Year: 2019

The increasing value of personal data presents the challenge of managing a personal data economy

 

 

 

At the start of the millennium, the value of online services was equated with the number of registered users, but that changed after the dot-com bubble burst, according to Jon Shamah, chairman of EEMA, the European association for e-identity and security.

Jon felt that since 2010, that understanding has evolved, and increasingly the true value has been recognised as data about those registered users. He told the EEMA ISSE 2018 cyber security conference in Brussels.

He want on to say that the reality was that personal data had value for the service providers, but people were blindly throwing information at these companies in exchange for services.

This approach has changed in recent times, he said, particularly after the Facebook – Cambridge Analytica data sharing scandal that highlighted the potential for personal data to be misused.

People are finally waking up to the value of the information they have so willingly given in the past and their eyes have started to open. The evolution of data analysis tools, including the incorporation of artificial intelligence, he said, means that data collected in the past is becoming useful in new ways and therefore even more valuable.

John mentioned that it also means that service providers are able to analyse users’ online activities, largely without users’ knowledge or consent, and use that to tailor advertising on web pages, creating new and direct revenue streams. Something had to be done, and if it has achieved nothing else, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation has focused people’s minds and got company executives and board members to take this issue seriously because now they have to be accountable and declare breaches.

This means data protection in Europe, said Shamah, is no longer just the concern of technical teams in organisations, but also chief executives and shareholders.

In the light of the recent revelations about the misuse of data, everyone needs to consider what kind of digital footprint they want to leave; a permanent one like those left by the first astronauts on the surface of the moon or temporary like those left in the sand on a beach.

The aim, he said, should be for digital footprints that last only for as long as they are needed and then erased without a trace. In addition to being disposed of properly, personal data also has to be geographically safe because there are a lot of concerns about where data is stored and keeping it in home jurisdictions, and we need the trustees to be accountable and responsible.”

The issue going forward, said Shamah, is how well people and society will be able to adapt to the new reality that there are no free services without giving up personal data.

Perhaps the company will be able to control their own data through the application of things like self-sovereign identity, but ultimately the challenge is attaining a mixed and balanced personal data economy.

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Average cost of recovering from a single DNS attack is $924,390 for a large financial services company, survey shows

 

The costs of restoring services after a DNS (Domain Name System) attack are higher for financial services firms than for companies in any other sector.

According to a survey of 1,000 large financial services firms in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, the average cost of recovering from a single DNS attack is $924,390 for a large financial services company.

The survey, carried out by network automation and security supplier EfficientIP, and its subsequent 2018 Global DNS threat report found that the average cost of recovery for such finance firms had increased by 57% compared with last year.

It also revealed that financial services firms suffered an average of seven attacks each last year, and 19% of them were attacked more than 10 times.

The survey found that finance firms took an average of seven hours to mitigate a DNS attack and 5% of them spent a total of 41 working days mitigating attacks in 2017. More than a quarter (26%) lost business because of the attacks.

The most common problems caused by DNS attacks are cloud service downtime, compromised websites and internal application downtime.

David Williamson, CEO at EfficientIP feels that the DNS threat landscape is continually evolving, impacting the financial sector in particular. This is because many financial organisations rely on security solutions that fail to combat specific DNS threats.

Financial services increasingly operate online and rely on internet availability and the capacity to securely communicate information in real time. Therefore, network service continuity and security is a business imperative and a necessity.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority voices concerns about weaknesses in banks’ IT systems.

There was a 48% rise in the amount of money stolen from UK online banks in 2014, as criminals pilfered more than £60m. But IT security teams at large finance firms have to balance their resources in the face of increasing cyber threats. A survey commissioned by VMWare earlier this year showed that 90% of IT security professionals in financial services have to make compromises that could leave other areas of their organisation exposed to cyber threats, and half admitted doing this regularly.

Types of DNS attack include:

1. Zero day attack – the attacker exploits a previously unknown vulnerability in the DNS protocol stack or DNS server software.
2. Cache poisoning – the attacker corrupts a DSN server by replacing a legitimate IP address in the server’s cache with that of another, rogue address in order to redirect traffic to a malicious website, collect information or initiate another attack. Cache poisoning may also be referred to as DNS poisoning.
3. Denial of service – an attack in which a malicious bot sends more traffic to a targeted IP address than the programmers who planned its data buffers anticipated someone might send. The target becomes unable to resolve legitimate requests.
   Distributed denial of service – the attacker uses a botnet to generate huge amounts of resolution requests to a targeted IP address.
4. DNS amplification – the attacker takes advantage of a DNS server that permits recursive lookups and uses recursion to spread the attack to other DNS servers.
   Fast-flux DNS – the attacker swaps DNS records in and out with extreme frequency in order redirect DNS requests and avoid detection.

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