Archive for March, 2009

Model changes between the Beta and 1.0

From reviewer and user feedback, there’s a few noticeable changes in the model itself between the Beta and 1.0 releases. Here’s a recap of the major changes to the model.

  • Disciplines became Business Functions – The term ‘disciple’ used for the four high-level categories didn’t accurately capture their intent. After several discussions, it made more sense to rephrase them as the core business functions of software development and draw the security-related practices down from those.
  • Strategic Planning became Strategy & Metrics – These changes were made to place more emphasis on the measurement of the overall software security assurance program. Even though example metrics were given for each maturity level, feedback indicated this wasn’t explicit enough
  • Standards & Compliance became Policy & Compliance – Feedback showed the term ‘standard’ wasn’t as popularly used as the term ‘policy’ for referring to the normative requirements an organization places on software development. Standards are still included here, but as an extension of policies.
  • Threat Modeling became Threat Assessment – Feedback indicated this section was too specific to usage of attack trees, so the language was loosened to allow other methodologies for the threat modeling activities. Also, the name was changed to avoid collision with existing notions of the term ‘threat modeling’ (e.g. Microsoft’s methodology). Further, abuse-case modeling activities were moved from Security Requirements into this practice since many felt it was more suited here.
  • Defensive Design became Secure Architecture – The term ‘defensive design’ didn’t resonate with reviewers at all, so the activities were re-evaluated and recast as organization-wide augmentations to the design process that emphasize centralized application architectures. Activities related to creating access control matrices were moved into Security Requirements since feedback showed this was more of a specifying activity rather than an architecture-related one. A new activity was added here to require promotion of centralized infrastructure and services since most reviewers felt that activity was missing from the Beta.
  • Architecture Review became Design Review – This change was made to ensure the terms ‘architecture’ and ‘design’ were being used more consistently. This practice discussed reviewing detailed design, so ‘design review’ seemed a more agreeable title.
  • Infrastructure Hardening became Environment Hardening – Since the term ‘infrastructure’ can easily be interpreted to include network devices and other appliances, the title and associated activities were changed to indicate specific focus on bolstering the security posture of the software’s environment.

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Press release about SAMM

gds_smallThe awesome folks at Gotham Digital Science, namely Matt Bartoldus and Mara Clarke, worked with me to put together a fantastic press release about the SAMM 1.0 release. It went out yesterday and has been picked up and syndicated on a number of different news wire services. Here is a link to the press release on eMediaWire and Yahoo News, and I’m sure there are several others too.

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OWASP Podcast about SAMM

I recorded an OWASP Podcast episode with Jim Manico and it just went live. We discuss the new SAMM release, some of the project’s history, and, of course, some other favorite projects of mine. Jim is a great host and I can’t wait to get invited for another!

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SAMM 1.0 Released!

samm-coverThe Beta release has been out for quite a while now (since August 2008) and lots of organizations and individuals have provided excellent feedback to help improve the model. I’ve heard lots of stories from people using SAMM (some are consulting firms, and some are development organizations) and that feedback has been some of the most valuable. This release marks the official 1.0 version of SAMM and there’s a few new pieces added:

  • Executive summary and introduction to the model
  • Improved details on applying the model to solve problems
  • Assessment worksheets for evaluating existing programs
  • Roadmaps for financial services and government organizations
  • Improvements and refinements to the model (I’ll cover changes individually in separate posts)

Many thanks to the individual reviewers and the organizations that have volunteered time to help improve SAMM. I look forward to more active participants as we push forward with some of the future development plans for SAMM.

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SAMM Mailing List

We’ve got a project mailing list setup through the OWASP mailing list manager. You can:

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Next SAMM release coming this week

There’s been a huge amount of feedback and lots of refinement to SAMM since the Beta was release last August. I’m happy to report that we’re putting the finishing touches and reviews on the next release as I write. I’ll put together some separate posts that discuss the rationale behind the major changes, but in general, here are some new features in the next release:

  • Better introduction – there’s a proper Executive Summary and a section describing the structure of the model before diving into the details
  • A section on assessing an existing assurance program – this should help folks that need to map an existing software security program into SAMM (or anyone just performing an assessment of a software security program in general)
  • Better guidance on building assurance programs – the Beta had some short text, but the next release includes a bigger section on and building a roadmap for a particular organization
  • New layout and design – revamped the ordering of SAMM materials based on feedback from users and there’s a new topical table of contents (to better route people through the resource provided)

I’m looking forward to feedback on the 1.0 release once it’s out this week… stay tuned!

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What’s up with the other model?

A day or two back, Cigital and Fortify just released another maturity model named the Building Security In Maturity Model (BSI-MM). I’ve had lots of folks ask me about it and how it’s related to SAMM, so I figured I should write a post about it. The short answer: they’re different (BSIMM forked from the SAMM Beta). The long answer? Keep reading…

So, a long time ago in a galaxy far… ahem… actually, it was last July (2008). Brian Chess and I had a drink at RSA and discussed what I’d be doing with my time now that I’d left Cigital to start independent consulting. I was really focused on using my new found spare time to build the next revision to CLASP. In my vision (which I talked about as early as the OWASP EU conference in Milan in May of 2007), there would be a model that both demonstrated how to logically improve individual security functions over time as well as a collection of prescriptive roadmaps based on the organization type.

Brian and Fortify gave me contract to fund development of what would become the SAMM Beta. Once the Beta was complete last August, Gary McGraw (who sits on Fortify’s Technical Advisory Board) got word of SAMM and wanted to get Cigital involved. We had one meeting for Cigital to provide feedback on SAMM, but it was clear to me that they wanted to take the model in a different direction than I had wanted (lots of reasons here, but one objection I had was use of branding/marketing terminology). So, we forked.

Gary, Brian, and Sammy (and maybe others) massaged the high-level framework from SAMM into what they call their Software Security Framework (SSF). They took this out to 9 big companies with advanced secure development practices to get feedback on what those companies are actually doing. Though I really liked the idea of collecting that data, I wasn’t involved at all. Based on what they learned from SAMM and what they heard from those 9, they created the BSI-MM. So, even though the models may seem similar in structure, they’re different in terms of content.

Just as a disclaimer on the current state of things, I have not worked with the folks at Cigital, but I’m still actively collaborating with folks at Fortify who are supporting both models (and maybe others too!). If folks are interested, I’ll write up more about SAMM vs. BSI-MM once the next release of SAMM comes out next week.

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Shiny new website

Well, it was time to trade-in the quick and dirty website we stood up for the SAMM Beta. In exchange, we’ve now got a real workhorse, WordPress. Now people can leave comments and discuss proposed changes right here on the site. It’s also a really good platform for building other nifty tools into the site, but more on that later.

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