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."

This Has Been Why...

[ackthpt]

This has been why email attachments are regularly stripped and IM is forbidden here. Still, we get stuff because people bring it in on CDs, infected PDA's in dock, etc.

opportunities for workplace crime are growing?

[mnmn]

"opportunities for workplace crime are growing"

This may be more because of incompetent netadmins than vile employees. Maybe more so because of lax security. Tighten up the computers, the type of traffic that can travel, the ports, the installed apps, passwords etc and an employee on a mission cant break in except into her own account. Security in a workplace lan is more than just put an MS Windows 2000 Server Firewall, its segregated security groupings per department and employee.

Security is good. Give it a shot.

Re:Is security the answer?

[PCM2]

If you're in a situation where you really have to worry that much about your own people, doesn't that just show that management has failed to provide a good working environment and create loyalty?

It's a fair question, and yet loyalty is not always something that is so easy to just "create." Loyalty is not something that's handed down from management. It is a personal choice on behalf of each individual employee. Every employee has his or her own agenda and set of beliefs. Particularly among IT people, you may encounter a number of difficult types:

• The smug techie who thinks he knows more than anybody and is therefore tempted by the idea that he can get away with whatever he wants because nobody knows what he does anyway.
• The person with poor interpersonal skills which have held him back in terms of career advancement, and who thus feels he is undercompensated (and doesn't know how to ask for a raise).
• The individual who styles himself as a "Bad Boy hacker," who isn't going to be loyal to any company no matter how you compensate him.
• The individual who was hired right out of college and is simply too young and inexperienced to have a well-developed sense of personal ethics.

There are all sorts of other examples that could apply to anyone; for example, an employee who feels bored or unchallenged at work, or is otherwise just lazy, might spend too much time engaging in compromising activities (whether they be playing games or using P2P networks). And some people just don't know any better than to disclose information they shouldn't -- I personally have worked for a company that hired a private detective to try and get a job at a rival company and pick up information from other employees while he was there.

The point is that you can't entirely point the finger at management. Yes, it's in management's best interest to create an engaging and enjoyable work environment for everyone, but the most they can really do is try. Whether or not they succeed, that's still no reason to skimp on internal security measures.

OT: Disney store does!

[PCM2]

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

I had a girlfriend who had a (very brief) job working at the Disney Store. She said that at the Disney Store, if a patron was referred to as a "customer," that meant someone suspected them of shoplifting. Everyone else was a "guest."

Re:Who is the enemy?

[bnenning]

From my view, virtually every practice in the free market, even those that are applauded, are of marginal ethics and morality at best. The basic premise of taking as much wealth as possible from others because you are clever enough to win it at their expense makes the entire pile of rubbish stink.

Free markets are not zero-sum. Wealth can be created, not just "taken", and capitalism encourages that better than the alternatives.

Greed doesn't win

[redelm]

Look at game theory: betrayal and greed only work in the very short term. Co-operation works much better long term. Different people have different time horizons (discount rates), but the system has long memories. Getting longer with electronics.

Re:One thing is sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Along with the occasional piss-in-the-cup drug test.


Having worked all over the world; military and some safety-related jobs excepted, this is an exclusively American phenonomon. Most Americans don't know, for example, the rest of the civilized world sees this as an unnecessary intrusion. Just FYI, and something to think about.