* "The Application Usage and Risk Report" from Palo Alto Networks
The enterprise WAN used to be a calm and controlled environment. It typically connected a company’s branch offices with headquarters and allowed employees at branch offices access to a handful of applications such as sales order entry. Those days are long gone. Having read a report entitled “The Application Usage and Risk Report” that was recently published by Palo Alto Networks, we now think of the WAN not as a calm and controlled environment – but as the Wild West where (almost) anything goes.
That report was based on a series of 20 application visibility and risk assessments that Palo Alto Networks had conducted. OK, it is easy to argue that 20 is too small of a sample size to be statistically significant. That argument aside, the data in the report provides fascinating insight into what applications are actually running over the enterprise WAN.
One of the interesting facts brought out by the report was the broad use of consumer-oriented applications and supporting technologies within the enterprise. One of the examples was instant messaging (IM). While there is no doubt that IM is a powerful tool, there is also no doubt that IM represents risk. For example, the Palo Alto Networks report showed that IM functionality was present in the vast majority of sites and that in many cases the IT organization’s policies for acceptable usage were ignored.
The report also showed that browser-based implementations of IM (e.g., AIM-Express) are almost as common as client-based implementations. That is a problem for IT organizations because browser-based implementations bring along evasive port-hopping and file transfer capabilities with them. While these capabilities have the affect of simplifying use they also have the affect of possibly evading detection by corporate firewalls.
Because of the associated risks, many companies disallow or try to set strict policies for the use of IM. For example, one IT organization that we work with currently blocks IM in large part because due to government regulations if they allowed IM functionality they would have to be able to store all IMs for several years and implement the search capability to go back and find a particular IM if requested by a client or a regulator. That IT organization knows that it is fighting a losing battle because the majority of the company’s employees are 30 or younger and they are becoming increasingly vocal in their demand for this type of technology.
In the next newsletter we will continue the discussion of the Wild West of application usage.
