Offer valid on any 60 month lease plan - $1, 10%, or capped FMV buyout; minimum $3K transaction, subject to credit approval. Project can include other items like unified threat management, VPN, home-shoring equipment, cabling, backup power - even training!  Take advantage of 50% off  our 5 year equipment warranty, too! 

 

By Stefanie Hoffman, ChannelWeb 
Thu. Jan. 29, 2009 A former engineer at mortgage finance company Fannie Mae was indicted for allegedly planting a "logic bomb" that would have shut down the company for at least a week by destroying all 4,000 of its servers, costing the company millions in lost productivity and damages.
Rajendrasinh Makwana, 35 was indicted for sabotaging the mortgage lender's computer network by entering malicious code known as a logic bomb that would have resulted in destroying and altering the entirety of data on Fannie Mae's servers, according to the U.S. District Court indictment.  The logic bomb was embedded with legitimate code and set to launch at 9 a.m. on Jan. 31, but was impeded when another Fannie Mae engineer discovered the malware several days after it was planted.
Makwana was terminated the afternoon of Oct. 24 due to a scripting error he had made earlier in the month.  However, after his termination, Makwana's access to the computer systems did not immediately end, and he retained full access rights until at least 10 p.m. that evening, according to an FBI affidavit. Makwana used his extended legitimate access to clear out all logs that revealed his access to the server, eliminating any "footprint" of his malicious activities on Oct. 24. He then gained launch code that would allow him access to Fannie Mae's servers remotely. Upon gaining root access to Fannie Mae's system, Makwana created a file in which he developed the malicious code on Oct. 25, the day after his termination.

Meanwhile, security experts say that companies can anticipate more insiders that pose threats to corporate environments as the economy worsens and disgruntled or laid off employees seek some kind of retribution.
Brian Cleary, vice president of marketing for security company Aveksa, said that many data leaks and malware attacks committed from the inside, such as the near attack on Fannie Mae, often stem from a lack of access control and ineffective or outdated security policies.  To fully protect themselves from insider threats, companies will increasingly need to automate their access control, Cleary said.
"An automated approach is crucial to making sure you're protecting your operation's resources," Cleary said. "[Makwana] definitely had malfeasance in mind. We've seen this where organizations with disgruntled employees have mal-intent toward the company and want to hurt it. You have to find a way to protect the operation of the enterprise so it can conduct business.

 

When times are tough, businesses look to control operating costs and reduce risk. Synertel Managed Workplace is a powerful tool for proactively detecting and avoiding network, server, printer, and workstation problems - BEFORE they impact productivity.  SMW provides monitoring, alerting, proactive network tuning, plus remote and onsite services to detect and solve problems before they become catastrophes.

 

Monitoring can detect hundreds of things - and make as big or little a deal about them as you want.  Examples include

 

- low disk space,

- printers about to run out of toner

- security patches that didn't apply

- viruses found and quarantined

- LAN traffic jams,

- if your website is ever down

-   if an employee installs personal software on a company PC.

 

 

SMW can serve as a radar screen for your existing IT staff - with all alerts and tickets flowing to your staff, or we can take shared or full responsibility for monitoring, managing, and intervening.  Every minute of IT downtime costs your organization in lost productivity -- even before the cost of solving the problem. Let us help trim those costs.

 

If you think network management is a luxury in tough times -- you may be thinking tactically, not strategically! A small wise investment in proactive monitoring avoids larger (and more variable) costs of being reactive.

 

SMW can even monitor your telephone system and voicemail!  For more details, call 415 746 1811 or email managedworkplace@synertel.com.

 

 

For a complimentary assessment of your organization's IT and Telecom spending and resources, call Ben Stiegler at 415 746 1811 or email ben@synertel.com