Security of systems, whether comprised of datacenter mainframes, desktop workstations, laptops, or thumb drives and cellphones, is paramount. Maintaining security across these more diverse architectures is becoming increasingly complex and as such more difficult to manage to a “perfect” protected environment. And the ways and means available for attackers to gain entry to systems are ever more sophisticated as they too take advantage of the improvements in technology.
So why are there still large numbers of corporations that believe protecting only a single group of their assets, for example Window based servers, with freeware scanning tools is even remotely sufficient to ensure the integrity of their corporate environment?
OEMs and Resellers need to do a better job at scaring the $%^* out of the upper management of these corporations. They’re living in a fantasy that also believes locking the front door will keep burglars from considering entering through an open window, a basement crawlspace, the chimney, and so on. Protecting only one of the many entry ways into an enterprise is tantamount to not really protecting it at all.
The first point to clarify is attacks on their enterprise is not limited to Windows based systems. Attackers are targeting anything that can store or move a file, any device that can be touched from the internet (including cellphones and printers).
OEMs/Resellers should take a position of Trusted Advisor and offer the insights that only partially protecting the enterprise and hoping nothing gets through is truly gambling the future of the company. While it may be that protecting one part of total infrastructure will reduce the “statistical probability” of loss/corruption, from a Corporate Security viewpoint the only statistics that matter are actually binary. Either the enterprise can be compromised, or it can’t. Offering strategies that protect the full enterprise are valuable services corporations will be willing to pay for. But first, you have to wake them up to the realities that bits and pieces of freeware is not a prudent long term strategy to ensure the survival of the company.
