Introduction

Data security issues have been drawing ever-increasing attention of IT professionals, security specialists, and companies’ top managers. Virus epidemics that have become pretty much casual, hacked web sites, and data leaks occurring in the greatest companies have provided IT security-related topics coverage in just about all mass media.

This triggered significant sales growth in products for preventing various threats to enterprise information system. Analysis of such products presented on the IT security markets reveals that the greatest choice is offered in the area of software and hardware-based firewalls and anti-virus tools. The area of boundary protection and viruses, Trojans, and SPAM fighting is best covered in literature on information security systems deployment. Thus, security specialists' attention is mainly focused on the external threats.

However, according to CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey, the amount of losses caused by data leaks for 1000 polled respondents has exceeded $70 M. This value has significantly passed ahead of other IT threats, such as viruses ($27 M), hacker attacks ($65 M), financial fraud ($10 M.), and made up approximately 40% of the total value of registered damage. According to the same survey, an average amount of damages caused by insider activities has totaled $300 thousand, while the greatest amount of damages made up $1,5 M. The same conclusion was announced by Ernst&Young, which has confirmed the trends in its annual survey on IT security issues (Global Information Security Survey 2004). The greatest growth of IT professionals’ concern is observed in the area of internal threats. The respondents have put this problem to the second position on the list of the most serious dangers. 60 % respondents have declared that employees’ wrongful actions pose a threat to normal functioning of information systems. This value has passed ahead of such “hot” topics as SPAM (56%), DoS attacks (48%), financial fraud (45%), and breaches in software security (39%); it has only yielded to threats posed by viruses and worms (77%).

Thus, the greatest deal of damages caused by violations in the area of information security occurs due to leakage and theft of valuable data, i.e. threats caused by the companies’ employees.

Most Popular Security Techniques

The market of security systems capable of protecting against data leakage and theft is only beginning to form. The most widespread family of software offered for counteracting disloyal employees are the various contextual traffic analyzers, implemented as either independent products or modules that expand firewall and proxy-server functionality. Not even pressing in the detailed analysis of concrete products, it is obvious, that the traffic analyzers are capable of solving a problem of casual data theft only partially. First, they simply physically do not close such data transmission channels as wireless networks (Bluetooth, wi-fi) and replaceable media of various types (diskette, flash-disks, etc.). Second, the analyzers cannot guarantee preventing theft of data being transmitted over a network (for example, just about any analyzer can be bypassed using steganography).

Another way of protecting sensitive data is administrative measures, i.e. unplugging floppy and CD disk drives and sealing up USB ports. In a combination to disabling network that carries sensitive data from external networks, this approach is probably the most reliable solution for the considered problem. On the other hand, enforcing such measures not only creates extreme inconvenience, but such measures are not always possible technically. For example, when the keyboard and the mouse are connected through the USB ports.

Alternatively to the administrative measures, we may consider the relatively new software, which allows setting access rights for disk drives and various input/output ports. Perhaps, such software’s unique advantages before the administrative measures are the possibility of centralized remote management and setting personal access rights to computer devices for various employees. Taking into account that in most cases one employee uses only one computer, the last item is not really necessary.

SecretsSaver Security Solution

An essentially new approach to counteracting data leakage and thefts caused by insuders is implemented in SecretsSaver, the data security system.

SecretsSaver’s features include:

— Restrict IT department employees’ access to confidential data.
— Classify data stored on employees’ workstations and servers by its security level.
— Assign each of the company’s employees an individual data access level.
— Restrict unauthorized distribution of data by employing data security levels and employee access levels.
— Control dynamically users’ permissions to data transmission hardware (diskettes, flash disks, Internet) depending on the users’ access levels and security levels of documents the users work with.
— Provide complete history of operations with confidential data.

SecretsSaver’s mechanisms are based upon classification of data by security levels and employees of the enterprise – by access levels. By default, system carries the following data security levels (stamps): public, office, and confidential. For following access levels are available for employees:

— User Access Level (UAL) – defines the greatest security level of data, which the employee may access.
— Network Access Level (NAL) - defines the greatest security level of data, which the employee may transmit over network.
— Removable Media Access Level (RMAL) - defines the greatest security level of data, which the employee may copy to removable media.

Besides the above, SecretsSaver introduces the Computer Security Level (CSL) – which defines the greatest security level of document that can be opened on the computer. This is necessary for preventing situations, when, for example, a user with a higher access level opens a confidential document on computer of a user with less permission, and that may open unauthorized access to the confidential document.

For data provided by servers via the client-server technology (e.g., 1C, SharePoint, Axapta, etc.), the system introduces the Computer Information Security Level (CISL) – which defines the security level of data stored on the server, which may be accessed over the network. SecretsSaver interprets an attempt to access such server the same way as if that was an attempt to open a local document with the security level equal to the server’s CISL.

Thus, SecretsSaver not only allows restricting users to access certain data – this feature is available in pretty much any operating system available on the market – but also it allows to restrict transferring data depending on its importance and the user’s permissions. This not only makes it difficult for users (including IT personnel) to steal data – it as well drops chances significantly for stealing confidential data with all kinds of spyware.

Installing and Configuring SecretsSaver

SecretsSaver runs in a Windows 2000/2003 domain and Windows 2000/XP/2003 workstations.

The installation is a two-step process, which is to be done under the domain administrator permissions. The first step includes installing the program by running SecretsSaverInstaller.exe – the installation program, which will prepare the domain and install the control console. The installation process is extremely simple: you may just leave all the settings. The second step includes installing the agents to workstations; it is carried out in the control console.

After you launch the control console, it will prompt you for path to the keys file, which is used for encrypting SecretsSaver’s settings and for restricting access to modifying these settings. If the keys file is not available, you can only run the console in the view mode. The console’s look is available on Screenshot 1.

Users – when this item is selected, the right section of the program’s window will display domain users with access levels enforced for them.

Computers – when this item is selected, the right section of the program’s window will display domain computers with security levels enforced for them.

Event Logs:
Access to documents – when this item is selected, the right section of the program’s window will display attempts to access and transmit the data.
Logon/Logoff – when this item is selected, the right section of the program’s window will display attempts to logon and logoff.
Agents – displays technical information on functioning of the agents.
Console – displays technical information on functioning of the console.

Once you have started the console the first time, you need to create a key file. To open the key file creation dialog, select the Access Key item on the Settings menu.

To install an agent, open the Computers section, then select the computer you want to install an agent to on the list, and then click on the Install button (or select “Install” on the context menu). If the installation completed successfully, the status of the computer (see the last column) will change to “Installed, reboot needed”. To complete the installation, click on the Reboot button (or select “Reboot” on the context menu). When the computer has been rebooted (this may take from one to five minutes) click on the Refresh button (or select “Refresh” on the context menu). The computer’s status should change to “Running”. If an error occurs during installation of an agent or in the course of running any other operation in the control console, you may find details on the error in the “Log->Agents” and “Log->Console” sections.

To modify user access levels and computer security levels, select the object to be modified in the corresponding section and then open the settings dialog by clicking on the Modify button or by selecting the corresponding item on the context menu.

To view history of users’ operations over confidential data, open the “Log->Access to documents” section; users’ logon/logoff logs are available in the section “Log->Logon/Logoff”.

ApplicationExample

Let’s consider a bulk trade company as a case study. Let’s suppose, the company has the following structure:

Let’s assign access levels as follows

The company must as well have a server, for instance, for the 1Ñ applications, which will store the accounting data. The server must have the CISL value set to “Confidential”. Restriction of access to data of the same security level can be carried out with the Windows operating system’s built-in control tools.

Now all users can work with documents on their workplaces, while only the department chiefs can move and transfer the data. At the same time, every event of copying the data will be properly recorded in the access log.

This method’s main shortage, which is sequent to its purpose, is that the user that created the document will be unable to transfer it anywhere else. So, team working on a document appears to be quite a difficulty. To solve this problem, we may improve the company’s IT structure by adding one file server for each security level greater than the “Public” and have users exchange data via those servers. For instance, in the example above, the company will need two servers. The first one will have the CISL value set to “Office”, the second one will have that value set to “Confidential”. Disabling transferring data with security level greater than “Public” to all users will provide a reliable protection from stealing confidential data with any spyware tools.

Please pay special attention to the fact that all the IT department employees have the least access level. To take care of their duties, IT personnel absolutely doesn’t need to have access to company’s business data. Nevertheless, in just about any company, the network administrator may access just about any data. SecretsSaver does not eliminate the threat of stealing confidential data by company’s IT personnel. Nevertheless, it is capable, especially when combined with wisely developed administrative measures, of significantly complicate the job of espionage. For example, after you have deployed SecretsSaver, one will be unable to just copy a document with the “Confidential” stamp from a department chief’s computer over network, and even a Trojan program installed on the “victim’s” computer will be useless. Much greater intervention to the system operation will be needed, and that will doubtfully be unnoticed.

Hence, let us summarize: by deploying SecretsSaver in your company, you can axe the number of users capable of moving confidential data beyond your company boundaries and eliminate the possibility of doing that unnoticed – practically at all.