The GenCyber 10 Security First Principles are a set of fundamental best practices and guidelines for cybersecurity. They were developed as part of the GenCyber program, which is a cybersecurity education initiative funded by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). These principles provide a foundation for good cybersecurity habits and practices.

https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/Press-Releases-Statements/Press-Release-View/Article/2530813/gencyber-call-for-proposals/

MITRE ATT&CK https://attack.mitre.org/

Triage https://tria.ge/reports/public

1. Domain Separation: Separating different network domains and resources based on their sensitivity and criticality.
2. Process Isolation: Running different processes in separate environments to prevent unauthorized access and data leakage.
3. Resource Encapsulation: Encapsulating resources and data to protect them from unauthorized access and modification.
4. Least Privilege: Granting users and processes only the minimum level of access and permissions necessary to perform their tasks.
5. Modularity: Designing systems and applications in a modular way to limit the impact of security breaches and make them easier to manage and update.
6. Layering: Implementing multiple layers of security controls to provide defense-in-depth and reduce the risk of a single point of failure.
7. Information Hiding: Protecting sensitive information by hiding it from unauthorized users and processes.
8. Simplicity: Keeping systems and security controls simple to reduce the attack surface and make them easier to understand and manage.
9. Minimization: Minimizing the collection, storage, and use of sensitive data to reduce the risk of data breaches and privacy violations.
10. Fault Tolerance: Designing systems to be resilient and able to continue operating even in the presence of failures or attacks.

Each of the GenCyber 10 Security First Principles plays a crucial role in enhancing the overall security of a system. They address different aspects of security and provide a comprehensive approach to protecting against various threats and vulnerabilities.

• Domain Separation helps prevent unauthorized access and data leakage between different network domains.
• Process Isolation ensures that processes run in separate environments, reducing the risk of unauthorized access and data leakage.
• Resource Encapsulation protects resources and data from unauthorized access and modification.
• Least Privilege minimizes the potential damage that can be caused by a compromised user or process.
• Modularity makes systems easier to manage and update, and limits the impact of security breaches.
• Layering provides multiple layers of defense, reducing the risk of a single point of failure.
• Information Hiding protects sensitive information from unauthorized access.
• Simplicity reduces the attack surface and makes systems easier to understand and manage.
• Minimization reduces the risk of data breaches and privacy violations by minimizing the collection, storage, and use of sensitive data.
• Fault Tolerance ensures that systems can continue operating even in the presence of failures or attacks.

Here are some example security controls that can be implemented for each of the GenCyber 10 Security First Principles:

1. Domain Separation: Network segmentation, firewall rules, virtual private networks (VPNs).
2. Process Isolation: Sandboxing, containerization, virtual machines.
3. Resource Encapsulation: Access control lists (ACLs), encryption, secure protocols.
4. Least Privilege: Role-based access control (RBAC), principle of least privilege (PoLP), just-in-time (JIT) access.
5. Modularity: Microservices architecture, modular design patterns, secure coding practices.
6. Layering: Multi-factor authentication (MFA), defense-in-depth, security information and event management (SIEM).
7. Information Hiding: Data encryption, tokenization, secure key management.
8. Simplicity: Secure default configurations, minimized attack surface, clear and concise security policies.
9. Minimization: Data minimization, retention policies, secure deletion.
10. Fault Tolerance: Redundancy, failover mechanisms, incident response plans.

The provided Python script demonstrates the implementation of the GenCyber 10 Security First Principles through a set of functions. Each function focuses on a specific principle and shows how it can be applied in code.

The script includes the following functions:

1. domain_separation: Demonstrates the separation of environments based on different domains.
2. process_isolation: Shows how to run a separate process in isolation using the subprocess module.
3. resource_encapsulation: Encapsulates sensitive data within a class and accesses it through defined methods.
4. least_privilege: Grants different privileges based on user roles.
5. modularity: Creates modular components for authentication and request processing.
6. layering: Applies multiple layers of security, including input validation, data sanitization, and data processing.
7. information_hiding: Hides sensitive information (password) within a class and hashes it before storing.
8. simplicity: Uses simple and clear naming conventions, along with straightforward and readable code.
9. minimization: Collects only necessary data, avoids storing sensitive data unnecessarily, and clears it after use.
10. fault_tolerance: Implements fault tolerance by handling database connection errors and using a local cache as a fallback.

The script also includes a main function that demonstrates the usage of each principle by calling the corresponding functions.

This table provides an overview of the 10 Security First Principles, their descriptions, and the before and after states as demonstrated by the functions in the provided Python script.

https://www.clark.center/c/gencyber

Disclaimer This repository is intended for educational and research purposes.