Line Thorsen Sieg

The importance of user role definition and access restrictions

Many of us have seen the cinematic masterpiece called The Lord of the Rings and can recall the scene where Pippin Took touches The Palantír (the glass orb looking thing with the eye of Sauron in it) and thus gave said villain an insight to his mind.

The bad news: Sauron knows everything Pippin knows. The good news: Pippin doesn’t know anything!

At first there is the panic when Gandalf thinks Sauron now knows everything, then there is the calmness of realising the ‘fool of a Took’ knows nothing that Sauron can use. If we compare that to real life: The panic of knowing your systems have been infiltrated, then the calmness of realising that the access is very limited and doesn’t cover any of the important parts of the IT system.

Continue reading

The legend of The Scottish Thistle - the early version of a socio-technical defence system!

Technology is getting both advanced and effective, but what good does it do if we don’t understand and use it properly? Humans have a long history of using tools to help us make our jobs easier or for keeping us safe. However, technology can only do so much on it’s own. It needs a human touch to fulfil its full potential.

Lets jump right into a famous legend of humans and technology working together to prevent an approaching attack:

Continue reading