Vulnerability and Patch Management Dr Thomas Moore Ph

Vulnerability and Patch Management Dr. Thomas Moore, Ph. D. EMBA, BCSP, CISSP, CISM, LCNAD

Vulnerability Management: What, why, how

What is Vulnerability Management? The ability to assess and secure multi-platform environments. – Protection from internal vulnerabilities such as: • • Machines that do not have the latest hot fixes or service packs loaded People who have inappropriate rights to files and directories Users who have no passwords or easily guessed passwords Accounts that have not been disabled once an employee is no longer with the company • Employees who are going against corporate policies and who are sending emails with inappropriate content Protection from external vulnerabilities such as: • Unknown/unsecured IP devices • Open ports • Easily guessed passwords

What is Vulnerability Management? Combination of management and security tools into one product. Examples of Management tools: – – – Automated documentation for disaster recovery Disk space analysis Content scanning (MS Exchange) Mailbox moves (MS Exchange) Change impact analysis (MS SQL) The ability to audit and document your improved security. – Requisite in banking/healthcare/government or any highly regulated industry – Staff augmentation (cost savings)

Why Vulnerability Management According to Gartner: Security continues to be one of the top three issues for CIOs. Windows, IIS and SQL Server are three key areas prone to attack. 2004 was the first time that the security budget for the average enterprise constituted more than 5% of the overall IT budget – showing up on the CIO’s pie chart

Why Vulnerability Management Also according to Gartner, some ways to quantify what you do are: • What percentage of known attacks is the organization vulnerable to? • When was that percentage calculated? • What percentage of company software, people and supplies have been reviewed for security issues? • What percentage of downtime is the result of security problems? • What percentage of nodes in the network are managed by IT?

CIO Magazine/PWC survey, 15 OCT 04: The top three security-related organizational priorities for 2004 were: • • • Raise end user awareness of policy & procedures – 55% Train staff – 41% Develop security policies and standards – 35% This same survey stated that 80% of North American companies used liability as a justification for security investments. Also in the study, security investments are justified due to: • • • Liability/exposure – 69% Regulatory requirements – 53% Revenue impact – 40%

Vulnerability Management: More Insight According to a Summer 2003 Info. Pro Study, the top operational problems or pain points that are driving spending are: * Audit/compliance related – 41% * Technology related – 40% * Standards related – 16% “The numbers are staggering: 82, 094 new vulnerabilities discovered in software and hardware last year. That's up 64 percent from 2001. And in the first quarter of this year alone, the number was 76, 404. The volume of flaws found has been rising at an alarming rate for as long as people have kept statistics. ” --e. Week, Aug. 11, 2003

VM Trends Windows and. NET Magazine (May) 2002 vs. 2003 Study Results • Manage infrastructure still #1! • OS upgrades and security (equal) * “Which of the following would you say is your company's highest priority technology initiative for IT in the next year? ” Hardware upgrades not asked in 2002. *

Why implement a VM solution? • Multiple threats across a complex IT infrastructure • Multiple IT Managers are accountable for specific pieces of the infrastructure, but not all • Native tools do not provide enterprise-level, consolidated assessment and audit • A breach in any one area can affect the entire infrastructure • Organizations must comply with some mandated standards and practices across the enterprise • Time and efficiencies gained

Quick Quiz: 1. How many machines does it take to make a network completely vulnerable? 2. Name three ways a network may be vulnerable?

Risk Management Lifecycle Repeat Certify/ Verify Define Rules Policy Compliance Vulnerability Management Directory Administration & Migration Remediate Publish Audit/ Analyze Assign Notify

Benefits of Lifecycle • Increase audit coverage and frequency • Look at ALL your servers and workstations, ALL the time • Provide policies to measure against • Achieve constant state of audit More Coverage + Complete Policies = Less Risk

Automating the Lifecycle • What percentage of your machines do you audit regularly today? • For best security, how many should you audit? • How often do you complete your audit cycle? • Only an automated solution can: – Audit 100% of machines – Increase your audit frequency – Decrease the time to remediate – Reduce risks AND reduce costs at the same time

Sustainability • Is this more work than you are doing today? – YES!! And it will continue to grow… – Start Now! • With all the other things that are going on, how can I not only create – but maintain a secure environment. – Create Policies – Automate Assessment with software tools (VM) – Remediate (VM) – Evaluate (VM) – Start Over! (VM – using scheduling)

Any pitfalls? Technical: • Depth of reporting (granularity, ad-hoc VS predefined) • Closed loop problem identification and Remediation • Scalability – Agents and their associated maintenance – parallel processing • Lack of centralized management (combination of security, auditing and management tools bundled into product)

Other benefits Business reasons: • 30 -70% reduction in business losses due to downtime • 20 -70% reduction in lost opportunity costs • 20 -50% reduction in mediation, recovery time and associated costs • 10 -30% reduction in lost productivity of non-IT personnel • 1 -2% legal exposure and costs • 10 -30% deployment and maintenance

Testimonials “(VM) solutions reduced our business loss and downtime when NIMDA hit. ” “…put out the 1. 1 million hits that we took. That was huge. ” – Large mid-west financial organization “…vulnerability management solution, we realized more than $1, 000 in ROI. ” – Florida Hospital

New trends Non-credentialed scans • Benefits – Cross-platform – Doesn’t require administrative rights to scan device – Keep up with the latest vulnerabilities – O/S Fingerprinting with version identification – Identify every IP device on the network Total Devices – Managed – Unmanaged Rogue Machines

Patch Management

What is a patch? • A patch, or Hot Fix, is an updated file or set of files (exe, dll, sys, etc) that fixes a software flaw • Two types of patches: – Security patches: Patches that address known security vulnerabilities – Non-security patches: Patches that improve performance or fix functional problems • Service Packs – Contains all previously released security and non-security patches (rollups) – Contains new patches also

Race Against Time Companies have less time to patch software flaws before Internet worms hit their computer systems. Name of Worm Melissa Vulnerability Alert Number of Days Worm Released Dec. 1, '99 65 March 27, '99 Sadmind Dec. 29, '99 496 May 8, '01 Sonic July 18, '00 104 Oct. 30 '00 Bugbear March 29, '01 550 Sept. 30, '02 Code Red June 18, '01 31 July 19 '01 Nimda Aug. 15 '01 34 Sept. 18 '01 Spida April 17, '02 34 May 21, '02 SQL Slammer July 24, '02 185 Jan. 25 '03 Slapper July 30, '02 46 Sept. 14, '02 Blaster/Welchia/Nachi July 16, '03 26 Aug. 11, '03 Witty March 18, '04 2 March 20, '04 Sasser April 13, '04 17 April 30, '04

What is patch management? The process, through which companies… • determine which patches are missing from their environment • deploy those patches to end user machines • verify patches were successfully deployed Automation is a key element of the patch management process. – Computerworld July 2003 “The number of patches released makes it almost imperative to employ automated solutions” –Gartner

Two Key Components Assessment • An analysis to determine whether or not a target machine is patched Packaging & Deployment • The distribution of a patch to a target machine

Deployment Options Patch Assessment Option #1: Packaging Deploy to end-user w/ software deployment Option #2: Deploy to end-user

Patches for OS Platforms Companies have to manually create and keep up to date a spreadsheet illustrating which patch goes for which operating system!

Check in with the experts • The manual process of patching thousands of workstations and servers in an environment is “nearly impossible”. (Computerworld/July 14, 2003) • “Gartner estimates that IT managers now spend up to two hours every day managing patches. ” (Computerworld/July 14, 2003)

Patch Assessment-Considerations • Audit the patch process – Why is patch needed? • Reboot required? • Unsigned driver? • Conduct an in-depth assessment – CVE number – Affected product – Reason patch is missing – Bulletin ID & name

Patch Assessment, how A comprehensive meta document, called MSSECURE. XML, provides the intelligence used to analyze whether or not a patch is installed. It contains security bulletin name and title, detailed product specific security hotfixes, including: – Files in each hotfix package with their file versions and checksums – Registry keys that were applied by the hotfix installation package – Information about which patches supersede other patches – Related Microsoft Knowledge Base article numbers – Third party analysis of threats posed by a patch’s vulnerability – Links to additional information from Bug. Traq, cross references to CVEs, and more

Patch Deployment Patch packaging Wizard-based package creation Decentralized, scalable patch distribution method Packaged using standard technology Patch Deployment Packaged UI Centralized patch depolyment Ad-hoc patch distribution Test deploy

Patch Package – Bat File Creation Example bat file created to install patches. Without Bind. View you would have to create this manually for every workstation and patch.

Solution considerations Agentless Scalability Scheduling Baselining Executive reporting/view Detailed patch analysis Comprehensive pre-patch auditing Post patch verification auditing Flexible/comprehensive patch selection (critical patches) Flexible patch deployment (critical servers) Office CD central source Rollback capabilities

Common Patch Management Tools in Enterprise Environments § Microsoft Baseline Security Advisor (MBSA 1. 0, 1. 2) § Microsoft Software Update Service (SUS) § Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS 2. 0, 2003) § Active Directory Group Policies

Microsoft Baseline Security Advisor (MBSA 1. 0, 1. 2) § Designed for small to medium businesses (less than 500 machines or 1500 users § No centralized management server or reporting services § No distributed agents for data collection § Does not distribute patches § When used with SMS, developers still have to manually create patch packages

Microsoft Software Update Service (SUS) § Corporate windowsupdate. com § Does not evaluate “back office” applications such as Exchange or IIS § No reporting, only basic log analysis § No distributed agents or distribution points

Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS 3. 0) § Does not specifically target security § Software deployments (including patches) must be created manually § No easy way to report on only security patch deployments

Active Directory Group Policies § Not designed for patch deployment § Cannot report on software deployments § Targeted distribution points is cumbersome. You must use multiple GPOs which is not recommended § Cannot monitor software pushes

Q&A