Employees the Next (Continuing) Big Security Risk?

surely_you_cant_be_serious writes "A nationwide survey finds that most companies consider their systems vulnerable to attack. Historically, crime rates increase during recessions — and some believe that cybercrime may well follow suit, especially given massive layoffs and the dim prospects many laid-off employees face in finding a new job. 'One thing companies can start doing is monitoring their networks on an ongoing basis so that they understand the normal pattern of data flow and usage, Brill said. In many cases, companies may not have the internal capability to do this, but outsourcing options are available. Kroll Ontrack, for instance, will be rolling out a 24/7 monitoring service for its global clients manned from a US location by professionals in early 2009.'"

Comments

crime also goes up

[thermian]

when employees think their employer is treating them like criminals with little more than dubious and extremely general statistics for proof.

Its amazing how fast people will start breaking the rules if you start on the premise that they already are, and treat them accordingly.

Re:crime also goes up

[nine-times]

That might be true, but regardless it has always been true that employees have been one of the big security risks for businesses. In one way of dividing things up, security basically falls into two categories: denying access to people who shouldn't have access and preventing those who have access from abusing their access.

Think about a bank, for example. Protecting against bank robberies is one kind of security problem, but it's not really the hardest thing to do. You put things in a vault, lock the vault, install an alarm, hire security guards, etc. The trickier issue is that you have all these employees with access to the money, and if there are no security measures, it wouldn't be hard for a teller to pocket a hundred dollars every now and then. So banks have procedures where the tellers have to do account for the money in their drawers at the end of the day (or whatever the particular procedure is).

So computer security isn't really much different. Instead of vaults and locks and security guards, we have encryption and firewalls and antiviruses. Protecting against external threats isn't really that hard a lot of the time. Most of the time, the biggest dangers are either directly or indirectly from employees. It's a very tricky security issue to deal with, since you can't "plug the hole"-- employees are *supposed* to have access.

And when I talk about dangers that come "indirectly from employees", I mean that they might be the source of a breach even if they aren't themselves criminal or dishonest. I've heard hackers say that often social engineering (i.e. getting an authorized employee to give you access) is easier than actually exploiting any security holes.

Besides the danger of purposeful social engineering attacks, employee carelessness can also leave you exposed. People often choose bad passwords in spite of good password policies, i.e. just because you make them use a 10 character combination of letters/numbers/symbols doesn't mean they won't choose a password that's easy to guess (Passw0rd!!). Also people do things like access a secure webpage in an Internet cafe computer (which might have keyloggers installed for all anyone knows) and then walk out without closing or logging out, or put highly sensitive data on a usb stick and lose it somewhere. Sometimes employees even go through a lot of trouble to pierce their company's security (for example, in order to get Kazaa working inside the firewall) and effectively open a hole to potential hackers, too.

So overall, yes, employees are a big potential danger to securing your data. A criminally inclined employee can cause lots of damage, but so can a careless one.

Employee's were the first security risk

[Freaky Spook]

People have been around long before computers, and have always been the biggest risk to business.

Computers have just made it easier for employee's to do more damage, either through malicious intent or just plain negligence.

Having many SMB clients where cost is always placed over security, its scary just how vulnerable many businesses are to their employee's, from even ignoring the most basic security steps like using ACL's to secure files and basic auditing of file access, or even implementing basic password policies like "Do not give your password, to anyone, ever!"

A back-to-front mentality

[golodh]

The opening post breathes a mentality which seems to pervade US firms. It runs approximately as follows:

(1) view employees purely as resources (about on level with the printers and the staples)

(2) use every possible means to make their job manageable for the Human Resources department (which is shorthand "define all tasks in such a way that every individual instantly plug-replaceable by (a) your average worker in the job market with his job title and (b) any of his colleagues, actively remove any individuality, and rather waste someone's talents than allow him to enrich his job")

(3) use HRM to "Dynamically contribute to optimization of enterprise processes and results" (translation: hire people when they are marginally qualified for their job and let their colleagues educate them, fire 'em the instant they become overqualified and aren't immediately placeable in a higher function, or if they show signs of become tired, bored, jaded, cynical, or if they catch on to what Human Resource Management really means for them)

(4) use an elaborate system of "who reports to whom", physical access checks and "security" guards, to ensure that people are total strangers in the company they work for with the sole exception of the department they work (this enhances "security")

(5) determine scientifically that your employees may spontaneously become disgruntled and hostile towards the company they work for (or after being fired)

(6) determine that the company urgently needs to protect itself from the consequences of its employees becoming disgruntled and hostile

(7) further plan employees jobs and tighten "security" so that the amount of damage any disgruntled individual below the rank of executive can do is reduced to an acceptable minimum.

The final step (8) is to spend good money to outsource security and workflow monitoring to establish tight restrictions on what employees can mess up before being physically apprehended. Outside firms have nice glossy brochures that provide your board with plenty of reasons why employees should be treated as detainees rather than as collaborators. Recommending specialized outside firms to cover specific areas of employee containment definitively establishes you as a savvy and professional manager (and keeps you in line for that end-year performance bonus).

On the other hand, the suggestion of actually treating employees as if they were collaborators confuses simple PR slogans meant for glossy company brochures with actual management. Expecting people to behave civilly when treated like people is naive in the extreme and something no manager with an ounce of professionalism should sully himself with.

Recognize this mindset? I foresee that work-flow monitoring will become a growth industry.