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.

Security News Brief: 10-03-08

• New federal law targets ID theft and cybercrime. The bill lowers the bar prosecutors need to clear before bringing hacking and other cybercrime charges against an individual. (Security Fix, October 1, 2008.)
• Laptop stolen in break-in at McCain campaign office in St. Louis. Campaign officials said the laptop contained information about areas that Republicans are targeting for support. (STLToday.com, October 2, 2008.)
• October is Cyber Security Awareness Month. (Network World, October 3, 2008.)

Security News Brief: 08-26-08

• Medical identity theft is “the fastest-growing form of identity theft in America today.” (Chicago Tribune, August 22, 2008.)
• More data breaches have been reported so far this year than in all of 2007, according to Identity Theft Resource Center. (Washington Post, August 26, 2008)
• Most mid-sized U.S. firms rate information security as a higher priority than reducing business costs. (Dark Reading, August 22, 2008.)