Preventing Good People from Doing Bad Things: Implementing Least Privilege

Servers Are the Primary Target for Insiders and Hackers Alike

“As in previous years, nearly all data were breached from servers... This continues to be a defining characteristic between data-at-risk incidents and those involving actual compromise.”

—Verizon RISK Team with US Secret Service,2010 Data Breach Investigation Report

There is a significant distinction between the data on desktops described in the last chapter and the data on the server. To use another metaphor: if misusing desktop privilege can get you into the bank, then misusing server privilege is the equivalent of carte-blanche access to the bank vault. Indeed, in a secure and ...