What I Worry About

As the primary IT guy and security guru for my company I have lots to worry about. I don't worry about my data circuits, my servers (too much), my routers or firewalls (unless I need support for my Barracuda). I don't worry about most of these things.

What I do worry about is security. What "evil" is lurking out there trying to ruin my day and get at my data. I worry about virus's, worms, trojans, rootkits and keystroke loggers. I worry about remote users who are at Wifi HotSpots while I'm waiting on the vendor to fix a driver vulnerability. I worry about someone sniffing my wireless and getting on it and thus gaining access to my network. I worry about who it was that left FTP open on my firewall all weekend (since no one remembers doing it). I worry about home users using their laptop from home to connect to the vpn while "hitching a ride" on their neighbors unsecured wireless. I worry about all the IM traffic that crosses my network (especially the user who practices IM Sex). I worry about the users who have USB thumb drives and IPODS connected to their machine. I worry about the users who have local admin rights on their machine because some program that they use requires it. I worry about Spammers and phishers and users who click on links and attachments.

That's enough to drive any security nut even nuttier. That was how my IT life was, but luckily it has and is changing. It's still not perfect. The tools are slowly getting put in place to reduce or eliminate these things and hopefully make my life easier. But until then I worry............

More woes of small shop IT and our struggle to make it through the day.