7 Lessons From IT Security Trial

If you want to make it as difficult as humanly possible for hackers--whether employees or outsiders--to ply their trade, your company needs to have bulletproof security policies and practices. That may seem extremely obvious, but in the course of this trial, UBS employees acknowledged that 40 systems administrators in the company's data center used the same password for root--or all-encompassing--access to the company's network. The defense has been aggressively pouncing on this as an indicator of porous security that left the network vulnerable to attack, and it's tough to argue that point. In addition, 20% of the servers affected by the attack had inadequate data backup--not the smartest move for a company whose lifeblood, stock trading, requires data access.

Don't underestimate the measures a hacker or person seeking revenge will go to in order to prove their point or carry out their plan. In this case, the sophistication of the logic bomb's author has come into question, but one point is undeniable: The person responsible methodically placed the trigger that set off the logic bomb on every affected server two times to maximize the chances it would wreak havoc. Sophisticated or not, the plan did immense damage, just as the attacker hoped it would.

You can't be too wary of disgruntled or otherwise suspicious employees. Sure, we'd all be pissed off if our bonus came up $15,000 to $20,000 short. That's not chump change, even for someone making a base salary of $125,000 per year, as the defendant was. But how many of us would be willing to risk our future, our reputation, the reputation of our families, and a lengthy jail stay over that amount of money? Duronio was prepared to do so, if the prosecution's account is accurate.

The effects of a major attack can be far-reaching and long-lasting, even after the forensics pros have gone home and the remediation work is done. By the admission of UBS's own IT pros in trial testimony, on March 4 (the date of the attack), for two or three years later, they took critical servers offline to avoid the affects of any lingering malicious code. Also by UBS's own account, the effects are still felt today, more than four years later.

Even a hacker who's successful at damaging systems and impairing business can be susceptible to stupid behavior that points back to him or her. We don't yet know whether Duronio is guilty, but the existence of hard-copy printouts of malicious code in his home is likely to weigh heavily on the jury.

When it comes to security--and in fact all IT work--choose your vendors carefully. The defense has been hammering away at UBS's use of @Stake after the attack, in part because it employed well-known hackers. It's entirely possible, even likely, that @Stake is totally on the up and up. Perhaps UBS was fully aware of the hacking backgrounds of some employees and considered those backgrounds when hiring @Stake. Let's hope that was the case.

IT security problems--aside from the direct financial damage to a business--can be a public relations nightmare for any company, and even worse for a financial services firm. UBS's PR organization must be eagerly awaiting the day this trial is over and no longer in the news. No matter how well-meaning and even well-run its IT operations may have been, the trial isn't casting that organization in a positive light.