Artikel & White Paper

White Paper
Easy Guide to Comprehensive IT Security Strategies for SMBs
High-End Endpoint Security, Data Loss Prevention and Portable Device Management at a Reduced Scale
July 2008

Wireless internet connections open the door to data theft and data loss

According to the study, some 66% of those surveyed would like airlines to provide wireless internet connections to maximize time while traveling. This opens up the door to data theft, data loss, unauthorized access to private data and much more.

Which Are the Threats and What Needs Protection?
Using portable storage devices to steal corporate information is not a new practice, yet USB Flash Drives, smart phones or portable music players continue to gain popularity, becoming common accessories, thus making it extremely easy to either carry data outside a certain enterprise or to cause serious malware infections, putting and end to most activities for hours or days.

Endpoint security software prevents against inside threats

While preventing uploads of potentially malicious files without authorization, endpoint security software also prevents information theft or loss. More importantly however is that they highlight a threat commonly overlooked: the inside threat. Most surveys and reports show insiders are those behind the majority of security breaches. Be it intended or a simple mistake, such breaches come at a high price.

The 2005 CSI/FBI computer crime and security survey shows the theft of proprietary information went up from $168,529 in 2004 to $355,552 in 2005. Moreover, according to the Computer Crime Research Center, in 2005 98% of all crimes committed against companies in the U.K. had an insider connection.

In April 2007, the Palo Alto Networks released a survey releasing troubling findings: employees in most enterprises are constantly circumventing corporate security policies by deploying unauthorized applications, including video viewers, streaming audio, P2P, and Google applications. Given this breach savvy attribute of possible employees, all gateways are open to stealing and loosing classified information.

Examples are more powerful than abstract numbers, so it would help pointing out that quite a few of the security breaches occurring in the past few months of 2008 were caused or believed to be caused by insiders. That was the case for the second largest breach ever reported occurring at Hannaford, where 4 million credit card accounts were exposed to identity theft and fraud, or for the Downingtown High School where a student stole 55,000 private records or for the Southeast Missouri State University.

How to Determine the Real Costs of Security Breaches?

Endpoint security solutions mainly focus on protecting data stored and transited through the network

Endpoint security solutions mainly focus on protecting data stored and transited through the network. Information bits, be it private records of customers and employees or intellectual property, is know to have high value, yet it is hard to quantify. But one can come to a rather accurate image of what is at stake by creating a few scenarios: think what effects the loss of a commercial software product’s source would generate; or think of a new service model stolen and immediately implemented by your main competitor; alternatively, imagine what costs rebuilding your reputation would entail after exposing all your customers to identity theft by losing their social security numbers, bank accounts or usernames and passwords for online purchases through your online shop.

White Paper Kostenlost als PDF herunterladen Name and E-mail address are required