KrudlerOct 23, 2023

Tech workers - what did your IT Security team do that made your life hell and had no practical benefit?

https://lemmy.world/post/7232834

Tech workers - what did your IT Security team do that made your life hell and had no practical benefit? - Lemmy.World

One chestnut from my history in lottery game development: While our security staff was incredibly tight and did a generally good job, oftentimes levels of paranoia were off the charts. Once they went around hot gluing shut all of the “unnecessary” USB ports in our PCs under the premise of mitigating data theft via thumb drive, while ignoring that we were all Internet-connected and VPNs are a thing, also that every machine had a RW optical drive.

Show threadbody_by_makeOct 23, 2023

Often times you’ll find that the crazy things IT does are forced on them from higher ups that don’t know shit.

A common case of this is requiring password changes every x days, which is a practice that is known to actively make passwords worse.

Show threadddittyOct 24, 2023
For our org, we are required to do this for our cybersecurity insurance plan
Show threadNatanael
Tell them NIST now recommends against it so the insurance company is increasing your risks
Oct 24, 2023 at 10:04amWeb
Show threadHoboOct 24, 2023

The guideline is abundantly clear too with little room for interpretation:

5.1.1.1 Memorized Secret Authenticators

Verifiers SHOULD NOT impose other composition rules (e.g., requiring mixtures of different character types or prohibiting consecutively repeated characters) for memorized secrets. Verifiers SHOULD NOT require memorized secrets to be changed arbitrarily (e.g., periodically). However, verifiers SHALL force a change if there is evidence of compromise of the authenticator.

pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html

NIST Special Publication 800-63B

NIST Special Publication 800-63B