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Over the past few years the companies either \u2018fessing up or being outed by the media for data breaches has dramatically increased, as has the scale of them. There persists for far too many companies, this fantasy that it will never happen to me, and rather than accepting the inevitability (in some form or another) and putting into place mitigation technology, they ignore the threat, tiptoeing down sniper alley as fellow corporates with similar attitudes drop around them.<\/p>\n
A couple of years ago, Equifax were victims to a\u00a0massive breach<\/a>. Around 143 million American and 700,000 British citizens lost a variety of data including social security numbers, birth dates, addresses and even driver\u2019s licence IDs. To make matters worse the way in which Equifax reacted and handled the breach was a lesson in what-not-to-do. Delayed disclosure in order to sell $2 million worth of stock shares by company executives demonstrates the unpreparedness, sheer dishonesty and bungling from the top tier of the company. Were Equifax serious about security? Their Security Chief was qualified as a Music Major whose login credentials were up for grabs on the dark web and the company database sign-on was set to admin\/admin. Come on! Really? This is a company whose primary function is to deal with personal information and is one of the largest in the world!<\/p>\n In September 2018 the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), released a\u00a0comprehensive report<\/a>\u00a0that examined the reasons for the breach and the company and governmental actions since the breach. Much was promised but very little has been done, $200 million was earmarked for additional security systems but the attitudes from senior board has not made any real changes in Equifax\u2019s outlook, they seem entrenched in a one-hit-wonder mentality. Senator Elizabeth Warren commented on Richard Smith, CEO of Equifax that he was… \u201cAt best incompetent; at worst complicit. Either way, should be fired.\u201d<\/p>\n Lee Child\u2019s literary hero Jack Reacher\u2019s quote \u201chope for the best, plan for the worst\u201d is probably the best advice in security terms that a company can take.\u00a0If you\u2019d like some help on the best route to take for your business, we\u2019ll be discussing all things security in our \u2018cyber zone\u2019 at Techfest<\/a> in June. Failing that you could always get Jack on your side and put him in charge!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the past few years the companies either \u2018fessing up or being outed by the media for data breaches has dramatically increased, as has the scale of them. There persists for far too many companies, this fantasy that it will never happen to me, and rather than accepting the inevitability (in some form or another) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":55192,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":" Over the past few years the companies either \u2018fessing up or being outed by the media for data breaches has dramatically increased, as has the scale of them. There persists for far too many companies, this fantasy that it will never happen to me, and rather than accepting the inevitability (in some form or another) and putting into place mitigation technology, they ignore the threat, tiptoeing down sniper alley as fellow corporates with similar attitudes drop around them.<\/p> A couple of years ago, Equifax were victims to a\u00a0massive breach<\/a>. Around 143 million American and 700,000 British citizens lost a variety of data including social security numbers, birth dates, addresses and even driver\u2019s licence IDs. To make matters worse the way in which Equifax reacted and handled the breach was a lesson in what-not-to-do. Delayed disclosure in order to sell $2 million worth of stock shares by company executives demonstrates the unpreparedness, sheer dishonesty and bungling from the top tier of the company. Were Equifax serious about security? Their Security Chief was qualified as a Music Major whose login credentials were up for grabs on the dark web and the company database sign-on was set to admin\/admin. Come on! Really? This is a company whose primary function is to deal with personal information and is one of the largest in the world!<\/p> In September 2018 the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), released a\u00a0comprehensive report<\/a>\u00a0that examined the reasons for the breach and the company and governmental actions since the breach. Much was promised but very little has been done, $200 million was earmarked for additional security systems but the attitudes from senior board has not made any real changes in Equifax\u2019s outlook, they seem entrenched in a one-hit-wonder mentality. Senator Elizabeth Warren commented on Richard Smith, CEO of Equifax that he was... \u201cAt best incompetent; at worst complicit. Either way, should be fired.\u201d<\/p> Lee Child\u2019s literary hero Jack Reacher\u2019s quote \u201chope for the best, plan for the worst\u201d is probably the best advice in security terms that a company can take.\u00a0If you\u2019d like some help on the best route to take for your business, we\u2019ll be discussing all things security in our \u2018cyber zone\u2019 at Techfest<\/a> in June. Sign up now. Failing that you could always get Jack on your side and put him in charge!<\/p>","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[329],"tags":[4590,4591,4592,4211],"yst_prominent_words":[4587,4586,1489,105,269,4585,4588,509],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55191"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55191"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55479,"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55191\/revisions\/55479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55191"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.n4stack.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=55191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}