Another company suffered a security breach, according to the NYTimes today. What’s the big deal, you might say, because companies getting hacked into isn’t really news. Well, this story is making news because it’s a classic “man bites dog” story. The company that was breached was none other than EMC’s RSA Security division , which is renowned for its advanced cryptographic system innovations and security products such as sophisticated electronic tokens which provide multi-factor authentication.
Experts say that it’s possible that a master key used to encrypt communications might have been compromised, among other things. Oops! How could this be? You see, even a company that makes a living selling security products isn’t immune to threats. The reason is very simple: IT security today involves dealing with numerous potential avenues through witch security breaches could occur, and tightening each one of those avenues. Ad EMC (or its RSA division), is like any other company when it comes to security – it must follow the best practices for securing its entire infrastructure. So, while RSA makes famous security products, it’s failed to secure its own doors against external threats.
This latest breach could end up having serious security ramifications for many companies that use RSA products. Hopefully RSA is going to determine t he exact nature of the security compromise and advise its customers as to whether the security products they bought from RSA are now vulnerable. Any company has an obligation to protect itself, especially a company that’s a leader in the security product market. I hope that RSA’s loss will be a wakeup call to the companies out there that really haven’t grasped the nettle by implementing a through IT security plan across their enterprise. Implementing those plans takes time, effort and money, but the consequences are much more expensive.