New data breach notification regulations aren’t a matter of if, but when

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission plans to update its six-year-old guidelines regarding data breach notification and cyber risk disclosure, Bank Info Security reports:

The agency has indicated that it expects to refine guidance around how businesses disclose cybersecurity risks to investors as well as require insider trading programs to include blackout rules in the event that a suspected data breach gets discovered.

“Unfortunately, in the reality that we live in now, cyber breaches are going to be increasingly common, and this is in part why the SEC, NFA is so fully focused on cybersecurity,” says Matt Rossi, a former assistant chief litigation counsel to the SEC, NFA who’s now an attorney specializing in securities litigation and enforcement as well as data privacy at global law firm Mayer Brown. “Chairman [Jay] Clayton said it’s one of the greatest risks to the financial system right now.”

There is great irony in the SEC’s announcement. Less than two weeks after the Equifax breach came to light last fall, the agency disclosed that its EDGAR database, which is used to disseminate company news and data to investors, had been hacked – over a year prior.

Be that as it may, data privacy is at top of mind for consumers. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is about to become law in the European Union, and 2017 saw numerous high-profile incidents where breached organizations sat on their hands for extended periods of time before notifying potential victims.

Equifax Breach Incites Outrage from Congress, But No Action

The SEC’s guidelines are just that – guidelines, not legislation – and they apply only to publicly traded firms. While 48 states have data privacy laws on the books, and companies in certain industries are subject to industry-specific regulations or standards, such as HIPAA and PCI DSS, there is no federal data privacy or data breach notification law that applies across industries.

For the past several years, the U.S. government has been under increasing pressure to establish federal data breach notification regulations and address other data privacy issues. This pressure intensified after the Equifax breach was disclosed, and many privacy advocates hoped the incident would finally push Congress to act. Unfortunately, lawmakers’ initial public outrage over the Equifax breach quickly died down, and Congress’ focus shifted back to healthcare and tax reform.

Frustrated with the lack of progress in Washington, states have begun taking matters into their own hands. Last year, New York State passed a sweeping cyber security law that was heavily steeped in data governance and integrated risk management. Effective January 1, 2018, Maryland’s data breach notification law was amended to not only require companies to notify victims within 45 days of a data breach but also expand the definition of “personal information.”

Could We Ultimately See an “American GDPR”?

However, the lack of progress on a federal level doesn’t mean U.S. companies should assume that we will never see an “American version” of the GDPR on a federal level. The New York Times recently reported on businesses that do not accept cash as a form of payment. While these are isolated incidents, they are a sign of the rapid digitization of our society. Consumers are seeing more and more of their personal information being preserved for posterity in digital files kept by a dizzying array of government entities and private-sector organizations, with almost no control over where it goes or what happens to it. Even minors’ information is stored digitally, and children can easily become victims of identity theft.

Businesses, meanwhile, are struggling to stay abreast of an ever-changing compliance landscape complicated by the fact that while states have borders, ecommerce does not. This forces businesses that sell in multiple states to reconcile a confusing patchwork of regulations, some of which contradict each other. Depending on individual states to regulate data breach notification and data privacy is rapidly becoming untenable, and the federal government will eventually be forced to step in, as it did with HIPAA in the 1990s.

In the meantime, the best option for businesses is to adopt a data-centric, integrated risk management approach to ensure they have control of their data and are able to quickly adapt to changing regulations.

The cyber security experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. Our full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC RegTech software will help protect your organization from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization adhere to cyber security regulations, maintain compliance, and secure your systems.

Cyber Security Tips for 2018 and Beyond

Now that the year is coming to an end, all eyes are on what’s possibly around the corner. More attacks on cryptocurrencies? An escalation in attacks by state-sponsored cyber criminals? Chaos as the EU’s GDPR is implemented? In cyber security, only one thing is certain: It’s a continuous game of Spy vs. Spy. As soon as one hole is plugged, hackers find another way in, and with every new technology comes a brand-new set of risks. Here’s a list of cyber security tips for 2018 that will protect your enterprise not only in the New Year but in the years to come.

Secure Your Cloud, Secure Your Cloud, Secure Your Cloud

The AWS breach epidemic made our list of the worst cyber attacks of 2017, so it’s not surprising that cloud security is at the top of our cyber security tips for 2018. The rule of thumb is that your cloud service provider is responsible for the security of your cloud, but your organization is responsible for the security in it. Understand that cloud security is quite different from on-premises cyber security, and make sure to seek professional help to ensure a successful and secure cloud migration.

Make Sure Your Business Associates Are Secure

The next item on our list of cyber security tips for 2018 addresses another epidemic we saw over this past year: incidents where hackers targeted the smaller, third-party vendors of larger organizations such as Verizon, the Republican National Committee, and Netflix. It is estimated that over 60% of all breaches now involve third-party business associates. Often, hackers target these firms because they tend to be smaller than their corporate customers and have less robust cyber security. Make sure to vet your vendors’ information security very carefully and ensure that they aren’t cutting corners. Ask us about Vendor Risk Assessments.

Keep Your Software & Systems Updated

Both the WannaCry and NotPetya attacks targeted older, unpatched versions of Microsoft Windows, and the Equifax breach was the fault of the organization not updating its installation of Adobe Struts. Because hackers often exploit known vulnerabilities that developers have patched in security updates, one of the easiest ways to fend off cyber attacks is to keep your operating systems and software up to date.

Don’t Forget About Your Employees

The biggest security vulnerability in any organization is its own people. All of the updates, firewalls, and technical controls in the world will do you no good if an employee clicks on a link in a phishing email, shares their password “just this one time,” or “goes rogue” and decides to strike back against the company. Your cyber security plan should include continuous employee training on cyber security best practices as well as precautions to guard against malicious insiders.

Remember that Compliance Does Not Equal Cyber Security

It is of the utmost importance to comply with regulatory and industry standards such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC, FedRAMP, and the upcoming GDPR. However, compliance is the starting point, not the do-all, end-all, of cyber security. Because today’s data environments are complex and unique, and the threat environment changes daily, it is impossible for any standard or framework to address every single possible risk and vulnerability that an individual organization may face.

The cyber security experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. Our full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC RegTech software will help protect your organization from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization adhere to cyber security regulations, maintain compliance, and secure your systems.

A look back at 7 of the worst cyber attacks of 2017

Cyber criminals upped their game this past year, launching everything from cryptocurrency thefts to international ransomware attacks. Here, we examine seven of the worst cyber attacks of 2017.

1. The Equifax Breach

Any list of the worst cyber attacks of 2017 would be remiss if it did not include the Equifax breach, which put the PII of everyone who has ever applied for or held a credit card, mortgage, rental lease, car loan, or anything else that required a credit report at risk. While the Equifax hack was not the largest data breach in terms of sheer numbers, it was one of the most troubling because of its massive scope, the nature of the information stolen, and the absolutely awful way in which it was handled. Not to mention, while consumers can choose not to patronize a private-sector company with poor cyber security practices, their information is handed over to Equifax without their consent, and there is no choice to opt out.

2. The SEC, NFA Hack

What’s at least as bad, and possibly even worse, than half of America being compromised in one of the worst cyber attacks of 2017? Having it turn out that the agency in charge of enforcing cyber security on Wall Street, the same agency that called cyber attacks “the greatest threat to our [financial] markets,” cannot keep its own cyber security house in order. Apparently having learned nothing from Yahoo’s mistakes, the SEC, NFA spent years ignoring warnings about cyber security vulnerabilities, including a DHS report released in January 2017 that found five “critical weaknesses” on SEC, NFA computers.

3. The WannaCry Attacks

EternalBlue, a code execution vulnerability from the Shadow Brokers NSA hack, was used to launch two of the worst cyber attacks of 2017. The first one was WannaCry, the largest ransomware attack in history. WannaCry infected hundreds of thousands of computers in 150 countries. The worst part is that all of these attacks could have been prevented. About 98% of victims were running Windows 7. While this OS is quite old, Microsoft still supports it, and they’d issued a patch for the Eternal Blue vulnerability about two months before WannaCry. However, a lot of users never downloaded it and ended up learning, the hard way, about the importance of keeping operating systems and software updated.

4. The NotPetya Attacks

On the heels of WannaCry came NotPetya, another attack made possible by EternalBlue. However, unlike WannaCry, NotPetya didn’t just encrypt files; it destroyed Windows machines’ master boot record (MBR), doing irrevocable damage to the system. Because the release of NotPetya coincided with a national holiday in Ukraine that is not observed in other countries, it appeared to have been aimed squarely at computers in that country, where it hit organizations ranging from shipping companies to the infamous Chernobyl plant. NotPetya ranks among the worst cyber attacks of 2017 both for its destructiveness and the fact that it may have been a “trial run” for a much larger future attack, possibly one that will take advantage of organizations letting their guard down during a much more widely observed holiday. Hackers don’t take holidays, and neither should your cyber security measures.

5. The Uber Hack

After spending the better part of the year grappling with allegations of gender discrimination and sexual harassment, in November, ride-sharing titan Uber ended up back in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Not only did Uber fail to disclose an October 2016 breach that compromised 57 million customers and drivers, but they attempted to cover it up by paying the hacker $100,000 to delete the data and keep his mouth shut. Even worse, shortly after the breach became public, Reuters reported that Uber had funneled the hush money through its bug bounty program, possibly in an attempt to evade the attention of regulators.

6. The NiceHash Bitcoin Theft

In July, cryptocurrency investors were on edge after two Ethereum ICOs were hacked within a week of each other, and a few days later, smart contract coding company Parity’s Ether wallet software was breached. In all, over $45 million in Ether was stolen. In December, the cryptocurrency world suffered another black eye when digital currency platform NiceHash was hacked; this time, hackers made off with at least $70 million in Bitcoin. With cryptocurrency investing going mainstream and the value of Bitcoin rising into the stratosphere, watch for more attacks on ICOs and digital wallets in 2018.

7. The Epidemic of AWS Breaches

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is perfectly secure – if customers configure their AWS servers properly. Problem is, a lot of organizations don’t, so near-daily AWS breaches ranked among the worst cyber attacks of 2017. Amazon itself even sent out a mass email to customers with unprotected AWS S3 buckets, imploring them to review their security settings. Notably, most AWS breaches involved the smaller third-party vendors of very large organizations, such as Verizon and the Republican National Committee, underscoring how important it is for organizations to secure their entire cyber ecosystem.

Here’s hoping for a more secure 2018!

The cyber security experts at Lazarus Alliance have deep knowledge of the cyber security field, are continually monitoring the latest information security threats, and are committed to protecting organizations of all sizes from security breaches. Our full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC RegTech software will help protect your organization from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Lazarus Alliance is proactive cyber security®. Call 1-888-896-7580 to discuss your organization’s cyber security needs and find out how we can help your organization adhere to cyber security regulations, maintain compliance, and secure your systems.