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Human Error Is Greatest Security Risk
from the no-surprise-there dept
For all the talk about “trustworthy computing” and how buggy software is a big “cybersecurity” risk, it turns out (and, no, this shouldn’t surprise you), that the biggest security risk remains human error – and not security holes in software. People simply configure things wrong and leave security wide open all the time. While there’s nothing wrong with promoting better software, it might be more productive to better train IT workers in properly securing systems.
Comments on “Human Error Is Greatest Security Risk”
Astonishing
A company which certifies IT workers says that not enough IT workers are certified.
Re: Astonishing
A company which certifies IT workers says that not enough IT workers are certified.
Excellent point. I should have noticed that…
hmmmm, then why is it that..
I make, many, many less mistakes than all my certified friends… go figure… heh
Sounds like someone wants more money. In an economy that’s hurting and lacking job I can see where certifying agents would be “alarmed”, their life’s bread is dwindling.
Bull!?!
I’d agree if they were including stupid mistakes by programmers, but there is no way that a stupid mistake by administrators can cause more trouble than stupid mistakes by programmers. No way, I don’t believe it, and a survey run by a certifier against those who went through their certification program isn’t going to make me believe it any more than if Microsoft said that stupid mistakes by Unix administrators caused more problems than stupid mistakes by Windows administrators.
Yes, stupid mistakes by administrators setting up computers do happen, and sometimes they mess the machine up enough that an attacker can access their system… I’ve been on many an assessment where we busted root in a server because the administrator did the wrong thing, and many a DefCon CTF where the same occurred, but to find these vulnerabilities takes an attacker of far more caliber than your normal script kiddies who pound Unix boxes with Windows exploits.
And besides, education trumps these types of errors, but looking at Microsoft for experience, very little is accomplished when you try to teach programmers to do the right thing, but don’t have any real code review process in place. I’d take computers with OpenBSD on them, administered by clueless newbies over Windows boxen administered by the best of the best any day.
Then again, I have the best of the best running OpenBSD….