access control

In the face of breakneck growth, you absolutely must maintain appropriate segregation of enterprise data networks, storage networks, and more.

Privileged identity management (PIM) products automate control over administrative accounts, which typically put too much power in too many people's hands with too little accountability. They address the security, operational and compliance issues posed by the widely shared administrative accounts and passwords, excessive administrative rights, poor separation of duties, embedded passwords in legacy applications and scripts, and poor or nonexistent privileged-password rotation. They also provide individual accountability and an audit trail to prove that policies and controls are actually being enforced.

I apologize up front for jumping into this debate, but I couldn't resist. Not a week goes by, or so it seems, without some newspaper, magazine or TV show (apologies to my media brethren) lambasting security and IT professionals because they force unnecessary security controls on the poor, downtrodden consumer or worker. It's as if your security requirements are designed to make everyone's life miserable with little or no benefit. You evil CSOs! My heart bleeds for the poor peasants whom you oppress.

Encryption vendor SafeNet is now offering technologies that help enterprises securely store and access information held in third-party data centers.

With the proliferation of vulnerability assessment products and services, we have begun to create a different problem. Any organization that maintains a reasonably sized infrastructure or Web presence can easily end up with many different applications, services and tools to maintain and monitor their vulnerabilities.