WHEN data gets stolen, there鈥檚 an unexpected suspect in the frame.
To protect their networks from viruses and hacker attacks, most companies insist their computers are 鈥渓ocked down鈥� so they can鈥檛 run unauthorised software or CD and DVD content. 鈥淏ut woe betide the lowly IT director that would inconvenience the CEO with such restrictions,鈥� says Glenn Zimmerman, a technology expert with the Pentagon鈥檚 cyberspace task force. 鈥淢ost senior leaders鈥� computers are often wide open to threats,鈥� and it is often the CEO who holds the most critical data, he warned a London conference on last week.
The way to counter this threat from within is to hack their computers and show them what you find, says cyberwar analyst Yael Shahar of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel. 鈥淭hey may close the door and show you out, but their security awareness will have gone up a notch,鈥� she says.
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However, the conference also heard how locked down computers are stopping people doing their jobs 鈥� even in the high-tech intelligence services. After being asked to obtain a machine that could securely destroy DVDs containing classified content, one Cyber Warfare delegate said he consulted the National Security Agency鈥檚 list of approved DVD-destruction devices. But when he tried to order one online, his locked-down government computer would not let him.
Zimmerman believes such lockdown measures reduce employees to the level of 鈥渟ubmorons鈥� 鈥� only able to turn a PC on and off. And it鈥檚 done chiefly, he believes, to make life easier for IT security departments. Worse, he says, they lead the smarter computer users in a given workplace to find their own lockdown workarounds 鈥� which then in turn introduce serious vulnerabilities.
He says management needs to find compromise levels of security that let people do their jobs properly while providing a manageable level of protection.
鈥淭o be effective, security has to be a compromise,鈥� Zimmerman says. 鈥淏ecause the only totally secure computer is one that is switched off, filled with concrete and dropped to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.鈥�
