Technology Nightmare for the City of San Francisco: How to Protect Your Network from the Threat of Rogue IT Employees - Par Rick Cook sur CIO.com.

An IT admin for the City of San Francisco holding the network hostage is just the latest high-profile example of the security risk posed by insiders. Learn what steps you can take so it won't happen to your company.

Terry Childs, a network administrator for the City of San Francisco is accused of creating a super-password on the switches and routers in the city's Fibre WAN and using it to block everyone else's access to administrative functions. According to reports, Childs had been detected tampering with the network and had reacted with hostility when disciplined after a confrontation with a supervisor.

As a result of Childs' alleged actions, administrators are unable to access the routers and switches, although the network continues to function. Childs was charged with four counts of computer tampering and held on $5 million bail.

A week after the incident the city still hadn't gotten access, and details were still sketchy. However a few things are obvious.

"This should never have happened in an organization of this size," Cameron Laird says flatly.

The need to protect organizations from rogue employees existed long before computers were invented, notes Laird, the vice president of Houston, TX, security consultancy Phaseit. "There are principles people have been working out for a couple of millennia," Laird says. "I think we're best off working from models that enjoy more experience than we do in IT. For instance accounting and auditing where we've got a few hundred years experience."

Some of those principles, like access control, have been incorporated into IT culture. Some, like least privilege are only beginning to be widely incorporated. Some, like dual authorization, haven't made it into the culture yet.

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