The Vault

In the wake of last week’s shooting incident at a GOP baseball practice, the House Administration Committee plans to increase funding for members by $25,000 through the balance of 2017 to cover the cost of increased security. This is an important measure, given the increased presence of crowds – and protesters – at many political town halls and Republican events. However, the funding is earmarked for physical security, leaving the issue of cyber security largely unaddressed.

The Washington Post reported recently that “President Donald Trump has been handing out his cellphone number to world leaders and urging them to call him directly, an unusual invitation that breaks diplomatic protocol and is raising concerns about the security and secrecy of the U.S. commander in chief’s communications.”

Government agencies throughout the world are bolstering data security strategies in the wake of intelligence leaks and possible election meddling in the US and elsewhere. The UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is no exception. The Queen has tasked the agency with managing a new National Cyber Security Center and combating cyberthreats to the national infrastructure, utility grids and healthcare systems.

There are dozens of ways your data can be compromised. Many are well known and well documented. Here are a few that aren’t:

Unexpected members of the IoT

We usually think of explicitly connected, smart devices as making up the Internet of Things. Laptops, desktops, phones, and so on. But what about a refrigerator?

One of the biggest stories of the week, the worldwide WannaCry ransomware attack, continues to gain momentum as the payment deadline approaches. The malicious software took advantage of vulnerabilities in commonly run software, impacting hundreds of thousands of computers across the globe.

According to the New York Times, “Early estimates of what the virus could ultimately earn had ranged into the tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Victims have seven days to pay from when their computers were originally infected, so the deadline will vary from case to case.”

Hackers exploit vulnerability stolen from NSA

The destructive power of ransomware was on full display today across nearly 100 countries worldwide, including the US, China Great Britain, Russia and Japan. Affected computers at countless organizations, including the UK’s National Health Service, displayed a message demanding $300 in Bitcoin to unlock stored data.

Data breaches and climate change are a lot alike. Preventing either requires enough people to care about mistakes made one, two, or ten years ago and to change their daily habits to help prevent a growing, if hard to define, problem.

“Information security is a race between peak indifference to surveillance and the point of no return for data-collection and retention,” Cory Doctorow wrote in a recent article on BoingBoing. “The unprecedented leaks in 2016 were not (merely) the result of data gathered last year; much of that data was gathered in the decades [before] this one, inadequately secured and treated as so inconsequential that Yahoo allowed the NSA to backdoor a billions-strong silo filled with data its customers had not even realized they were filling.”

In our weekly newsletter, we'll bring you insights from our executive team, news and information about data governance and methods you can use to prevent leaks. We’re looking forward to your feedback and hope you enjoy the read. If you'd like to receive future editions, please subscribe.

How does $250 sound?

Recent research shows that’s all it would take for about 7 percent of European employees to cough up access to their corporate networks. 14 percent would sell their login info, although their price points would be a bit higher. The same study, which surveyed 4,000 employees in Europe, found that 29 percent have purposefully sent sensitive information outside their company and 15 percent have taken “business critical” information from one job to another with the purpose of reusing it.

These are facts that every business and IT leader needs to understand and consider how to address.

This is a repost of our first weekly newsletter. We'll bring you insights from our executive team, news and information about data governance and methods you can use to prevent leaks. We’re looking forward to your feedback and hope you enjoy the read. If you'd like to receive future editions, please subscribe.

Widespread Adoption of New Financial Data Regulations

If you don’t do business in New York or work in the financial services industry, the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) rules that went into place March 1 won’t directly impact your day to day…yet.

I say yet because other states are looking at the rules as possible blueprints for their own regulations. Significant takeaways from the regulations include: