[ISN] Five Tactical Security Metrics To Watch

http://www.darkreading.com/security-monitoring/167901086/security/perimeter-security/232600679/five-tactical-security-metrics-to-watch.html

By Robert Lemos
Contributing Writer
Dark Reading
Feb 10, 2012

Ask security professionals for a list of important metrics, and expect 
to get a long list with much debate. Yet information security managers 
need a way to keep track of their progress on securing the network while 
watching out for potential threatening situations.

Good metrics can help define the fight. While many professionals might 
argue that it's better to have as much information on the security of 
their networks as possible, too much information can blind practitioners 
to what is going on, says Mike Lloyd, chief technology officer for 
network monitoring and discovery firm RedSeal Networks.

"You don't have to have, nor want, a dashboard like an airplane," he 
says. "You want a dashboard that's more like a car."

In its own dashboard for clients, RedSeal goes to one extreme: a single 
overall score for network risk. Drilling down on the score is what 
reveals the specific metrics that make up the score. A network map and 
two top 10 lists round out the dashboard.

Verizon and its managed security practice focuses more on incident 
metrics. Tracking what goes wrong can help an IT manager figure out 
where to allocate resources, says Christopher Porter, a principal of 
Verizon's RISK team.

[...]


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