Security Architecture

Designed for both management and technical staff, the Campus Architecture and Middleware Planning (CAMP) workshop, "Bridging Security and Identity Management," February 13-15 in Tempe, Arizona, will address practical approaches for addressing issues surrounding three themes:

Mayank Sharma writes about some of the features that Red Hat is rolling out to support SELinux on the desktop. SELinux is an NSA-developed security system for locking down Linux. The new tools are GUI tools which allow end-users to configure, examine and analyse an SELinux system. SELinux is unlikely to be suited to non-technical users and still looks to be a significant administration burden even with the new tools, but it's a must-have for the security conscious.

The benefit of SELinux is twofold. First, it replaces the user-based model with a policy-centric model. Every action, like running an application or reading and modifying data, is controlled by a security policy. Actions that violate the policy are denied. Additionally, SELinux compartmentalizes the various applications and processes running on the system. This not only helps in isolating a break-in, but also confines the damage caused by one compromised service. SELinux plugs into the Linux distribution through the Linux Security Module (LSM) hooks, which are available in the 2.6.x kernel series.

• Leadership actions to achieve accountability
• University-wide communication and security education & training
• Stronger IT security policies
• Risk assessment guidelines and mitigation with focus on both academic and administrative strategies.

Yet another bug / flaw / vulnerability / whatever-you-want-the-call-it has hit Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Much of the ho-ha in the press is about the short-term implications of this and they (and thus presumably their readers) are still not asking questions needed to shed real light on the underlying issues:

 

1. Is there something about browsers that makes them inherently prone to these kinds of security bugs? Yes. There have been a range of bugs with security implications across a wide variety of browser, IE, Opera and Mozilla.
2. Are there well-understood ways to make browsers more secure against software flaws? How? Yes. By separating functionality into units within a framework with clear, sparse, well documented protocols between them and clear security responsibility within the framework. By having extensive review and testing of the framework and regular updates to both the framework and the components within it. By including security features such as the Java sandbox and by using so-called "layer" security model, in which a single flaw doesn't lead to the complete compromise of an entire system.
3. Why aren't these things used now? Some of them are, but there are many design requirements when designing, building and maintaining software, and security has to be balanced against issues such as cost, time-to-market, flexibility, robustness, ease-of-use, backwards compatibility and the availability of third party add-ins. Companies such as Microsoft, Opera and Apple, who all have commercial browser offerings, produce software they think is going to get used in the market by balancing these.

 

UCISA were at the 2006 JISC Conference, touting their Information Security Toolkit:

The UCISA Information Security Toolkit is intended to support UK Higher and Further Education Institutions in producing Information Security policies to address (and to demonstrate that they are addressing) threats to the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information systems for which they are responsible, and to help meet audit requirements. The sections draw heavily on British Standard BS 7799, not least by adopting its structure for control objectives and controls.

Unfortunately it's very much embedded in the UK legislative framework, so only the technical bits will be of much use to those outside the UK. Strangely enough, I spent three days in Blackpool last week at their big annual event and didn't catch up with the toolkit at all, presumably they were all too busy running the event to promote their own documents.

Newsforge is carrying an article by Bruce Byfield entitled "Nine principles of security architecture." While there is nothing new here for those with a background in software engineering or computer science, it's a great no-nonsense introduction for those without a formal software background.