FW: Cost of Worm Attack Protection

Thu Nov 13 21:40:16 UTC 2003

It would be great not to spend any money and let the worms run their course.  But when you have to deal with downed production at the cost of give or take possibly 500K per attack it unfortunately cannot be done without one loosing their job.  The last worm that spread throughout enterprises mentioned having to reinstall the entire server.  If that server is a critical production server what would you do?

Would spending 100K prevent the attack, very likely not.  Would spending 100K help track the offending machine(s) and enable someone to remove them from the network until they are serviced, possibly?  
Would this help keep production rolling, possibly?

The installation management and response time needed to implement an IDS solution does have to be investigated to see if the ROI comes in line with the cost.  The ROI would need to include any saved downtime.  If someone has this information please pass it along. 

A nicer solution would be an operating system that does not need a critical patch every other week, due to it's exploitable nature. 

Yes I am dreaming :)

Kim

> 
> From: "Braun, Mike" <MBraun at firstam.com>
> Date: 2003/11/13 Thu PM 03:02:59 EST
> To: "'nanog at merit.edu'" <nanog at merit.edu>
> Subject: FW: Cost of Worm Attack Protection
> 
> 
> The old saying of "you get what you pay for" seems to be well directed when
> it comes to this topic.  If you're willing to allocate $100K more than you
> currently spend to mitigating the effects from Worms and Viruses, I'm sure
> you will have some increased success.  If you allocate 1 mill more, your
> success will increase substantially.  The true cost really boils down to
> what you are trying to protect, such as how many servers, users, network
> segments, and other critical devices you are willing to encompass in your
> protection plan.  Also, you may be able to mitigate the cost by using the
> functionality built into devices you may already own.  A good protection
> schema needs to address the use and benefits from the following:  Firewalls,
> VPN tunnels and policies, HIDs, NIDs, Antivirus software, and a good network
> security policy that grows with your network.  You may already have most of
> this in place and need only a little extra funding allocated to give you the
> protection level you feel comfortable with.  
> 
> If you're looking for pricing on each component, they will vary widely
> depending on the brand and model you go with.  You should shop around for
> components that suit your budget.  An example of this price variance can be
> found by looking at a Net Forensics project priced at $500k compared to a
> similar solution going will Network Intelligence at $40K.  The Network
> Intelligence solution may not have all the functionality offered by Net
> Forensics, but it may be enough for your needs. 
> 
> Best of luck in fighting this ever growing problem,
> 
> Mike Braun
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sgorman1 at gmu.edu [mailto:sgorman1 at gmu.edu] 
> Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 7:59 AM
> To: Joel Jaeggli
> Cc: nanog at merit.edu
> Subject: Re: Cost of Worm Attack Protection
> 
> 
> 
> Good point - then what is the cost of attempting to mitigate or handle
> attacks vs. doing nothing?
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Joel Jaeggli <joelja at darkwing.uoregon.edu>
> Date: Thursday, November 13, 2003 10:14 am
> Subject: Re: Cost of Worm Attack Protection
> 
> > I haven't seen any network or customer site that has protected 
> > itself from 
> > worms... only mitigated them.
> > 
> > joelja
> > 
> > On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 sgorman1 at gmu.edu wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > I was hoping to get some estimates from folks on the costs of 
> > defending> networks from various worm attacks.  It is a pretty 
> > wide open question,
> > > but if anyone has some rough estimates of what it costs per edge,
> > > manpower vs. equipment costs, or any combination thereof it 
> > would be of
> > > great assistance.  We are doing some simulations of attack and 
> > defense> strategies and looking for some good metrics to plug into 
> > a cost benefit
> > > model.  We'd be happy to share the results if anyone is 
> > interested as
> > > well.
> > > 
> > > Thanks in advance,
> > > 
> > > sean
> > > 
> > 
> > -- 
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------
> > ------- 
> > Joel Jaeggli                 Unix Consulting                
> > joelja at darkwing.uoregon.edu    
> > GPG Key Fingerprint:     5C6E 0104 BAF0 40B0 5BD3 C38B F000 35AB 
> > B67F 56B2
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
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