VOLUME 43

   ISSUE 43

13 February 2015

The Online Trust Alliance (OTA) has analyzed more than 1,000 data breaches from 2014 and concluded that as many as 90% of them could have been easily prevented.

The OTA studied data breaches from 2014 that involved the loss of personally identifiable information (PII) and found that those breaches could be attributed to one of four causes: 40% by external intrusions; 29% by employees, either accidentally or maliciously; 18% by lost or stolen devices or documents; and 11% by social engineering or fraud. According to the OTA, 90% of these data breaches could have been easily avoided by strengthening internal controls. "Businesses are overwhelmed with the increasing risks and threats, yet all too often fail to adopt security basics," said Craig Spiezle, executive director and president of OTA. To help organizations with those security basics, OTA has released two companion guides: one covering security best practices and controls, and one for security risk assessment. One pixelInsider threat prevention controls to thwart data breach incidents The best practices suggestions include detailed tips for 12 "critical yet achievable" security items, like enforcing effective password management policies, conducting regular penetration tests and vulnerability scans, implementing a mobile device management system (MDM), and developing, testing and refining a data breach response plan.

The guide for security risk assessment aims to help organizations follow industry and regulatory best practices, and follow the four general steps to risk assessment: threat assessment, vulnerability identification, risk determination and control recommendation. OTA plans to present these guides and research findings in a series of three "town hall" meetings scheduled in Silicon Valley, Calif., on Jan. 28; New York on Feb. 3; and Washington D.C. on Feb. 5. The events will include sessions featuring leaders from the FBI, Secret Service, the New York and California Attorney General's office, Twitter and more, and will cover major data breaches from the past year, including those impacting Sony and Home Depot.
 

2015 Statistics so far

Abuse Distribution by Categories

Overview for ITU Regions

Monthly Overview

Reference:

http://www.impact-alliance.org/

�..Human attention isn�t stable, ever, and it costs us: lives lost when drivers space out, billions of dollars wasted on inefficient work, and mental disorders that hijack focus. Much of the time, people don�t realize they�ve stopped paying attention until it�s too late. This �flight of the mind,� as Virginia Woolf called it, is often beyond conscious control...�

'..�Whodunit� is essential to solving crimes. You can�t make an arrest or prosecute a crime if you don�t even know who committed it. That makes �attribution� one of the major challenges of law enforcement. But while identifying perpetrators is difficult enough in the physical world, it is even tougher in the cyber world, where the ways for perpetrators to cover their tracks or make it look like a breach was committed by someone else are both sophisticated and practically limitless....'

FEW PRIVACY LIMITATIONS EXIST ON HOW POLICE USE DRONES

'...As drones become cheaper and more capable, more police departments across the country are asking for and getting federal approval to use them for law enforcement.

But the Federal Aviation Administration only takes safety into consideration when it grants a law enforcement agency approval to use drones, leaving privacy protections to legislation�which, depending on the state in question, may or may not exist....'

'...Cellular carriers spent nearly $45 billion in an auction of wireless frequencies, blowing past even the highest estimates, the Federal Communications Commission announced Thursday....'

'...There�s a new cloud service offering that has met the government�s standardized cloud computing security requirements, and it�s one every major federal agency IT official will recognize.

VMware, already a known name in virtualization, announced today its VMware vCloud Government Service has achieved compliance under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program....�