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01/11/2018

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12/05/2017

shadow app
A shadow app is a software program that is not supported by an employee's information technology (IT) department.
In the past, shadow apps were often purchased and installed locally by impatient employees who wanted immediate access to software without going through normal corporate channels. With the growth of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud computing, however, the meaning of shadow app has expanded to include free consumer software that is accessed over the Internet.
Skype, Dropbox and Google Docs are all popular shadow apps. Although many shadow apps can improve productivity and collaboration with little or no financial cost to the company, their use comes with risks. If an employee accesses a cloud app with his personal account, for example, corporate data may be put at risk or even lost if the employee leaves the company. Shadow apps can also cause bandwidth issues on the corporate network, slowing things down and impacting everyone's productivity.
To prevent problems, an IT department should have a service audit process in place to inspect outbound packets and verify ownership of company-owned services in the cloud. The organization should also have policy in place that requires employees to use corporate accounts for web-based applications and restrict network privileges so end users cannot install software locally. If a large group of employees is using a particular cloud app, the IT department should consider providing the service in house and finally, the IT department should educate employees about the value of corporate data and the risks that shadow apps present.

09/05/2017

09/05/2017

group think
Group think (also spelled groupthink) is a phenomenon that occurs when group's need for consensus supercedes the judgment of individual group members. Group think often occurs when there is a time constraint and individuals put aside personal doubts so a project can move forward or when one member of the group dominates the decision-making process.
In a group think scenario, consensus is often derived by social pressures or by work flow processes that cannot accommodate change. Group thinking, which carries a negative connotation, can be contrasted with collaboration, a scenario in which individual group members are encouraged to be creative, speak out and weigh many options before arriving at a consensus.
In acceding to group think, group members often choose not to explore alternative solutions as part of the decision-making process, either because it is easier not to go with the flow or because they do not want to be perceived as troublemakers and lose status within the group. As such, group think can blind individuals from considering future consequences, warnings and risks that result from their choices.
The Groupthink Phenomenon refers to the tendency of the members of a group to reach solidarity and cohesion, the trend that allows to bypass any questions which would lead to disputes (Iurchevici, 2016).

Reference
Iurchevici, I. (2016). Leadership, cohesion and groupthink. Psihologia. Pedagogia Specială. Asistenţa Socială, Vol 44, Iss 3, Pp 119-126 (2016), (3), 119.

09/05/2017

Behavior-based security is a proactive approach to managing security incidents that involves monitoring end user devices, networks and servers in order to flag or block suspicious activity.
Traditionally, security management has been signature-oriented; the security program monitors a data stream and compares code in files or packets to the code in an anti-virus vendor's library of known threats. In contrast, behavior-based programs compare the actions of files or network packets to a list of acceptable or suspicious actions. In general, signature-based tools are best at identifying and repelling known threats, while behavior-based are best for fighting zero-day threats that have not yet made it onto a list of known threat signatures.
Behavior-based security software scans for deviations from the norm and has the intelligence to decide whether an anomaly poses a threat or can be ignored. Most behavior-based security programs come with a standard set of policies for specifying which behaviors should be allowed and which should be considered suspicious. Some also allow administrators to customize vendor-provided policies and/or create new policies.
A behavior-based security software product may be marketed as a behavior-based intrusion detection product, a behavior threat analysis (BTA) product or a user behavior analytics (UBA) product. Some products are sophisticated enough to apply machine learning algorithms to data streams so that security analysts don't need to specify what comprises normal behavior. Other products include behavioral biometrics features that are capable of mapping specific behavior, such as typing patterns, to specific user behavior. Most products have sophisticated correlation engines to minimize the number of alerts and false positives.

21/07/2015

Going digital...