Security: Back to basics (Part 1 – The Human Touch)
Taking a look at the latest quarterly update on security from Symantec, there are still some basic steps that system administrators can do to protect their network and endpoints. These are the low-hanging fruit that can help prevent attacks and comprise of confidential data.
Education is still one of the top three returns on investment on the security side. An educated end-user will not click on links in emails that aren’t from trusted parties, open password-protected zip files and run their contents, and question suspicious emails with the help desk. An educated management team understands that Security is not just a line item that can be eliminated or reduced. As treats become more sophisticated at penetrating networks and endpoints, increasingly more sophisticated tools are needed to prevent, find, and remove these threats.
But the question is, “How do we effectively educate the end-user?” Some strategies that are most effective are some that are the most popular or well-known infection routes. You can also think about what employees are trained to do from memory, like a Fire Drill. For example:
- Set up an external website with a login screen with their company or agency’s logo but not the company or agency’s web address.
- Send an email with a non-department email address (like yahoo) to everyone in the organization asking them to log into the website.
- Do not capture the login info, but direct them to a web page saying that their login credentials would have been compromised had this been an actual phishing website.
- Create a simple program using Auto-It or another application building tool with a warning to users
- Configure it to auto-run on insert using Autorun.inf
- When the end-user pops in the thumb drive, run the program and display the message saying to not trust thumb drives.
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