Building Security In vs Auditing

[James.McGovern at thehartford.com (McGovern, James F (HTSC, IT))]

Thanks for your response but I am not sure that it got at the essence of my thinking, so let me ask some additional 
questions.

1. I haven't gotten a sense that a bakeoff matters. For example, if I wanted to write a simple JSP application, it 
really doesn't matter if I use Tomcat, Jetty, Resin or BEA from a functionality perspective while they may each have 
stuff that others don't, at the end of the day they are all good enough. So is there really that much difference in 
comparing say Fortify to OunceLabs or whatever other tools in this space exist vs simply choosing which ever one wants 
to cut me the best deal (e.g. site license for $99 a year :-) ?

2. Continuing with your plumber analogy, usually you either are referred by someone who had a particular experience 
with a vendor or you simply choose whoever is available from the Yellow Pages that will show up when you want them to 
and will charge what you think the best value is. My circle doesn't include the first and I would like to become 
smarter about the second in that should I choose someone knowledgable from Accenture, TCS, Cognizant or other firms I 
am familiar with or would I be doing myself a huge disservice and should instead focus on a boutique.

-----Original Message-----
From: Paco Hope [mailto:paco at cigital.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 9:33 AM
To: McGovern, James F (HTSC, IT); sc-l at securecoding.org
Subject: RE: [SC-L] Building Security In vs Auditing


> Gary, I would love a little refinement of the benefits to badnessometers.
> Let's say I get a tool to tell me something I already suspect is wrong,
> what percentage of the population are better than they expected?

I won't speak for Gary, but working a few doors down I have seen a few of the same things he has.

Occasionally developers internally run free tools and surrepetitiously fix problems that the tools find (this happens 
in some cultures where management is particularly antagonistic towards security as a first class concern). In those 
unusual instances, I could see the results of a badnessometer coming out better than expected. Management would 
perceive that such things had never been run, and would be pleasantly surprised to learn that the sky might not be 
falling. Other than that, few people run a tool for the first time and see results better than they expected. Tools 
codify all manner of stuff that your developers almost certainly do not know how to check for (and if they do, they 
probably don't have time).

> Is it better to do such a badness test by doing a POC with one of the
> tool vendors in this space or do I get additional lift by going with
> a consulting firm in this regard?

I'm a consultant, take that as implied bias. But, I think you do get lift, and here's my analogy. Consider yourself a 
handy guy around the house who is going to do something moderately complicated, like redo a whole bathroom. You can buy 
all the tools and read all the books on how to do it for a lot less money than hiring a contractor to do the whole 
thing.  There's some pretty specialized tools in plumbing, though, and they're tools you probably haven't used more 
than once or twice. Do you gain some extra insight into the use of those tools by hiring someone experienced to assist 
on the complicated parts? I think so. That someone experienced will come in, help you wield the unfamiliar tool, show 
you some things that he has experienced, and get you through the difficult parts. Then you, being the handy guy you 
are, are left to finish the bathroom, doing things you know how to do well.

I think this analogy holds with a lot of the tools in security. You learn a lot by getting the experience someone 
brings, assuming you get a good someone. We, for example, have run a bunch of tools on a lot of different code bases. 
We know which rules tend to be alarmist and which ones are really important if they fire. Tool vendors won't give you 
that objectivity on their own tool, and some of the sales engineers don't have the insight into their own tool to know 
which warnings are just noise and which warnings are a big deal. A consultant can help you have a bake-off between 
tools, whereas a tool vendor typically lacks that objectivity.

Paco



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