A Perspective on the Next Big Data Breach

By Kevin Beaver, Guest Blogger, Lancope

In looking at the headlines and breach databases, there haven’t been any spectacular, high-visibility incidents in recent weeks. It’s almost as if the criminals are lurking in the weeds, waiting to launch their next attack during the busy, upcoming holiday season. After all, the media tends to sensationalize such breaches given the timing and that’s part of the payoff for those with ill intent. Whether the next big breach will impact consumers, corporate intellectual property or national security, no one really knows. It may be that we witness all of the above before year’s end. One thing’s for sure, the next big data breach will be predictable.

Once the dust settles and the incident response team members, investigators and lawyers have done their work and had their say, I can foresee how it’s all going to go down. It’s not at all unlike what happened a couple of years ago with the crippling snowstorms that we experienced in my hometown of Atlanta:

• There's an impending threat that most people are aware of. Some argue that threats are evolving. I’m not convinced that’s true. I think the technologies and techniques the threats use against us are maturing, but the threats themselves – criminal hackers, malicious insiders, unaware users, etc. – have been the same since the beginning.
• People will get caught “off-guard" and get themselves (and their organizations) into a pickle.
• The subsequent impact will be a lot worse than expected, or assumed.
• Key individuals will ponder the situation and try to figure out who's to blame.
• Management will vow to never let it happen again, including but not limited to, providing short-term political and budgetary support for much-needed security initiatives.
• Things will go back to normal – the typical daily routine will set back in and then months, perhaps years, will go by. Either the same people will forget the pain of what transpired or new people will be in charge and then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere – it’ll happen again.

With practically all data breaches, there are no surprises. There’s really nothing new. It’s the same story that’s repeated time and again. Comedian Groucho Marx was quoted as saying “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, misdiagnosing it and then misapplying the wrong remedies.” In most cases, the same can be said for information security. There’s a lot of talk. Some tangible action (often wheel spinning and going through the motions). There are even policies and contracts that are signed and audits that come up clean. Yet, history repeats itself.

As businessman Warren Buffett once said, there seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult. I know it’s not truly “easy” to manage an overall information security program. I don’t envy CISOs and others in charge of this business function. However, knowing what we know today, it is easy to not repeat the mistakes of others. It’s also easy to become complacent. That’s where you have to be really careful. Too many people feel like they’ve “made it” – that they’ve got everything in place in order to be successful. Then they end up relaxing too much and letting their guard down. Then they become vulnerable again. It’s a vicious, yet predictable, cycle that leads to breach after breach after breach.

When all is said and done, your primary goal should be to determine what the very worst thing is that could happen on your network and then go about doing whatever it takes to make sure that worst thing doesn’t happen. That’s how you’ll prevent the next data breach from happening to your organization. Let the criminals go pick on someone else.

Kevin Beaver is an information security consultant, expert witness and professional speaker with Atlanta-based Principle Logic, LLC.