The Enemy Within the Firewall

Mel Tom writes to tell us The Age is reporting that many businesses are now considering employees a much bigger threat to security than most external threats. From the article: "With email and instant messaging proving increasingly popular and devices such as laptop computers, mobile phones and USB storage devices more commonplace in the office, the opportunities for workplace crime are growing."

Duh!

[__aaclcg7560]

Employees are the biggest threat to any company. Especially if the CEO is shoveling the loot out the backdoor.

Then the ONLY real solution is...

[3D Monkey]

to get rid of all the employees.

Seriously, how can anyone get any work done with all this security risks running around?

Here's Some News

[mordors9]

"Ms Warwar believes that the rise in internal security attacks has come about because outside criminal gangs realise that recruiting or tricking employees to hand over insider knowledge is less expensive and traceable than other forms of cybercrime."

Gee someone ought to come up with a name for this... let's see, we can call it "Social Engineering". Hopefully no bad guys will read about this and start using it now....

From the well-duh-department...

[hackstraw]

Employees often suck. In retail, they rip you off more than your "customers". (I can't call a shoplifter a customer :)

Kevin Mitnick was able to get employees to give him tons of "sensitive" information just by asking for it. They take their laptops home and surf porn and get 0wn3d and bring the trojans and malware inside the firewall. Hell, they can even VPN the crud in from home or Starbucks too.

I suggest 1) firing all employees you can 2) treat the remaining ones to a paycut 3) installing spy mechanisms inside of their office, computer, and bathrooms to "keep them honest", and let go of the ones that don't make the cut.

We don't need no stinking happy employee. We need one that does what they are told, and is already happy to do what they are told. Thats it.

Re:One thing is sure

[Anonymous Coward]

What does this stuff have to do with the GNAA?

Re:From the well-duh-department...

[LunaticTippy]

Better yet, replace them with robots.

Robots programmed and designed by robots, to remove the chance of humans tinkering with the logic.

Re:Is security the answer?

[Tsugumi]

Free coke? Hell yeah, sign me up, my dealer is way too expensive! A hole full of pot sounds interesting too, but I reckon the plants in the office would probably yield a better crop. When can I start? I swear I'm gonna be way too high to be any kind of security threat...

When everything is illegal, everyone is a criminal

[Pinback]

The goal is to always have more dirt on your employer than they have on you.

Screw hacking the server. Spend a few months running the license paperwork through the shredder, and then call the BSA. If you do it right, you may even be in line for a reward.

Seriously folks, if you want to treat your employees like criminals, hire people who are already institutionalized. At least you can find out what their predilection is.

Re:One thing is sure

[slapout]

It's funny. At one job I had, it wasn't allowed to defragment my own hard drive. Yet I had delete access to every table in the production database. Strange.

Cops always have the best dope

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, you are reading and posting to /. from work.

You may not be a Nazi, but you are a hypocrite.

Re:Make Sure You Own It!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the real AC - and so is my wife.

IT 101

[zero1101]

99% percent of the time, employees are not a threat because they're malicious...they're a threat because they're very, very stupid.