Intangible Assets

Jul 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Sandra Kay Miller

           

Network access control has also grown extensively to include everything from more robust operating systems using complex identification and authentication in conjunction with directory services and group object to fully integrating physical access with logical identities.

Roy Chua, vice president of product management and marketing at Identity Engines (idengines.com), a technology vendor that integrates networked devices, directory services and centralized security policies through its appliance, explains how organizations can control access through dynamic policies linking disparate systems. “The way our fall-through policies are set up, users are granted access under their credentials only when all criteria are met. For example, an employee might log on to confidential information from his or her desktop in the office and have complete access, but when attempting to access that same data, say from a laptop using an unsecured network at the local Starbuck's, they're not going to be able to get to it,” he says.

In the end, however, protecting intangible assets often boils down to human nature. Organizations are starting to look past the technology and into the simple things they can do to protect digital assets.

“One of the easiest things a company can do to protect its data is close all the doors when an employee leaves,” says Jeff Nielsen, senior product manager at Symark International (symark.com), an access control software company based in Agoura Hills, Calif. Nielsen likened employee computer system accounts to “little back doors” that are left open when people leave an organization and their access isn't immediately — if ever — terminated.

“Pretty much any account in a company covers some valued data. If you think about the system and database administrators, certainly they have the keys to the kingdom, but even the people in accounting have access to things like customer lists and how much money they have paid for products and maintenance — that have value to a competitor,” he reasons. “In a typical enterprise environment, you'll have a login to the network environment where you store all your files, do all your printing and maybe have access to a line of business applications that run on Unix machines. Most companies are diligent enough about having a process that says when a person leaves, HR is supposed to inform IT that this person is left, but that doesn't always happen.”

To combat this type of security hole, Nielsen advocates combining all employee logins through a centralized directory system such as Active Directory or LDAP so that when a person leaves, administrators can delete a single user account and all access is immediately terminated across the board.

Without comprehensive protection, it only takes an instant to lose or expose critical digital assets. Kevin Gillis, vice president of product management in research and development at Ipswitch (ipswitch.com), a Massachusetts-based file transfer and network-monitoring company, points out, “Last year alone there were more than a thousand laptops left in the back seats of taxi cabs in New York City. I wonder how much private information and confidential files were exposed?”

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