VLCM IT Industry News

Once upon a time web filtering was super easy: if you block out the inappropriate, gambling, and extremist content, your business would live happily ever after. Unfortunately like most fairytales, web filtering has reached the troubles of a modernized world. With slick hackers, and legitimate websites becoming the source of a company’s malware woes, delinquent web filtering lands number 7 on the SOPHOS 7 deadly IT sins.

Picture this: You're Ethan Hunt and you've been assigned to a new impossible mission. Your assignment is to steal a laptop containing sensitive information from an evil corporation and decipher it. Through a series of magnificant feats - overcome with the help of your high-tech utility belt - you finally get your hands on the laptop. Surrounded by your team of code-crackers, you open the laptop expecting the code to be as indecipherable as your girlfriend's mood. Surfing through the laptop's contents, the mission takes a rather possible turn. All of the communication and incriminating information thought to be impossible to interpret is laid out, un-encrypted and as vulnerable as a snowball on a hot summer day. Sounds far-fetched right? Not quite. A large portion of both good and evil companies today are woefully lacking in the area of file encryption. This is why we're introducing Un-Encrypted Files as the sixth SOPHOS Deadly IT Sin.  

Just like the Marvel Avengers, firewalls are your first line of defense against the evils of the universe. In the recent movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Tony Stark attempts to create the next generation of defense using artificial intelligence to surpass human limitations. Most IT directors feel the same way about their firewalls. When firewalls were first deployed, all that was needed was a physical wall to fend off the world. Today, IT directors need bigger, stronger, and smarter firewalls to better defend their networks. That is why "Faulty Firewall" has a spot on SOPHOS list of 7 deadly IT sins.

When people think of all the technology we use today to communicate few would consider email old, or archaic. However with its roots spanning all the way back to 1965 it is actually one of the oldest tools people use today. Sure email has made some progress in the fifty years of its existence, but not as much as people assume. It is very insecure and is under attack by email snooping, making un-encrypted email the number 4 deadly IT sin.

As technology has advanced, so has our demand for the availability of the most recent convenience. The transitional need from cell service, internet access, to Wi-Fi access, has been rapid and those needs are not contained to just our homes. In London there was a project called Warbike that set out to locate wireless networks, and found 107,000. Of that fantastic number 27% of them had poor or no security. Unsecured Wi-Fi puts your network at risk, and that is why it is number 3 on the list of Sophos deadly IT sins.

Since the two companies emerged in the 80’s, people have been faced with the choice, Mac or PC. Fast forward to today, Microsoft owns 91.02% of the market share, and Mac at 5.57% of the market. Despite those numbers, IT directors are facing an increasingly mixed environment, as Mac continues to grow in popularity. The timing has created the right atmosphere for our second deadly IT sin “Mac Malice”.

Over the course of the next seven weeks we will be reviewing the Sophos 7 Deadly IT Sins. It is apparent that as technology continues to advance and our reliance of technology increases, IT professionals are being forced into a juggling act. One of the heaviest and most critical things companies have to deal with is security. Sophos has a practical saying they like to use ‘the solution to complexity is not more complexity.’ They have set out to tackle security challenges with clarity and confidence.