{"id":18331,"date":"2020-04-22T16:01:36","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T14:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.proactivanet.com\/blog\/sin-categorizar\/anything-goes-is-not-enough\/"},"modified":"2023-02-21T20:18:25","modified_gmt":"2023-02-21T19:18:25","slug":"anything-goes-is-not-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.proactivanet.com\/en\/blog\/safety-management\/anything-goes-is-not-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAnything goes\u201d is not enough"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In these times of health crisis, quite a few CIOs and CISOs call us to request assistance with the new scenario of mass remote work: some because they need remote control, and others for help securing their infrastructure or organizing the flood of incidents and requests received from their users. But of all the discussions that took place during these days, there is one that made my hairs stand on end with a categorical assertion that \u201c<\/span>Anything goes as long as operations continue<\/span><\/i>\u201d. I\u2019m sorry, pal, but I don\u2019t agree with you on this.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be sure, the highest priority is to protect people (ourselves and those around us, especially older people), and with this precondition as highest priority, then we can begin to think about continuing operations of our organizations. Let\u2019s take this as a guiding principle...<\/span><\/p>\n

Well then, in reality, \u201canything goes\u201d<\/strong> is not enough for IT either\u2026 If we allow the idea of \u201canything goes\u201d<\/strong> to take hold in our minds, in the end we will be only a single step away from a complete tragedy for our networks, and if you don\u2019t believe me, let this simple example serve as a lesson.<\/span><\/p>\n

Continuing operations with \u201canything goes\u201d<\/strong> can be as easy as our users leaving their company PCs on and allowing any of our users\u2019 home devices to access the network via VPN. Isn\u2019t that easy? This is not much of a mystery. In that case thanks to \u201canything goes\u201d<\/strong> we have just connected to our network various unknown devices, perhaps in multiples of 10. Or perhaps in multiples of 100. They may not be updated or may lack antivirus, (or worse) be full of viruses, browsing through pages of downloads plagued by every type of malware,... This path is easy, but it is much more <\/span>dangerous.<\/span><\/p>\n

The other option for \u201canything goes\u201d<\/strong> \u201canything goes\u201d if we do not want home PCs to enter our network via VPN, is to make public the remote desktops via Internet, and in this manner the devices can access them without being connected to the VPN, which enables us to eliminate the risk indicated above. Of course, we are opening another door to non-security since the remote desktops are an excellent attack vector (and if you don\u2019t believe me, remember the people suffering from WannaCry attacks and similar types of attack)<\/span><\/p>\n

No, \u201canything goes\u201d is not enough<\/strong>. \u201cAnything goes\u201d<\/strong> is an approach that will only lead to the self-destruction of our networks, and then what we have accomplished is that the continuity of operation has lasted only a few days, and then is interrupted for weeks until we clean up the mess. Is it preferable to wait one more day, but then continue operations securely for an indefinite time, or to run the risk that there is downtime only a few weeks later because we gained a single day at the beginning?<\/span><\/p>\n

It is clear to me. Quite clear. Crystal-clear.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Best regards,<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Alejandro Castro<\/a>, Proactivanet\u2019s<\/a> Technical Director<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

PS: I promise that the reflections are based on real conversations \ud83d\ude41 although fortunately those involved reflected and looked for alternatives in time \ud83d\ude42<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":16465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,1464],"tags":[1498,1499,1465],"class_list":["post-18331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","category-safety-management","tag-ti-en","tag-itam-security","tag-security-en"],"acf":{"is_icon":[]},"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proactivanet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proactivanet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proactivanet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proactivanet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proactivanet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.proactivanet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proactivanet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proactivanet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proactivanet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proactivanet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}