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Q&A: GM security chief says cyberthreats lead to change
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June 18, 2004 (Computerworld) -- As the chief information security officer at General Motors Corp., Eric Litt admits that he isn't exactly starved for attention within the company these days. Globalization, regulatory mandates and fast-evolving threats have put him at the front and center of GMs effort to integrate security into every aspect of its vast $186 billion business. Computerworld caught up with him at the recent SecurE-Biz CxO Security Summit, where Litt talked about the need for building security into information infrastructures.
What's driving security at GM these days? I always say Sarbanes-Oxley and Mydoom are my best friends. Everybody reacts to that in surprise and asks me, 'How can that be?' Whether it's regulations or worms, the reality is that they focus attention on security at the board level and force us to do things, even though they can be painful and challenging.
What does architecting security into information infrastructure really mean? Many people are talking just about the technology when they talk about security. We need to look at things much more holistically. That means the people, the organization, governance, process and lastly technology. One of the other key points is that security has to be driven by the business need. It has to have a strong linkage to business processes. From a security perspective, to be successful, you need support [from] the board and the CEO level down.
How do you go about doing all of this? We've built a model that is based upon the threats faced by a business. What are the threats we are trying to protect against? What are the things we are mandated to do that are aligned with the threat? [Sarbanes-Oxley] is an example. It deals with access control. Do we understand what the requirements are? Are we doing the things we need to do to comply with the regulation? Once we complete the exercise, we know what to do. Then we put in a governance model, the people and policies in place, and lastly we look at the technology.
Eric Litt, the chief information security officer at General Motors Corp.
What about outsourcers and third parties that you do business with? I look at all the resources that support a business function, whether they are GM-badged, outsourced vendors or a joint venture. They are all part of my functional organization. We are very committed to scoring all our vendors. We looked [at] about 10 different categories. How well do they understand the business, how well are they meeting our business needs? We look at their technology and their resources.
What are some of your biggest challenges as you go about doing this? As an industrial entity, our environment has changed. We are in a global market, and one of our key Internet drives is to get our organization to act as one. That becomes increasingly complex to do as we get more integrated into the global community. In terms of the environment we operate in, worms and viruses are coming faster and faster. The time to exploit vulnerabilities is getting shorter and shorter. It means we need to move from a reactive model to a more automated and proactive security model.
What kind of organizational support and visibility do you have? I get plenty of attention, which is a very good thing. At GM, resources are not an issue. We give quarterly updates to our audit committee and at least monthly updates to other parts of our organization. And at virtually every one of our CIO meetings, we talk about security. I am not attention deficit.
What role can the government play? One of the things that is considerably important is the role of the government versus the role of industry. We believe the government plays a really important collaborative role. By mandating something, the government helps me accomplish [some of] my goals. But there needs to be a balance. We need to make sure that we are not so consumed by the need to comply with mandates that we don't have time for anything else.
What can users do to ensure that software vendors deliver more secure software out of the box? We believe in supply and demand. We believe the market should drive quality. Trying to legislate quality is very, very difficult. The best way to change a software vendor's behavior is not to buy their product.
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