What Does Your Network Body Language Say About You?

IT staff need to be alerted to unauthorised activity when it happens, not long after the event. Monitoring the network behaviour characteristics of users, applications and devices is on the increase in the battle against data loss and breaches, writes Stuart Hodkinson.

Security is one of the few areas of IT investment that would appear to be insulated from the woes of the economy. Alongside storage, investment in security has to continue, as the treats to public and private sector IT systems continue to grow and evolve regardless of how good or bad the economy is doing.

However, the state of the...

...economy can have a direct impact on the types of threat posed. For example, in the current climate we are seeing many companies forced to make significant headcount reductions, often in one bulk movement. This can result in numerous potentially disgruntled staff leaving the company in one go and leaving an already stretched IT department with several IT accounts to deactivate. This sudden jump in workload usually results in a significant lag between the individuals leaving and their accounts being manually shut off, with the company being at risk throughout of unauthorised access while those accounts remain active and exploitable.

Of course, the treat of a network breach does not always sit with a disgruntled former employee. It can just as easily sit with a current employee or even someone completely disconnected from the organisation, the so-called opportunistic hacker.

According to the most recent Identity Theft Resource Centre (ITRC) data breach report, a shocking 656 data breaches were reported in 2008 in the US alone, a 47% increase from the 2007 figure of 446 data breaches. Financial services companies reported more than 18 million records breached last year. Overall, more than 35 million records were compromised in 2008, according to the... continued on page two >

 

 

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