One of the most significant failures I see in organizations is an essential misalignment between Operations and Security over the default network state. Is it default-open or default-closed? And I’m talking about more than the configuration of fail-open or fail-closed on your security controls.
Every organization must make a philosophical choice regarding its default security state and the risk it’s willing to accept. For example, you may want to take a draconian approach, i.e. shooting first, asking questions later. This means you generally validate an event as benign before resuming normal operations after receiving notification of an incident.
But what if the security control detecting the incident negatively impacts operations through enforcement? If your business uptime is too critical to risk unnecessary outages, you may decide to continue operating until a determination is made that an event is actually malicious.
Both choices can be valid, depending upon your risk appetite. But you must make a choice, socializing that decision within your organization. Otherwise, you’re left with confusion and conflict over how to proceed during an incident.
