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2019 Update on frameworks, standards, and regulations for infosec

by Michael R. Brown on February 20, 2019

At the 2019 BSides Tampa Security conference I did a talk on 2019 Updates on frameworks, standards, and regulations for infosec. Over the last year several new and updated frameworks and regulations have come out, as well as are being updated.

Most of the information can be found on the Internet, but if you’re not making an effort to stay up to date, you can miss something. So here I give links to much of the information I gave.

NIST is the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a non-regulatory part of the Department of Commerce. They are doing a lot of things that impact us in infosec. Most are hopefully familiar with the Special Publication 800 and 1800 series that are put out on a regular basis. Several are being developed, updated, and in a few cases retired. Go HERE to access all of them.

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) was updated to version 1.1 last year, and they later had a cyber risk conference in October. It just had its 5th anniversary, too. For full info on the CSF, and any updates and the like, go HERE. One element I am looking forward to is an update to informative references that will add additional references (such as crosswalks to PCI-DSS, Standards of Good Controls, etc). Hopefully we’ll start seeing these coming out.

NIST Privacy Framework. NIST has embarked on creating a privacy framework like they’ve done for cybersecurity. This work has just begun, and they are working on a preliminary framework which we should see soon. I would hope there will be further workshops and feedback before the final version is out. To see where they are, go HERE.

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FISMA is the Federal Information Security Management Act. Basically sets down security standards for federal information systems. NIST has developed the materials for this, the Risk Management Framework (SP 800 37), the controls set (SP 800-53) and other materials. They are working on updating this, having just come out with the latest version of the RMF. The control set is next, with others to follow. Go HERE for their page on this work. The schedule is HERE.

Baldridge Cybersecurity Excellence Builder is a combination of NIST’s Baldridge Excellence work crossed with their CSF. It was rolled out in 2017, and should get an update this Spring. You can download it for free HERE, and there is info on how others have used it successfully.

NIST OSCAL is an interesting project that attempts to create a common set of control assessment language. This is a project I want to spend more time looking into myself. More info on their website HERE.

Hopefully most have heard of the “Critical Controls” or the “Critical Security Controls”. Maybe you’ve heard it referred to as the “Top 20” or the “SANS20” or the like. While it was started by SANS, they no longer manage it. For the last few years its been handled by the Center for Internet Security, which has rolled out v6 and in early 2018 they rolled out v7. They have reorganized it into 3 groups: Basic, Foundational, Organizational. They have been putting out other resources for it, including the CSAT, a self assessment tool. They are working on a v7.1 and I expect more resources coming from CIS. So keep your eye out for them, as they just rolled out a companion guide for cloud (go HERE) and is working on another for IoT.

ISO/IEC 27000 is the international standard set for information security. This series is made up of about 50-60 documents in various states of work. Sadly, the documents are not free, and the cost is over $100 for each. Key documents is usually 27001 and 27002. 1 sets down the ISMS (Information Security Management System) and 2 is the control set (compare with SP800-53). As several of the documents are being worked on, its hard to keep up. ISO/IEC 27005 got updated. My go-to site to keep up to date on this is iso27002security.com.

Privacy regs (GDPR & California). Privacy is getting more and more important. While we work in security, we often get pulled into privacy work as well. GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) of the EU was rolled out last year. And we’ve already seen some big companies get in trouble. While I see a lot of groups pushing GDPR training and the like, as a consultant I’m not seeing a lot of clients asking for help. Yet. California is rolling out their regulation, which isn’t in effect yet. We’ll see if other states will roll out or update their privacy regulations.

One I left out of my presentation is 23 NYCRR 500, which is the New York Department of Financial Services (NY DFS) regulations on cybersecurity. Rolled out a couple of years ago, the various elements of the regulation has been slowly rolled out with the last one required this March. This regulation expects companies do certain things to protect NPI (non-public information), such as have a security program, policies, doing pentesting and vulnerability scanning, have a CISO, do training, have an incident response plan, vendor management plan, etc. This may be a model for other state. You can read it all HERE.

Now, there are some other items that aren’t pure infosec/cybersecurity, but do touch on it, so should be mentioned.

CMMI- The Capability Maturity Model Integrated, originally for assessing the maturity of software development, it was later expanded to others. Later merged into the CMMI, with Development, Service, and Acquisition versions. The Software Engineering Institute at CMU developed it, and it used to be available for free or via books. But they moved the CMMI to the CMMI Institute, which was recently bought by ISACA. They’ve rolled out CMMI v2, but its available as a SaaS product, and no longer free. The CMMI Institute has also rolled out a Cybermaturity Platform, again as a SaaS product. I’d like to learn more about it, but hard to do.

COBIT, which is ISACA framework for governance of enterprise IT has been updated to COBIT 2019. They’ve rolled out the new books, and hopefully other materials will be updated to COBIT 2019.

ITIL is a framework for IT Service Management, which includes infosec. The current version is ITIL v3 (updated in 2011). It’s being updated to a new version, ITIL 4. So far only the foundation certification info have been updated. Hopefully they will update the 5 main books this year.

PCI-DSS is the standard for assessing credit card processing systems. Current version is 3.2.1, which was updated due to issues with SSL. Well, the next version, v4, is going to be coming out, but not for another year or so. It will be a very different version, but info on this is hard to find. Am sure as we move further along we’ll learn more.

Hopefully this is useful for others. As I learn of new updates, I’ll make further postings.