3.3

3 Database Security
38
Establishing Security Procedures
Use the following guidelines to improve the security of your system:
• Set up official security procedures and have everyone follow them.
• Keep track of your backup tapes. You can get user passwords from a backup tape.
• Assign users superuser status only when they need it.
• If any user does not need superuser status, remove it. Create two user accounts for staff
members who need superuser privileges—one to be a superuser and another to be a
regular user. That way, you can track activity of superuser accounts.
• Change the superuser password regularly.
• Ensure that users do not use their names, station call letters, or other easily guessed
words as passwords. Require everyone to include at least one non-alphabetic character
such as a punctuation mark or a number.
• Use the system profile to set a required minimum length for all passwords so no one
uses a short password.
• For devices for which you have dedicated resources—that is, devices that have a
one-to-one correspondence between the physical device and device number used to
identify it—use device name security on workstations in specific locations and put the
device ID in a group.
• If you have dedicated resources, you can put a MODIFY-DEV field in the queue’s story
form if you suspect that someone has broken into a user’s account. When changes are
made to stories created after the MODIFY-DEV field has been added, the system puts
the device name of the workstation where changes were made in that field. This
information is kept internally, but having the MODIFY-DEV field makes it visible to
users.
• Be familiar with valid user accounts on your system. Restrict access to these account
names to protect against unauthorized outside access.
User Passwords
Your iNEWS newsroom computer system protects against unauthorized access by giving
each authorized user a password to log into the system. Group security, described under
“Using Group Security to Control System Access” on page 45, lets you control specific
areas of your database that each user can access.