Systems administrator as the scariest threatSystems administrator as the scariest threat

As the NSA,some companies and the city of San Francisco have learned,it administrators are in the perfect position if they want to leak sensitive information or blackmail higher-level officials.

The director of the NSA,Gen Keith Alexander,acknowledged the problem in a television interview Sunday and said his agency would institute a two-man rule that would limit the ability of each of its system administrators to unfettered access to the entire system. The rule,which would require a second check on each attempt to access sensitive information,is already in place in some intelligence agencies.

From government agencies to corporate America,there is a renewed emphasis on thwarting the rogue IT employee. Such in-house breaches are relatively rare,but the NSA leaks have prompted assessments of the best precautions businesses and government can take.

The scariest threat is the systems administrator, said Eric Chiu,president of Hytrust,a computer security company. The system administrator has godlike access to systems they manage.

John R Schindler,a former NSA counterintelligence officer,agreed that the buddy system would help. But I just dont see it as a long-term solution, he said. Wouldnt it be easier to scrub all your ITs for security issues, he asked,and see if there is another Snowden?

The biggest issue for government and industry,Schindler said,is to vet the IT candidates more carefully and to watch for any signs of disillusionment.

System administrators are often the technology workers with the most intimate knowledge of what is moving through their employers networks. Administrators at intelligence agencies can have access to top secret programmes without being cleared for them. If they can get into one part of the network with credentials for what is called root access,they can get into almost everything else.

Since 9/11,the vast majority of IT experts in the intelligence world have worked for private contractors,and the Snowden case has set off a new debate about whether the government could have more control of the workers if they were direct employees.

This is a dirty little secret, said Robert Bigman,a former chief information security officer at the CIA. When you log on with a root account,it doesnt know if youre staff employee or a contract employee. It just knows youre root. You have all privileges.

At a New Jersey pharmaceutical firm in early 2011,a former IT administrator gained access to the companys system,deleted several files and froze the firms operations for several days,causing $800,000 in damages. Prosecutors called it a revenge attack after the company,Shionogi,announced layoffs.

Reuters has reported that Snowden had made many posts anonymously on an online forum,including one in which he seemed critical of technology companies cooperating with government surveillance programmes.

Schindler said the NSA could also do what Soviet officials did after one of their cipher clerks defected in 1945. Their response wasnt to crack down on code clerks,but to make them happier.