Linda W. Perkins

File Integrity Monitoring: Challenges & Solutions

NetIQ - February 12, 2010

If there was ever an era where the saying “you can’t be too careful” rings true, it’s this one. Every year, despite growing awareness and implementation of protective security measures, data breaches are hitting the headlines more and more. The numbers are scary: 285 million records were compromised in 2008. Even more frightening is the fact that that these breaches are happening right under the noses of information security managers, as evidenced by cases such as Heartland Payment Systems, where a breach of approximately 100 million credit card accounts went unrecognized for 18 months.

One of the critical questions that must be answered, in order to solve this problem, is “why?” Why are these breaches going undetected? What can be done to maintain the kind of surveillance required to identify and stop these attacks before they are able to cause insurmountable damage? One of the most effective solutions is to implement file integrity monitoring.