The Big Picture

Employees behavior should be looked at when forming security philosophy

• By Susan Callahan
• May 31, 2007

UNFORTUNATELY, security breaches are not uncommon in today’s world. Internet viruses, data tampering and information theft top the list of nightmares IT departments face worldwide. And finding the latest and greatest security software may be only half the successful solution to protecting corporate assets.

According to Lenny Goodman, director of desktop management at Baptist Memorial Health Care Corp. in Memphis, Tenn., employee behavior must be addressed and adopted as part of the overall security philosophy before security technology can become effective.

“Twenty years ago, an endpoint was a dumb terminal attached to a mainframe,” Goodman said. “The only thing you could use it for was a business-related application, and e-mail was only for internal communication. Misuse of corporate resources was limited to sending your bills through the corporate mailroom or making personal long-distance calls. If you wanted to steal confidential company information, you’d have to figure out a way to hide a huge, three-ring binder.

“Point being, theft was conspicuous. You didn’t need policy—visibility of the behavior was the deterrent. That’s no longer the case.

Facing Facts
Goodman said today’s security breaches have forced many security professionals to acknowledge naiveté regarding staff behavior.

“The Internet changed everything,” Goodman said. “We granted people access to e-mail, asked them to use the Internet for business-related research, and the next thing we know we’re being forced to write policies addressing many different kinds of inappropriate Web sites and constraints on what should or should not be in an e-mail. In effect, corporations are trying to put the technology cat back in the bag.” 

Unfortunately, the cat is putting up quite a fight. While managers and human resources departments are scrambling to play catch-up, technology continues to evolve.

“While we weren’t looking, Intel, Microsoft and other manufacturers were putting together USB. You no longer need a screwdriver, an open slot and a driver disk to alter your PC,” Goodman said. “You can significantly modify the functionality of your machine, particularly for malicious purposes, using a device smaller than a cigarette lighter.”

Is the implementation of restrictive software the answer to corporate security vulnerabilities? Yes and no. Goodman said he compares the illicit use of devices in the workplace to drug use in sports.

“Technology can encourage bad behavior. It’s like athletes using new steroids that you don’t yet have a test for,” Goodman said. “Reactively, we have to analyze the device capabilities, develop a test for detecting them, and then once they’re found, we must establish a consequence. Do you bench the offender if there isn’t a restriction on the behavior to begin with?”

IT or IP?
Baptist Memorial chose to run an audit on the network using Safend’s USB Auditor. Without revealing specific numbers, Goodman acknowledges officials were not happy with devices they found connected to the network. Security officials then had to ask some serious questions: “Why are they here?” and “What are they being used for?”

Unfortunately, security software cannot always tell an IT manager how devices are being used on a network. Is a ZIP drive being used to backup data? An employee sitting in their cube listening to an iPod may not be a problem, but having an iPod plugged into a PC is a different issue.

“That’s misuse of corporate resources,” Goodman said. “An iPod doesn’t need to be plugged into a machine to listen to music. That’s a situation where we must ask the question: What’s the purpose of this device?”

Are corporate IT departments becoming the new sheriffs in town? Goodman said absolutely not, or at least not at Baptist Memorial.

“We found a great product in Safend Protector,” he said. “We’re able to audit our network, locate unacceptable devices and then restrict the use. Working with non-IT administrators, we can even decide which employee can use which devices.”  

But there’s an internal step to take first.

“Before you can implement behavior-modifying technology, you have to set up guidelines defining appropriate and inappropriate behavior so that morale doesn’t suffer,” Goodman said. “Then, we will use the new product to detect attempted breaches of the guidelines and report those findings to human resources. It will not be IT’s job to determine consequences.”

And Baptist Memorial takes a proactive approach in hunting for security breaches.

“You can take two approaches,” Goodman said. “You can assume everything is fine, turn on the security solutions and then deal with the problems as they arise. We’ve chosen to go in the other direction and be a bit more proactive. We’ll blacklist everything and then listen to requests on an individual basis. If an employee wants to connect an iPod to their computer, they can make a request to HR, and we’ll go from there. We don’t want to be the one to tell an executive he can’t use his Blackberry. However, guidelines will have to be established.

“We want a happy workplace, but one that is compliant and secure, as well.”

This article originally appeared in the issue of .