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The Weakest Link in Network Security

July 13th, 2006 · No Comments


Your small-business network may be protected by firewalls, intrusion detection and other dataprotection2.jpgstate-of-the-art security technologies. And yet, all it takes is one person’s carelessness, and suddenly it’s as if you have no network security at all.

Let me give you an example. In March 2006, a major financial services firm with extensive network security disclosed that one of its portable computers was stolen. The laptop contained the Social Security numbers of nearly 200,000 people. How did it happen? An employee of the firm, dining in a restaurant with colleagues, had locked the laptop in the trunk of a SUV. During dinner, one of the employee’s colleagues retrieved an item from the vehicle and forgot to re-lock it. As fate would have it, there was a rash of car thefts occurring in that particular area at that particular time, and the rest is history.

The moral of that story is clear: No matter how secure your network may be, it’s only as secure as its weakest link. And people–meaning you and your employees–are often the weakest link. It’s important to note that poor security puts your business, as well as your partners, at risk. As a result, many enterprises and organizations, such as credit-card companies, now specify and require minimum levels of security you must have in order to do business with them.

So what can you do? Here are nine ways to minimize the risks that people can pose to the security of your company’s data: The Weakest Link in Network Security

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