Re: [PEN-TEST] Evaluating Auditors Abilities

[Steve <steve () SECURESOLUTIONS ORG>]

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I hate to say it but I agree with some of Derrick's findings.  In a
past employment situation, I found the company (I won't name them but
they are a big 5) that we used for IT Security Audits spend more
time/money on things that turned out to be non-issues.  I even saw
one case where some "kid" walked into a banking client armed with a
copy of a popular scanning tool, ran the scan, printed the report and
handed it over along with a bill.  Ask him to explain the report of
the false positives and he couldn't.

Its clear that companies need to do their homework before hiring
someone to do an audit.  I would recommend looking at the potential
auditor as a whole, who they employ, and what discoveries/advisories
they have released.  See if they can provide references and don't be
fooled by the marketing machines of the bigger companies.  Some of
the most talented people work for smaller organizations.

Regards;


Steve Manzuik
Moderator - Win2K Security Advice

Security Analyst - Bindview RAZOR
http://razor.bindview.com

- -------------------------------------------

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Penetration Testers [mailto:PEN-TEST () SECURITYFOCUS COM]On
> Behalf Of Derrick
> Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2000 10:46 PM
> To: PEN-TEST () SECURITYFOCUS COM
> Subject: [PEN-TEST] Evaluating Auditors Abilities
>
>
> Dear Pen-Testers,
>
>       Recently I underwent something that had me thinking about
> Security Auditing
> companies and others (Big accounting firms that offer a side
> service of auditing). Management decided that we needed to be
> audited by an outside firm, which I am in full favor of. The
> problem came about in what an un-named auditor did. Firewalls tend
> to cause false positives in
> some tests
> and other anomalies that many auditors may not be aware of. So they
> performed this audit which we did pick up and were aware of. What
> happened next is what baffles me. The auditors did not understand
> the results that nmap and other tools gave them. Near the end of
> the business day they contact management proclaiming they have
> found numerous security
> issues and
> even some backdoors in our network. After a long couple of days of
> testing we found none of these issues were correct, and we then
> spent
> many hours and
> several meetings explaining that the firm hired didn't seem to know
> what they were doing. Management made the default comment of "We
> are
> paying them
> a lot so they must be right, fix these problems". After several
> days of explaining why they results were wrong and verifying the
> network
> we came out
> to show that the auditors did in fact improperly interpret the
> results.      The end result is management walks away wondering if they
> got ripped off or
> if we were just trying to cover problems. It also caused a lot of
> overtime and extra work for us to explain and prove the network to
> management. So the
> end questions are these.
>
> How can companies decide which auditors really do a decent job
> and are worth
> their value ?
> Are there any certifications or Industry groups out there or on
> the horizon
> that will evaluate and endorse auditors ?
> What is the best approach from a Network Admin position to counter
> end results delivered by auditors if they seem to be in error ?
> Has anyone else been through this, and is destined to get worse
> before getting better ?
>
> Thanks for any thoughts or comments,
Derrick

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