Awareness Month

October has been national Breast cancer Awareness Month for the last 25 years. For the last 5 years, it has also been the national Cybersecurity Awareness Month. I don't know how these things get set, but it seemed to me there were a couple common threads going on.

Both are major problems for our society. One is a condition when cells replicate uncontrollably, the other a premeditated malicious digital attack. In 2009, there are 193,000 new breast cancer cases expected. My mother is a breast cancer survivor, thanks to early detection, great doctors and divine will. And we all likely know someone who is a cyber-security attack survivor: after all, there are 339 million victims of data loss and breaches (see: Data Loss DB and Privacyrights Clearinghouse).

When it comes to breast cancer, early detection is the key; there are even earlier technologies than the mammogram. But, what's the corollary for cybersecurity? Testing of course! Testing of our knowledge of threats and best practices. And testing of our defenses: whether individual products, or layered defense architectures and policies.

Unfortunately, there is far too little testing going on. Erecting defenses and not periodically evaluating their effectiveness is a far too common practice. Requirements of certain compliance regimes like PCI DSS are helping drive awareness and require at least some level of testing. However, there seems to be a common perception that you can 'set it and forget it.' For technologies like IPS and anti-malware that require constant updating, nothing can be further from the truth.