There are two major methods: 1. Opportunity cost / competitive advantage (the Microsoft model) 2. Recovery cost reductions (the model used by most financial institutions)
Generally, opportunity cost is where an organization can further its goals by a secure business foundation. This requires the CIO/CSO to be able to sell the business on this model, which is hard when it is clear that many businesses have been founded on insecure foundations and do quite well nonetheless. Companies that choose to be secure have a competitive advantage, an advantage that will increase over time and will win conquest customers. For example (and this is my humble opinion), Oracle¹s security is a long standing unbreakable joke, and in the meantime MS ploughed billions into fixing their tattered reputation by making it a competitive advantage, and thus making their market dominance nearly complete. Oracle is now paying for their CSO¹s mistake in not understanding this model earlier. Forward looking financial institutions are now using this model, such as my old bank¹s (with its SMS transaction authentication feature) winning many new customers by not only promoting themselves as secure, but doing the right thing and investing in essentially eliminating Internet Banking fraud. It saves them money, and it works well for customers. This is the best model, but the hardest to sell. The second model is used by most financial institutions. They are mature risk managers and understand that a certain level of risk must be taken in return for doing business. By choosing to invest some of the potential or known losses in reducing the potential for massive losses, they can reduce the overall risk present in the corporate risk register, which plays well to shareholders. For example, if you invest $1m in securing a cheque clearance process worth (say) $10b annually to the business, and that reduces check fraud by $5m per year and eliminates $2m of unnecessary overhead every year, security is an easy sell with obvious targets to improve profitability. A well managed operational risk group will easily identify the riskiest aspects of a mature company¹s activities, and it¹s easy to justify improvements in those areas. The FUD model (used by many vendors - ³do this or the SOX boogeyman will get you²) does not work. The do nothing model (used by nearly everyone who doesn¹t fall into the first two categories) works for a time, but can spectacularly end a business. Card Systems anyone? Unknown risk is too risky a proposition, and is plain director negligence in my view. Thanks, Andrew On 3/19/07 11:35 AM, "McGovern, James F (HTSC, IT)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I am attempting to figure out how other Fortune enterprises have went about > selling the need for secure coding practices and can't seem to find the answer > I seek. Essentially, I have discovered that one of a few scenarios exist (a) > the leadership chain was highly technical and intuitively understood the need > (b) the primary business model of the enterprise is either banking, > investments, etc where the risk is perceived higher if it is not performed (c) > it was strongly encouraged by a member of a very large consulting firm (e.g. > McKinsey, Accenture, etc). > > I would like to understand what does the Powerpoint deck that employees of > Fortune enterprises use to sell the concept PRIOR to bringing in consultants > and vendors to help them fulfill the need. Has anyone ran across any PPT that > best outlines this for demographics where the need is real but considered less > important than other intiatives? > > > ************************************************************************* > This communication, including attachments, is > for the exclusive use of addressee and may contain proprietary, > confidential and/or privileged information. If you are not the intended > recipient, any use, copying, disclosure, dissemination or distribution is > strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify > the sender immediately by return e-mail, delete this communication and > destroy all copies. > ************************************************************************* > > > _______________________________________________ > Secure Coding mailing list (SC-L) SC-L@securecoding.org > List information, subscriptions, etc - http://krvw.com/mailman/listinfo/sc-l > List charter available at - http://www.securecoding.org/list/charter.php > SC-L is hosted and moderated by KRvW Associates, LLC (http://www.KRvW.com) > as a free, non-commercial service to the software security community. > _______________________________________________
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