As the year comes to a close, we take a look back at six data breaches that dominated the headlines and defined the state of cyber security in 2016.

It could be said that 2016 was the “Year of the Hacker.” From healthcare to politics to adult entertainment, no industry was spared the wrath of cyber criminals. Here, we reflect on six of this year’s most infamous data breaches.

1. The SWIFT Network Attacks

It was a plot that sounded like it came straight out of a Bond movie: A band of international bank robbers stole nearly $100 million from a bank in Bangladesh, spooking finance executives around the world and leaving them wondering where the thieves would strike next. But these robbers didn’t hand a note to a teller or dynamite their way into a vault; they breached the victimized banks’ networks and accessed their accounts on the SWIFT network, a proprietary messaging system that few people outside the finance industry have ever heard of. Once inside SWIFT, they were able to remotely send billions of dollars in fraudulent money transfer requests. Most of these were caught and flagged, but $81 million went through, and the hackers remain at large. These data breaches sent shockwaves through the finance world and threw into question the integrity of what was once thought to be one of the world’s safest networks.

2. The Yahoo Data Breach

The Yahoo data breach, which compromised 500 million user accounts, resulted in at least 23 lawsuits, and put the company’s planned acquisition by Verizon at risk, didn’t happen out of nowhere. It was the result of years of the company putting cyber security on the back burner in the name of not compromising “the user experience.” Other companies should look to Yahoo as an example of what can happen – in fact, what is bound to eventually happen – when information security is not taken seriously. While it’s true that end users of software products can be fickle and impatient, it is far better to risk annoying customers with product security measures than to leave their personal information open to data breaches.

3. The DNC Hack

Cyber security took center stage early on in this year’s contentious U.S. presidential election, and the Democratic National Committee became the poster child for embarrassing email data breaches. In June, WikiLeaks released a number of damaging emails stolen from the DNC’s email server. Among the “highlights” were what appeared to be messages written by high-ranking party officials plotting to smear candidate Bernie Sanders and planning to reward high-dollar DNC donors with federal appointments in an anticipated Hillary Clinton administration. As if that weren’t bad enough, some of the emails compromised these same donors’ private data, with one email attachment containing an un-redacted image of a six-figure check, complete with the donor’s routing and bank account numbers. The hack was so scandalous that the DNC’s chairperson, CEO, and communications director were forced to resign.

4. The FriendFinder Data Breaches

Apparently, last year’s Ashley Madison data breach didn’t teach companies that store sensitive information to be adults about data security. In October, news broke that six sites owned by FriendFinder Networks, Inc., owners of some of the world’s largest adult entertainment sites, had been hacked. Over 412 million user accounts were compromised, most of which came from a site called AdultFriendFinder, which bills itself as the “World’s Largest Sex and Swinger Community.” In addition to users’ email addresses and passwords – which had been stored as plain text or hashed and converted to all lower-case, making them far easier to compromise – hackers also got hold of the company’s source code and private/public key pairs. As of this writing, the FriendFinder hack is set to win the “award” for the largest data breach of 2016.

5. The Wendy’s POS Hack

Where’s the cyber security? Around the same time fast-food chain Wendy’s announced it would be switching from human clerks to automated ordering kiosks, the company was forced to admit that it had been victimized by a massive breach of its existing POS systems, which exposed customer credit card information captured at 1,000 of its locations in the U.S. Rather than taking responsibility for the data breaches, Wendy’s decided to pass the buck, insisting that “only” independently owned franchises, not company-owned locations, had been breached, and further claiming that the breaches were the fault of third-party POS service providers hired by its franchisees. This spin-doctoring didn’t dissuade dozens of credit unions from joining a class-action lawsuit against the chain, alleging that Wendy’s knew that its POS systems were not secure but did nothing to address the problems.

6. The Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center Ransomware Attack

While it was not technically a data breach, we felt we would be remiss if we did not mention the infamous Hollywood Presbyterian ransomware attack, which happened early in the year and was a harbinger of things to come for the healthcare industry. Hackers managed to lock down the hospital’s entire network, including its electronic health records (EHR) system. Hollywood Presbyterian ended up forking over $17,000 in Bitcoin to get back in – an act which, unfortunately, emboldened hackers, who now knew they could easily extort big paydays from healthcare facilities. A spate of similar attacks hit medical facilities across the U.S., Canada, and even the U.K. As of this writing, Intel estimates that hospitals have paid various hackers nearly $1,000,000 in ransom this year.

Here’s hoping that 2017 is the year the “good guys” finally get the upper hand in the fight against data breaches, ransomware, and other cyber crimes.

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. We offer full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC software to protect companies 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 secure your systems.

What will the state of cyber security look like under the Donald Trump administration?

The election is over, the votes have been counted, and thankfully, other than a few isolated reports of malfunctioning voting machines, Election Night was unremarkable from a cyber security perspective. Now, it’s time to turn our attention to President Elect Donald Trump and what a Trump Administration will mean for cyber security in the U.S.

Donald Trump’s Official Stance on Cyber Security

Cyber security is the only tech-related topic Trump addresses directly on his official website. At this point, his plan has four main points:

• Appoint a “Cyber Review Team” composed of “individuals from the military, law enforcement, and the private sector” to perform “an immediate review of all U.S. cyber defenses and vulnerabilities, including critical infrastructure” and “provide specific recommendations for safeguarding different entities with the best defense technologies tailored to the likely threats.” The Cyber Review Team will also be tasked with establishing protocols and setting up “mandatory cyber awareness training” for government employees.
• “Instruct the U.S. Department of Justice to create Joint Task Forces throughout the U.S. to coordinate Federal, State, and local law enforcement responses to cyber threats.”
• “Order the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to provide recommendations for enhancing U.S. Cyber Command, with a focus on both offense and defense in the cyber domain.”
• “Develop the offensive cyber capabilities we need to deter attacks by both state and non-state actors and, if necessary, to respond appropriately.”

Much like HIPAA, Trump’s plan focuses on procedural generalities as opposed to technical specifics. However, this is to be expected of a presidential candidate who comes from a business background, not a tech background. The positive thing about the plan is its focus on taking proactive measures to prevent attacks, not just responding to them after they occur.

What to watch out for: Who Trump appoints to his Cyber Review Team. President Elect Trump should seek out experienced cyber security professionals with deep knowledge of the industry and the issues to hammer out the technical details of his plan.

The End of the H-1B Visa?

As a candidate, Trump famously took a hardline stance on immigration, including an initial pledge to eliminate the H-1B visa program that is heavily used by the tech industry. This has alarmed many tech employers, who claim that the H-1B is necessary because there is a shortage of qualified IT workers in the U.S., and that without being able to import talent from overseas, critical positions would go unfilled. This is an important issue in the cyber security field, which faces a severe skills shortage; there are approximately 200,000 unfilled cyber security jobs in the U.S., and demand is expected to increase by 53% by 2018.

However, it is important to note that Trump softened his stance on the H-1B at a Republican debate in March, claiming, “I’m changing. I’m changing. We need highly skilled people in this country.” Additionally, since his election, he has backed off from his initial zero-tolerance immigration stance overall.

What to watch out for: Whether Trump will abolish the H-1B is debatable. As a businessman, he used it to hire foreign workers, and his wife, soon-to-be-First-Lady Melania Trump, came to America on an H-1B. However, it is likely that Trump will make some changes to the H-1B program, and it is up to cyber security companies to ensure that our voices are heard as he makes decisions on this issue.

Cyber Security as Part of National Security

Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump referred to cyber security in the context of national security. At a debate against Hillary Clinton in September, he spoke of the gravity of the threat of foreign cyber terrorism against the U.S.:

…when you look at what ISIS is doing with the Internet, they’re beating us at our own game. ISIS.

So we have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare. It is — it is a huge problem. I have a son. He’s 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it’s unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it’s hardly doable.

But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that’s true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better, Lester, and certainly cyber is one of them.

What to watch out for: It is possible that a Trump Administration will increase spending on cyber security at the federal level and impose more stringent requirements on state and local governments. Since the number and severity of data breaches and ransomware attacks are intensifying, these would be welcome changes.

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. We offer full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC software to protect companies 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 secure your systems.

For Years, Yahoo Put Usability Ahead of Cyber Security

The massive Yahoo data breach, which compromised 500 million user accounts and has put its planned acquisition by Verizon at risk, happened because the company repeatedly put product user experience ahead of security, the New York Times reports:

Six years ago, Yahoo’s computer systems and customer email accounts were penetrated by Chinese military hackers. Google and a number of other technology companies were also hit.

The Google co-founder Sergey Brin regarded the attack on his company’s systems as a personal affront and responded by making security a top corporate priority. Google hired hundreds of security engineers with six-figure signing bonuses, invested hundreds of millions of dollars in security infrastructure and adopted a new internal motto, “Never again,” to signal that it would never again allow anyone — be they spies or criminals — to hack into Google customers’ accounts.

Yahoo, on the other hand, was slower to invest in the kinds of defenses necessary to thwart sophisticated hackers that are now considered standard in Silicon Valley, according to half a dozen current and former company employees who participated in security discussions but agreed to describe them only on the condition of anonymity.

The Times goes on to describe how CEO Marissa Mayer, after having taken over the troubled search engine in 2012, decided to focus Yahoo’s efforts on developing new products and creating better user experiences for existing products such as Yahoo Mail. Even though Mayer was aware of multiple information security issues, those took a back seat. Yahoo’s internal security staff, including former CISO Alex Stamos, warned Mayer about security vulnerabilities but found their efforts stymied due to “concerns that the inconvenience of added protection would make people stop using the company’s products.” Mayer cut the team’s budget and refused to approve the proactive cyber security initiatives Stamos pushed for, including end-to-end encryption, intrusion-detection mechanisms, and automatic resets of passwords on accounts that had been compromised. Even now, Mayer is still declining automatic password resets for the accounts compromised during this most recent breach – again, all in the name of not inconveniencing users.

Cyber Security vs. the User Experience

It’s common for tech companies to worry about how information security measures will affect the user experience. Often, developers must sacrifice speed and ease of use for a more secure product, and, while the majority of Americans claim to be highly concerned about data breaches, fickle customers may resist or become frustrated over security measures. A recent study found that one-third of Americans engage in risky behaviors to remember online passwords, and an ethnographic study of healthcare workers found widespread, flagrant disregard of cyber security practices in hospital settings.

While these are valid concerns, the answer is not to simply release unsecured products and hope for the best, as Yahoo apparently did. The burden of protecting customer data does not lie solely on software developers and data storage companies, and it cannot. The overwhelming majority of data breaches occur not as the result of external hacking but because hackers obtain legitimate login credentials, usually through social engineering schemes such as phishing. Manufacturers must build proactive security measures, such as multi-factor authentication, into their products, and get their customers accustomed to using them, even if the features are inconvenient or frustrating. The cost of a data breach is much higher than the cost of customer frustration, to both the breached company and the compromised customers.

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. We offer full-service risk assessment services and Continuum GRC software to protect companies 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 secure your systems.