According to structured cabling manufacturer Molex Premise Networks, many companies are tending to place emphasis on the wrong areas of their IT security.
According to structured cabling manufacturer Molex Premise Networks, many companies are tending to place emphasis on the wrong areas of their IT security and are missing a key layer in their security strategies; monitoring and documentation of the physical network infrastructure.
There is often little link between security spending and actual security. For only a small proportion of an organisation’s overall security budget, modern intelligent infrastructure management (IIM) systems, such as Molex’s Real Time solution, enable the physical network infrastructure to detect deliberate or inadvertent potential threats to the network, from the inside, before they occur. Devices connected to the network are automatically detected and electronically logged, as are any changes in network connections. Network connections can be correlated with physical location of network access point so the disconnection of a key patchcord can be fixed in minutes – saving downtime costs. Security devices such as cameras, access switches and motion detectors can be set-up and correlated with network event and access logs.
Almost all network security devices installed by organisations are aimed at defeating external threats, but many serious security breaches are caused by internal parties who already have systems authorisation and can void intrusion detection systems. Of 530 US security practitioners polled by the Computer Security Institute in the 2003 Computer Crime and Security Survey, 80pc reported unauthorised access to systems by insiders. Controlling activity and access of people already inside an organisation is a big problem. Costly thefts of confidential information such as personnel records, financial details, and research and development information are easier to achieve by people on the inside, with knowledge of the environment and the technical means to navigate the network, than by external hackers. And 93pc of UK firms experienced unplanned downtime in the past year according to a Dynamic Markets survey of 850 IT managers in the UK. Minor security breaches, either deliberate or accidental, account for much of this downtime. The cause of many minor breaches eg a lead ‘falling out’ of a patch panel may never be traced or recorded.
