Do you Overshare? - WST

Have you ever been in the grocery store check-out line and heard the person in front of you recite their entire life history while they're checking out? Some might categorize the dispensing of that information as "oversharing".

You could be oversharing your corporate IT data without knowing it. Most operating systems and applications now gather data to be transmitted to the manufacturer whenever the software fails or experiences other difficulties. This is intended to provide the manufacturer with real-world data to be used to debug the software and make the product better.

However, you should know that the information sent back to the manufacturer could contain a full dump of the memory of the workstation(s), servers(s), and network devices involved in the issue. Your proprietary information - as well as your customer's private information - could be sent to the manufacturer.

Review the technical documentation for each software product you install. Find out how to disable the automatic gathering and transmission of your error report data. It belongs to you, and you should be the sole determinant of when you provide company confidential information to a third party.

Authored by: Bill Wallen, Security+