Security Tales - everyday security woes exposed
September, 2004
The scientist’s tale
To think of all the late nights, missed lunches and complaints from the kids of the time I spend at work that I’ve sacrificed for these guys! The hours of research and development I’ve put in to give them that leading edge. And how do they repay me? With a measly 3% increase! They stand to make hundreds of thousands if not millions from this “little ladies” work and yet…
It was so simple copying all of this hard work onto one small memory stick, so small nobody noticed. Safely in my handbag I just walked straight past the lazy security guard, even if he had checked he wouldn’t have known what it was.
The salesman’s tale
Dave knew his performance over the last quarter had been considerably below par and that his future sales prospects had looked better! Now on opening the email from his boss’s secretary requesting he attend a meeting with the man tomorrow morning, “9.00am sharp!”, he knew his days were numbered.
Handy that the company had supplied a desktop with a CDRW drive. Just a couple of clicks with the mouse and he watched as the entire customer database was transferred onto the disk. A warm self-satisfied smile washed over his face. It’s just insurance he told himself.
The policeman’s tale
Geoff was so pleased with himself finding that a pen drive that cost £25 could store as much as 22 floppies. His regular meeting with DC Phillips, from the neighbouring force, in Tesco’s car park was going to be so much easier without having to carry a bunch of floppies with him. This regular exchange of intel regarding the local underworld had to be conducted this way since there was no secure network link between the two forces and email was strictly forbidden.
Seeing DC Phillips pull-up he got out of the car and reached into his pocket for the device. A dreadful sickening feeling hit the very pit of his stomach. I’m sure that it was there when I left the station!
The soldier’s tale
Backing-up the days’ data to a memory stick had become policy in theatre; they were so convenient and fast. But this latest action had seen them changing location daily. Imagine setting-up and breaking-down a network every twenty-four hours in battlefield conditions. Not the easiest of tasks especially when the commanding officer demands the network to be live from the earliest possible moment to the last.
Corporal Nunn knew it was inevitable that one or more of these tiny devices would go missing! It might have fallen into the sand never to be seen again but equally it would be better to know that if it were ever found that the data contained on it would be unreadable to the discoverer.
The student’s tale
It had been really wicked getting Gran to buy me an MP3 player for Christmas. Now I can make great use of the super fast Uni. internet connection and download rate. Transferring files to home this way attracts zero un-wanted attention!
The politician’s tale
With hindsight maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to use one of those new fangled “flash memory drives” to move “work in progress” to and from my constituency. I had told myself it was both less of a pain since I could just plug the current work into either my home PC or the office network. Not only that but I was less of a target for the mugger without the obvious laptop. But now reading this leaked report and for good measure a sprinkling of my private life in the Sunday paper. I now realise I didn’t just mislay that device…
Restoring order
New technology can be a double-edged sword. In the case of removable memory devices such as pen drives, on the one hand they provide inexpensive additional reusable storage, which is both quick and cheap. But on the other hand they introduce a security risk in that large volumes of data can now be transferred via these devices to who knows where.
Reflex Magnetics Ltd have the solution in their Encryption Policy Module (EPM) Client, a new addition to the Reflex Disknet Pro security suite. EPM technology provides the ability for the system administrator to dictate that all removable memory devices are transparently encrypted. This ingenious development brings encryption without all the associated complication of needing to understand key pairs or algorithms. The user does not need to know a thing, whilst the system administrator can be assured they will always have a master key to unlock any data encrypted by the system.
To think of all the late nights, missed lunches and complaints from the kids of the time I spend at work that I’ve sacrificed for these guys! The hours of research and development I’ve put in to give them that leading edge. And how do they repay me? With a measly 3% increase! They stand to make hundreds of thousands if not millions from this “little ladies” work and yet…
It was so simple copying all of this hard work onto one small memory stick, so small nobody noticed. Safely in my handbag I just walked straight past the lazy security guard, even if he had checked he wouldn’t have known what it was.
The salesman’s tale
Dave knew his performance over the last quarter had been considerably below par and that his future sales prospects had looked better! Now on opening the email from his boss’s secretary requesting he attend a meeting with the man tomorrow morning, “9.00am sharp!”, he knew his days were numbered.
Handy that the company had supplied a desktop with a CDRW drive. Just a couple of clicks with the mouse and he watched as the entire customer database was transferred onto the disk. A warm self-satisfied smile washed over his face. It’s just insurance he told himself.
The policeman’s tale
Geoff was so pleased with himself finding that a pen drive that cost £25 could store as much as 22 floppies. His regular meeting with DC Phillips, from the neighbouring force, in Tesco’s car park was going to be so much easier without having to carry a bunch of floppies with him. This regular exchange of intel regarding the local underworld had to be conducted this way since there was no secure network link between the two forces and email was strictly forbidden.
Seeing DC Phillips pull-up he got out of the car and reached into his pocket for the device. A dreadful sickening feeling hit the very pit of his stomach. I’m sure that it was there when I left the station!
The soldier’s tale
Backing-up the days’ data to a memory stick had become policy in theatre; they were so convenient and fast. But this latest action had seen them changing location daily. Imagine setting-up and breaking-down a network every twenty-four hours in battlefield conditions. Not the easiest of tasks especially when the commanding officer demands the network to be live from the earliest possible moment to the last.
Corporal Nunn knew it was inevitable that one or more of these tiny devices would go missing! It might have fallen into the sand never to be seen again but equally it would be better to know that if it were ever found that the data contained on it would be unreadable to the discoverer.
The student’s tale
It had been really wicked getting Gran to buy me an MP3 player for Christmas. Now I can make great use of the super fast Uni. internet connection and download rate. Transferring files to home this way attracts zero un-wanted attention!
The politician’s tale
With hindsight maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to use one of those new fangled “flash memory drives” to move “work in progress” to and from my constituency. I had told myself it was both less of a pain since I could just plug the current work into either my home PC or the office network. Not only that but I was less of a target for the mugger without the obvious laptop. But now reading this leaked report and for good measure a sprinkling of my private life in the Sunday paper. I now realise I didn’t just mislay that device…
Restoring order
New technology can be a double-edged sword. In the case of removable memory devices such as pen drives, on the one hand they provide inexpensive additional reusable storage, which is both quick and cheap. But on the other hand they introduce a security risk in that large volumes of data can now be transferred via these devices to who knows where.
Reflex Magnetics Ltd have the solution in their Encryption Policy Module (EPM) Client, a new addition to the Reflex Disknet Pro security suite. EPM technology provides the ability for the system administrator to dictate that all removable memory devices are transparently encrypted. This ingenious development brings encryption without all the associated complication of needing to understand key pairs or algorithms. The user does not need to know a thing, whilst the system administrator can be assured they will always have a master key to unlock any data encrypted by the system.
