Least Privilege And The 9 Circles Of IT Hell

Anybody remember the classic works from their college reading curriculum? Specifically today's blog will reference an epic poem considered by many to be one of the greatest in world literature: Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy". Now you might be asking what does Dante's nine circles of hell have to do with least privilege and why should I keep reading today's blog? Anyone who has ever worked in technology knows the answer is obvious: at some point we all wind up in IT hell. I was following the @BeyondTrust twitter feed recently and came across a tweet from @Tynan_on_Tech referring to his (Dan Tynan's) article published in InfoWorld on October 3, 2011 titled "IT inferno: The nine circles of IT hell" with the subhead "The tech inferno is not buried deep within the earth -- it's just down the hall. Let's take a tour." Needless to say I was greatly intrigued and read on as Mr Tynan states "Thankfully, as in Dante's poetic universe, there are ways to escape the nine circles of IT hell. But IT pro beware: You may have to face your own devils to do it." The entire article is a great read and highly recommended but I reserved a special love for the deepest levels of hell: circles 8 & 9 which clearly could benefit from least privilege to mitigate the very real and scary realities presented there. Once you've finished reading that article you should check out how to mitigate these levels of hell for yourself here.