• When seconds count, how long will it take for you to respond?

    06 Dec 2007

    I was listening to Neal Boortz’s radio talk show this morning about the tragedy that occurred at the Omaha mall yesterday. A caller brought up the old saying “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.” This made me think about all the organizations out there who don’t have an IT-centric incident response plan – or at least don’t have one that’s adequate enough to respond to real security threats in a professional manner.

    The thing is, with most networks I see, there are so many technical controls all intertwined yet no system is talking to another. There’s no real event correlation. Add the people complexities on top of this (like everyone being involved yet no truly established leader, responsibilities, or accountability) , and most businesses would never know if a breach happened. Or, they’ll find out several days or weeks too late!

    In the Omaha mall incident, it took police 6 minutes to arrive. By then it was too late. Ask yourself: when seconds count, how long will it take you to respond to a network security incident? You may come to the realization that things need to change.