Riordan Manufacturing Internet security issues and web concerns

The biggest, and probably the most insidious threat facing Riordan comes not from aging servers, poor physical security, or antiquated workstations, but from their own employees; many of which may become unwitting pawns of social engineering, phishing, and malware. In recent surveys conducted across the industry, “More than 50% of businesses consider their own employees to be the greatest IT security threat, with 54% of respondents believe that insiders are the biggest threat, compared to 27% who fear criminals the most, 12% state-sponsored cyber-attacks and 8% competitors (Swabey, 2013).” With a growing trend across the industry, to include even the Department of Defense, to allow employees access to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, this comes as no small wonder.
“Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed (Lucas, 1976).” On the surface, all four of Riordan’s plants have firewalls at the border of their network, and to many novice system administrators and misguided information technology specialists this should be more than enough to secure the network from internet based attacks. Chances are these firewalls are inadequately configured; explicit deny means nothing if your letting social media sites into your internal network. “Social networks are about connecting people, and a convincing-looking profile of a person followed by a friend or connection request can be enough to get a social engineering scam rolling (Teller, 2013).” Explicit deny should be the norm, and any exceptions should have to go through the system administrators. Riordan employees have access to email accounts; there is no legitimate reason for employees to have access to any social media sites on company resources.

A properly configured firewall should be the first line of