It's them, as a consumer organization, trying to walk the line around convenience.  Same as some organizations *still* do not enforce auto-password locks on workstations because some grumpy executive doesn't want to remember a password.  Blizzard eventually had to do dual-factor when warcrack accounts/items became profitable to sell, and others just to keep from becoming a scandal from lazy users.

I enforce mostly the same standards at home I would at work, but sadly naive companies treat their data just the opposite - not someone I would do business with.  No proprietary/pii data should live outside a firewall.  You'd think they'd at least hold employee accounts to a complexity standard, but that assumes they just didn't use the same pass everywhere and it got lifted externally.  This is common these days.

So yeah, dual-factor externally where possible.  And don't use mschap v2 to send it (lots of enterprise wifi does).  ;)

http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-tldr-version-of-moxies-mschapv2.html

-mb


On 07/31/2012 08:48 PM, Mike Bydalek wrote:

Just some random thoughts to expound on Michael's ...

I get what you're saying, but I think limiting it to cloud storage
isn't enough (or fair).  Having *any* NPI (non-public information)
stored in any means *other* than being encrypted is just asking for
trouble - Dropbox or at home.  You can have all your sensitive data on
your computer at home until you get robbed and now someone has all
your CC#s, bank login info, etc. (or lose your laptop).  I pretty much
live by the rule of thumb saying, "Anyone can get access to this data.
  How can I prevent them from using it?"

To get back to Dropbox, the employee in question had a file of e-mail
addresses.  Their account password was probably weak and someone
guessed it.  This situation can happen under *any* web-based system
that isn't using two-factor authentication (Gmail.com? Mint.com?
etc.).  That's why when websites have really stupid password policies
(ie. no more than 8 characters, no special characters, etc.) or don't
have a system which locks the account after X failed attempts,
auditing successful logins, etc., I have a really hard time believing
they are taking security seriously.

-Mike

On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 7:59 PM, Michael Butash<michael@butash.net>  wrote:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/07/dropbox-confirms-it-got-hacked-will-offer-two-factor-authentication/

So yeah, about not trusting cloud storage services...

"At any rate, users may want to think about examining more secure
alternatives, encrypting their files, or simply not storing ultra-sensitive
information in Dropbox."

An employee account was exploited for this, probably a password gotten via
some other exploited site, or cracked (weak pw policy).  Sad
proprietary/confidential data, let alone pii, was even publicly accessible
in any means.  Why I'll keep mine on my rfc1918 ip lan, thanks.

-mb
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