Close
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Video
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Logo
Logo
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Video
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Latest News
    • Networking

    Focus on Identity, Vigilance

    Written by

    Peter Coffee
    Published September 9, 2002
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.

      The terrorist attacks of last september permanently changed the terms of debate for subsequent discussions of IT security and the technical response to potential terrorist threats.

      Almost no imaginable attack can now be dismissed, and it is no longer a confession of incompetence to acknowledge that at least some attacks will succeed.

      Some technologies were unduly demonized in Septembers aftermath. For example, there was an immediate flurry of ill-conceived proposals to attempt restrictions on access to encryption. Thankfully, this notion is no longer holding sway among even the most ill-informed legislators or the most opportunistic enforcement agencies.

      As noted in Februarys position statement from the IEEE, “Encryption is likely to be used by criminals to protect their communications, but their use of encryption is not necessarily obvious. … Laws prohibiting the use of unescrowed, strong encryption would be of little use to law enforcement efforts.”

      Any broad use of Web services will depend on well-integrated encryption; distributed storage and processing solutions must also incorporate encryption to protect data and real-time business intelligence.

      Enterprises should, therefore, be developing internal guidelines—and monitoring relevant industry standards and regulatory requirements—to strike a balance between the desired degree and duration of cryptographic protection and the performance overhead and costs of processor-intensive crypto algorithms.

      Other technologies enjoyed brief moments in the spotlight of our hopes for a quick technology fix. Face recognition, for example, can be quite effective under controlled conditions, but tests in public airport security checkpoints during the past year have been disappointing. Tests in Palm Beach, Fla., this spring and in Boston this summer failed to limit false alarms to acceptable levels while still consistently recognizing “suspects” (played by airport employees).

      More intrusive technologies, such as eye and fingerprint matching, have also failed to live up to their hype. Strategies as simple as breathing on a fingerprint scanner, making the previous users fingerprint reappear to be re-scanned, are dismayingly effective.

      Prices for iris scanners, which are harder to fool and less likely to falsely reject legitimate users, are coming down into the same $100-plus price range as fingerprint scanners, but administrative issues still impede adoption: In eWeek Labs review of the Panasonic Biometric Groups Authenticam, for example, we found the included software far better suited to individual workstation access control than to large-scale network security. (For more on the use of biometrics, see story, left.)

      Rather than pushing the envelope of cost, not to mention possible user discomfort with the “Minority Report” aura of pervasive biometrics, enterprises will do better to streamline their identity management systems. This means integrating e-mail, voice mail, workflow and file-sharing systems under well-defined privilege management schemes, rather than devoting resources to elaborate and conspicuous “gee-whiz” hardware.

      USA Patriot Act

      USA Patriot Act

      Hopes remain high, though, for following terrorists footprints—not the kind left by shoes but the kind left in cyberspace by travel arrangements and other financial transactions.

      The USA Patriot Act, signed into law last October, is named with a tortured acronym: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (doubly condensed to USAPA).

      The USAPA itself consists largely of revisions to other laws. The burden falls on ISPs, financial institutions and other potential targets of expanded subpoena powers to understand the aggregate effect on their resulting obligations.

      Individuals and enterprises should also understand the effect of USAPA on the exposure of their records, electronic communications (including voice mail) and other information assets—especially to the extent that these are handled or stored by third parties.

      Enterprises and outsource providers should conduct a complete review of their respective rights and obligations, especially to the degree that their service contracts and confidentiality agreements may be vitiated by subpoenas or court orders.

      Focus on Identity

      Focus on Identity

      Enterprise IT architects in the year since Sept. 11 have also been hard pressed to cope with a flood of urgent items in more familiar domains, such as network operating systems, firewalls, virtual private networks, intrusion detection systems and anti-virus tools. The following trends are apparent.

      Perimeter defense, as a viable strategy, is dead. Wireless and nomadic laptop devices, with external network connections, make it impossible to define even the physical location of the network edge. Web services make the logical location still harder to characterize.

      Network protection must, therefore, focus on identities and privileges of authorized users, using tools such as Zone Labs Inc.s Integrity. During our review this spring, we found the product (priced at $80 per user with volume discounts) effective in controlling client devices Internet access on an application-specific basis.

      The pervasive network can be its own worst enemy in the ease with which it propagates virus attacks. Enlisting the network in its own defense are products such as Network Associates Inc.s McAfee Security VirusScan ASaP, which uses peer-to-peer technology.

      Meanwhile, key IT vendors have been addressing concerns about out-of-the-box insecurity with a long-overdue shift toward more secure default configurations. In our tests last month of Microsoft Corp.s Windows .Net Server Release Candidate 1, for example, we found that the installer utility detected our failure to run the Internet Information Services Lockdown Wizard and automatically disabled IIS.

      Our pleasure was limited, though, by the discovery that restarting the server did not trigger any further notice of our exposures—notably, the many default extensions retained from our previous Windows 2000 installation. On the plus side, installation of .Net Server on a bare machine gave us ample warning of bad practices, such as leaving an Administrator password blank.

      Poor administrative practices wouldnt be such an open invitation to attackers if systems didnt grant unrestricted superuser status. We remain strong advocates of the trusted-system architecture in products such as Argus Systems Group Inc.s PitBull, the only technology that has yet survived one of our international Openhack events unscathed—though a successful attack on the underlying operating system kernel, specifically on a version of Solaris 7 x86, did succeed in a challenge late last year.

      The message here is that every security technology—regardless of architectural merits—demands continued vigilance. That vigilance is embodied in state-of-the-art intrusion detection in products such as OneSecure Inc.s Intrusion Detection and Protection appliance. Rather than merely relying on known attack signatures, the $16,495 OneSecure device (which we reviewed last month) uses various heuristics to detect previously uncharacterized attacks. By developing a model of normal traffic and using sophisticated analysis of attack patterns, the Intrusion Detection and Protection appliance can identify new threats while minimizing the time lost to false alarms—the goal, were sure, of every IT administrator a year after Sept. 11.

      Technology Editor Peter Coffee can be reached at [email protected]. The reviews cited in this story can be accessed at www.eweek.com/links.

      Related Stories:

      • Special Report: Rebuilding for Tomorrow
      • Still Much to Learn from Sept. 11
      • Locked Down, Planning for the Worst
      Peter Coffee
      Peter Coffee
      Peter Coffee is Director of Platform Research at salesforce.com, where he serves as a liaison with the developer community to define the opportunity and clarify developers' technical requirements on the company's evolving Apex Platform. Peter previously spent 18 years with eWEEK (formerly PC Week), the national news magazine of enterprise technology practice, where he reviewed software development tools and methods and wrote regular columns on emerging technologies and professional community issues.Before he began writing full-time in 1989, Peter spent eleven years in technical and management positions at Exxon and The Aerospace Corporation, including management of the latter company's first desktop computing planning team and applied research in applications of artificial intelligence techniques. He holds an engineering degree from MIT and an MBA from Pepperdine University, he has held teaching appointments in computer science, business analytics and information systems management at Pepperdine, UCLA, and Chapman College.

      Get the Free Newsletter!

      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis

      Get the Free Newsletter!

      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Artificial Intelligence

      9 Best AI 3D Generators You Need...

      Sam Rinko - June 25, 2024 0
      AI 3D Generators are powerful tools for many different industries. Discover the best AI 3D Generators, and learn which is best for your specific use case.
      Read more
      Cloud

      RingCentral Expands Its Collaboration Platform

      Zeus Kerravala - November 22, 2023 0
      RingCentral adds AI-enabled contact center and hybrid event products to its suite of collaboration services.
      Read more
      Artificial Intelligence

      8 Best AI Data Analytics Software &...

      Aminu Abdullahi - January 18, 2024 0
      Learn the top AI data analytics software to use. Compare AI data analytics solutions & features to make the best choice for your business.
      Read more
      Latest News

      Zeus Kerravala on Networking: Multicloud, 5G, and...

      James Maguire - December 16, 2022 0
      I spoke with Zeus Kerravala, industry analyst at ZK Research, about the rapid changes in enterprise networking, as tech advances and digital transformation prompt...
      Read more
      Video

      Datadog President Amit Agarwal on Trends in...

      James Maguire - November 11, 2022 0
      I spoke with Amit Agarwal, President of Datadog, about infrastructure observability, from current trends to key challenges to the future of this rapidly growing...
      Read more
      Logo

      eWeek has the latest technology news and analysis, buying guides, and product reviews for IT professionals and technology buyers. The site’s focus is on innovative solutions and covering in-depth technical content. eWeek stays on the cutting edge of technology news and IT trends through interviews and expert analysis. Gain insight from top innovators and thought leaders in the fields of IT, business, enterprise software, startups, and more.

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Advertisers

      Advertise with TechnologyAdvice on eWeek and our other IT-focused platforms.

      Advertise with Us

      Menu

      • About eWeek
      • Subscribe to our Newsletter
      • Latest News

      Our Brands

      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms
      • About
      • Contact
      • Advertise
      • Sitemap
      • California – Do Not Sell My Information

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      © 2024 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×