RE: Height of paranoia

Have you also thought that recipients may have forwarded these on by
mistake(or by design)?
I have received emails before that have the whole conversation(some of which
I shouldn't have been privy to) laid bare for all to see.

This happens quite often from other companies and we have had to have
awareness building campaigns to minimize the risk of it happening with us.

Once that email is gone you have no control over it any more.

When you say 'leaked out' what do you mean exactly? Competitors have the
info or it has come up in gossip sessions internally etc? Are the data being
leaked specific to confidential 'conversations/emails'? Or are they general
ideas and subjects?

Not sure about the securing mail from mail admins...how about having better
auditing for access? I'm sure you could log who has accessed what and
when-especially if you have unique logins for the admins.

I don't see the point of removing the PC's from the domain because I can't
see any security benefit from that, to be honest. Maybe you could clarify
what you'd hope to achieve by doing that.

I remember being offered a job by someone who told me that they used the
company systems and their access to 'spy' on other staff and even on the
execs(he was related to one of the higher ups himself and they used the info
they gleaned for leverage). Now that was a paranoid environment that I had
no wish to get into.




-----Original Message-----
From: listbounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:listbounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of WALI
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008 1:55 AM
To: security-basics@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Height of paranoia

It's a given that all workstations have XP firewall enabled, an
enterprise
grade antivirus and Windows defender installed. I am the security guy.

The need is that there are a couple top management executives that have
highly confidential data/emails residing on their desktops, and quite a
few
times, the information seems to have leaked out.

Discounting the 'word of mouth' of their secretaries or the end
recipients
of that information, I want to take as many precautions from the IT
security
perspective as possible and even bring our domain admins and helpdesk
personnel into the realm of doubt.

We have a Windows 20003/exchange 2003 environment of about a 2000 users.
Here's what I have thought:

1. If I detach these executive PCs from the domain. Mails will stop
landing
in MS Outlook. Is there a way around? Also DNS security doesn't register
any
PC unless it's joined to a domain. I thought of this to make it out of
bounds by system/domain admins. I have a feeling that their port 3389
gets
accessed when they aren't around.

2. Alternatively, create a private vlan on the core switch and make these
PCs as it's members. Put an ACL and deny everything except ports required
to
authenticate to AD and exchange and few other web applications. Monitor
port
memberships regularly.

3. How to secure their emails from exchange admins (it's the height, I
know).

Pls advise!!

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