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07.23.08 Server Theft Trumps Server Hacking  By
David Utter The brute force technique applied to physical goods long before it ever came up in the conversation about breaking passwords to gain access to resources. Spend a lot of time carefully tweaking your router, your firewall, your on-board security software, and you probably feel reasonably confident about the state of security for your computer. That will last until someone kicks in the door while you're away, and carts off the hardware. Such base crimes seem almost quaint when thinking of computer security, but a smash and grab yields as much of a device, if not more, than any software or network approach to cracking a machine. Pingdom picked up on the theme of theft of hardware in a blog post. The solution to physical security, one might think, would be hosting with a dedicated center where physical protection comes along as part of the package.
But that thinking stops with the news of several robberies of servers from their colocation facilities. In one example in Chicago, thieves cut through a wall, tasered an employee, and walked out with at least 20 servers. Verizon, the Financial Times, and musician Peter Gabriel all suffered at the hands of thieves who liberated servers with their content from purportedly secure facilities. Thefts at private offices also add up to a common theme: machines that have value to criminal sellers, and a market for those devices. Regular backups and encryption help get a victimized business up and running, while keeping sensitive data safe from prying eyes when a hard drive gets stolen. There's little reason not to safeguard information on a storage device anyway; security pros ought to evaluate their options here and make encryption part of a standard hardware build in enterprises of all sizes. About the Author: Dan Morrill has been in the information security field for 18 years, both civilian and military, and is currently working on his Doctor of Management. Dan shares his insights on the important security issues of today through his blog, Managing Intellectual Property & IT Security, and is an active participant in the ITtoolbox blogging community. |
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