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With nearly three million people employed in temporary contract jobs today, and that number continuing to rise, what security issues do businesses face when it comes to hiring temps?
PCR recently spoke to Kevin Cunningham, president and founder of SailPoint, about the pros and cons of temp workers in an ever-increasingly security conscious world and what businesses can do to ensure their important data is kept safe.
“While temporary contract job arrangements provide businesses and organisations with a competitive edge and flexibility to expand and contract their workforce as needed, there are associated IT risks,” said Cunningham.
“There is no silver bullet solution to this problem, but a layered approach that includes awareness and education alongside preventive and detective controls will be much more secure.”
Cunningham noted that the rise of BYOD, and its associated software vulnerabilities, is causing a headache for IT departments.
“As more businesses jump on the BYOD trend, IT departments are battling to stay ahead of the game to ensure they are supporting business users while simultaneously managing the IT risks associated with these evolving technologies,” he told PCR.
“In order to better manage the risks associated with BYOD, IT needs better visibility into and control over the access privileges granted to workers. The use of mobile devices to access both on-premise and cloud applications makes these controls more difficult than ever.
“By leveraging a governance-based approach to identity and access management (IAM), enterprises can ensure that only authorised users have access to sensitive applications and data, and they must be ready and able to remove all access privileges promptly upon worker termination. It’s no longer a simple, one-step process to revoke network access privileges,” he warned.
Cunningham concluded by discussing poor password management and how simple tools can help prevent massive data loss.
“Password management might seem old hat, but you’d be surprised to hear just how many organisations aren’t doing it very effectively,” he said.
“As we watch cyber attack after cyber attack rock some of today’s largest organisations, you have to wonder: Why isn’t more being done? Even just simply having tools in place that make it easier to enforce stronger passwords – something critical to user access management – could prevent massive data loss.”
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