A CSO cannot open a newspaper or turn on the network news without reading or hearing about the latest security breach in a Fortune 500 company. Internet viruses, data tampering and information theft top the nightmare lists of IT departments worldwide.However, finding the latest and greatest security software may be only half of a successful solution to protecting corporate assets.

According to Lenny Goodman, Director of Desktop Management at Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation in Memphis, Tenn., employee behavior must be addressed as part of the overall security philosophy, and adopted before technology can become effective.

“Twenty years ago,” he says, “an endpoint was a dumb terminal attached to a mainframe. The only thing you could use it for was a business-related application and e-mail was only for internal communication. Misuse of corporate resources was limited to sending your bills through the corporate mailroom or making personal long-distance calls. If you wanted to steal confidential company information , you’d have to figure out a way to hide a huge 3-ring binder.”

“Point being, theft was conspicuous. You didn’t need policy; visibility of the behavior was the deterrent. That’s no longer the case.”

Facing Facts…

Goodman notes that today’s security breaches have forced many in his profession to acknowledge their naivety when it comes to staff behavior.

“The Internet changed everything!” he says. “We granted people access to e-mail, asked them to use the Internet for business-related research, and the next thing we know we’re being forced to write policies addressing many different kinds of inappropriate websites, and constraints on what should or should not be in an email! In effect, corporations are trying to put the technology cat back in the bag.”

Unfortunately, the cat is putting up quite a fight. While managers and human resources departments are scrambling to pay catch-up, technology continues to evolve. “While we weren’t looking, Intel, Microsoft, and other manufacturers were putting together USB. You no longer need a screwdriver, an open slot, and a driver disk to alter your PC,” Goodman points out. “You can significantly modify the functionality of your machine, particularly for malicious purposes, using a device smaller than a cigarette lighter.”

Is the implementation of restrictive software the answer to corporate security vulnerabilities? Yes and no. Goodman compares the illicit use of devices in the workplace to drug use in sports.

“Technology can encourage bad behavior. It’s like athletes using new steroids that you don’t yet have a test for. Reactively, we have to analyze the device capabilities, develop a test for detecting them, and then once they’re found we must establish a consequence. Do you bench the offender if there isn’t a restriction on the behavior to begin with?”

IT or PI?

Baptist chose to run an audit on their network using Safend’s USB Auditor. Without revealing specific numbers, Goodman acknowledges they were not happy with the devices they found connected to their network. They then had to ask some serious questions: “why are they here?” and “what are they being used for?”

Unfortunately, security software cannot always tell an IT manager how devices are being used on a network. Is a zip drive being utilized to back up data or to steal it? An employee sitting in his cube listening to an iPod may not be a problem, but having an iPod plugged in to a PC is a different issue. “That’s misuse of corporate resources,”according to Goodman. “An iPod doesn’t need to be plugged in to a machine to listen to music. That’s a situation where we must ask the question: “what’s the purpose of this device?”

Are corporate IT departments becoming the new sheriffs in town? Goodman says absolutely not, or at least not at Baptist. “We found a great product in Safend Protector,”he says. “We’re able to audit our network, locate unacceptable devices, and then restrict their use. Working with non-IT administrators, we can even decide which employee can use which devices.”

There’s an internal step to take first, however. “Before you can implement behaviormodifying technology, you have to set up guidelines defining appropriate and inappropriate behavior so that morale doesn’t suffer. Then we will use the new product to detect attempted breaches of the guidelines and report those findings to human resources. It will not be I.T.’s job to determine consequences.”

Is everyone a suspect in the hunt for security breaches?

“You can take two approaches,” says Goodman. “You can assume everything is fine, turn on the security solutions and then deal with the problems as they arise. We’ve chosen to go in the other direction and be a bit more proactive. We’ll blacklist everything and then listen to requests on an individual basis. If an employee wants to connect an iPod to their computer, he or she can make a request to HR and we’ll go from there. We don’t want to be the one to tell an executive he can’t use his Blackberry. However, guidelines will have to be established.”

“We want a happy workplace, but one that is compliant and secure as well.”