Network World

Younger T-Mobile store employees routinely surf to social networking sites like Facebook and lots of other high-traffic/high-vulnerability sites that have unwittingly hosted spyware attacks in the past. Having seen that behavior, I wouldn't be surprised if iPods and thumbdrives also enter into employee IT practices. This isn't unique to T-Mobile - it's a widespread security problem almost everywhere that can't be countered with security technology alone. Add to lax behaviors & lax enforcement the vast army of increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals that are mastering gaining network access via piggybacking on these risky activities, and it explains why breaches are proliferating at a geometric rate. My other observation is that client/server architecture, packet switched networks, and defacto local admin rights all combine into a perfect storm of inherent security vulnerabilities that are a full-time job to contravene on even small networks, let alone on enterprise WANs. So, this design flaw of inherent indefensibility creates a threat bubble that is forever expanding to include new devices, new users, new attack vectors, new attack strategies & technologies, and a host of over-hyped defense technologies that try to cover the newest vulnerability discoveries. Oh well... another day in an internet connected world.

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