Effective Access Control

Twitter: @smtaylor12

In my last post, I talked about the problems of open network access in many of our government and local municipality offices.

Effective access control needs to balance effectiveness with operational efficiency, meaning you can’t shut down operations in the name of security. Services need to be provided to constituents but not at the sake of security. Revenues need to be collected, car decals need to be distributed, home improvement inspections need to be done, police officers need to continue to ensure public safety and so on.

Business still needs to go on, but at the same time, you need to have adequate security measures in place.

In the case of my previous post entitled “Can I interest you in a Community Meeting and a side of Network Access,” that county facility needed to ensure the Girl Scout troop leader’s infected laptop didn’t: 1) place a bot onto one of those badge readers or cameras or, 2) distribute malware throughout vulnerable endpoints and hosts.

If either of those things happened, the resulting events could be catastrophic and the nefarious activities may not even be felt or seen for days, weeks or even months; until well past forensic logs would be available to analyze and diagnose a root cause.

So, what are some of the things a municipality can do to manage network access and mitigate the risks that a seemingly harmless community meeting could impose?

How can they assess if the people and resources on their network should be there?
How can they determine if that laptop is a risk just simply by being connected?
How can they balance answering these questions while still providing the services their constituents expect?

These questions, while seemingly difficult, are really rather easy to answer with the right policies and technology components in place. Reach out to us, [email protected], and see how Forescout can help you answer these questions.