Archive for May 2014

by Scott Morabito: Three of the biggest news stories in the last few weeks have been Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, and the Equifax data breach. The data breach at Equifax is somewhat unfathomable because of its scope and magnitude. Sure, there have been large hacks of data in the past such as Yahoo in 2016 and LinkedIn in 2012 - but who cares about email addresses? The Equifax breach contained identity information for 200 million Americans and this could systematically cause massive amounts of identity theft. From the outside, it would seem not that this is expected: surely Equifax had major security software, systems, and tools in place to prevent this from happening. This is certainly true. The problem with cyber attacks is the asymmetric nature of offense and defense. Protecting yourself from a data breach like the Equifax one is like building a house that can withstand an F5 Tornado. house2 As hurricane Harvey and hurricane Irma worked their way up the Gulf of Mexico, one thought that would go through people's mind was "Hurricane's have hit here before - we'll probably be OK". To some degree, there is some logic to this. Modern buildings can withstand hurricanes ok and can even be safe to be in during the store. Millions of people stayed in their houses during these storms and there was only a tiny percentage of life lost. There are some anomalies and bad luck associated with hurricanes, but for the most part they are survivable
Read the rest...