Vetted custodial staff with security clearances exist! As far as custodial pay goes, having a TS/SCI is probably going to put you in the top tier, it pays to stay out of trouble sometimes.
The security risk is a good reason to follow the advice of the article though - know your people. Also, badging and physical security.
Re:Don't ignore the janitor
by FumblingBear on Tuesday September 06, 2022 @01:08PM
(#32739996)
Our custodial staff come into secure facilities to clean—they just need to be escorted by a person who does have an active security clearance. We have a duty roster that everybody rotates through in the office space for both lockup and escorting custodial staff.
It's only a security risk if you don't mitigate it through physical security policies.
If you claim to have a secure working environment, I'm not looking for an unsecured VPN, or an unpatched SSH server, I'm asking who cleans up. The two correct answers are:
* Nobody, that's why this place looks like a fucking wreck.
* We all take turns, I hate it.
If you have cleaners, there is no way that's not a security risk. Firstly you probably pay a contractor, which means you're not even interviewing or vetting these staff. The contractor will say they do that, but they're actually picking up as many illiterate immigrants as they can who'll take less than minimum wage and be happy nobody checked their documentation, because they keep the profits. Even if the management doesn't do that, their people on the ground do. Secondly, even if you hire these staff yourself, realistically your standards are poor and turnover is high. Nobody has "Clean up other people's trash" as their career goal except in some vague "Fix the Pacific garbage island" elevator pitch sense.
So either way if I want access to your "secure" environment I just have to pretend to need the work and ignore all the red flags to get a cleaning job. And then, as the article implies, I become invisible. A guy in a Ninja outfit roaming the offices late at night is a call to the cops. But put them in overalls and give them a black plastic sack now they're a cleaner, carry on. What's in the sack? It's just garbage of course. Well, OK it's the 23-25 financial strategy, a copy of our internal price list and six unlabelled USB drives that used to be on people's desks. No problem, the black sack covers many sins.