Cybersecurity Architect Knowledge Overview

Confidentiality - Keeping data secure

Practice:

1. Data encryption is one way to ensure confidentiality and that unauthorized users cannot retrieve data for which they do not have access.
2. Access control is also an integral part of maintaining confidentiality by managing which users have permissions for accessing data.
3. Life science organizations that utilize patient data must maintain confidentiality or violate HIPAA.

• Securing Data in-motion
• Transport Channel Encryption
• Message-level Encryption
• Securing Data At Rest
• Disk Level Encryption
• File-Level Encryption

Integrity refers to whether your data is authentic, accurate, and reliable.

Practice:

1. Event log management within a Security Incident and Event Management system is crucial for practicing data integrity.
2. Implementing version control and audit trails into your IT program will allow your organization to guarantee that its data is accurate and authentic.
3. Integrity is an essential component for organizations with compliance requirements. For example, a condition of the SEC compliance requirements for financial services organizations requires providing accurate and complete information to federal regulators.

• Message Authentication Code (MAC)
• Hash-Based Message Authentication Code (HMAC)
• Digital Signatures
• Message Digest

Practice

1. Employing a backup system and a disaster recovery plan is essential for maintaining data availability should a disaster, cyber-attack, or another threat disrupt operations.
2. Utilizing cloud solutions for data storage is one way in which an organization can increase the availability of data for its users.
3. As the reliance on data analytics expands, the need for data to be available and accessible grows for sectors like financial services and life sciences.

How:

• Denial of Service (DoS)
• Threat Modeling and use of Anomaly Detection tools
• Resource Throttling
• Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) Based Prevention
• Network Ingress Filtering

Authentication

• MFA
• Password-Less Authentication
• Authentication Models (API and Web Applications) - OAuth, Federated Identity SSO
• Active Directory (AD) Authentication
• Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS)
• Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL)

Authorization

• Access Control Lists (ACL)
• OASIS Extensible Control Access Markup Language (XACML)
• Java Web Token (JWT)

Auditing

• Non-Repudiation

Notes: https://systemweakness.com/a-brief-introduction-to-security-architecture-principles-24f5fbc58dd4

From: https://lucid.app/lucidchart/64441e4f-d35f-4065-92a3-a5bcf2886f8f/edit?invitationId=inv_4eec6e85-6cdc-495c-8f8e-50f3c7fc3a79

Zero Trust is a security model that emphasizes the need to verify every user and device before granting them access to company resources.

The key tenets of a modern defense-in-depth strategy include:

• Protect privileged access – use privileged access management solutions to monitor and secure access to privileged accounts (superuser accounts, local and domain administrator accounts, application administrative accounts, etc.) by both human and non-human identities (applications, scripts, bots, etc.).
• Lockdown critical endpoints – use advanced endpoint privilege management solutions to lock down privilege across all endpoints, prevent lateral movement, and defend against ransomware and other forms of malware.
• Enable adaptive multifactor authentication – use contextual information (location, time of day, IP address, device type, etc.) and business rules to determine which authentication factors to apply to a particular user in a particular situation.
• Secure developer tools – use secrets management solutions to secure, manage, rotate and monitor secrets and other credentials used by applications, automation scripts, and other non-human identities.

Solutions:

1. Threat detection and response solutions

2. Identity and privileged access management

3. Endpoint and data protection

4. Security services

Best Practices:

1. Always Verify the User with Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)

2. Always Validate the Device

3. Ensure the Device Measures Up to Your Security Standards

4. Least Access and Least Privilege for IT and Everybody Else

5. Use a Solution that Learns and Adapts

Frameworks

TOGAF EXAMPLES:

• Definition of business principles, goals and drivers.
• Security architecture roadmaps - or in other words, a list of individual work packages that will define the target security architecture and show progression from the as-is state to the desired state within agreed timelines.
• Security architecture building blocks. A building block is a package of functionality designed to meet the business needs across an organization.
• Specification of security architecture requirements. This provides a quantitative view of the solution, stating measurable criteria that must be met during implementation.

SABSA EXAMPLES:

• The business attribute model - the heart of SABSA. The business attribute model is an abstraction of real-life business requirements, detailing definitions and guidelines for a variety of important business attributes.
• A defined security strategy, mapped to control objectives and business attribute profile.
• Security policy architecture, which covers security and domain policies that an organization should follow, complied to the latest security standards and regulatory bodies.
• Defined security services. These should be based on security policies, business strategies and control objectives.

OSA EXAMPLES:

• Functionality and technical security controls. These provide a definition of technical security controls such as access controls, system hardening, security scans, etc.
• Software and data integrity protection, a taxonomy of software integrity protection techniques

Notes: https://www.dig8ital.com/post/what-is-security-architecture-and-what-do-you-need-to-know

COBIT: 

Using the Frameworks to Develop an Enterprise Security Architecture

The fair question is always, “Where should the enterprise start?”

If one looks at these frameworks, the process is quite clear. This must be a top-down approach—start by looking at the business goals, objectives and vision.

The initial steps of a simplified Agile approach to initiate an enterprise security architecture program are:

• Identify business objectives, goals and strategy
• Identify business attributes that are required to achieve those goals
• Identify all the risk associated with the attributes that can prevent a business from achieving its goals
• Identify the required controls to manage the risk
• Define a program to design and implement those controls:
  • Define conceptual architecture for business risk:
    • Governance, policy and domain architecture
    • Operational risk management architecture
    • Information architecture
    • Certificate management architecture
    • Access control architecture
    • Incident response architecture
    • Application security architecture
    • Web services architecture
    • Communication security architecture
  • Define physical architecture and map with conceptual architecture:
    • Platform security
    • Hardware security
    • Network security
    • Operating system security
    • File security
    • Database security, practices and procedures
  • Define component architecture and map with physical architecture:
    • Security standards (e.g., US National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST], ISO)
    • Security products and tools (e.g., antivirus [AV], virtual private network [VPN], firewall, wireless security, vulnerability scanner)
    • Web services security (e.g., HTTP/HTTPS protocol, application program interface [API], web application firewall [WAF])
  • Define operational architecture:
    • Implementation guides
    • Administrations
    • Configuration/patch management
    • Monitoring
    • Logging
    • Pen testing
    • Access management
    • Change management
    • Forensics, etc.

It is that simple. After all risk is identified and assessed, then the enterprise can start designing architecture components, such as policies, user awareness, network, applications and servers.

Figure 6 depicts the simplified Agile approach to initiate an enterprise security architecture program.

Using these frameworks can result in a successful security architecture that is aligned with business needs:

• COBIT principles and enablers provide best practices and guidance on business alignment, maximum delivery and benefits.
• The COBIT Process Assessment Model (PAM) provides a complete view of requirement processes and controls for enterprise-grade security architecture.
• SABSA layers and framework create and define a top-down architecture for every requirement, control and process available in COBIT.
• The TOGAF framework is useful for defining the architecture goals, benefits and vision, and setting up and implementing projects to reach those goals.
• The CMMI model is useful for providing a level of visibility for management and the architecture board, and for reporting the maturity of the architecture over time.