Wake up America, the banks, retailers, utilities, government agency’s and the like are not doing enough to keep our personal information private and secure.
The other day Verizon business released a study of 500 forensic investigations that shows how much cooperations and governments are out of touch with the reality of the underground.
Some key findings:
Some of the findings may be contrary to widely held beliefs, such as that insiders are responsible for most breaches. Key findings include:
- Most data breaches investigated were caused by external sources. Thirty-nine percent of breaches were attributed to business partners, a number that rose five-fold during the course of the period studied.
- Most breaches resulted from a combination of events rather than a single action. Sixty-two percent of breaches were attributed to significant internal errors that either directly or indirectly contributed to a breach. For breaches that were deliberate, 59 percent were the result of hacking and intrusions.
- Of those breaches caused by hacking, 39 percent were aimed at the application or software layer. Attacks to the application, software and services layer were much more commonplace than operating system platform exploits, which made up 23 percent. Fewer than 25 percent of attacks took advantage of a known or unknown vulnerability. Significantly, 90 percent of known vulnerabilities exploited had patches available for at least six months prior to the breach.
- Nine of 10 breaches involved some type of “unknown” including unknown systems, data, network connections and/or account user privileges. Additionally, 75 percent of breaches are discovered by a third party rather than the victimized organization and go undetected for a lengthy period.
- In the modern organization, data is everywhere and keeping track of it is an extremely complex challenge. The fundamental principle, however, is quite simple – if you don’t know where data is, you certainly can’t protect it.
The also have some good information on the black market for identities stolen and some recommendations for enterprises.
All I have to say is wake up people. It is time to start doing what is right for the people and not what is right for the bottom line.
I will post some more info on what we as consumers can do to help protect our information in a later post.
Here is a great presentation from the RCFL on managing digital evidence. Watch it here.
The associated presentation/toolkit is located here.
Here is the main site. http://www.rcfl.com
The DOJ finally release an updated version to their guide for first responders.
Electronic Crime Scene Investigation: A Guide for First Responders, Second Edition
Computers and other electronic devices are being used increasingly to commit, enable, or support crimes against persons, organizations, or property. This National Institute of Justice guide is intended for first responders to a variety of crime scenes who may have the responsibility of protecting, recognizing, collecting, and preserving electronic evidence at the scene. (NCJ 219941)
You can get it here.