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CHAPTER 1 SSCP^® Security Operations and Administration

      THIS IS WHERE THE planning hits reality; it's in the day to day of information security operations that you see every decision made during the threat assessments and the risk mitigation plans being live-fire tested by your co-workers, customers, legitimate visitors, and threat actors alike. Whether you're an on-shift watch-stander in a security operations center (SOC) or network operations center (NOC) or you work a pattern of normal business hours and days, you'll be exposed to the details of information security in action.

Security operations and administration entail a wide breadth of tasks and functions, and the security professional is expected to have a working familiarity with each of them. This can include maintaining a secure environment for business functions and the physical security of a campus and, specifically, the data center. Throughout your career, you will likely have to oversee and participate in incident response activities, which will include conducting investigations, handling material that may be used as evidence in criminal prosecution and/or civil suits, and performing forensic analysis. The Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP) should also be familiar with common tools for mitigating, detecting, and responding to threats and attacks; this includes knowledge of the importance and use of event logging as a means to enhance security efforts. Another facet the security practitioner may have to manage could be how the organization deals with emergencies, including disaster recovery.

      There is a common thread running through all aspects of this topic: supporting business functions by incorporating security policy and practices with normal daily activities. This involves maintaining an accurate and detailed asset inventory, tracking the security posture and readiness of information technology (IT) assets through the use of configuration/change management, and ensuring personnel are trained and given adequate support for their own safety and security.

      This chapter will address all these aspects of security operations. The practitioner is advised, however, to not see this as a thorough treatment of all these concepts, each of which could be (and has been) the subject of an entire book (or books) by themselves; for each topic that is unfamiliar, you should look at the following content as an introduction only and pursue a more detailed review of related subject matter.

      NOTE The countries and regions that an organization operates in may have varying, distinct, and at times conflicting legal systems. Beyond considerations of written laws and regulations, the active functioning of court systems and regulatory bodies often has intricate, myriad applications in the real world that extend far beyond how things are codified in written laws. These factors become even more varied and complex when an organization functions in multiple countries and needs to deal with actual scenarios that directly involve international law and the laws of each respective nation. With that in mind, it is always imperative to get the input of a professional legal team to fully understand the legal scope and ramifications of security operations (and basically all operations and responsibilities beyond security as well).

COMPLY WITH CODES OF ETHICS

Your day-to-day journey along the roadmap of security operations and administration must keep one central ideal clearly in focus. Every day that you serve as an information security professional, you make or influence decisions. Every one of those decision moments is an opportunity or a vulnerability; it is a moment in which you can choose to do the technically and ethically correct thing or the expedient thing. Each of those decision moments is a test for you.

      Those decisions must be ethically sound; yes, they must be technically correct, cost-effective, and compliant with legal and regulatory requirements, but at their heart they must be ethical. Failure to do so puts your professional and personal integrity at risk, as much as it puts your employer's or your clients' reputation and integrity at risk.

      Being a security professional requires you to work, act, and think in ways that comply with and support the codes of ethics that are fundamental parts of your workplace, your profession, and your society and culture at large. Those codes of ethics should harmonize with if not be the fundamental ethical values and principles you live your life by—if they do not, that internal conflict in values may make it difficult if not impossible to achieve a sense of personal and professional integrity! Professional and personal integrity should be wonderfully, mutually self-reinforcing.

      Let's first focus on what ethical decision-making means. This provides a context for how you, as an SSCP, comply with and support the (ISC)² Code of Ethics in your daily work and life. We'll see that this is critical to being able to live up to and fulfill the “three dues” of your responsibilities: due care, due diligence, and due process.

      Understand, Adhere to, and Promote Professional Ethics

      Let's start with what it means to be a professional: It means that society has placed great trust and confidence in you, because you have been willing to take on the responsibility to get things done right. Society trusts in you to know your practice, know its practical limits, and work to make sure that the services you perform meet or exceed the best practices of the profession. This is a legal and an ethical responsibility.

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