How would we recognize good engineering? It seems to me like the very same problem faced by the idea of software liability law - that it is hard to define good engineering for software security - would be faced by an incentive program. If "good engineering" is fuzzy enough to give a big corporate legal dept the upper hand against an individual, wouldn't it be similarly fuzzy enough to counter the fairness of a tax incentive?
Tax breaks are a big deal - I doubt the government is going to want to issue tax breaks to a company because the company claims they have achieved level X in a CMM -- think about the economic cost in demonstrating something like that to the point where it is fair and worth something. I also doubt that a metric based on vulnerability counts will work -- that will just encourage companies to hide vulnerabilities, fixing them silently and/or with great delay, instead of disclosing them. Not that I think that incentives inherently wouldn't work -- rather I'd be interested in seeing some discussion here on some of the above issues. One alternative that has worked well in many other areas of manufacturing -- encourage some kind of limited warranty, at least in certain industries. For consumer mobile devices, it might be something as simple as, "if your device's security is ever compromised due to a flaw in the bundled device software, we'll repair it free of charge". The big challenges are 1) getting customers to care about their device's security, and 2) making a vendor's commitment to security recognizable by the customer. By no means ideal, but at least a talking point. - Greg Gary McGraw wrote, On 08/02/2012 08:40 AM: > Hi Jeff, > > I'm afraid I disagree. The hyperbolic way to state this is, imagine YOUR > lawyer faced down by Microsoft's army of lawyers. You lose. > > Software liability is not the way to go in my opinion. Instead, I would > like to see the government develop incentives for good engineering. > > gem > > On 8/2/12 10:26 AM, "Jeffrey Walton" <noloa...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Hi Dr. McGraw, >> >>> Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) passed by >>> there House in April) has very little to say about building security in. >> I'm convinced (in the US) that users/consumers need a comprehensive >> set of software liability laws. Consider the number of mobile devices >> that are vulnerable because OEMs stopped providing (or never provided) >> patches for vulnerabilities. The equation [risk analysis] needs to be >> unbalanced just a bit to get manufacturers to act (do nothing is cost >> effective at the moment). >> >> Jeff >> >> On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 10:28 AM, Gary McGraw <g...@cigital.com> wrote: >>> hi sc-l, >>> >>> This month's [in]security article takes on Cyber Law as its topic. The >>> US Congress has been debating a cyber security bill this session and is >>> close to passing something. Sadly, the Cybersecurity and Internet >>> Freedom Act currently being considered in the Senate (as an answer to >>> the problematic Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) >>> passed by there House in April) has very little to say about building >>> security in. >>> >>> Though cyber law has always lagged technical reality by several years, >>> ignoring the notion of building security in is a fundamental flaw. >>> >>> >>> http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/opinion/Congress-should-encourage-bu >>> g-fixes-reward-secure-systems >>> >>> Please read this month's article and pass it on far and wide. Send a >>> copy to your representatives in all branches of government. It is high >>> time for the government to tune in to cyber security properly. >>> > > > _______________________________________________ > 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. > Follow KRvW Associates on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/KRvW_Associates > _______________________________________________ > _______________________________________________ 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. Follow KRvW Associates on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/KRvW_Associates _______________________________________________
