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So you better make sure you do.
As we discussed in the article on Social Engineering in Penetration Testing, it’s not that the employees don’t care as such, it’s that they don’t know. They haven’t been educated, they are ignorant, their awareness of best practise is low.
An experiment carried out within London’s square mile has revealed that employees in some of the City’s best known financial services companies don’t care about basic security policy.
CDs were handed out to commuters as they entered the City by employees of IT skills specialist The Training Camp and recipients were told the disks contained a special Valentine’s Day promotion.
However, the CDs contained nothing more than code which informed The Training Camp how many of the recipients had tried to open the CD. Among those who were duped were employees of a major retail bank and two global insurers.
The CD packaging even contained a clear warning about installing third-party software and acting in breach of company acceptable-use policies – but that didn’t deter many individuals who showed little regard for the security of their PC and their company.
Rob Chapman, CEO of the Training Camp, who carried out the stunt to promote a course in security for non-IT professionals, said: “Fortunately these CDs contained nothing harmful. No personal or corporate data was transmitted due to the actions of these individuals but the fact remains that this could have been someone wanting to cause havoc in the City.”
Chapman claimed the “potential outcome could have been disastrous”.
Source: Silicon
It shows what you can do with a little bit of imagination, a Japanese bank fell victim to a Spyware infection last year that led to the thieves almost getting $300 million.
The moral of the story is, educate your staff, it IS important that you tell them. People don’t inherently know what is right and wrong when it comes to computers, what they should and shouldn’t do.