DLP is dead. (Not yet, but soon)

Ever since Richard Stiennon came out with his "IDS is dead", he started a trend which even he subscribes to by declairing any big technology to be dead. I really believe though that Information Security products go through a cycle.

I was explaining this cycle to Dominic White a couple of weeks back and we were rudely interrupted by the meeting that we were in fact attending. Had I managed to finish then maybe he would be able to answer the question he asks on his blog. (This is also assuming that he agrees with me, which is not a foregone conclusion.)

The first part to any Information Technology solution is to slide the technology in making the least amount of pain for users and fixing the maximum amount of problem.

Example - Firewalls back in the old days were open by default and as problems were detected, the Admin would close ports and fix routes until the problems were gone. I call this Generation 1. This worked fine until the admin was too much and firewalls started being configured closed by default and opened as needed (Generation 2). I think that the third generation of this is "closed by default, opened for business reasons". We may think we are there but we are not really.

If you use a tool like websense or surfcontrol to control web browsing then you'll be at Generation 1 for browsing. Antivirus is Generation 1. Email is Generation 1.

I believe that we will see a jump to Generation 3 for all of these tools but the uptake will be very slow.

Generation 3 is where every action that someone takes has a strict business reason. A user sends an order to a supplier. The email system knows who the user is and whether they should be ordering something or not. Based on that - the email goes through.

Does this sound like some sort of workflow application? Bingo!

Now, consider DLP and DRM...
DLP is Generation 1 - allow everything and block bad things from happening. DRM is there too - let your staff decide what restrictions to put? Doesn't work. Put them together and you get closer to Generation 2 (assuming that you are prety tough with your DLP rules - otherwise - why waste your time?). Generation 3 is where things get interesting - Dave in finance creates a document and lables it "financial results". Workflows are built up automatically around the document and are enforced as such:

The file server is configured to allow only Finance people to access document. Auditors can open the document but make no changes. The firewall will not allow the document out of the organisation, mail server will not allow the document sent out. The antivirus (horrible word - very Generation 1.. lets use "application handler" for Gen 2+) will only allow certain programs like excel to access the document. Anything else is blocked and an alert is fired up.

At a certain date the document is "allowed" to be sent to the communications department who can't make any changes.

You may have a DLP box watching what is happening. You'll certainly have a box with policies and workflows on it (I have a feeling Microsoft want to control this) but everything from smartphones, routers, switches, mail servers, PCs, programs, databases will be "process-aware".

DLP will become part of the "defense in depth" solution but everything will have content protection built in. Welcome to the future.

Thinking out the box

I am going to predict the future of the WWW and how Information Security will have to adapt in the next few years.

This will take some time to secure and will take some time to get accepted but this is (IMHO) coming so brace yourselves. Life is going to get very interesting, especially for the Information Security guys out there.

This is actually not a new concept - Novell and Sun were working on these ideas about 15 years ago but the world and the Internet were not yet ready. They are now or, at least, they soon will be.

WEB 1.0
This is the Internet as we know it. HTML with some scripting for the pretty factor. Some media added in. Not much interaction. Security is easy here. Make sure that no wiggly things make it from the web onto your network. Make sure that users don't visit sites that waste time and shock people.

Web 2.0
This is the big catchword but I don't think we are where we should be. Web 2.0 is a taste of things to come but we are still chained to web 1.0 thinking. Information is swopped but format and location of information are still king. XML is just starting to come into its own and information is starting to become self-aware. The same information can be represented in totally different ways on different pages but the tools are new and websites are built around specific purposes. Sites with open APIs like Facebook are starting to take hold. Security is starting to become difficult - we have to make sure that internal data doesn't become external data.

Web 3.0
This is the new buzzword but I think it is merely more extreme web 2.0. Early examples of this are Yahoo Pipes, facebook's API etc. Sites with open tools to manage information. Information flows and is not bound to a certain site, location or format. Information Centric Security becomes key here. I think that the tools have not been developed or have not been properly developed.

Web 4.0
Cloud computing. This has been around for a while but it will soon come into its own. Combine GMail, Google Reader and technology like AJAX (of course), Google Gears and Mozilla Prism. I'm sure that Microsoft and Yahoo etc all have their own versions of the above and there will probably be some small niche players too.

Keep all the above free (with advertising) and you get a very useful and smart Office Suite that allows for collaboration and features such as backup and works wherever you are. This is exciting stuff but the assumption is that your data will be safe.

This is a bad assumption. This is Information Security's next headache. The problem with this is that like wireless and portable devices and USBs and the Internet etc etc.. cloud computing will happen. Businesses will need to do it and they will do it. We need to make it secure. Applications such as Microsoft Office etc are already terminally ill, it is just a matter of time...

The next race between Microsoft and Google and Apple will be in this space. I believe that the winner will be the one who can ensure the security of the information stored on their network.

Of course, cloud computing is a walk in the park compared to what will be next:

Web 5.0
This is where it all gets mad. Think Web 4.0 mixed with P2P such as Skype and Bit-torrent. Add in a bit of virtualisation. Your data is hosted on 100 different people's personal machines. In exchange you host 1000 people's data on your machine. A piece of your company's still-to-published annual results are split up between a mac in Japan, an iphone in brazil, 3 pcs in the US and a linux server in the UK. It is xored with Bill Gates's personal phone list and another 6 people have spare copies. If the UK box falls off the Internet then another box picks up where it left off. Processing is done by a further 3 machines, one in Namibia and 2 in China. Each time you access your data the communication takes a different route bouncing off 10 machines between you and all the places that your data is. At any one time you have no idea where your information is. Information Security becomes part of the network - all files have to be encrypted and there are numerous copies of it.