Information Security Tips from Westfield Insurance

Information Security Concerns in a Pandemic

For a while now, we have been working on the development of a pandemic plan for our company.  Information Technology supports this plan in many ways.  Through the use of technology we can increase the number of employees who can “work at home” and use Virtual Private Networking (VPN) software to remotely connect into our systems to perform their work.  Getting employees out of the office but still having them be productive is a form of “Social Distancing” that can reduce the risk of exposure to disease.

A component of any pandemic plan needs to be communication on what can and can’t be done from an Information Security perspective, even in a pandemic situation.  For example, we only allow company configured machines to connect to our network, even over a VPN connection.  However, not all of our employees have laptops so many, therefore, cannot work at home.   It must be reinforced that information security policy is still policy even in a pandemic, and employees who do not have company laptops must not use email to send documents or data to themselves to work on using their home (or any non-company owned) computer.  This is the same for taking work home on portable USB drives or other media.  Even if you have the best intentions and only want to help your company, you are putting your company at risk of your data being intercepted, copied or lost resulting in a privacy breach.

Why be so paranoid?  Our employees are only trying to be more efficient and effective in a time where 20%-30% of the company might be out sick.  It can't be that bad, right?  Wrong.  A big reason why is “endpoint protection”.  Your company’s endpoints (workstations and laptops) have known, approved and licensed software on them, they have anti-virus software running on them, they are regularly patched for security vulnerabilities and they are free of peer-to-peer sharing software.  Some of your employees' home machines MAY be up to your company’s standards, but what if even one is not?  When your employee is done with their work, are you sure that no backup or temporary files will linger behind?  How many of your employees have children that use the home computer to share music or files?  How about viruses or malware infecting your corporate network once this work is brought back into your production environment?  What if the employee actually loses the USB drive?  Not to mention the risk of a shared or compromised gmail or yahoo mail account.

All of these scenarios can cause data leakage or data loss that can lead to a privacy breach.  According to the most recent Ponemon study that reports on the costs and causes of privacy breaches, “Over 88% of all cases this year involved incidents resulting from negligence.” This leaves only 12% as a result of malicious activity.  This 88% is composed of employees who think that they are doing the right thing, are trying to help and believe that nothing bad can happen.

So, please reinforce to your employees and peers that it is not safe to trust public networks, infrastructure or non-company owned equipment to store or work on company confidential materials.   Even in a pandemic situation were your workforce may be diminished and people are looking for innovative ways to “keep the lights on”, information security policy is still in effect and information security risks, and their consequences, outweigh lost productivity.

National Cyber Security Awareness Month

“Our Shared Responsibility” is this year’s National Cyber Security Awareness theme. This theme is meant to reinforce that cyber security is not only government and industries responsibilities but each computer users.

By following a few simple steps, you can keep your personal assets and information secure. If each computer user does their part to keep safe, this will improve the overall security cyberspace.

 Listed below are the top tips from the National Cyber Security Alliance on ways to keep you safe online. Additional information on each point can be found at their website http://www.staysafeonline.org/top-tips.

• Know who you are dealing with online.
• Keep your browsers and operating system up to date.
• Backup important files.
• Protect your children online.
• Use security software tools as your first line of defense.
• Use strong passwords or strong authentication technology to help protect your personal information.
• Learn what to do if something goes wrong.

 While the month of October is National Cyber Security Awareness month, we all need to practice good cyber security all year long.

Shredded documents can be unshredded

Shredding is the ultimate defense, right? Once it's shredded, it's gone!

No longer. It was always vulnerable if your attacker had the shredded chaff and plenty of free time. Think of the shredded embassy documents from the Iranian Hostage crisis of 1979. Those students reconstructed the pages with nothing more than scotch tape and patience. More recently, methamphetamine users have been hired by identity theft ringleaders to do the same thing.

Bill Wilson of the Big I recently found a number of services which make the "unshredding" problem much more manageable. In the Enron case, the government hired ChurchStreet Technology to scan the chaff, then used computer algorithms to piece the documents together. They claim to take the recovery time from hundreds of hours down to mere minutes. It's expensive but not terribly complicated. And your trash is in the public domain - anyone can take it back out of the dumpster without breaking any laws.

So how do you fully protect your waste paper from those ID thieves with too much time on their hands?

1. If you're still using a strip-cut shredder, get rid of it now. Upgrade to a cross-cut that chops the paper into very small bits of chaff.
2. Feed your pages into the shredder vertically, that is, with the words perpendicular to the shredder blades.
3. Don't have unusual-colored paper. Or if you do, shred enough of it that it can't be easily picked out. The rule in the army used to be no less than 20 sheets of any given paper type in each shred "lot".
4. Stir the chaff before disposal. A careful attacker could exploit the fact that pieces from the same document tend to come out of the shredder close to each other and remain so in the waste bag. A few quick stirs can randomize the chaff and make reconstruction much harder.
5. Send the chaff to a paper recycler. Even the best reconstructors can't bring a page back after it's been turned into new paper pulp. Of course, you have to be sure that your waste isn't intercepted before it hits the recycler but there are several bonded shredding companies that will do that for you.

How much is enough? It depends on who's out to get you. For most home users and small businesses, one and two are probably enough. If you really have something to hide, consider three and four and look into five when your shredding contract comes up for renewal. Find the right balance, remembering that identity theft is real but that most of us are not dealing with DoD nuclear secrets.

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Bill Wilson publishes a bi-weekly newsletter filled with useful information including a technology column in almost every issue. His target audience is an independent insurance agent but many of his topics are applicable to any small business owner. If you're not subscribed already, I recommend looking them up.

Information Security Concerns in Hotels and Hotspots

More and more of us are using our computers while we are on trips and are making use of the ever increasing number of wireless hotspots that are popping up everywhere.  I wanted to take this post and discuss some risks associated with connectivity in these environments and offer some simple things that you can do to reduce these risks.

• Most hotels and wireless hotspots offer a number of wireless access points to connect to.  Each one will appear separately in your wireless network list.  You should check with the establishment you are at as to which ones are "official" and which ones are not.  Many times scammers set up an access point named something similar to those provided by the establishment.  These rogue access points can be set up to perform a classic "man in the middle" attack known as an "evil twin" to forward all your traffic to a real access point and simply capture everything you are doing online.  Another scam is to offer you access at an additional fee.

• When entering your ID and password in public places, take extra care to watch for people looking over your shoulder. "shoulder surfing" it is sometimes called.  It does happen.

• Wireless connectivity can be implemented securely but if you have a choice between a wireless access point and plugging your laptop into a network jack choose the network jack.

• It is important to have your personal firewall turned on and configured with a restrictive rule set when attached to non-trusted networks.  What I mean by a "restrictive ruleset" is simply configuring your firewall to only allow software you trust to access the Internet, and block all other software and network traffic. Anti-virus software should also be enabled, have real time protections turned on and be configured to download anti-virus signature updates automatically.  These are relatively simple things to do.

• Use your corporate VPN (Virtual Private Network).  If you are doing work for your company and they have VPN capabilities, you may be safer connecting to the Internet this way.  It may sound strange, connecting to the Internet to connect to your company to connect back to the Internet but your company has protections in place to block malicious traffic, attackers and websites.  If you establish an encrypted VPN tunnel to them and surf through their network to the Internet, you are adding a few controls that can protect you.

• Keep your laptop powered off when you leave it in your hotel room.  Lock it in the safe if it will fit.  If you just lock the screen (control alt delete), there are vulnerabilities that could be exploited while you are not there to gain access to your software and information.

• Don't leave your laptop sitting there all alone when you get up and get another coffee or cheeseburger.  It may not be there when you go back to your seat. Same goes for USB drives.  It is pretty easy to swipe them without notice.

• Encrypt your hard drive and USB drives, or at least sensitive data or subdirectories on them.  If the unthinkable happens and your laptop is lost or stolen, let the most significant thing the thief gets be the laptop.  It may sound like a hassle but losing $1000.00 on a laptop is a whole lot better than a case of identity theft for you and any other people regarding whom you have their information stored.  Same goes with information about where you live, your children, relationships you are in, etc… Any of this information could be used against people you care about.

Its not a pretty world out there so the best thing you can do is be prepared.