How do you protect your IT resources from corruption or theft? The job continues to get harder as our need to be online increases. Today we are seeing more and more devices that need to be connected to corporate resources for efficiency and productivity of our employees. Ooften those resources are not company owned or managed.
My smart phone today is very powerful. With it I can hook into my company network to reduce the cost of phone service. I can open a browser and work with company resources. I can download apps that allow me to manage servers and other things. I can even work on documents if I was inclined.
But my cell phone is not managed by my company. They have no control over what virus software is installed, or where I may go on the internet, or what virus infections I may gather.
But there’s more. We obviously have the little USB stick we can plug into our computer to move data off our work machine and use it elsewhere. What are we brining into the office by way of virus on that data device? What protected information are we taking out of the office on that same device?
How about the laptop? I have never worked for a company that uses laptops where at least one has been stolen in the last 15 years. So, what is on the laptop? Is it locked in case of theft? You can probably assess your risk a lot better than I can.
The point is, we probably do a better job and managing our risk in our data center than we do with the devices that are brought in and out of our office space all day long. The statistic that is thrown around about data theft is that the majority of it comes from internal resources. If that is the case, would it not make as much sense to reduce your risk on those devices that come in and out of your office? Or, for that matter, can you protect against them?
Share your thoughts with us. Is this something that can be managed or controlled? Leave your thoughts here online, or drop me an Email with your input to btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben