Scary tech stories: How dangerous user behavior puts networks at risk

IT managers share tales of how users' actions can cause security nightmares

As CIO at Bunker Hill Community College, Bret Moeller embraces students experimenting with technology as part of their education, but he'd prefer if their independent studies didn't involve hacking into the college's network.

Slideshow: End users behaving badly

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As CIO at Bunker Hill Community College, Bret Moeller embraces students experimenting with technology as part of their education, but he'd prefer if their independent studies didn't involve hacking into the college's network.

Slideshow: End users behaving badly

"There are some students who discover at school that their whole point in life is to hack into the college's network to either glean information they have no right to access or to simply kill the network to prove they can do it," says Moeller, who works to manage and secure the Boston-area college's network.

"We can detect scanning on our network and we try to lock things down as much as possible or not allow software on workstations, but sometimes there can be a hole in our protections. We can't control the end users to the same degree one can in a corporate environment, but we still have to do as much as possible to secure the environment from end users," he says.

Yet, Moeller may have more in common than he realizes with corporate network and security managers.

Recent research from the Ponemon Institute revealed that a majority of users disobey company security standards -- and they do so knowingly. (See related slideshow: End users behaving badly.) In addition, survey data just released by RSA shows that trusted insiders "create data exposures of extraordinary scope" through their everyday behaviors.

"End users are smarter than ever. The advent of the PC at home and not just work anymore, as well as the ability to look up and verify what the IT people are saying to you, is a different world," says Steve Moore, technology leader at Mary Kay Cosmetics in Dallas.

In addition, users can easily find detailed accounts of how to sidestep corporate policies, available from countless Internet sites and even laid out clearly in publications such as The Wall Street Journal.  

With compliance regulations a constant factor, IT executives are caught between a rock and a hard place.

"We're constantly trying to balance the need for expanded access to information and the requirements to protect information from unauthorized and inappropriate use," says James Kritcher, vice president of IT at White Electronic Designs in Phoenix. "We now have an expanding number of accounts, passwords and other mechanisms to manage access to various resources. The resulting overhead and complexity increases the likelihood that inappropriate access may be granted."

For instance, users can unwittingly grant inappropriate access to coworkers, friends and family if they share too much information or neglect to update passwords. One area Craig Bush finds lacking among users is password security. He says the company has policies in place to ensure passwords aren't abused or revealed, but users consider managing passwords more of a hassle than a safeguard.

"It's funny how end users just don't think passwords are a big deal and think we are just here to make their lives miserable when we request them to change or update passwords," says Bush, who is network administrator at Exactech in Gainesville, Fla. "General password security is an area I see lacking among most end users. They just don't realize there is technology that can use their passwords to get information and corrupt the entire network."