Management central to securing Linux
After performing more security assessments than he can count, Gijo Mathew has seen every worst practice imaginable. He's even seen an IT shop replace virus-violated data with an unpatched backup that succumbed to the same virus. A security strategist for Computer Associates International Inc., Mathew has 10 years of experience in software development, computer technology, networks and security.
In part one of this two-part interview, he lists the worst security practices he has encountered, and provides some advice to security administrators who might be straying from the right patch, or path. In Part Two, he digs into mistakes made in assessing control management, handling super user privileges and seeing suspicious activity, among other areas.
Gijo Mathew
What are the most common security mistakes being made by IT managers today?
Gijo Mathew: It still has to be the lack of asset management that IT administrators have. If queried, most people still do not have an accurate inventory of the systems they have and what applications and other software they are using on those platforms. Without this information, you can never know what needs to be secured and what may be vulnerable.
Another common mistake is using bad and easy-to-crack passwords. All too often, I have walked into companies and noticed their systems have the user ID of 'root' and a password of 'password.' Making sure that the keys to the kingdom are not easy to find is an obvious, but often overlooked task.
What enterprise-level security applications have been missing from Linux? Is this gap being closed?
