Remember when we were kids and we’d hear a strange noise from the other room, or the closet. Maybe it was after your parents finally let you watch that movie you promised wouldn’t give you nightmares. Back then nothing could get us, so long as we hid under out blankets. But we had to do it right, you couldn’t even have a pinky showing, otherwise, it wouldn’t work and we would have been taken away to work as slaves for the boogie man.
We’re all a little older now and the days of hiding under the blanket are over, although I will admit there still can be no space between my chair and the ottoman; that just gives me the chills. But guess what? Somewhere along the line, YOU became the blanket. You became what everyone else uses, even if they don’t realize it, to ward off the flying demons, abominable snowmen, and clowns. What, we’re in the trust tree here, you and I both know clowns can be freaky, the kind of freaky that only an 1/8” thick piece of cotton can protect us from. Of course, the adult version of these are Viruses, Trojans, Phishing Attacks, Key Loggers, Data Breaches, Theft…the list goes on. Some of these threats start from outside your network, but a growing number, (70%+) originate from inside your perimeter.
So how you gonna handle it? Will you be part of a blanket, half a blanket, maybe a little more? Either way, unless you can cover up your end-users completely, the things that go bump in the night are getting through. So with everyone in your ear and in your email telling you this and selling you that, how do we know what makes us an entire blanket? It starts with something you already have, knowledge. By now, especially if you’ve been following this blog, you know the single biggest security measure you can take is to run your user base with standard user rights, or at least limit what the almighty ‘root’ can do and when they can do it. Not doing this is like trying to sew a blanket without thread. You have no stitching to show the auditors and everything just falls apart.
The point is, to be the blanket, yes, we need good AV, Firewall, and Security Policies in place but in order to really secure the perimeter within, we need to limit users’ access, understand how data flows in our organizations, monitor database activity, and we need the ability to report on all of this. BeyondTrust is your pattern to create that blanket. We provide the tools you need do all this and more, while keeping end-user’s productivity a top priority. Give us call and let us show you first hand. Then, once you do this, maybe someone out there can tell me why my dogs keep staring at nothing and barking, and I swear a voice keeps telling me to geeett ouuuuut. Where’s my blanket?
Scott Lang, Sr. Director, Product Marketing at BeyondTrust
Scott Lang has nearly 20 years of experience in technology product marketing, currently guiding the product marketing strategy for BeyondTrust’s privileged account management solutions and vulnerability management solutions. Prior to joining BeyondTrust, Scott was director of security solution marketing at Dell, formerly Quest Software, where he was responsible for global security campaigns, product marketing for identity and access management and Windows server management.