Study notes link between IT sabotage, work behavior
Workers who sabotage corporate systems are almost always IT workers who exhibit specific negative office behavior according to recent research.
That is the conclusion of the U.S. military in conjunction with Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) program, which together analyzed insider cybercrimes across a variety of critical industry sectors.
The research suggests that potential troublemakers should be easy to spot. Nearly all the cases of cybercrime investigated were carried out by people who were "disgruntled, paranoid, generally show up late, argue with colleagues, and generally perform poorly."
According to the research, 86 percent of those who committed cybercrimes held technical positions and 90 percent had system administrator or privileged system access. Almost half -- 41 percent -- of those who sabotaged IT systems were employed at the time they did it but most crimes were committed by insiders following termination. Most incursions -- 64 percent -- involved VPNs and old passwords that had never been terminated, highlighting a lack of security controls and gaps in their organizations' access controls.
As a result, Carnegie Mellon has developed a methodology that it said can help detect insider threats as early as possible, involving management, IT, human resources, security officers, and others who "must understand the psychological, organizational, and technical aspects of the problem, as well as how they coordinate their actions over time."
The university's study, Management and Education of the Risk of Insider Threat (MERIT): System Dynamics Modeling of Computer System Sabotage, is available here.
According to security management vendor Calum Macleod of Cyber-Ark, most organizations are leaving themselves exposed by "not paying due care and attention to the people who are charged with looking after their systems and applications." Even outsourcing cannot resolve the problem fully, he said.
Macleod's solution is password management. This means ensuring that policies and standards are in place to control administrative access by containing the number of privileged accounts to three or fewer. This reduces the difficulty of managing those accounts. Passwords also need to be changed regularly.
Macleod concluded: "So as far as doing the right thing, I'd suggest that you start from the basis that your IT staff are the biggest risk to your organization's security, and if anyone of them disputes this, remember that arguing with colleagues was one of the clear signs of an impending attack.
"And automate the whole process. If privileged password management is not on your shopping list in 2007 it may already be too late."
» posted by abennett
Techworld.com
Symantec Backup Exec 12 and Backup Exec System Recovery 8 deliver industry leading Windows data protection and system recovery. Download this whitepaper to find out the top reasons to upgrade and how to get continuous data protection and complete system recovery.
Data and system loss — from a hard drive failure, malicious attack, natural disaster, or simple human error — can happen anytime. Don’t leave your business vulnerable. Make sure you have a secure recovery strategy in place. Symantec's latest backup and system recovery technology can efficiently restore critical applications, individual emails and documents and even restore your entire system in minutes in the event of a loss.
Businesses face a growing challenge to ensure that the IT environment is properly protected. Backup Exec 12 integrates with other applications in the Symantec family of products, to complement your current data protection strategy, keep your data securely backed up and make it recoverable when you need it most.
This is the DUMBESTthing
This is the DUMBESTthing I've ever heard of. It is simply more mind reading attempts by voodoo artists. This kind of stuff poisons-the-well when people like me, who have integrity, try to defend themselves against malicious managers.In fact, the single more dangerous person to my organization is my immediate manager. His characteristics follow:
1) over committed
2) arrives at work early and leaves late
3) constantly sabotages employees work (documented fact).
4) manager constantly modifies web site files without notification.
5) manager constantly assigns work and demands unrealistic completion withing a few minutes or hours at the end-of-the day.
The list goes on.
Funny how they always assume the employee is guilty and never nail the managers.
Such is the new American slavery, scape goating, and employee sabotage by American business manager who get away with murder.