Top
of Mind
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Shionogi Shutdown and the Power of
IT
Philip Lieberman
President & CEO
Lieberman Software
Recently, I came across
an article
by Robert McMillan in Computerworld that really got my
attention. McMillan’s article covers an event that occurred earlier
this year in which Jason Cornish, a former employee of U.S.
pharmaceutical company Shionogi, was able to destroy most of the
company’s computer infrastructure.
Cornish was laid off in
2010 along with some other employees. Unfortunately, Shionogi did not
change the passwords that gave Cornish access to systems and
applications on the company’s network. Cornish was still able to use
his credentials to log into the company’s network from a public
McDonald’s WiFi connection in February and launch a vSphere VMware
management console that he’d secretly installed on the company’s
network a few weeks earlier.
According to the story,
Cornish deleted 88 company servers from the VMware host systems, one by
one. The U.S. Department of Justice reported that the attack
effectively froze Shionogi’s operations for a number of days, leaving
company employees unable to ship product, cut checks, or even
communicate through e-mail.
This story is just
another unfortunate example of too many people having too much access
to sensitive data for too long. Because many companies blindly trust
the members of their internal IT departments and fail to control access
to sensitive data, what happened at Shionogi is certain to reoccur
again and again.
The Shionogi incident is
solid proof that IT departments absolutely must change their privileged
account passwords regularly – and have the tools in place to revoke
privileged access immediately when job roles change. It is evident that
the wrong IT employees can be granted full administrator access – and
use that access with crippling results.
Our latest survey found
that 78% of the IT professionals interviewed admitted they could walk
out of the office taking highly sensitive information with them.
Cornish clearly fit into that mold, but your own IT staff can be made
accountable if you take the right steps to secure privileged logins.
The best advice I can give to any organization is to make security a
strategic investment and deploy software that automates privileged
identity management.
Does your company change
its privileged account passwords regularly?
Email me at: phil@liebsoft.com.
You can also follow me on Twitter: @liebsoft
or connect with me via LinkedIn.
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Tech Tip of the Month
How to Handle Service
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What's
New in Identity Week
Featured commentary on our Identity
Week blog this month includes:
- Encrypting Your Data is Not Enough.
By exploiting weak or non-existent privileged access controls and
technology, an insider, former employee or criminal can easily get to
the encrypted data by gaining access to program encryption keys.
Encryption is a good first step, but failing to actively control
privileged identities degrades its value...
Partner News
>> EdgeSeven will provide
Lieberman Software's PIM and security management products to its
customers throughout the United Kingdom.
Jon Inns, co-founder of EdgeSeven, said: “The mission of our company is
to provide organisations with world class situational awareness about
the security activities across the enterprise. Lieberman's PIM
capabilities are critical to us delivering on that mission as misuse,
loss, sharing and compromise of high value credentials is still a huge
problem for organisations.” Read
more.
>> Nanjgel
Solutions will be Lieberman Software's value added
distributor for the Middle East nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council
(GCC) which includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates.
In its new role in the Lieberman Software Partner Program, Nanjgel will
not only continue to market, sell and support Lieberman Software’s
privileged identity management (PIM) solutions and other products
directly to its clients, but will now provide localized support to
authorized resellers and service providers in the region. Read
more.
Events / Press /
Analysts
- WEBINAR:
Managing Database Administrator Credentials. September 28, 2011 @ 11am PT.
In this webinar we will show you how to easily find SQL Server
instances on your Windows systems, find their accounts, change
credentials and propagate new credentials to connection strings in
seconds. We will also how you how Enterprise Random Password Manager
(ERPM) can be used to manage the credentials and connection strings of
other database engines.
- WEBINAR:
Self-Service Passwords Resets and Password Synchronization, The Easy
Way. September 29, 2011 @
11am PT. Users forgetting their passwords is
always the number one load on the Help Desk. Automating the solution to
this problem can save money and free up Help Desk staff to address more
critical user problems. See how our self-service password reset and
password synchronization products can eliminate users calling the Help
Desk for password resets.
- WEBINAR: Windows Privileged
Identity Management. October
5, 2011 @ 11am PT. In this webinar, we will show you how
ERPM can be used to automatically find machines, accounts and their
usage, reliably propagate password changes, and delegate access to
sensitive credentials on the Windows platform. We will also show you
how to integrate into SIEM and trouble ticket systems to alert you to
out of compliance situations.
- WEBINAR:
Effectively Managing Windows Services, Scheduled Tasks and COM objects.
October 6, 2011 @
11am PT. Proper maintenance of Windows Services,
Scheduled Tasks and COM objects across thousands of computers can be
such a large task that it never gets done. Our tools allow you to
update credentials or change configuration across thousands of machines
in just a few minutes. Attend our free webinar and see how quickly you
can get the job done.
- WEBINAR:
Linux/UNIX Privileged Identity Management. October 12, 2011 @ 11am PT.
In this webinar we will show you how ERPM can be used to automatically
find machines, accounts and their usage, reliably propagate password
changes, and delegate access to sensitive credentials on the Linux/UNIX
platforms. We will also show you how to integrate into SIEM and trouble
ticket systems to alert you to out of compliance situations.
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