Is password protection enough?
As wireless technology and portability of electronic devices has developed over the years, so has an entirely new set of vulnerabilities regarding information security. With more and more devices that contain sensitive information leaving company property, physical security is dramatically less effective as now those devices are more likely to be lost or stolen. In fact, more than 345 million records containing personal information have been reported compromised since 2005, and the actual number is undoubtedly much higher since only about half of the states in the U.S. are required to report such incidents (see privacyrights.org).
Is your organization doing enough to protect its valuable information?
For instance, if an employee loses his cell phone that contains privileged contact information for his clients, or if his company laptop with client records and profiles is stolen, what guarantee do you have that information stays safe? If you think simply password protecting your systems is enough to thwart even the dullest of criminals, think again. According to a recent whitepaper, there are at least three fairly simple ways of bypassing a password protected computer. Briefly, they are:
1) Using an alternative boot device. Installing a new copy of the operating system on a machine will grant you access to any data residing on the hard drive.
2) Using an alternative boot device and an alternative boot program. Instead of booting to the same operating system, a thief could boot to a different OS that allows it access to information the original would not.
3) Moving a hard drive to an alternative computer system. By physically removing the hard drive from a computer, a criminal can attach it to another machine as an external drive, and all the data appears as if he had successfully logged on to the original machine.
As you can see, simply employing the use of a password, though important, is not enough to effectively protect your company devices. For real information security solutions, you need to turn to IT security experts. In an age where even criminals are becoming tech savvy, your business depends on staying a step ahead of the game.
[photo: the_english_guy]
Additional Resources:
Is your IT security effective?
Eliminating Small Business Security Threats
Tags: computer security, electronic devices, information security, IT security, Operating system, Password, real information security solutions, wireless technology