No Man Is An Island

I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of how everything that we do has ramifications beyond the moment we are in and beyond us as well. What I mean is that everything that you do will affect you and at least one other person and it's impact will be immediate and lasting. Don't quit reading at this point. I'm not going to start preaching.

As I thought about this I also thought about how it applies to security. Actually this is the kind of security breach that worries me the most. As I wrote about last week. We have to get our users to the point of understanding that they realize that what they do with the network enabled device can and does affect others. They can't just go to any site they want, they can't just connect to the Internet at any "open" place they find.

I know that you are now thinking why is he repeating himself. Well, it's because I think that this is possible the biggest problem that we (at least those in the SMB space) have. There are too many laptops out there where the users have admin rights. There are too many people spending time behind closed doors surfing porn from their company PC. There are too many people who connect to any open wireless network. I can't count the number of times I've heard someone say that they found a "Free Wireless Internet" and connected. Can you say owned?

These acts open up the users system to attack. That attack often will be brought back to the office and spread to other systems or will snoop around the network and see what it can find of value. These are the things that done alone but have the potential to affect others in a very negative way. These are the things that make this world one big island instead of 6 continents and thousands of small islands.