LulzSec proves security's no joke

A former CISO and Jericho Forum board member has backed LulzSec for its public penetration tests.

Adrian Seccombe, the SC Magazine US 2010 information security person of the year, said LulzSec raises the profile information security in the general public.

“For IT security professionals, it gives us a benefit as a lot of boardrooms don't want it to be them next," Seccombe said.

“I don't despise these people that create these incidents as long as they are not doing it for economic benefit.

"I don't support black hats at all, but grey hats are doing a good job in creating their future consultancies, in addition to helping create a more secure world."

He said it is dangerous to pretend that an environment is benign as security professionals should be building and developing their world to survive in the deperimeterised environment.

“The game should be unplayable for the grey hats. We are still not designing as if all our systems will always be in a corrosive environment,” he said.

“Frankly we mostly still don't get it. I hope that a dose or two of the grey hat vaccination will persuade security professionals to finally understand they live in a deperimeterised world. So we have to design differently.”

Companies have two options: to hire a white hat to do a penetration test, get a private copy of the results and choose not to manage the established vulnerabilities/ risks; or they are compromised by a grey hat who publishes their findings on the web. What do you think the offending organisation will do now?

“Which option do you choose, if you know you are or will be a customer of that company? My position: security transparency is a good thing,” he said.

“If our systems were more secure grey hats would not find the sport in it. Every game relies on it being playable, security professionals need to make ‘their' game unplayable.”

This article originally appeared at scmagazineuk.com