Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Opinion
The (Campus) Empire Strikes Back
7/1/2008
Antivirus software, behavior-anomaly detection devices, and firewalls can strengthen security but have proven inadequate in protecting users from targeted stealth malware and botnet infiltration. In truth, because botnets and stealth malware in general are very difficult to detect, many end users may not realize their systems have been compromised.
Social Engineering Scams. The popularity of eCommerce, social networking, and user-hosted content-rich entertainment sites such as YouTube all contribute to a collective curiosity, trust, and naiveté among users, which in turn fuels social engineering vulnerabilities.
USER PRACTICES: Sabotaging the System
Open environments and stealth malware contribute to the security challenges within today's universities, but user practices are part of the picture, too. The importance of user education and awareness cannot be stressed enough when it comes to network security. Without proper training, users may help facilitate malware infiltration. In particular, lack of backup practices and "social engineering" scams (a type of intrusion used for data gathering that often involves tricking or conning users into divulging information or breaking standard security protocol) can sabotage IT's efforts to protect data and resources.
Social engineering preys on curiosity. Because social engineering scams are dependent upon human intervention, I include them here. Social engineering could be thought of as both a security threat and a destructive user practice. These scams prey upon user trust, curiosity, compassion, and greed, and often are part of a blended or multivector attack. Through social engineering, hackers may gain access to accounts and passwords, which then can be used to infiltrate computers to establish a botnet.
Defending against social engineering is exceptionally difficult because IT must rely upon smart user practices. Network managers can warn against the latest "gimmes" or gimmicks, but it's nearly impossible to catch them all before they have proliferated across the university. The popularity of eCommerce, social networking, and user-hosted content-rich entertainment sites such as YouTube all contribute to a collective curiosity, trust, and naiveté among users which, in turn, fuels social engineering vulnerabilities.
Without backup, data losses are huge. Backup practices are another challenge for university IT departments. When an intrusion is detected, it's often too late to protect the user from data loss, identity theft, remote control of a device, and other illicit activities. In most cases, the user has not recently backed up his or her information, or is inbetween backup cycles, resulting in huge data losses. Then too, if malware is detected on a machine, standard practices usually call for a complete rebuild, which can take days. Users also expect that their machines will be reconstructed exactly as they were, which isn't always possible. Faced with these consequences, many users will attempt to work around the malware or simply ignore it, leaving a back door open on the network which allows perpetrators to bypass any and all security measures to access data and resources. Bottom line: In addition to user productivity loss, IT resources are heavily consumed to mitigate risks and rebuild equipment.
Recommended Reading
- Get Users on Board
- Greening IT
- It's a Zinch
- Meeting up Virtually
- Online Tutorials to the Rescue
Now's the time to use online tutorials to streamline professional development and help desk management.
- Retention Rx
