Firewall Wizards mailing list archives
Re: The home user problem returns
From: jseymour () linxnet com (Jim Seymour)
Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 20:16:27 -0400 (EDT)
"Marcus J. Ranum" <mjr () ranum com> wrote:
Mason Schmitt wrote:
[snip]
User education ---------------- User education still needs to happenPointless. If educating users was going to work, it would have worked by now. If Anna Kournikova worm and phishing hadn't gotten people to take this seriously years ago, they aren't going to next year, either.
[snip]
It may be pointless in home user space, but, IME, it's most definitely *not* pointless in the workplace. I regard end-user education as one of my best defenses. And it has worked for me. Some things that've no doubt helped: Relatively small company--only 150 or so desktops. Good support from management: Official dispensation to *immediately* remove from the network misbehaving machines. I once disconnected an entire R&D department. Another time I suspended a manager's account (for password sharing). I'm allowed Draconian email filtering at the mail gateways. Most of that same filtering is done on internal mail servers. But still: End-user education is an important component. I have somebody either come to me or email me about how "I received this, and it looked suspicious, so I didn't open it. Do you want to see it?" on a fairly regular basis. Result: We haven't had a single virus/worm/Trojan get loose on the network, with *one* exception, in the six years I've been working for my current employer. That one exception was a "day 0" kind of a thing, infected .zip file, sent from the outside to somebody that was expecting an email, with an attachment, from that person. (It didn't get far. As luck would have it: Soon after he opened that attachment, I had logged-in remotely because of the advisories, detected the spoor, and shut down all the mail and POP servers until I got in the next morning.) Jim _______________________________________________ firewall-wizards mailing list firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com http://honor.icsalabs.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards
Current thread:
- Re: The home user problem returns, (continued)
- Re: The home user problem returns Marcus J. Ranum (Sep 13)
- RE: The home user problem returns Tina Bird (Sep 13)
- RE: The home user problem returns Marcus J. Ranum (Sep 13)
- Re: The home user problem returns Mason Schmitt (Sep 14)
- Re: The home user problem returns R. DuFresne (Sep 13)
- Message not available
- Message not available
- Re: The home user problem returns mason (Sep 14)
- RE: The home user problem returns Paul Melson (Sep 22)
- Re: The home user problem returns Mason Schmitt (Sep 13)
- RE: The home user problem returns Paul Melson (Sep 13)
- Re: The home user problem returns Mason Schmitt (Sep 13)
- Re: The home user problem returns Jim Seymour (Sep 13)
- RE: The home user problem returns Tina Bird (Sep 14)
- RE: The home user problem returns Paul Melson (Sep 22)
- Message not available
- Re: The home user problem returns Mason Schmitt (Sep 12)
- RE: The home user problem returns Paul Melson (Sep 13)
- Re: The home user problem returns Mason Schmitt (Sep 13)
- Re: The home user problem returns Jim Seymour (Sep 13)
- RE: The home user problem returns Bill Royds (Sep 14)
- RE: The home user problem returns Jim Seymour (Sep 22)
- RE: The home user problem returns Brian Loe (Sep 22)
- Re: The home user problem returns R. DuFresne (Sep 13)