A hacktivist group calling itself Team GhostShell has claimed responsibility for leaking 120,000 records from more than 100 higher-education networks. Team GhostShell claims the attacks were carried out in an attempt to “bring attention to failing educational standards worldwide.”

From the looks of it they were quite successful. The story has been picked up many times with dozens of articles discussing it.

I don’t want to get into a debate on world-wide educational standards, but I do think there is a serious discussion to be had around higher education network design, policy, and network security methodology.

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The IT Consumerization or “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) movement is already well underway and the iPhone5 launch will see even more employee sourced devices hitting the enterprise network. Even if you’re lucky enough to work for a company that provides iPhones to their employees, you probably don’t want to wait for IT to upgrade your iPhone now do you? You’ll want to BYOD.

So in support of iPhone5 users everywhere, here are three essential components of a BYOD-ready company: Policy, Education, Technology. Let’s discuss…

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There are many uses of NetFlow but one of the most important and often overlooked is the network security value NetFlow and IPFIX can provide. Based on feedback gathered over 10 years from hundreds of NetFlow customers, here’s the top five uses of NetFlow analysis for network security in ascending order…
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Most companies agree that business Internet security systems are a paramount concern.  Relying on traditional security efforts such as firewalls and antivirus software are not going to perform a very important emerging security detection technique called network behavior analysis.  To leverage this internal security measure, network administrators need to collect and analyze NetFlow or IPFIX from existing routers and switches.  And here’s some good news: firmware upgrades are usually not needed to take advantage of flow technology.

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I’ve been playing with our joint Mobile IAM reporting solution that we have developed with our partner Enterasys Networks.  These new reports appear to be very helpful when trying to find out about all the BYOD devices on the network, who authenticated them (i.e. username) and any BYOD security  issues that may have appeared in the host reputation  alarm dashboard.

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What is your company’s BYOD policy?  Do you have one?  Does BYOD traffic monitoring exist in your network monitoring routines?  BYOD policies  need to be put in place as this new technology paradigm is costing most companies BIG TIME!

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BYOD Policies in schools and in the work place should include what is considered both acceptable use and misuse of resources.  Because many students and employees engage in personal activities on BYOD devices such as Facebook.com, twitter and scrabble, these applications and others are often active during work hours.  They not only distract people from doing their jobs, they can also consume considerable network bandwidth which could negatively impact business critical applications such as connectivity to the CRM or even VoIP.  If you think you are going to see a BYOD savings, you may want to think again.

 “Aberdeen Group found that a company with 1,000 mobile devices spends an extra $170,000 per year, on average, when they use a BYOD approach.”

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