A Little Tech Knowledge Can Be A Terrible Thing For Security

from the viruses,-worms,-and-security-threats,-oh-my! dept

It's said that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and that may definitely be true in the case of technology. Non-IT staff technology choices are increasingly making their way into the office. It may have started with mobile phones or the original Palm Pilots, when plenty of people seemed to purchase them on their own, and then bring them into the office. However, more recently, the rise of WiFi, instant messaging and camera phones all seemed to have started outside the office, and been moved in -- all of which seems to scare the living daylights out of security professionals, who recognize that most of the tech products are being used within an office environment without first taking into account the security risks. The problem is that the article suggests the solution to all of these inbound technologies is to educate and ban. While better education is definitely necessary, it's pretty clear that banning doesn't work all that well. People are still bringing these things into work because they're helpful, so there's potential that a big market for technology products going forward may be in some sort of computer security compliance. That means the focus won't be on setting up specific policies people need to learn, but having systems that make sure, automatically, that any technology being used in the office environment complies to the security rules.