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A Test of Physical Security - A Real World Example | Week 5

I would like to build off last week’s post by sharing a real-world example of how no matter how many security controls you have in place, employee engagement and adherence to policy will inevitably determine their effectiveness. 

The organization I work for have two separate departments, one for data security (think workstations, servers, etc.) and the other for physical security (think door/badge access, security cameras, etc.). Both departments are completely separated from each other and operate in their own silos. One day the security operations center who manages the physical security of our buildings decided to run a penetration test. They hired an outside contractor, gave him a “lost employee bade” with basic access, and told him to see what he can gain access to in a day before getting caught.  

So off this contractor went wearing a badge without his picture on it, no knowledge of the key combination to use with the badge, but simply following employees through doors as they held them open for him. So long as he kept the picture on the ID facing away from other people, no one was all the wiser. Finally, after a full morning of wandering around the campus, my co-worker walked into a control booth that controls our auditorium's AV infrastructure. He found this stranger on a networked computer who claimed to “be with IT.” Working closely with IT for a long time, my coworker knew right away this man didn’t belong and finally informed our security team.  

All of this triggered a security response procedure from our entire IT and security departments. Computers were pulled out of production, forensics were performed on the computers, camera logs were pulled and reviewed, badge access logs were reviewed. Turns out the director of security never told anyone, not even his team about this test. All in all, it was a successful test of our response procedures, but exposed flaws in employee awareness of best security practices. "Technology investments fail to deliver physical security if employees are not engaged in helping sustain the physical security of the organization.” (Ingelbrecht, N. Rao, S. 2019). This test prompted updates to our annual security training modules and ignited a new focus on employee engagement in security awareness around the office.   

References: 
Ingelbrecht, N. Rao, S. (Feb, 2019). Best Practices in Implementing Video Surveillance, Analytics and Response Systems in Physical Security. Retrieved From: 
 https://www.gartner.com/document/3900979?ref=TypeAheadSearch&qid=6b888e97c8b13ddaa3bb8fa 

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