By Andreas M. Antonopoulos
Network World Data Center Newsletter, 03/01/05

Security is always only as strong as the weakest link. For many years, IT security managers have realized that, more often than not, the weakest link is human. Be it the end user who inadvertently clicks and launches a virus, or the administrator who mistakes a security breach for a routing failure, human error is the most common cause of security problems. Unfortunately, we cannot automate security functions to the point of completely removing the human element (nor would we necessarily want to go that far). So, in the meantime, we have to ensure that our technology infrastructure and our human resources work together as well as possible.