In an organization, there are many people with different roles and access. In the IT environment, there are different ways to define access and roles and each person base on his or her role and
access level is able to access different resources. Users would use some ways to introduce themselves to the system for example:
The main challenge is that if anyone could bypass these methods or in the other word introduce themselves as someone else, they could gain access to resources that they are not allowed to access.
For example, consider case that manager will have access to company confidential data, while employee won’t have access to these resources. Then manager will loss his or her smartcard and employee will find it and enter to the management office and use PC
to access confidential data and might expose it to competitors.
In a small organization with few employees, it is easier to identify who has access to what resources. However, in large organization with different branches, it is not expected that all employees
knows each other. For this reason, IT Admin should plan identity protection for everyone in organization. These are some effective techniques:
1) Train your employees:
at this moment we don’t have any effective technology that prevents cases such as losing smartcard or writing down username and password in piece of paper. You should make it clear to employees about risk of these cases and instruct them about how
to response in these cases.
2) Define investigation scenario:
define ways to investigate issues, that when an issue rise, follow those methods. For example, place CCTV in area that sensitive information stored.
3) Use right technology and define plan:
employees might write their username and password on piece of paper because they might forget it too often. One good way is create user password recovery scenario that user could reset password by answer some questions. Another good approach is to
manage your smartcards using software. For these scenarios, you could use
Forefront Identity Manager.
4) Protect endpoints:
identity theft is not only when someone stole smartcard or memorize your password. Spyware and keylogger could steal information; they are malicious software that will steal information. You should make sure your endpoints are protected with Anti-Malware
software and they are getting update regularly, you could use System Center Endpoint Protection to monitor and manage security for endpoints.