Security Metrics

The Definitive Guide to Quantifying, Classifying, and Measuring Enterprise IT Security Operations Security Metrics is the first comprehensive best-practice guide to defining, creating, and utilizing security metrics in the enterprise. Using sample charts, graphics, case studies, and war stories, Yankee Group Security Expert Andrew Jaquith demonstrates exactly how to establish effective metrics based on your organization's unique requirements. You'll discover how to quantify hard-to-measure security activities, compile and analyze all relevant data, identify strengths and weaknesses, set cost-effective priorities for improvement, and craft compelling messages for senior management. Security Metrics successfully bridges management's quantitative viewpoint with the nuts-and-bolts approach typically taken by security professionals. It brings together expert solutions drawn from Jaquith's extensive consulting work in the software, aerospace, and financial services industries, including new metrics presented nowhere else. You'll learn how to: . Replace nonstop crisis response with a systematic approach to security improvement . Understand the differences between "good" and "bad" metrics . Measure coverage and control, vulnerability management, password quality, patch latency, benchmark scoring, and business-adjusted risk . Quantify the effectiveness of security acquisition, implementation, and other program activities . Organize, aggregate, and analyze your data to bring out key insights . Use visualization to understand and communicate security issues more clearly . Capture valuable data from firewalls and antivirus logs, third-party auditor reports, and other resources . Implement balanced scorecards that present compact, holistic views of organizational security effectiveness

Andrew Jaquith is the program manager for Yankee Group's Enabling Technologies Enterprise group, with expertise in compliance, security, and risk management. Jaquith advises enterprise clients on how to manage security resources in their environments. He also helps security vendors develop strategies for reaching enterprise customers. Jaquith's research focuses on topics such as security management, risk management, and packaged and custom web-based applications. Jaquith has 15 years of IT experience. Before joining Yankee Group, he cofounded and served as program director at @stake, Inc., a security consulting pioneer, which Symantec Corporation acquired in 2004. Before @stake, Jaquith held project manager and business analyst positions at Cambridge Technology Partners and FedEx Corporation. His application security and metrics research has been featured in CIO, CSO, InformationWeek, IEEE Security and Privacy, and The Economist. In addition, Jaquith contributes to several security-related open-source projects. Jaquith holds a B.A. degree in economics and political science from Yale University.

Foreword xv Preface xix Acknowledgments xxv About the Author xxviii Chapter 1 Introduction: Escaping the Hamster Wheel of Pain 1 Chapter 2 Defining Security Metrics 9 Chapter 3 Diagnosing Problems and Measuring Technical Security 39 Chapter 4 Measuring Program Effectiveness 89 Chapter 5 Analysis Techniques 133 Chapter 6 Visualization 157 Chapter 7 Automating Metrics Calculations 217 Chapter 8 Designing Security Scorecards 251 Index 301