Security Pros Cheating During Audits?

from the oops dept

We were just discussing if a security auditor should be liable for giving a company a passing grade if there's later a security breach. Considering that it's pretty much impossible to be perfectly secure, and there were always some things that could go wrong, it seemed like a bad idea to hold auditors liable, except in situations where there was obvious fraud or gross negligence. And now, there's evidence that security professionals may try to trick auditors, raising even more questions about why auditors should be liable. Michael Scott points us to the news that a recent survey of security pros found that 20% admit to having cheated or knowing others who cheated in order to pass a security audit. Now, the phrasing can be misleading -- by saying that "they did or they know someone who did" it could (in theory) just be one guy who cheated... who happens to know a lot of other security professionals. So, it would certainly require a bit more research to determine how widespread the cheating is. It's also not clear how many times the cheating occurred. If it's every audit, that's one thing. If it just happened once and the issue was fixed, that's quite different. Still, it's more evidence that you can't just blame the auditors -- especially when the security pros at the company may not be completely truthful in providing info to the auditors.

Filed Under: auditor, cheating, data breach, liability, security

Is A Security Auditor Liable If There's A Security Breach?

from the we-may-find-out... dept

Wired is discussing the suddenly relevant legal question of whether or not a security auditor should be held liable if it claims a company's data is secure, and then there's a data leak. The specific lawsuit in the spotlight right now involves Savvis -- who had audited the security of CardSystems' computer systems and determined that the company "had implemented sufficient security solutions and operated in a manner consistent with industry best practices." As you may remember, CardSystems was later found to have had a massive breach of credit card data (for a while, until recently surpassed, it was considered the largest ever credit card data breach). So Savvis is now being sued for claiming that CardSystems' systems were secure. This is certainly a tough one. Obviously, it's no good if security auditors are simply rubberstamping things -- but it's impossible to be fully confident that a system is secure, and there can always be a leak somewhere. So holding auditors liable for any such leak could make it prohibitive to even be an auditor -- with the end result being fewer auditors, and potentially less actual security. But... at the same time, you certainly want there to be some incentive for the auditors to take their job seriously. It seems like in the absence of clear negligence on the part of the auditor, that it's a bit extreme to put any liability on the auditor.

Filed Under: auditor, data breach, liability, security