My brother just called to warn me about aftershocks and told me to go work from home. I'm onto him, though, he knows I live in a basement... he wants my inheritance.
@Susan: That's actually a great point. Laws differ from country to country, making security even tougher. Perhaps in some areas it's not legal to monitor employee activity, while elsewhere it might be the law of the land to do so.
@Susan: On a network where most "clouds" are secured, how would that work? Who would manage it? ICANN is already embroiled in problems over its lack of internationalism, or governance, or whatever.
Kim, I'll ask you flat out: Does your lack of shaving, etc., as noted by Bolingbroke, indicate that you're betraying the firm??? And where are you going with those hard drives? If you don't tell Nicole, I will!
Perhaps there is a syndrome, in which workers get so caught up in wanting to be part of the team that they are willing to follow a boss into wrongdoing.
Kim, we have to let you go. I haven't liked the cut of your jib lately, your shaves leave a lot to be desired, and your shirts and trousers are wrinkled. Here's security, please leave with then quietly.
@Mary. I would speak to the employee if I was concerned and if the responses didn't satisfy me I would speak to a manager. You can only start covering up for them if you don't plan to stay in your own job.
But I keep returning to the fact that at least some -- maybe a lot -- of recent breaches at big outfits could have been avoided if common sense had reigned.
@Nicole -- LOL, exactly. Given the gloomy news, I wouldn't be reporting foul moods. If anything, I think if you suspect there's an insider issue go to I.T. and just tell them to do a security check just in case.
@Kim: I am reminded that in Keith Richards' autobiography, he talks about a producer he could not stand (also English) to whom he suggested the only decent thing was to do that. Two years later, "he took my advice," Keith writes. Scary!
Of course, insider threats are not essentially IT threats. If anything, I should think IT was easier to lock down than other stealable items (paper files, overheard conversations, the fruit in the refrigerator).
I can understand the mentality that someone is operating like a spy and disliking that... but it's another thing if people do what Mary did and confront the person face-to-face.
I hate the "You're a snitch" mentality. You catch someone doing wrong, you do the right thing, and people get annoyed because heaven forbid they behave themselves?
@Mary Sounds good but to actually go and snitch to a higher up because of suspicions is one thing, if you actually know of a wrongdoing is something entirely different.
Well, I was not in a position to fire them. What I did was get a head of steam up about the fact that the person was interfering with the hard work we were all doing. Then I told the person, "I know what you are doing. Either you go to the boss, or I will."
@Mary: Amazing. Sometimes I am really convinced that this part of the world belongs to a different world. You wouldn't believe how much you can trust people. You even get things back if you lose stuff. Once a friend forgot a new laptop in a train and she got it back. Another time I knew about someone who found a wallet in the library (with almost 200euros in cash and credit cards) and gave it to a librarian who later on called the owner.
@Nicole: Well, I went into a cell phone provider's store at a big NJ mall to get a new phone. Awhile later, when I went to use the phone, I discovered the number had been hijacked and my account had racked up $2K in calls. Turns out the workers in the store, both young guys, had committed the fraud.
@Paul: Thank you very much. That is beautiful. It's touchy to know that you can actually touch people. Thanks. I'll check it out later and get back to you. I haven't been updating that site for some time.
@MJ: "One reason may be that IT needs more protection than firewalls, authentication mechanisms, and encryption afford." I think this perfectly sums up the grande challenge and until we are able to go beyond these peripheral secuirty measures, there is no edn in sight.
@Susan; Yes, sadly, I've heard of the restauarnt premises problem. And then there's the WiFi threat as well. But those aren't insider threats, technically anyway.
One thing: I have heard of cloud service clients demanding that their cloud servers be hosted in their home country and accessible only to their own internal staff. In other words, access to the cloud service would be restricted.
@Susan: I read your amazing story about how u finally get to stay in Finland. I enjoyed reading it that much. I admire your perseverance and self-belief to achieve your vision in life. It taught me a great lesson.
A lot of times you'll find that some of these malicious attacks that occur from within an organization are due to the fact that people have too many privileges". What privledges is he refering to here?
Here's another somewhat IT example of an insider threat, most credit cards are stolen by people at resturants who run your bill but also run it through a swiper that copies the data down.. you trust the restruant with your data but you can't trust the individual?
@Mary: with the pace at which tech is moving, a security solution can only be as good until the next tech invention that will make it completely redundant.
@Paul I guess it all depends on a companies attitude. I find one of the big problem today is that actors are so focused on short term profit (maybe thinking in terms of quarters) that no one focuses on the long term growth (10+ years down the road). A company should be looking for the kind of people that can help them get there
In a local shop, it was discovered that the manager was robbing the till by cooking the online books. The board allowed him back onto his computer to retrieve personal data there. And guess what happened?
I worked for a company with a paranoid client. All the client's data was kept on a system managed by the client which didn't permit downloading or printing. Pain in the neck.
Hi all. Perhaps one way to deal with insider threats is to play towards primary loyalities. If companies are willing to hire/fire employees all willy-nilly then they are not going to have a lot of loyality to the insitution..
@Paul: The fellow who perpetrated the attack on Shionogi had already had a fight with management and been dismissed. Why on earth was he called back, when IT knew he had a beef with the company?
This links to the rumor I reported that the White House is drafting an executive order to prevent Wikileaks-type situations. The rumor, of course, was leaked.
"All of this may lead some to question why, in an age when security products and services are readily available, we're still seeing so much IT-based malfeasance."
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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