Why Less is More with Admin Rights
A recent blog post at Microsoft Malware Protection Center warns that disabling the User Account Control (UAC) tool increases the likelihood of malware threats. According to Microsoft’s Joe Faulhaber who published the entry, the Sality virus family, Alureon rootkits, Rogue antivirus like FakePAV, Autorun worms, and the Bancos banking Trojans all have variants for turning UAC off.
Identity Thief Irene Hijacks Customer Database At Travelodge
I introduced you to Identity Thief Irene as an archetype for the type of insider villain who may already be infiltrating your extended enterprise a couple of weeks ago and guess what? Almost every day I see an article that represents “Irene” as manifesting in another company with some measurable harm that was newsworthy.
What Comes After Discovery – Rediscovery and Scan
Over the next few blog posts I’ll show you ways to leverage your investment in Retina CS to help automate and streamline various scenarios I run into in the field. One common scenario I see quite often happens when customers are first implementing a vulnerability management solution into their organization. I call this the ‘What…
Learning from the Ghosts of Data Breaches Past
Data breaches are unfortunately becoming a staple in the ever-changing world of information technology. As this environment continues to shift, it would be nice if malicious insiders and trouble-causing outsiders would shift right out of reality. This, however, is not a likely reality, therefore we must examine carefully ways to mitigate the effects of these…
Microsoft Patch Tuesday – August 2011
True to form for the even months of 2011, Microsoft released thirteen security bulletins today. Of the most interest are MS11-057 (Internet Explorer) and MS11-058 (DNS Server). While it has become fairly commonplace for Microsoft to release an Internet Explorer patch every other month, this release also patches IE9 – the second time a critical…
Cloud Security Fears an Exaggeration? We Think Not.
According to a recent Computerworld article, outgoing Federal CIO Vivek Kundra was quoted as saying that cloud security fears are being exaggerated. Let’s take a brief look at some of the top government cloud service providers approved by the General Services Administration and see how they have fared in security, just in terms of malicious insiders.
PCI-DSS And Least Privilege
The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) is a set of comprehensive requirements for enhancing payment account data security in an effort to thwart the theft of sensitive cardholder information. The core group of requirements is as follows:
Least Privilege Becoming a Matter of National Security
We’ve been saying for years that enterprises need to pay attention to the risk of insider threat. Managing privileged access to IT information is both a security best practice as well as a stepin the right direction as far as productivity goes. Allowing employees and contractors to access information beyond what they need is both irresponsible and expensive, especially as more and more companies fall victim to breaches caused by supposed “trusted” insiders. It’s a very real IT threat, and one that must be addressed at every level. Especially by major utility facilities, as this special report by ABC points out.
Center for Digital Strategies And Securing The Perimeter Within
With our focus on managing the perimeter within we think a lot about the role of human and organizational behavior as well as technology in managing the insider threat. So it was great to discover that he folks at Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College are doing a lot of great research on human element of IT security.
Treat The Symptom Or Cure The Disease
When virus outbreaks, data thefts and other security breaches impact an organizations computing systems, most will treat the symptoms instead of curing the disease. Treating the symptoms might include updating security software or policies, adding additional layers of security technology, and possibly locking down users so tightly that their productivity suffers.
