No, I’m not talking about the Mars candy, funny characters pervasive on your TV, or even the legendary brown ones from a Van Halen concert rider.
I am referring to how the popular candy has been used as a metaphor for IT security because it reflects the common practice of hardening your perimeter with firewalls, access and authentication solutions (hard candy shell) while allowing any insider almost free reign to do as they please once inside your enterprise or extended enterprise network (soft chocolate center).
Billions of dollars have been spent over the last few decades on corporate information technology (IT) security in order to “keep the bad guys out,” but it turns out the bigger threat was and always has been found within the network perimeter. The so called “insider threat,” the trusted employee, contractor, or partner, that can cost an organization more on a daily and/or per-incident basis than any outside hacker could hope for.
Whether we like it or not, “good people do bad things” intentionally, accidentally, or indirectly. This is the premise upon which the new book “Preventing Good People From Doing Bad Things, Implementing Least Privilege” is based. In this book, you can learn from your peers how to avoid the embarrassments and costs that they have already experienced.
Hopefully your privilege identity management practices won’t melt in someone else’s mouth instead of yours.
