Your people are your strongest link! Or are they?
Ten years of planning, dodging her husband’s personal issues and accusations of impropriety around land deals, and most probably a head to head battle for the presidency were any of Hillary’s peccadillos likely to be “Trumped” into the news; and then she uses a personal email account to send “Classified” information. Months down the line, and the headlines today detail that despite the denials from the Clinton presidential campaign that Hillary had done no wrong, the scandal has taken a turn for the ominous, with lives being put at stake due to her classification faux-pas.
Her judgement is in doubt, some people are questioning her Patrotism. “Is she fit to lead the Western World if she doesn’t take security seriously?”. Reportedly other possible contenders like Joe Biden are thinking of giving Hillary a run for her money.
It looks like she just took the easy option and has given Donald some ammunition to help him duck the flak, while Clinton herself claims the whole scandal is simply political theatre orchestrated by her enemies.
The technical problem is that her personal email system is not protected like her work email; it doesn’t go over their encrypted network and have all of the right access controls and archiving rules applied. All of these automatically enforced system controls fail if your strongest links have a tendency to circumvent the rules. Making the rules not following them is often seen as the reason why you get the corner office.
To succeed you have to get the hearts and minds of your senior staff focussed on security. Your policies and procedures need to be simple, easy and not cumbersome.
Automated systems make user’s lives difficult without including them in the decision, so senior people resort to their personal email to get stuff done. If you involve the user and they understand the risk, you can get meaningful behavioural analytics and enforce the penalties if they transgress.
Whether it’s the White House, a corner office, or the key to the executive washroom they will think twice before letting your sensitive data slip through their fingers.
Boldon James Classifier not only works on your desktop machines and laptops, but can also travel anywhere you go with Mobile Classifier. Make sure you don’t land yourself in the same hot water as Hillary, and see how data classification using Classifier can help protect all of your sensitive and valuable data, at all times.