San Francisco’s Network Crisis Highlights Insider Threats

It’s one of an IT security manager’s worst nightmares: An employee tampers with the computer system, holding the network hostage. That’s exactly the scenario playing out in San Francisco as a city network administrator goes to trial for computer tampering.

According to an article by Network World’s Ellen Messmer, the crisis in San Francisco “represents an extreme example of the insider threat that IT security vendors and others have been sounding the alarm about for years.” She says experts are trying to take back the city’s compromised network from Terry Childs, the employee who was arrested for alleged computer tampering when he refused to relinquish network control.

“There’s worry that Childs, who has worked for the city for five years but faced firing for alleged poor performance, may have installed the means to electronically destroy sensitive documents,’ Messmer says. “Childs, who now sits in a jail cell on $5 million bond, also happens to be a former felon convicted of aggravated robbery and burglary stemming from charges over two decades ago, which the city knew when it hired him as a city computer engineer.”

The incident has many companies scrambling to find ways to prevent insider threats, Messmer says. There are plenty of software packages available on the market to do that, and in the article, Messmer highlights some of the companies that are using them today.

But that doesn’t stop the threat. Messmer points out that San Francisco’s Childs is not the first IT administrator to have been accused of going on a rampage. “There have been several cases in the past, including the case of Roger Duronio, the former UBS PaineWebber computer systems administrator, convicted two years ago for planting a malicious-code ‘logic bomb’ that caused more than $3 million in damage and repair costs to the UBS computer network,” she adds.