Endpoint Protection

Now here is a topical subject on the eve of the A level results due out tomorrow. If you have a someone who is waiting for results then you have my sympathies. The waiting is excruciating!

But if you are the ones who do not necessarily get what you hoped for then the DPA is here to help. According to the Information Commissioners Office, an individual can access personal information about themselves from any organisation. This is known as a Subject Access Request (SAR). Students wishing to know more about why they were awarded certain marks can use a SAR to request examiners’ comments from examinations scripts. Students who appeal their results can also request the minutes of appeals.
At last, it seems that the DPA actually has some value to the public as opposed to its oppressive prevention of access to information.

So don’t delay, use your rights and use your SAR. Its nothing to do with SARS!!

First it was the cuts in private sector firms and now it is the public sector. The easiest and quickest cuts that make a difference to the bottom line are to remove people who are usually the largest cost item. Sadly redundancy is now a major occurrence in a working life. I know of many capable, intelligent and hard working people who have been made redundant two or three times in their lives sometimes more. It is increasingly a tool of organisations to quickly get rid of people. In general, redundancy is never executed against the legal guidelines which results in court cases and compromise agreements.

So what has all this to do with Information Security. The removal of staff from an organisation is currently the biggest threat to an organisations information. Redundancy or whatever method is used can result in animosity, resentment, and malicious intent on the part of the former employee. Of course most organisations are understanding and sensitive to emplyees and most follow the rules. However, sales of DLP software has been rising and the most sited reason for purchase is protection of contact databases, intellectual property and sales information from disgruntled employees.

The threat is real and active and who knows how much critical informaiton has been taken by upset and revengeful emplyees without anyone knowing. Please add any comments to this post on your experiences of cost cutting and data loss.

Another Microsoft vulerability is exposed in a bulletin by Microsoft dated the 16th July 2010.  Microsoft Windows is prone to a vulnerability that allows a file to automatically run when a folder is viewed in Windows Explorer. This vulnerability is being exploited by W32.Temphid to ensure that malicious code executes when an infected USB drive is inserted into a computer. While current attacks involve executing files from USB drives locally connected to targeted computers, attackers may also exploit this issue by setting up remote network or WebDAV shares and enticing a user to visit them. This possibility presents a remote threat to affected users. Microsoft published an advisory describing a workaround for this issue.

Be aware that as this exposure will be exploited with other methods of attach

On the 12th December, it was widely reported that another laptopn was taken from MOD Headquarters in central London. This would not normally cause worry as all laptops are encrypted. However, the encryption key was also taken so exposing the information to the thief. It is not known if there is any exposure whilst investigations proceed. However, news items referred to the laptop as a ’secret data laptop’ which gives an indication. It was only in July thsi year (as reported in this blog) that 658 laptops have been stolen from the MOD in the last four years.

Below is one report on the story but the BBC also have reported it

http://www.pressassociation.com/component/pafeeds/2009/12/12/secret_data_laptop_stolen_from_mod_headquarters?camefrom=regional

St Albans City and District Council is the latest organisation to lose four laptops with personal data on over 14,000 voters. Files contained names, addresses, dates of birth, signatures, postal vote forms and statements which is all the information required to obtain a bank account.

Councillors were recently debating the loss and how the laptops could be stolen from the actual offices. Even though the data was protected, the portable devices were not physically secured. This goes against council policy of portable devices being physically as well as logically protected.

It also begs the question as to why personal data was held on portable devices. Such data should only be accessed on central resources and users prevented from copying to local devices.  We shall see what lessons will be learned and then forgotten til the next time.

The council needs to develop an information classification with associated policies on protection. A simple Data Loss Prevention product would have prevented the personal data from being copied in the first place but, had it been copied then the data would have been encrypted. It is noted that one of the laptops was left for months on an unused desk with no one knowing that held all this data. This is why an information audit and classification is required to start to get some control.

This story has been widely reported so use these links for more detail (such as there is)!!

http://www.stalbansreview.co.uk/news/4760711.St_Albans_councillors_debate_laptop_theft/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/8363514.stm

http://www.stalbansreview.co.uk/news/4743799.St_Albans_council_worker_claims___Laptop_was_ignored_for_months_/

The Information Commisioners Office (ICO) or the privacy watchdog has published figures on data breaches that makes disturbing reading. What’s more is that the ICO  is getting so concerned that it will be introducing fines on comapnies and public bodies that recklessly or deliberately break the rules. Fines up to half a million may be imposed on losses of information. In total, 434 organisations reported data security breaches in the past 12 months, up from 277 the year before. This is what Deputy information commissioner David Smith said: “The majority of organisations get data protection right, but regrettably a significant minority of management teams are failing to take data protection seriously enough. Unacceptable amounts of data are being stolen, lost in transit or mislaid by staff. Far too much personal data is still being unnecessarily downloaded from secure servers on to unencrypted laptops, USB sticks, and other portable media.”

Well what a surprise! But what is really interesting and scary is that there are fines coming! But I thought that if you breached the Data Protection Act then you would be fined or sued anyway. However, what is clear is that this affects all businesses; large or small; SMB or large multinationals. So Data Loss Prevention is for all organisations that have personal data stored but it is not sufficient to just use device control, the ICO is saying any data loss from any channel! So does that mean that first generation products that really only do encryption and device control will be replaced by the second generation products that provide device, IM, and all the goodies? I think this is a call to action for vendors to smarten up their act and work with others to gain functionality rather than buy and try to integrate. You can read some more here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8354655.stm

Latest reports on conficker infections include not only Ealing Council (see previous post) but also Oxford Brookes University, Manchester City Council and Whipps Cross University Hospital NHS Trust. Prior to this, the Houses of Parliament and Ministry of Defence were infected.

So AV has been proved to be powerless with this worm and even the DLP vendors do not have any defence as they tend to focus on information passing out of the organisation. Application control should be a part of a DLP solution to stop worms from running and spreading to the rest of the organisation. In most cases it is not as AV and most DLP is focused internally not at the endpoint which is the highest risk. Maybe Windows 7 will save us but how many will implement the application control features and AV and DLP. Not many I fear - Take a look at our sponsors product and if implemented will protect against zero day attacks and Conficker worms as well as the normal DLP features.

Computing reports despite yet more data losses, more organisations are waking up to the need to encrypt mobile devices. How many times do significant data losses have to occur before both private- and public-sector organisations face up to the fact that encryption, whether applied to laptops, USB memory devices, or other mobile devices, is the only sure-fire way of stopping personal and business-critical data from going astray? Recently, four NHS trusts have been found in breach of the Data Protection Act (DPA) by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), and all of them have agreed in future to encrypt all portable and mobile data on devices.

The BBC reports that a man from New Zealand found that his MP3 player which he bought from a shop in Oklahoma contained sensitive information about military personnel. The data contained names and telephone numbers of soldiers including details of pregnant personnel and even some mission information.

The data is thought to date back to 2005 and isnt thought to compromise national security. There were also similar breaches in Afghanistan in 2006 where shops outside the main US base had stolen flash drives containing sensitive data.

In the current climate of data mobility, some level of encryption and security policy is becoming vital to protecting sensitive data.

The Herald reports on remarks made by the Scottish National Party (SNP) who are pointing out the poor performance of data security in 2008 by the government which lost 13 million files, the equivalent of 28 per minute.

It is also noted that the figure includes only known high profile cases of data loss and not smaller or unreported cases, the figure is therefore thought to be higher. Pete Wishart, SNP Home affairs spokesman - “These diabolical figures reveal a shockingly cavalier approach to data security by the Labour government”.

Many high risk projects such as the ID cards scheme and a single central communications database are under pressure from groups concerned about the track record of data security by the government.