The theme for this year’s SecCon was “Building on a Foundation of Security.” The breadth of topics discussed that are relevant to being a trusted vendor and producing trustworthy products is quite significant. Naturally many of the discussions revolved around the Cisco Secure Development Lifecycle (CSDL), Cisco’s approach to building secure products and solutions. As Graham Holmes mentioned in a recent blog post, CSDL takes a layered approach, with one of the key components being the security of the underlying operating system. As a standard part of the development process, Cisco’s product teams implement a comprehensive set of CSDL requirements to harden the base OS. These requirements were created not only by leveraging Cisco’s significant in-house security expertise, but also drawing from best practices available in the industry.

In keeping with the theme of SecCon 2012, we have decided to publish these foundational OS security requirements to enhance the knowledge of our partner ecosystem, and advance the industry as a whole. As of today, Cisco is releasing two documents that have been an integral part of CSDL: “Linux Hardening Recommendations For Cisco Products” and “Product Security Baseline Linux Distribution Requirements.” Read More »

Tags: cisco-seccon-2012, CSDL, Linux, product security, SecCon, security

Cisco SecCon 2012 brought together hundreds of engineers, live and virtually, from Cisco offices around the globe with one common goal: to share their knowledge and learn best practices about how to increase the overall security posture of Cisco products.

It is amazing to see how many definitions the word “hack” has out on the Internet. Just look at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack. In short, the word “hack” does not always mean a “bad” or “malicious” action.

I’ve had the opportunity and honor to present at SecCon several times, 2012 being my fourth year. My session this year was titled “Cisco PSIRT Vulnerability Analysis: What Has Changed Since Last SecCon”. As you probably already know (or might have guessed), I’m part of Cisco’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT). During my talk I went over an analysis of the vulnerabilities that were discovered, driven to resolution, and disclosed during this past year, as well as lessons learned from them. I also highlighted several key accomplishments Cisco has achieved during the last few years. For example, Cisco now has the ability to correlate and patch third-party software vulnerabilities. Additionally, we have grown Cisco’s Secure Development Lifecycle (CSDL) into a robust, repeatable and measurable process. As Graham Holmes mentioned in a recent blog post:

Our development processes leverage product security baseline requirements, threat modeling in design or static analysis and fuzzing in validation, and registration of third-party software to better address vulnerabilities when they are disclosed. In the innermost layer of our products, security is built-in to devices in both silicon and software. The use of runtime assurance and protection capabilities such as Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), Object Size Checking, and execution space protections coupled with secure boot, image signing, and common crypto modules are leading to even more resilient products in an increasingly threatening environment. Read More »

Tags: Cisco Security, cisco-seccon-2012, CSDL, intellishield, product security, psirt, SecCon, security, third party software

Having recently wrapped up the 5^th Annual Cisco SecCon Conference, I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you what Cisco SecCon is and the benefits to our products and you, our customers. With that, let’s start with a brief overview!

What is Cisco SecCon?

SecCon is a security conference for Cisco engineers that focuses on two critical elements for a healthy corporate Security intelligence: 1) expansion of knowledge for all and 2) building a sense of community. We allocate two days for intensive hands-on security training, and then we provide two general session days to discuss a variety of security topics including:

• Cisco Secure Development Lifecycle
• Best practices for security test suites
• Cutting-edge cryptography
• Implementation challenges
• Current threat landscape
• Vulnerability trends

Read More »

Tags: Cisco Secure Development Lifecycle, Cisco Security, cisco-seccon-2012, CSDL, product security, SecCon, security

Over the past month, many of the Cisco Security Blog contributors have provided their view on Cybersecurity and its implications for customer network designs, architectures, protections, and services. These, in aggregate, stress what we all know: security is best achieved using a layered defense that includes securing endpoints, hosts, and network and services infrastructures. Cisco adds some unique layers to this defense, which stems from our experience developing capabilities and solutions that meet the needs of critical infrastructure and government networks. We are applying these lessons, capabilities, and our layered defensive approach to critical business infrastructures, as well.

Cisco takes a “build-in security” approach to provide device, system, infrastructure, and services security, and is the basis of the development approach that we use called the Cisco Secure Development Lifecycle (CSDL). Our development processes leverage product security baseline requirements, threat modeling in design or static analysis and fuzzing in validation, and registration of third-party software to better address vulnerabilities when they are disclosed. In the innermost layer of our products, security is built-in to devices in both silicon and software. The use of runtime assurance and protection capabilities such as Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), Object Size Checking, and execution space protections coupled with secure boot, image signing, and common crypto modules are leading to even more resilient products in an increasingly threatening environment.

Read More »

Tags: CSDL, cyber-security-month-2012, secure development, Secure Development Lifecycle

More and more, we ask technology to play critical roles in our businesses, and our lives.  Pondering that for a moment, that dependance (versus use), requires careful thought on how much we trust that the technology is working as we want it, only as we want it, and nothing more.  For many businesses or governments, testing via FIPS or Common Criteria increases that confidence level, combined with detailed operational plans to ensure running the services after they are installed is going correctly. For many technology vendors, innovation and commitment, can help here.

Our commitment at Cisco, and our innovation, for trustworthiness have never been stronger than they are today.  Nearly 5 years ago, we started down a road which ultimately led to Cisco’s Secure Development Lifecycle (CSDL), and in our most recent FY12 SEC 10-K, acknowledged that work, our secure supply chain work, and our innovation efforts for Secure Boot and Anti-Tamper.  For reference, that 10K, or 2012 Annual Report, is posted here: http://investor.cisco.com/

We foresaw the need for trustworthiness by listening to our customers, and we started early.  Early results are in, and we’ve both reduced externally found security flaws, as well as increased the resiliency for multiple products anti-tamper.  Have we done it on every product? Not yet, although rest assured, that’s exactly where we are going. I’ll keep you posted.

Tags: Common Criteria, CSDL, CSO, fips, John Stewart, secure development, secure supply chain, trustworthy systems