 syslog
Access (remote or otherwise) is a good thing if it's granted
only to trusted users, but it can also be disastrous. If your systems
are not properly configured and your users not carefully trained,
you may be permitting access to more than you realize. According
to the results of a recent CompTIA survey, released on March 31st,
84 percent of the nearly 900 organizations surveyed "blamed
human error either wholly or in part for their last major security
breach". In last year's similar survey, human error was
cited as the cause of 63 percent of security breaches.
Also, 58 percent of organizations experienced at least one major
IT security breach in the past 6 months. The survey defined a major
breach as "one that caused real harm, resulted in the loss
of confidential information, or interrupted business operations."
That's up from 38 percent a year ago, according to the report,
which can be read at: www.comptia.org.
Human error is impossible to prevent entirely, but careful configuration
and vigilance on the part of both administrators and users will
go a long way toward alleviating major problems. In this issue,
three articles provide an in-depth look at LDAP and how best to
configure it to grant access and manage information. The articles
are "Using LDAP to Manage Unix Accounts" by Jeff Machols,
"Configuring Linux for LDAP Name Service and Authentication"
by John D'Emic, and "The OpenLDAP Proxy Server" by
Reinhard E. Voglmaier. Also in this issue, Russell Dyer begins a
series on PHP, and Ralph Durkee shows how to get chroot'ed
account functionality from OpenSSH. These articles provide key information
for configuring your environment with security and functionality
in mind.
Coming up, we'll be doing a special issue on spam. Teaching
users never to open attachments is one thing, but there are many
other considerations when spam-proofing your environment. Please
send your proposals for articles to Rikki Endsley at: rendsley@cmp.com.
Manuscripts for the special spam issue are due soon. Please send
comments to me at: aankerholz@cmp.com. As always, I look forward
to hearing from you.
Sincerely yours,
Amber Ankerholz
Editor in Chief
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