PC Data Security Blog

Passwords are exchanged routinely and even when they aren’t …

One of my relatives once worked for a large federal firm administering their employee database that included all of the employee personal data, salary, and for some the required monthly drug test results.  At the time, the firm was building a couple of new modern interfaces to the database, and my relative, being of the older generation of programmers, quite often asked for my help with the newer concepts.  Of course, when he was showing me how he built his interfaces, he also told me the password to that database (which happened to be the same as his laptop password).  Up until now, I cringe every time I think of how often things like this happen in every large corporation.  However, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, since I was his close relative, and he knew that I wouldn’t do anything bad with the password.  And, frankly, that’s not what worries me.  What really worries me is that his password was something like “Charles99” where Charles was my relative’s first name, and 99 was the current year.

I don’t break into systems, I don’t use my social engineering skills to gain access to user accounts, and I don’t get any pleasure out of doing things like that;  in other words — I’m not a hacker.  Nevertheless, I’m guessing that it would take me no longer than 10-15 minutes to guess that “Charles99” password, simply because it’s so easy!  In fact, I don’t even need to know any personal information about the owner of a laptop with such password, except for his or her name, which is most likely a part of their stored login anyway.  So, the question is: being the System Administrator in this corporation, how do you protect a system like this?

There are a couple of ways to enhance password security:

1) Educate your users. Conduct a mandatory security workshop with your users a couple of times a year, where you stress the importance of good data security practices.  Describe how a data security breach might directly affect the users’ work environment or salary and use that as an incentive for them to follow the company security rules.

2) Create a strong password policy in your domain. Things like nonalphanumeric characters and no relation to user’s account name are present in the Microsoft’s password complexity requirements as a default.  Make sure that you don’t require users to rotate passwords very often; otherwise they will get frustrated and write them down, which will defeat the purpose of the whole exercise.

3) Use a security package with remote kill switch. If the computer does get lost or stolen at some point, the IT Administrator should have a way to either secure or destroy the company data remotely.  In this case, the encryption is not going to protect your data if we assume that the password was broken by the thief.  But the ability to destroy the data will be an effective tool against data leakage.

The Effects of Economic Downturn on Data Security

The current economic landscape has left corporations brutally exposed to loss and even abuse of sensitive data.  According to a survey conducted by SailPoint of over 100 Fortune 1000 IT managers, “nearly 70 percent can’t summarize which workers have access to the most critical applications and data. Further, if faced with a layoff, 44 percent of respondents are unable to remove access privileges of terminated employees on a timely basis.”  This is extremely dangerous with the high number of layoffs and merger/acquisitions that are increasingly happening every day.  It allows for situations where disgruntled workers can maliciously misuse their access such as in the case of the disgruntled S.F. admin who hijacked their network.

Public CIO has some useful tips on what to look for and how to keep your company from being vulnerable.  The four things to look out for are :

• Orphan Accounts – Do employees that no longer work at your company have access to any systems
• Access Level of Contractors/Temps – Do you regularly restrict the access you give to contractors as they move off and on various projects
• Entitlement Creep – Have employees who have worked at your company for a long time received more access than they should have just for being around?
• Separation of Duties – Do any employees have excessive control over critical business transactions?

Regularly monitoring these things should greatly help maintain access control over your sensitive data so that the economy does not cause more damage than it already has.

Cloud Computing in our Immediate Future?

The term Cloud Computing includes many areas of technology such as software as a service (SaaS), a software distribution method, a newer avenue; hardware as a service; all having in common that they are delivered over the internet, on demand, from massive data centers. Cloud Computing represents a fundamental shift in the way companies obtain software and computing capacity, using the internet to tap into everything from extra server space to software programs. Assigning these computing tasks to a remote location, not a desktop computer, laptop computer, handheld machine or the companies own servers is known as Cloud Computing.

Cloud Computing, once a concept, is now on its way to becoming a legitimate new technology and is gaining interest with forward thinking CIO’s. According to writer Nicholas Carr, Cloud Computing will put most IT departments out of business. “IT departments will have little to do once the bulk of business computing shifts out of private data centers into the cloud.” Nicholas also comments on the security issues facing this new approach to off load data centers. “One of the key challenges for corporate IT departments, in fact, lies in making the right decisions about what to hold onto and what to let go.”

Several issues worry CIO’s about the reliability and security of cloud based services. Down time on these services will now be out of their control, moving away form their current ability to maintain their own systems to insure up time. The ability to comply with regulations, including Sarbanes-Oxley, governing corporate financial reporting and HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is a major concern.

Due to the concern for reliability of system up time and the ability to comply with the many regulations now mandated on corporate and personnel data security, many CIO’s, analysts and vendors see the emergence of Cloud Computing happening only gradually.