There are some things in life that are valuable and vitally important to our success and safety. Things like cars and homes, for example. They are important assets that aren't to be left open for just anyone to access. You don't think twice about locking them and taking precautions to protect them from thieves, intruders, or even your teenage daughter.
This same concept applies to the information within our enterprises, as well. As IT professionals, our job and responsibility is to protect critical information for the companies that we work for. And just like we do for our cars and our homes, we need to take every precaution to lock and protect the data that has been entrusted to us. The best way to do this is through the least privilege model.
Over and over again, we see the media report on examples of people who did not take correct measures to lock their sensitive information. For example, Loma Linda University Medical Center had a breach because employees illegally took documents from the office to their homes. Stoz Friedberg had one as well, when two customer service representatives diverted checks from client accounts for their own use. Another example is a programmer, working for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, stole $10 million dollars worth of proprietary software code.
Clearly locking down sensitive information and the users that can access said information is a no-brainer. For a completely secure environment, it's necessary. Least privilege, or giving users the least amount of access to do their jobs, is the most secure and compliant way to do this. Data should be protected from all employees and contractors that don't absolutely need it, and those who do should be monitored closely.
To learn more about how to lock down your enterprise and keep your sensitive information secure from insiders, click here.
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.
