This week I had an interesting exchange with a full-time Linux administrator. What started out as a discussion about PowerBroker Servers Linux Edition, quickly became a heated debate about trust. After much back and forth, he said this: “At the end of the day, employers need to trust the employees. Relying on technological solutions to ‘keep honest people honest’ is putting the cart before the horse. If you can't trust your employees, you shouldn't have hired them.”
In a perfect world, he’s absolutely right, but the reality is, the world we live in is far from perfect. Human nature is capricious and you never know what is going to be the “thing” that transforms a good, trustworthy employee into an insider threat. Businesses are remiss if their security practices and privilege delegation polices start and end with trust, and it’s probably safe to say that UBS, Societe Generale, Stanford Hospital and the many others that have been the victim of rogue insiders, would strongly agree.
This is exactly the topic that Preventing Good People from Doing Bad Things addresses – providing useful tips and tricks to help companies implement the right least privilege policies for their organizations, all while providing illuminating anecdotes about the damage malicious insiders can cause.
