Panther Media GmbH via Alamy Stock Photo
PDF


Question: How do I make sure the saying "security is everyone's responsibility"
doesn't lead to people feeling like security is nobody's responsibility?



Lenny Zeltser, CISO at Axonius and Faculty Fellow at SANS Institute: Behind that
pithy slogan is the idea that every person in the organization contributes to
its security program. Even employees officially on the security team cannot
safeguard information assets on their own. It's people outside that team who
deliver services, build products, and engage in various business activities that
require making security-related decisions.

However, the diffusion of responsibility principle suggests that people feel
less responsible when they are part of a group, possibly because they think
someone else will take action. The key to combating this is to clarify
expectations, hold people accountable, and establish a personal connection
between the stakeholder and the affected items.




1. CLARIFY EXPECTATIONS

We can use a responsibility matrix, such as RACI, to capture across the entire
organization who should be responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for
specific security-related activities.



Cybersecurity leaders generally design and manage an organization's security
program, so they need to provide security guidance to other employees. Technical
colleagues must incorporate security principles into projects, fix
vulnerabilities, and deploy technology in secure ways. IT teams patch systems
according to risk-based, agreed-upon timelines.

Procurement or legal teams incorporate security reviews of vendors according to
a defined process and include necessary security requirements in contracts. HR
teams screen new hires according to specific background check requirements.

In addition to documenting expectations and speaking to other business units in
their own language, the discussions that lead to creating a responsibility
matrix can surface disagreements or coverage gaps, giving the organization the
opportunity to address them.

Regardless of department, everyone at an organization is responsible for
handling information properly, watching and reporting suspicious activities, and
using established templates, libraries, and standards that incorporate company
security guardrails.




2. ENFORCE ACCOUNTABILITY

Even with best intentions, those whose primary job isn't cybersecurity will
sometimes forget or not follow through on their security-related
responsibilities. To increase the chances that they will, we can use a
combination of three approaches:

 * Enforce security expectations using technology to prevent insecure choices or
   actions. For example, configure user authentication to require two-factor
   authentication (2FA) instead of merely reminding employees to enable 2FA.
 * Implement guardrails against severe risks when people take actions outside
   the boundaries the organization sets as reasonable. For example,
   infrastructure-as-code tooling, such as Terraform, allows users to work
   freely within preapproved modules while letting engineers control the overall
   infrastructure.
 * Monitor for gaps and take action when the right security steps aren't taken.
   Observing security-related activities through log aggregation is a part of
   this, as is continuous compliance monitoring. For instance, to confirm that
   background checks occur, we can query HR and background checking systems to
   detect missed employee screenings.

Of the many security controls, ensuring accountability for patch management is
particularly challenging because this practice often distributes
responsibilities across multiple teams. Software might be patched by DevOps, IT,
developers, external vendors — even end users. To maintain accountability, for
example, the IT team might allow workers to install approved applications that
are not centrally managed, but track when apps are outdated and remind end users
to take action.


3. MAKE IT PERSONAL

Besides communicating expectations and enforcing accountability, another way to
fight the diffusion of responsibility is to establish a personal connection
between the person and the task at hand.

People get accustomed to the systems they use at work. Many start to think of
the company-supplied laptop as "their" laptop. They consider the folders where
they keep work documents as "their" folders and the applications they've
customized as "their" apps. The security team can use this attachment to
highlight the person's connection to such assets, so they're more likely to
remember their related security responsibilities. For example:

 * When end users have patching responsibilities for their laptops, remind
   people that these are their systems. Keeping the laptop in top shape — for
   instance, by rebooting to apply security patches — lets them do their best
   work.
 * When people need to remember to include security in projects or design
   discussions, highlight the benefits of keeping their data secure, which
   they're more likely to achieve by following a security expert's advice.
   Addressing security risks upfront will minimize the chances of a disruption
   to their project.
 * When highlighting the need for colleagues to safeguard data shared with third
   parties, point out that their interactions might be compromised if they don't
   follow the necessary security measures.

When sharing security responsibilities across stakeholders, also point to the
shared business objectives that the organization's personnel are looking to
achieve. To be successful, employees should understand the organization's
business goals and how their security responsibilities can help or hinder the
company in reaching them. By framing security tasks in that context, you're more
likely to establish a security program that does actually make security
everyone's responsibility.

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