Re: HECVAT Security Assessment Question

[Brad Judy <brad.judy () CU EDU>]

This is the reason I have generally avoided the approach of “you must complete my form” and I have instead approached 
vendor assessments as “I’ll accept a variety of reasonable documentation and if you have none, then I’ll ask that you 
complete something like CSA/HECVAT.”  

Even in an RFP I’ll typically ask for them to provide one of a variety of security assessments (self-assessed or 
third-party) and additionally ask questions that are specific to the service or related risks. I have not yet been 
putting something as long as CSA/HECVAT within an RFP as it could easily amount to more security related questions than 
functional ones.

Brad Judy
 
Information Security Officer
Office of Information Security
University of Colorado 
1800 Grant Street, Suite 300
Denver, CO  80203
Office: (303) 860-4293
Fax: (303) 860-4302
www.cu.edu <http://www.cu.edu/>
 

 



On 7/13/17, 9:29 AM, "The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv on behalf of Rob Milman" <SECURITY () LISTSERV 
EDUCAUSE EDU on behalf of rob.milman () SAIT CA> wrote:

    Hi everyone,
    
    I've been watching this thread with interest. We made the decision to begin using the HECVAT this spring to replace 
our SaaS assessment that was just not detailed enough. I current am working on 5 different engagements with cloud 
service providers and 3 of them have outright refused to complete the HECVAT. The other 2 are being evaluated and they 
haven't got back to me yet.
    
    Some of the vendors that have rejected the HECVAT have provided their own documentation, but I can find no evidence 
of a third-party assessment. We have gone as far as telling the institution that we cannot support the cloud vendor as 
a risk assessment was not completed, the institution has gone ahead and signed contracts with these vendors anyway, 
without our acceptance.
    
    Has anyone else had vendors refuse to complete the HECVAT? What has been the result? Is there a lighter version of 
the HECVAT that you would be willing to share?
    
    Our institution is beginning to question the hard line we have taken with regards to cloud vendors, we may have to 
stand down.
    
    Thanks,
    
    Rob
    
    -----Original Message-----
    From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of José 
A. Domínguez
    Sent: Monday, July 10, 2017 4:45 PM
    To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
    Subject: Re: [SECURITY] HECVAT Security Assessment Question
    
    Hello Sue. Your approach seems similar to what I am trying to do at UO.
    I am engaging the office of Purchasing and Contracting Services and working on adopting HECVAT as part of their 
evaluation criteria for vendor selection. That way it's part of what the vendors need to do if they want our business 
and it's part of what departments need to look for when engaging businesses. The question is agreeing on what kind of 
cloud service solution requires what level of evaluation. I'll let you know how successful this approach is.
    
    José.
    
    
    On 7/7/17 5:14 AM, Sue McGlashan wrote:
    > Hi Mark
    >
    > You derailed the conversation exactly into what I was talking about yesterday within our team - speediness vs 
effectiveness. We need to be both effective and efficient, but effective does take time. Please see more below, and 
thank you for opening the conversation.
    >
    >     >   At Brown, we are trying to move towards adopting HECVAT/HECVAT Lite for all vendor assessments as well. 
So far, we haven’t run into the IBM scenario yet and we had our first instance of a vendor (Workfront) who had already 
seen it and turned it around almost instantly, thanks for whomever forged the way for us!
    >       
    >      >   If I could derail this conversation slightly, I’d be really interested in learning what your staffing to 
support vendor assessments looks like. We seem to be continuously trying to play catch up with assessments 
    >
    > Yes, we play a game of catch up all of the time, and any delayed 
    > projects seem to arrive in the middle of a high volume of projects, 
    > not when we had planned time to complete them  … we all know this 
    > story
    > - and I am sure you all also have internal projects, and you probably also need to look at both privacy and 
security.
    >
    >     > and it’s taking way more time than the cycles we have allotted. A vast majority of our time seems to be 
tied up in chasing down information and getting people to actually respond! 
    >
    > Agreed about the time, and to make it worse, sometimes the response is poor, so although a questionnaire is 
provided, it is filled in by marketing, or else the vendor has a weak security team - i.e. we cannot use it as is.  
    >
    > Solution? -  Please let me know if you have other suggestions.    I am adjusting our process - we need a better 
intake, so that as vendor responses comes in, we quickly review the supplied documentation, and immediately contact the 
vendor if the information is inadequate. This should reduce the overall time per project, but it will interrupt current 
projects. I am hoping for a longer-term win.
    >
    >     > Although in some cases, wading through the reams of documentation from a vendor can take significant time 
as well. At present, our team of two-part time people (very part time on paper for at least one of these anyways) seems 
to be consistently trying to do contract reviews and security assessments on just North of 20 contracts concurrently. 
I’m trying to figure out if we are just hugely inefficient, we are attempting to be too detailed in our reviews, or we 
are truly understaffed. Are we the only ones in this situation? Anyone have a better model?
    >      > Mark
    >
    > Overall, it takes time!  I am looking at how we can more efficiently complete an assessment, but I do not want to 
change to a check box approach since we have discovered some concerns that such an approach would not have.  However, 
when I asked the team to be more efficient, that was interpreted as rushing the work, resulting in the need to 
re-review some of the assessment.
    >
    > No, you are not the only ones in this situation.
    > If we decide an assessment must be completed, we should be thorough.
    > Yes, I think if we are to do all of the assessments, we will need more staff. (but e.g. workfront - hopefully in 
the longer term we will be able to share the results of our security reports/assessments, so we are also not each 
individually reviewing each vendor).
    >
    > But could we triage better?  Probably.
    >
    > We are working towards a self-assessment for some smaller internal applications, followed by providing an 
application vulnerability scan, and random full assessments. This idea evolved from listening to talks at the Educause 
conference.
    >
    > Thanks
    > Sue McGlashan
    >  
    >    
    >    
    >     
    >