Re: [cacao] Preventative Action

[Andrew Storms <storms@newcontext.com>]

HeyÂBret

I read those in the doc and was the source of my question. I read that definition of Preventative Action and asked myself what is the difference between prevention and mitigation. Harking back to my CISSP days, we typically used risk managementÂterms of: accept, mitigate or remediate.

So I attempted to find the uniquenessÂofÂPreventative by making a quick matrix which used the examples in the docs. I was hoping it would help to better defineÂPreventative.

I just want to be more clear withÂPreventative Action and see if we can provide some clarification. I think an example would be helpful. If we say that Mitigative and Remediative essentially happen after we learn of a potential attack method. AndÂPreventative is more like a hygiene/best practice/configuration change/pro active steps? Is that inline with what youÂare thinking?

On Tue, Feb 4, 2020 at 11:40 AM Bret Jordan <bret.jordan@broadcom.com> wrote:

Andrew,

I think it is important that we all use the same definitions for things. I have called these out the documents to help in this regards. I have heard many seasoned security analysts and security architects use these terms incorrectly. Â

From the requirements document:

Investigative Action - This is an action that is used to gather information relevant to the construction or modification of cyber security playbooks. This includes gathering of information about a possible incident, problem, attack, or compromise. In some cases, an investigative action could require changes to the systems, networks or application behaviors in order to facilitate a deeper understanding of the investigation and resultant potential response.

Mitigative Action - This is an action that is used to respond to problems that can occur from an incident, problem, attack, or compromise. This is often done when a remediative action is not currently possible. For example, when a system patch is not yet available, one might deploy compensating controls such as moving the system into a sandbox virtual lan (vlan) or deploying more stringent firewall rules.Â

Remediative Action - This is an action that is often used with a goal of eradicating an issue, problem, attack, or compromise on one or more systems that have been determined to be compromised or involved in the particular event.

Preventative Action - This is an action that is used to help ensure that an issue, problem, attack, or compromise does not happen in the first place. In some cases, preventative actions may overlap with certain mitigative and remediation actions.

So a preventativeÂaction could be likeÂdeploying the CIS Top20 security controls. Or could be deploying a block on the firewall for theÂnext HeartBleed before you getÂcompromised.Â

Thanks,

Bret

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On Feb 4, 2020, at 10:46 AM, Andrew Storms <storms@newcontext.com> wrote:

I'd like some help in better understanding the Preventative action type.

What is unique to a Preventative action that is different from Remediative or Mitigative? I recognize that there is some overlap, however it would be great to have 1 example to demonstrateÂthe uniquenessÂofÂPreventative that would qualify it as needing its own action type.

In order to try and get my head around this, I did a quick matrix of the current examples and mapped them to each action type. What I'm not seeing is a use case where Preventative would not have already been categorized as either mitigative or preventative.

Does anyone have a good and unique example for Preventative?

	Known Threat	Blocking Rules	Affect Policies	Blackhole	Sinkhole	Blacklist	Patch
Investigative	Maybe	N	N	N	N	N	N
Mitigative	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Remediative	Y	Y	Y				Y
Preventative	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y

Thanks

-A

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Andrew Storms VP of Security Services PÂÂ707-477-4335 ÂÂ

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Andrew Storms VP of Security Services PÂÂ707-477-4335 ÂÂ