DON'T COMMENT AT ALL - EVEN WHEN A GOVERNMENT WATCHDOG OUTS YOUR POOR PRACTICE MUCH LATER - Numerous UK Local Authorities up to Nov 2011
This strategy is used by organisations who know that trying to make an excuse for such widespread poor practice is like pouring petrol on a fire. Best to keep quiet and hope it all goes away.
As reported in the UK's Guardian newspaper in November 2011, of 1,035 breaches which happened at UK Local government authories over 3 years up to 2011, only 55 were reported to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). Quite understandable when you consider the glaring poor practice involved in some of them. It's not just the loss of physical storage devices which was obviously embarrassing, but the downright incompentent such as the Buckinghamshire CC employee who accidentally sent about 2,000 email addresses to the public, or the ccanned case notes relating to children which were published on Facebook by an employee at Kent council.
BeyondTrust says: Mitigating against insider threat is not just about protecting data assets from employees with malicious intent, but also against unintentional and accidental harm. This is best achieved with the fine grained management of privileges, by establishing boundaries which permit employees to do their job well, and nothing more, as opposed to building walls which require them to request support from IT Admin, everytime they want to go to the bathroom.
