In ABC Co. employees could bring n USB drives from home, install whatever they wanted including games, and otherwise modify their workstations. The consequence was that IT spent considerable time dealing with corrupted operating systems and had substantial expenses replacing machines. Rebuilding systems took "a lot of effort" according to an employee, and inevitably users had files in additional unexpected places, requiring manual efforts to retrieve those files. Users were down for a day or more. These incidents took time away from priority IT initiatives and required 3-24 hours each to identify the issue, mitigate and remediate. Educating users was helpful, but users still couldn’t manage themselves, particularly given increasingly sophisticated social engineering exploits. The Vice President of IT addressed several issues to improve the security of the infrastructure over the past five years, expanding on what was working, and changing what needed improvement. They virtualized 98% of the infrastructure, and still utilize custom-built applications where needed. According to an employee, "In the Windows environment we wanted to eliminate the havoc of allowing users admin rights. It makes me nervous from a security perspective, but it also inhibits productivity of both IT and end users."
They initially selected a product that had seemed simple in their trials, and it offered to fully automate deployment of software to local and remote employees via an intuitive web interface. It even offered remote access capabilities for remote employees. The results of a trial deployment, however, were much less than expected — important applications could not work without admin rights the way that product was designed. That’s when the IT department tested "PowerBroker" for Windows on his personal PC. "With "PowerBroker" for Windows I could navigate and discover assets, identify vulnerabilities, and most importantly lock down all applications to implement least privilege and remove all admin rights from users’ PCs," Romious discovered. And PowerBroker had flexibility in how it could be deployed and managed, which did take some time to decide, but in the end PowerBroker for Windows easily scaled to meet their enterprise needs and allow removal of admin rights from all Windows systems. PowerBroker has solved these challenges.
On an application-by-application basis, IT can then review the risk and vulnerabilities associated with the requested application by using the BeyondInsight platform included with PowerBroker for Windows. The BeyondInsight IT Risk Management Platform provides centralized reporting and analytics, giving visibility into the risks associated with assets that can be discovered and profiled. "BeyondInsight used with PowerBroker for Windows allows us to proactively assess and approve applications when warranted for business and when safe, rather than remediating after the havoc." The vulnerability scanner incorporated into PowerBroker for Windows and the BeyondInsight platform "has been invaluable" according to Romious. It ensures patches are applied, vulnerabilities are mitigated, and that nothing else becomes broken in the process. Fred Allen, VP of IT agrees, "The deployment of PowerBroker for Windows with BeyondInsight has gone well. It’s good to have a win-win after the challenges of the previous attempt to eliminate admin rights on users’ PCs.
Keeping in mind the IT security problem at ABC Co., what solution/s "PowerBroker" provided, from the perspective of the E-Commerce Security Environment you are aware of from ITMA 401 course?
What 3 vulnerable e-commerce points, which you studied of in ITMA 401 course, you also directly or indirectly encountered in this case study at ABC Co.?
What and how the 3 key technology concepts, of the Internet, got threatened at ABC Co.?
