Check employees' home computers for threats to your network

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: MICHAEL OSTERMAN ON MESSAGING
11/08/05
Today's focus: Check employees' home computers for threats to
your network

Dear security.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* Lessons from across the pond
* Links related to Messaging
* Featured reader resource
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by SunGard

When e-mail is down, you can pretty much count on the fact that
it won't be business as usual. Learn how to maintain access to
e-mail without missing a beat. And if regulatory compliance or
restoration is a top of mind concern--you'll be prepared.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=118769
_______________________________________________________________
INDUSTRY GROUP PLANS VOIP BEST PRACTICES

The potential threats to VoIP networks are many and include:
theft of service, spamming, intentional disruption of services,
number harvesting and more. An industry group is working toward
a best-practices document that will spell out for businesses how
to build secure VoIP networks using specific makes and models of
equipment. More:
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=119269
_______________________________________________________________

Today's focus: Check employees' home computers for threats to
your network

By Michael Osterman

In late October, I had the privilege of participating at the
Message05 event in London, an event focused on the e-mail
industry in the U.K and beyond. One of the more interesting
parts of this conference was the roundtable discussions in which
vendors, IT managers and others were given 90 minutes to kick
around a variety of issues - the two I led were focused on
content security and e-mail hygiene. Here are a couple of the
more interesting takeaways from the conference:

* One of the U.K.'s largest employers recently experienced a
major incident that brought its e-mail system and the rest of
its network to a complete halt for three days. It took a full
four weeks for all of the servers to be patched. At the time of
the conference, the company's IT management still didn't know
what caused the outage - it could have been anything from an IM
worm to a virus brought in on a USB keychain device. The company
has spent enormous sums of money combating the effects of
whatever caused the outage and reinforcing its defenses to
prevent something else like this from happening again.

* When Volvo negotiates with security vendors for new systems,
the company requires that its employees are provided with the
same desktop capabilities for use at home. Volvo's thinking is
that because a lot of its employees do work from home, it's
critical to make sure that threats cannot enter the corporate
network by way of users' personal machines.

Both of these points illustrate the critical need for
organizations of all sizes to focus on a wide and growing array
of threats that could easily impact their networks. A single
piece of code, for example, one that could bring down a network
for days, can enter through an e-mail, an image file embedded in
an e-mail, a single IM, a USB keychain device, a diskette, an
employee's laptop, an employee's home machine, a contractor's
machine, an employee's child or any of a variety of other
sources. It is critical, therefore, to protect every avenue by
which a threat could enter a network, not just those in the
workplace.

The top 5: Today's most-read stories

_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Michael Osterman

Michael D. Osterman is the principal of Osterman Research
<http://www.ostermanresearch.com/>, a market research firm that
helps organizations understand the markets for messaging,
directory and related products and services. He can be reached
by clicking here <mailto:michael@ostermanresearch.com>
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by SunGard

When e-mail is down, you can pretty much count on the fact that
it won't be business as usual. Learn how to maintain access to
e-mail without missing a beat. And if regulatory compliance or
restoration is a top of mind concern--you'll be prepared.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=118768
_______________________________________________________________
ARCHIVE LINKS

Archive of the Messaging newsletter:
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/gwm/index.html
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FEATURED READER RESOURCE

WHO'S IN THE HOT SEAT?

Now available on NetworkWorld.com is Network World's Hot Seat
with John Gallant. Guests on the Hot Seat, which include vendor
executives and industry luminaries, give candid answers to
pointed questions. These 5-minute video clips are sure to keep
you informed and entertained. Click here to see who is in this
week's Hot Seat:

<http://www.networkworld.com/nlmsg10753>
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