Security Watch | Matt Hines » You know it's bad when Halloween doesn't scare you

October 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)

You know it's bad when Halloween doesn't scare you

TAGS: Security

It's been a tradition of mine for some time to grab a fairly scary movie on Halloween and spend the night split between watching said fright flick and answering the call of neighborhood kids looking for a sugar fix.

You know, watching something so scary that rational thought is overridden for a brief moment. I can't pick out a movie that would do it for you, since everyone's different, but you know what I mean. I'll be you can think of a specific movie right now that would give you the heebie jeebies under the right circumstances.

The really frightening thing that I realized today is the fact that sitting in the dark watching a horror movie is not as scary as sitting down at a PC that I don't own or maintain.

That's really saying something.

And I don't think it's just my paranoia talking.

I sat down at a generic PC today, checked to make sure that the firewall was on, running and up-to-date, ran through a check of local anti-virus status, ran a quick anti-spyware scan via my USB drive, and still couldn't bring myself to log onto any system that I would normally be connected to remotely from my own laptop.

"Wouldn't be prudent at this juncture"

Of course, there are several solutions for this problem. I'm actually looking at one from Realm Systems that I've been putting through its paces and should be out as a review in the next few weeks. It's solid in terms of security for corporate access from off-site machines, but a bit pricey. Symantec and CheckPoint, not to mention GreenBorder, also provide solutions for secure remote access from untrusted hosts.

What this all boils down to is that I guess I'm more concerned about getting my credentials stolen than finding a razor blade in a candy apple.

Okay, maybe both to me are equally bad.

So, my question to you is: What do you use to reduce the fright factor of remote workers accessing your network? Is VPN software your primary defense? Or do you just close your eyes and take a big bite from that candy apple?

Remote worker survey

What started this whole new paranoid track going on in my head was that I just saw Cisco's new remote worker survey. Cisco surveyed a thousand international remote workers and gathered their responses on their remote use habits. I'll post it here next week so that you'll all get to join me in a good Halloween fright.

Posted by Victor R. Garza on October 28, 2006 03:29 PM

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