How to combat increasing cyber security threats?

Of late, cyber-criminal activities across the globe have assumed such grave proportions that all enterprises - big and small, are exposed to security breaches and identity thefts of various kinds. Many sabotage were found to have been caused by the insiders of the enterprises - either disgruntled staff or greedy techies or sacked employees.

Lack of well-defined internal controls and access restrictions generally pave the way for security incidents. Particularly, as stolen identities seem to have served as the ‘hacking channel’ for many cyber-crimes, improper management of the administrative passwords is believed to be at the root of a good number of security threats.

Security experts strongly believe that many security incidents (though not all) are actually avoidable by placing access restrictions and well-defined password policies.

How can we combat the threats?

Read my article on 'Combating Cyber Security Threats' in Express Computer (Nov 23rd issue):

http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20091123/technology04.shtml

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How do you manage website passwords?

Nowadays, even for personal needs, we are largely dependent on online services. At the enterprise level, it becomes much more complex.

Just reflect on the following questions:

• Do you face problems in remembering the credentials of website login accounts?
• Do you have a large number of web accounts and wish to automatically login to the sites without manually entering the user name and password?

If the answer to the above questions are 'yes', you must take the services of a password manager. ManageEngine Password Manager Pro is there to help you!

By simply storing the URL of the web page and the login credentials, you can launch direct connection to the required website from Password Manager Pro. That is, the URL of the website would be visible in Password Manager Pro and upon clicking that you will be logged in to the website directly.

There is a step-by-step tutorial on how to implement this feature. Along with the textual explanation, the tutorial contains a two-minute video presentation at the end. Don’t forget to check that out too!

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Have you ever revealed your administrative passwords to your colleagues?

Have you ever revealed the administrative password of an enterprise resource to your colleague? And do you strongly believe that your passwords remain secure even after telling others? If so, you must read this interesting survey done by SecurEnvoy.

The survey results reveal that 75% of UK employees have admitted that they have told at least two other colleagues their corporate passwords.

SecurEnvoy states that while workers are trusting of their colleagues, it may not be a great idea to share passwords so easily since it can compromise one’s entire work life.

The concern raised in the survey is well-founded. Enterprises - big and small, face security issues and outages quite often. After all, mis-management of administrative passwords lies at the root of all security issues.

It is always good to avoid sharing of administrative passwords. But, what if your business needs demand that you seletively share passwords with others and yet ensure high levels of security? Caught in a catch-22 situation, right?

But take heart, you have ManageEngine Password Manager Pro for your rescue. Using this Enterprise Password Management Solution, you can store thousands of administrative passwords in a centralized repository and selectively share the passwords with others. You can have the trail of 'who', 'what' and 'when' of password access. The passwords are shared, yet remain highly secure. Exactly what you want!

To know more, visit ManageEngine Password Manager Pro

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