[HN Gopher] CISA Zero Trust Maturity Model
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       CISA Zero Trust Maturity Model
        
       Author : Jellyspice
       Score  : 74 points
       Date   : 2021-09-10 13:55 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cisa.gov)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cisa.gov)
        
       | offmycloud wrote:
       | Zero Trust is such a terrible name. What they really mean is less
       | trust in network location, static firewalls, and site-to-site
       | VPNs, and much more trust in the cryptography behind TLS,
       | identity systems, and how they interact with applications.
        
         | slaymaker1907 wrote:
         | I think defense in depth is also a major related principle.
         | Make each layer as beefy as possible in terms of security even
         | if seemingly redundant since these help when other layers are
         | bypassed through some exploit.
         | 
         | However, in my opinion one major failing of this paradigm is
         | that while some additional layers are useful, it's still good
         | to think about threat models and failure modes since at some
         | point, you can't implement additional security measures due to
         | the computational and human cost.
        
       | user3939382 wrote:
       | I perused the draft and was surprised by my jaded reaction:
       | Great! More effort put into detailed cybersecurity strategies for
       | the likes of OPM, T-Mobile, and Equifax to ignore.
       | 
       | We have thousands of pages of frameworks and NIST guides and the
       | people in charge, especially in the private sector, are free to
       | neglect or ignore them with impunity because apparently
       | regulators don't care and the market doesn't care, so why should
       | they?
       | 
       | It's like we have these brilliant cryptographers working on
       | technical advancements that I can barely grasp, and the people
       | (management) in charge of putting their work to use can't be
       | bothered with basic patch management.
       | 
       | The whole landscape of practical cybersecurity feels very
       | hopeless to me.
        
         | annoyingnoob wrote:
         | If you want to work in the DoD supply chain after 2024 then
         | you'll have to implement NIST 800-171 and some level of CMMC.
         | Its no longer a self-attestation and requires a 3rd party audit
         | and certification. Its not trivial.
        
           | xxpor wrote:
           | The compliance costs aren't what worry me. The part that
           | worries me is ending up with FIPS but even worse everywhere.
           | Just because of how slowly it evolves and how people are
           | stuck on old things because of that.
        
             | annoyingnoob wrote:
             | I cant argue. I dont love all of the things we are required
             | to do. I'm sure my current VPN is better than what I'll
             | have to implement. The things I'm required to implement are
             | major attack targets with histories of vulnerabilities -
             | but they are certified.
        
         | giaour wrote:
         | One target audience for this document that can't ignore it (at
         | least not as easily) is the federal government and the
         | contractors they hire. In 2020, the chief information security
         | officer of a federal agency told me they didn't buy into this
         | newfangled zero trust stuff and would continue to rely on
         | network perimeter security, largely because that's what CISA
         | and OMB documents offered as a reference architecture.
        
         | lvspiff wrote:
         | Come work in healthcare - if you are at one of the larger
         | insurance orgs (UHG, Anthem, Humana) or hospital networks (HCA,
         | Dignity, etc) you are locked into a world of this model making
         | your life the most difficult imaginable. Need vendor support?
         | Hope you like watching them work over webex as they wont have
         | any access to any of your servers. Need a VPN to tunnel data
         | across? Yeah good luck with that it'll take at least 6 months
         | mostly for legal to approve. On top of rotating passwords on a
         | yearly basis for service accounts , regular entitlement
         | reviews, risk reviews, policy reviews, and rotating passwords
         | for users every 90 days still along with multifactor
         | authentication. I feel like I'm working at ft knox every day.
        
           | ziddoap wrote:
           | This sort of speaks to what the GP was talking about -- not
           | following guidelines and frameworks.
           | 
           | For example,
           | 
           | >On top of rotating passwords on a yearly basis
           | 
           | > rotating passwords for users every 90 days
           | 
           | NIST 800-63B, as of 2017, explicitly advised against this.
           | 
           | "Verifiers SHOULD NOT require memorized secrets to be changed
           | arbitrarily (e.g., periodically)." [1]
           | 
           | [1]https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html
        
           | freedomben wrote:
           | Agreed, be careful what you wish for. When I was a consultant
           | at Red Hat I worked with a lot of customers in this boat. We
           | had to jump through absolutely absurd hoops that made a two
           | day job take weeks.
           | 
           | I'm a security pro and I rejoice in secure systems, but
           | swinging the pendulum to the other side is bad too.
        
             | DrBenCarson wrote:
             | there are ways to 1. be secure, 2. be productive.
             | 
             | I think that's the ultimate goal of "zero trust," but maybe
             | I'm naive
        
         | imwillofficial wrote:
         | A lot of these frameworks are to convince bean counters that
         | Their sysadmins are right.
         | 
         | "Why do you wanna make that change? It's expensive!"
         | 
         | "Because it says so right here, sir"
         | 
         | That "official" guidance can go a long way.
        
         | imwillofficial wrote:
         | And if you look, CISA is mostly for gov agencies and critical
         | infra like oil pipelines.. They have a harder time ignoring
         | stuff like this if they are obligated by law.
        
       | elevation wrote:
       | Regarding authentication, the "optimal" practice is described as:
       | 
       | > Agency continuously validates identity, not just when access is
       | initially granted.
       | 
       | How does this work practically without having terrible UX? MFA to
       | login, then periodically poll for the presence of a hardware
       | token and less frequently, prompt for password reauthentication?
        
         | slaymaker1907 wrote:
         | There are programmatic implications for this as well. For
         | example, don't use/trust really long lived tickets with
         | Kerberos and force renegotiation with the AS. This doesn't
         | require much human interaction if you are using keytabs.
         | However, IMO it is much more important to continuously be
         | checking authorization to ensure no funny business is going on
         | rather than relying upon implied permissions.
        
       | unixhero wrote:
       | Just in time before 2022. Great!
        
       | adolph wrote:
       | See also last month's K8s hardening guidance.
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28050750
       | 
       | https://media.defense.gov/2021/Aug/03/2002820425/-1/-1/1/CTR...
        
       | acdha wrote:
       | I like seeing these guidelines but I definitely have been
       | thinking about this essay from a couple months back which I think
       | accurately calls the current situation untenable. These are all
       | good advice, but even most government agencies have nowhere near
       | the budget to fully implement them.
       | 
       | https://doublepulsar.com/the-hard-truth-about-ransomware-we-...
       | 
       | > The truth is, while governments are pushing frameworks such as
       | Zero Trust, the amount of orgs who successfully implement these
       | are... not many. Many companies can barely afford to patch
       | SharePoint, let alone patch the the tens of thousands of
       | application vulnerabilities shown in a vulnerability management
       | program, and really struggle with accurate asset lists. ... > My
       | concern, for years, has been that ransomware gangs have not only
       | closed the loop on monetization, they are also acquiring so much
       | income they are becoming a bigger operational threat than some
       | states. > > To give an example, one ransomware group receiving a
       | $40m payment for attacking a cybersecurity insurance company
       | gives the attackers more budget to launch cyberattack than most
       | medium to large organizations have to defend against attacks in
       | total. And that's just one attack, from one group, that barely
       | made the news radar of most people. > > The payment amounts are
       | increasing, the frequency is increasing, the sophistication is
       | increasing.
        
         | waz0wski wrote:
         | Goes hand-in-hand with the recent scathing message from Nicolas
         | Chaillan regarding DoD development modernization efforts
         | 
         | https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/time-say-goodbye-nicolas-m-ch...
        
           | acdha wrote:
           | I know the HN discussion had some debate over that
           | (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28408399) but I
           | definitely think there's a lot of good discussion about how
           | to make these problems more tractable. Even in the .gov
           | space, which does tend to treat security as something you
           | can't just brush away, there's generally limited money and
           | resources for actually shipping improvements and especially
           | challenging are the issues of legacy apps (which probably
           | require Congress to allocate money for replacements) and
           | adequately staffing for O&M (contractors are usually a bad
           | fit with lower continuity and restrictions on flexibility).
           | Most of the breaches you hear about trace back to something
           | which someone has been complaining about for ages but been
           | unable to get support for actually fixing.
        
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       (page generated 2021-09-10 23:02 UTC)