BlackBerry outage: Do not repeat

When RIM's email service went away, the lamentation of the Blackberry users was heard throughout the land. Now, the company's CEO says that they've learned their lessons and the service is here to stay. We all certainly hope so, since constant email access has reached the status of an enumerated constitutional right in the minds of millions of business executives. Constant connections requires a lot of an infrastructure, from redundant power supplies to effective security. One thing you can do on that latter score is make sure your security components are, in and of themselves, secure. A lot of companies assume that the security infrastructure is inherently secure, and that's a dangerous assumption. The next time you're running a security audit, make sure it includes the console connections to firewall, IDS, IPS, and authentication servers. You might come away reassured, but you'll certainly come away more secure than you were before. -Curtis