Specialist in testing acces control procedures has more clients

How many times have you passed an unknown person in the hallway at work, held open a keycard-protected door for a stranger, or let an office guest wander unaccompanied to the restroom? Employees of Baton Rouge, Louisiana-basedTraceSecurity are banking on this type of thoughtlessness to help them gain access to your personal information. TraceSecurity will not be opening up credit card accounts in your name, accessing your bank accounts, or installing spyware on your computer any time soon, however. In a detailed and useful article, PCMagazine’s Chloe Albanesius writes that companies hire TraceSecurity employees to test the security of their systems — operations that usually involve TraceSecurity personnel talking their way into offices in order to gain access to server rooms and sensitive customer information. TraceSecurity made its debut in 2003 with the merger of two other firms, Blaze Technologies and security tools vendor PatchPortal. The company’s management team has a background in technology, but acting skills play into the success of a TraceSecurity mission just as much as technical expertise. TraceSecurity will typically impersonate pest control workers or fire inspectors to gain entry to a building, talk their way into being left alone and gain access to the building’s server room, surveillance system and client information.

Approximately 85 percent of TraceSecurity’s clients are financial institutions. They used to be exclusively in the financial industry, but increased security and regulatory requirements have prompted companies in the healthcare, insurance, and government sectors to seek out TraceSecurity’s expertise, says Jim Stickley, the company’s chief technical officer and vice president of engineering. “ID theft has been around forever” but people are more aware of it now, he said. “It’s a good time to be in security.”

Read Albanesius’s article — and you will never look at visitors to your company’s office the same way again.