Ponemon Institute is pleased to present the results of The 2021 Cost of Phishing Study sponsored by Proofpoint. Initially conducted in 2015, the purpose of this research is to understand the risk and financial consequences of phishing. For the first time in this year’s study we look at the threats and costs created by business email compromise (BEC), identity credentialing and ransomware in the workplace.

The key takeaway from this research is that the costs have increased significantly since 2015. Moreover, with the difficulty many organizations have in securing a growing remote workforce due to COVID-19, successful phishing attacks are expected to increase.

We surveyed 591 IT and IT security practitioners in organizations in the United States. Forty-four percent of respondents are from organizations with 1,000 or more employees who have access to corporate email systems.

The following findings reveal that phishing attacks are having a significant impact on organizations not only because of the financial consequences but also because these attacks increase the likelihood of a data breach, decrease employee productivity and increase the likelihood of a business disruption.

The cost of phishing more than tripled since 2015. The average annual cost of phishing has increased from $3.8 million in 2015 to $14.8 million in 2021.The most time-consuming tasks to resolve attacks are the cleaning and fixing of infected systems and conducting forensic investigations. Documentation and planning represent the least time-consuming tasks.

Loss of employee productivity represents a significant component of the cost of phishing. Employee productivity losses are among the costliest to organizations and have increased significantly from an average of $1.8 million in 2015 to $3.2 million in 2021. Employees are spending more time dealing with the consequences of phishing scams. We estimate the productivity losses based on hours spent each year by employees/users viewing and possibly responding to phishing emails averages 7 hours annually, an increase from 4 hours in 2015.

The cost of resolving malware infections has doubled total cost of phishing. The average total cost to resolve malware attacks is $807,506 in 2021, an increase from $338,098. Costs due to the inability to contain malware have more than doubled from an average of $3.1 million to $5.3 million.

Credential compromises increased dramatically. As a result, organizations are spending more to respond to these attacks. The average cost to contain phishing-based credential compromises increased from $381,920 in 2015 to $692,531 in 2021. Organizations are experiencing an average of 5.3 compromises over the past 12-month period.

Credential compromises not contained have more than doubled. The average total cost of credential compromised not contained is $2.1 million and has increased significantly from $1 million in 2015.

BEC is a security exploit in which the attacker targets employees who have access to an organization’s funds or data. The average total cost of BEC’s exploits was $5.96 million (see Table 1a). Based on the findings, the extrapolated average maximum loss resulting from a BEC attack is $8.12 million. The average total amount paid to BEC attackers was $1.17 million.

What is the cost of business disruption due to ransomware? Ransomware is a sophisticated piece of malware that blocks the victim’s access to his/her files. The average total cost of ransomware last year was $5.66 million, and the average percentage rate of ransomware attacks from phishing was 17.6 percent.

Employee training and awareness programs on the prevention of phishing attacks can reduce costs. Phishing attacks are costing organizations millions of dollars. According to the research, the average annual cost of phishing scams is $14.8 million, an increase from $3.8 million in 2015.

Respondents were asked to estimate what percentage of phishing costs that could be reduced through training and awareness programs that specifically address the risks of phishing attacks targeting the workforce.  The cost can be reduced by an average of more than half (53 percent) if training is conducted.

Part 2. Key findings

Loss of employee productivity represents a significant component of the cost of phishing.
The average annual cost of phishing has increased from $3.8 million in FY2015 to $14.83 million in 2021. As shown, productivity losses have increased significantly from $1.8 million in 2015 to $3.2 million in FY2021. Please note that information about BEC and ransomware was not available in FY2015. In the current study, we estimate an annual cost of phishing for BEC at $5.97 million and ransomware at $996 thousand.

Employees are spending more time dealing with the consequences of phishing scams. The range of hours is less than 1 to more than 25 hours per employee each year. We estimate the productivity losses based on hours spent each year by employees/users viewing and possibly responding to phishing emails. As shown, each employee wastes an average of 7 hours annually due to phishing scams, an increase from 4 hours in 2015.

As discussed, the costliest consequence of a successful phishing attack is employees’ diminished productivity. Here we assume an average-sized organization with a headcount of 9,567 individuals with user access to corporate email systems.  Based on an average of 7 hours per employee we calculate 65,343 hours wasted because of phishing.  Assuming an average labor rate of $49.5 for non-IT employees (users) we calculate a total productivity loss of $3.2 million annually, an increase from $1.8 million in 2015.

An average of 15 percent of an organization’s malware infections are caused by phishing scams. Respondents were asked to estimate the percentage of malware infections caused by phishing scams. The estimated range is less than 1 percent to more than 50 percent. The extrapolated average rate is 15 percent. As discussed above, the cost to contain malware is estimated to be $353,582 (see Table 1).

The likelihood of a malware attack causing a material data breach due to data exfiltration has increased since 2015. In the context of this research, a material data breach involves the loss or theft of more than 1,000 records. Respondents were asked to estimate the likelihood of this occurring. The probability distribution ranged from less than .1 percent to more than 5 percent. The extrapolated average likelihood of occurrence is 2.3 percent over a 12-month period, an increase from 1.9 percent.

The total cost attributable to malware attacks caused by phishing scams more than doubles. The total cost to resolve malware attacks is $807,506 in 2021, an increase from $338,098 in 2015.

Phishing costs due to the inability to contain malware have more than doubled and represents 11 percent of the total cost of phishing.  Malware not contained is malware at the device level that has evaded traditional defenses such as firewalls, anti-malware software and intrusion prevention systems. Following are two attacks caused by an active malware attack that are difficult to contain: (1) data exfiltration (a.k.a. material data breach) and (2) business disruptions. The total cost of malware not contained has increased from $3.1 million to $5.3 million.

A malware attack resulting in a data breach due to data exfiltration could cost an organization an average of $137.2 million. The following formula is used to determine the probable maximum loss (PML) and the likelihood of such an attack:

What is the cost of business disruption due to a malware attack? Respondents were asked to estimate the PML resulting from business disruptions caused by a malware attack. Business disruptions include denial of services, damage to IT infrastructure and revenue losses. The distribution of maximum losses ranges from less than $10 million to $500 million. The extrapolated average PML resulting from data exfiltration is $117.3 million, an increase from $66.3 million.

How likely are business disruptions caused by a malware attack will affect your organization? Respondents were asked to estimate the likelihood of material business disruptions caused by malware. The probability distribution ranges from less than .1 percent to more than 5 percent. The extrapolated average likelihood of occurrence is 2.1 percent over a 12-month period, an increase from 1.6 percent in 2015.

Visit Proofpoint’s website to download the entire 2021 Cost of Phishing Report

Bob Sullivan

How do you catch Internet con artists? Well, you con them.

Alan, who lives near Washington D.C., had traveled to Dubai and to Ghana thinking he was helping a princess gain access to her multi-million dollar inheritance.  Before his fever was broken, Alan — not his real name — sent about $600,000 to a man named Eric and a woman who called herself “Precious.”  By the time the FBI got involved, it was too late for Alan’s money.  But Alan did have a photograph of the two criminals, taken in Dubai.  When a rookie FBI agent named Mike saw that, he decided there might be just enough evidence to pursue the criminals through cyberspace.

He had one big problem, however. Agent Mike — we’re protecting his identity — couldn’t fly to Dubai or Ghana and arrest them. He had to get them to fly, willingly, to the U.S.

You don’t often get to hear an FBI agent talk about chasing after online criminals. And rarely do stories involving $600,000 sent overseas to criminals have a happy ending. But in this recent episode of The Perfect Scam, I pull back the curtain on a remarkable piece of crime-fighting and a relentless pursuit by one very determined agent.

Listen to this episode by clicking here, or by clicking the play button below.  Below that, a partial transcript appears. It’s a two-part episode. You can hear part 2 at this link, or hit the second play button below.

———-PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT—————-

FROM PART 1

[00:06:25] Mike: Yeah, it’s almost heartbreaking, because when you read the transcripts, you can see how the victim actually thinks it’s real. I mean he’s actually saying things like, “Well when can I meet you,” or “Can you send me more pictures?” The scammer usually almost always just returns to, “Oh I love you so much,” et cetera, et cetera, you know, “How are you?” that kind of thing. And it’s just so one-sided in terms of the victim is like actually trying to have a relationship, but the scammers are just uh clearly have an agenda on their mind. And then uh, it will, you know, usually transition then to, “Oh, hey something terrible just happened. My mother just got into a car accident,” “We’re overseas for the moment,” or “My, my dad’s uh late on his rent,” or “I’m late on my rent,” or something like that. “Can you just send me, MoneyGram me uh, 500 bucks, ” or something like that.

[00:07:13] Bob: But those smaller asks are just the beginning of the crime. Soon, Precious starts to tell a much bigger story to Alan.

[00:07:21] Mike: One thing that happened, which I’ve come to realize this might be a common thing for scammers from Ghana, is that the uh the women, in this case, Precious, eventually will let the victim know that, “I am actually an African princess, I’ve actually inherited millions of dollars’ worth of gold, it’s back overseas in Ghana, and here’s my lawyer,” you know. In, in this case Precious had a lawyer named Eric, and other, other scammers will introduce other like a, they’ll, they’ll almost always introduce a second player, um, like a second figure. And then the lawyer will come in, in this case, Eric, with a very formal sounding, uh you know, email signature block and very formal sounding, uh, language and write, you know, big, long paragraphs, with very lawyerly sounding text to say, “I understand, Alan, that you’re here to help Precious. Uh, that’s a great thing that you’re doing. And in order to have her, you know, receive her inheritance of millions of dollars which will help her and her family, you need to start paying,” you know, this and that for legal documents, for shipping fees, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:08:40] Bob: So far, this looks like a crime that FBI agents unfortunately see pretty often, but as Mike keeps reading, he confirms one of his chief suspicions. That trip to Dubai and Ghana, that means the crime went a whole lot farther.

[00:08:55] Mike: Eventually, I think the reason to get Alan on a plane was so that he could meet the supposed lawyer, Eric, in Dubai so that they could sign some legal documents towards the uh, the release of the gold.

[00:09:08] Bob: And what did he actually sign when he got to Dubai?

[00:09:11] Mike: It was just, you know, something that you could drum up on Microsoft Word in 10 minutes.

[00:09:16] Bob: So this, this was still all just a, a movie scene that they were playing out for him. Um, well did you see the part of the discussion where he said, yes, I’ll, I’ll fly, I’ll get on an airplane? I mean, that must be amazing to see in black and white.

[00:09:30] Mike: Yep, we saw that. I think it must have been several months into their, the scam where he actually got onto the plane, if I recall correctly. But uh yep, they met in Dubai. That was actually one of the reasons why I decided that we could probably take on this case, because he had actually gone overseas, and he actually met these people in person, at least Alan could pick them out from a lineup, for example.

[00:09:55] Bob: He could pick Precious and Eric out of a lineup, if ever there were a way to get them into a lineup. But maybe even more important, there’s pictures.

[00:10:06] Mike: Yeah, so they meet in Dubai. It’s Eric and Precious. It’s uh, an African man and a Caucasian woman claiming to be Eric and Precious, and they have Alan pay for the hotel, they have Alan pay for the meals, everything. In fact, I think there’s this picture of Alan with uh, Eric and Precious in like, it looks like a Chili’s or something in the Dubai airport. It was one of the first times that we actually saw the scammers for real when, uh Alan shared that picture with us.

[00:10:34] Bob: Okay, yeah. Now before we go on, you have a picture of them at, of the three of them at a, at a Chili’s in Dubai?

[00:10:40] Mike: I, I don’t know what restaurant it is, but it looked like, you know, uh there’s, there’s a few more pictures of them at the uh, the Dubai airport, so you know, it’s just pretty good uh proof that corroborates the story.

[00:10:53] Bob: That’s, I’m almost, I’m kind of amazed that they were brazen enough to pose for a picture like that.

[00:10:58] Mike: You know, it’s um, sometimes I think about that, too. So I think from the perspective of a scammer, it’s really a risk/reward calculation they have to make because uh, when you’re trying to scam these folks, if you, you know, obviously, you know, it’s a romance scam, so your victim wants to meet you because you guys are supposed to be in love. So if you never meet with the victim, obviously they will start to get suspicious after a while. And there’s only so much that you can keep the victim on the hook for, there’s only so, so much money you can squeeze out of them. However, if you take the risk and you actually meet with the victim, and you have the uh, I guess the props to show that this is actually a true story, then you’ve got the victim hooked for even more, right. Now he knows it’s real.

(MUSIC SEGUE)

[00:11:43] Bob: Mike says the three of them looked pretty jolly in the photos, like they’re on vacation together.

[00:11:48] Mike: Eric and Alan, just kind of posing, big smiles somewhere, it must have been somewhere in Dubai, if I recall correctly. And then, when we saw pictures of Precious, she was indeed a Caucasian young woman. She must, she must have been in her mid–, she looked like she was in her mid-20s. Eric looked like he was a bit older, probably in his 40s, but you know, the pictures that Precious had been sending to Alan via Skype were, you know, pictures of just gorgeous women that you find on the internet, right, and it was pretty clear that the Precious in real life was not the same.

[00:12:26] Bob: Eventually, the group gets down to business. But they don’t stay in Dubai very long.

[00:12:31] Mike: After signing these documents for the uh, supposed gold, Eric kind of suddenly proposes to Alan, “Hey why don’t I take you to Ghana so that you could actually see the gold for yourself, and so that you can actually see all of Precious’s inheritance, so that you know it’s real.” And then um, the real reason that Eric’s doing this is because he wants to get Alan on some more scams that he has waiting for him back in Ghana. From there, Precious actually goes back to her home country; we found out later that was Ukraine. Eric, I think he just takes Alan’s credit cards, and he just buys tickets for them to go from Dubai to Ghana.

[00:13:08] Bob: And when they get to Ghana, Eric puts on quite a show for Alan.

[00:13:12] Mike: Pretty shortly after they landed, Eric takes Alan to what sounds like some sort of compound or some sort of building that he has, and inside is what Alan described as some sort of safety deposit box. Unfortunately, there was no pictures uh really from, that describe this, so I don’t, we don’t really have a good visual on it, but it looked pretty official. Uh, Alan, you know, Alan described that there was like a bank guard there, and there were some other folks there, and so, you know, Eric does the whole “bring forth the gold” kind of thing. Alan describes um, the guards bringing over I guess a chest of, you know, gold bars, and uh Alan picked one up, and, and he said it sure felt like they were pretty heavy, so it must be gold.

[00:14:05] Bob: Wow, and but to Alan’s estimation, it was maybe millions of dollars’ worth of gold?

[00:14:10] Mike: Yeah, that’s what Eric was claiming the whole time. That was part of the story, so…

[00:14:14] Bob: Of course, Eric has another reason to bring Alan to Ghana. He wants to introduce Alan to another criminal with another elaborate story.

[00:14:23] Mike: Eric kind of uses this opportunity to, to introduce a, another scam. It’s another scam that we’ve heard of before, it’s sometimes you call it like, uh I’ve heard it referred to as like a kind of a washing the money scam, or the black money scam. There’s different variations of it, but really what it amounts to is a magic trick that is really impressive in the moment and really uh hooks your victim. And what Eric does is he says, okay, great, now you’ve seen Precious’s gold. I’d like to introduce you to another person. This person here is Daniel. Daniel’s about 18 years old. You know, he’s also some sort of African nobility. And Daniel’s there, and he’s smiling and he’s, you know, playing the part of a, a poor 18-year-old kid, and Eric’s just trying to help him out too, just the way like he’s trying to help out Precious. And Daniel has inherited a large quantity of, of sheets, uh, you know, just like you’ve seen those sheets that are uncut at the Treasury Department. But these sheets are worthless unless you start cutting them, and once you cut them all, then they’ll be worth millions, but uh, the way to cut them is, you can’t just use scissors. You need a chemical that only, Frank, the other character, he uses introduces guy, Frank. Frank was kind enough to bring it, so let me show you how it works. Puts the chemicals in a bowl, pours water over it, mixes it all up, and then he dips one of these sheets into the bowl, and you know, before Alan’s eyes, the sheets separate into the separate individual $100 bills. So, just like that, we made 400 bucks. And so Eric says, you know, it’s as simple as that, so if we want to start getting Daniel’s uh money, then we need to start paying money for the rest of the chemicals from Frank.

—-FROM PART 2—–

[00:04:24] Mike: Plan C was, you know with Alan’s permission, and also his wife, too, we, we kept the wife in the loop the entire time. I didn’t want her to feel like she was being excluded, but I asked them if they’d be willing to, you know, take some pictures of Alan in the hospital undergoing, well, post, uh, his medical procedures, and to go back to Eric and Precious and say, “Hey, you know, my health is really declining. I really want to help you, Precious, so uh, here’s proof that I can’t go overseas and see you. Why don’t you guys come over here, and we can do things like, I’ll put you in my will,” and so Precious will have, you know, $10,000 a month in perpetuity or something like that, or, or uh, I got a, another, another ruse that we started coming up with was, we had Alan say, “I’ve got a really rich businessman man and he’s really looking to invest in uh, in Africa, you know, and Africa’s the next place to invest in, especially with uh, raw minerals, and you, you seem to know a lot about gold, so yeah, this, yeah this rich businessman wants to meet you. He wants to talk about gold.” So we kind of started coming up with stories to uh, you know, scam Eric and Precious and Daniel with.

[00:05:40] Bob: It strikes me that it’s a good thing you work for the FBI. Otherwise you’d have another career that might not be as wholesome.

[00:05:46] Mike: Oh, (laugh). Well, sometimes you’ve got to think like scammers to catch them, so.

[00:05:52] Bob: Mike has to really work to open the door to the US for Precious and Eric. One of the most important steps, getting the State Department to issue a visa.

[00:06:01] Mike: We were kind of playing multiple stories at the same time, and I think the pictures of Alan, uh, you know, in the hospital, they were effective, but what was even more effective was we were telling Alan to ask Eric like, “Hey look, go to the Embassy in Ghana, apply for a visa, just get that process started,” and then I actually started kind of going behind the scenes, and I started, uh, talking to some reps at the State Department to say, like, hey look, we’re going to, we’re trying to set this up now, you know. This person, Eric, which I, you know, by that time we had kind of identified who Eric really was, he’s a criminal, he’s a, he’s a subject of an investigation, there’s an active FBI investigation on him. Here’s what, here’s kind of what’s going on. Basically I said, “I need you to give him a visa.”

(MUSIC SEGUE)

[00:06:51] Bob: Meanwhile, Mike is coaching Alan on what to say to Eric and Precious. They lay it on pretty thick.

[00:06:57] Mike: We had Alan say, “Hey, you got your visa, because my friend, my rich friend pulled some strings with the government.” That was the story that we were spinning towards him, and then we were saying, “Okay, well now my rich friend really wants to talk to you about gold, so he’s going to buy you a plane ticket.”

[00:07:11] Bob: Even after Mike gets the State Department to play along, there are still a whole lot of steps before Eric and Precious might actually get on a plane and land in a US airport where they can be apprehended. Would Eric even show up for his visa appointment? What if he got cold feet right before boarding the plane? You’d think Mike might be worried by these things, but he says he wasn’t.

[00:07:32] Mike: You know, it wasn’t really so much nervousness, I think, uh, just the way that we think here, we always have plan A, plan B, plan C, so this plan that we were setting forth, even though it was plan C, which is now plan A, we still had backup plans, you know, in place, so I knew that if Eric never really came here, or if uh, he never followed up on his visa appointment. We had other ways, you know, it’s just, you know at the FBI we just, we, time is on our side. So something would have come eventually. Like, for example, the UAE would have told us who these people really were. And so we could have, you know, these investigations drag on for a while, and eventually something would have broken, so I wasn’t um, part of me was like, there’s no way he’s actually going to do this. But even, and even if he didn’t, that would be okay, because this investigation will still be going forward.

[00:08:22] Bob: But, to the surprise of many agents involved, the plan works. Eric gets his visa and gets on a plane headed for Dulles Airport outside Washington DC.

[00:08:33] Bob: So it worked, okay. Are, are you there at the airport when they arrive?

[00:08:36] Mike: Yep, yes, it’s myself and a few more agents, and uh, um, you know we kind of confirmed with the Department of Homeland Security that he did indeed board the flight. We actually bought his plane ticket for him. And so we knew exactly when he was arriving. As he’s going through the immigration queues, one of the uh customs and border protection officers was with us, had kind of taken us behind the scenes at the airport. We saw him just going through. I think he had like a blue suit on, and uh, he had like one of those neck pillows. He looked very tired, obviously. We kind of pulled him out of the queue. We told him to sit in a, a place that’s called secondary inspection, uh with CBP at the airport. We just kind of looked at his uh travel documents again, just to confirm that he really was the person we were looking for, and we kind of went to him, kind of broke the bad news.

[00:09:34] Bob: What was the, the expression on his face when you did that?

[00:09:36] Mike: I think he was very tired. He was very jetlagged. He was very like, uh just absolute resignation. No fight, no denial, just okay, sure. Take me.

The treasure trove of customer data and financial information that government generates, stores and processes on a daily basis makes it a rich target for hackers. The purpose of this study is to understand the steps government agencies are taking to mitigate digital fraud risks and protect customer data. In the context of this study, customers are individuals who receive and use services from federal, state and local governmental agencies.

Digital services enable government to conveniently deliver information and services to customers anytime, anywhere and on any platform or device. However, such convenience needs to be supported by a strong security posture.

Sponsored by TransUnion, Ponemon Institute surveyed 594 IT and IT security practitioners who work in the federal, state and local/municipal government organizations  (click for full study). All respondents are familiar with their agency’s efforts to prevent and detect fraud and are aware of their agency’s information security vulnerabilities and threats. In addition to studying the state of security in government agencies, the research reveals respondents’ awareness of the extreme dissatisfaction customers have with the security and convenience of agencies’ websites. 

A key finding is that government agencies are not making the necessary investment in security technologies to protect customer data and make online access to accounts convenient. Only 43 percent of respondents say their agency has the security technologies necessary to provide customers with both a secure and convenient online experience when accessing their accounts. Another fraud risk is that only 37 percent of respondents say their agency makes it as easy as possible for customers to notify them if they believe their account has been compromised.

Following is a summary of digital fraud risks revealed in this research and the solutions needed to protect customer data and improve the online experience.

Similar to the commercial sector, government agencies are having multiple data breaches involving the loss or theft of customers’ personal information. These data breaches are most often caused by employee carelessness (64 percent of respondents). This indicates the need for regular training and awareness programs and enforceable privacy and security policies. An important part of this training should be to prevent phishing and social engineering attacks. The other top root causes are hackers (56 percent of respondents) and lost or stolen devices (52 percent of respondents).

Without having the necessary security technologies and in-house expertise most agencies find it impossible or very difficult to detect attacks. The most difficult types of attacks to detect are social engineering (66 percent of respondents), credential stuffing (60 percent of respondents) and knowing the real customer from a criminal imposter using stolen credentials (60 percent of respondents).

ATOs are on the rise and respondents believe mobile phones are most vulnerable to attacks. Mobile phones are ubiquitous, and 62 percent of respondents say they are the most vulnerable to ATO fraud. Further, not only are ATO attacks increasing, the severity of these attacks is also on the rise according to 59 percent of respondents.

Most agencies’ senior leadership are not prioritizing the ATO risk. Barriers to managing the risk of ATO fraud is that only 41 percent of respondents say senior leadership makes it a priority to prevent ATOs and only 38 percent of respondents say their agency regularly assesses the ability of its IT systems to prevent and detect fraud. As a consequence, only 37 percent of respondents say most ATO attacks are quickly detected and remediated and only 28 percent of respondents say their agency has a comprehensive view of its customers’ accounts.

To address the increase in account takeover attacks, agencies should consider a layered fraud management solution based on risk-based identity and device authentication. On average in the past two years, agencies have experienced 18 ATOs. More than half (53 percent) of respondents say they have significantly increased (19 percent) or increased (34 percent). Sixty-five percent of respondents say their agencies use two-factor authentication to reduce ATOs.

Polices for the prevention and detection of fraud are not reviewed as frequently as they should be. The threat landscape is constantly evolving but only 25 percent of respondents say these policies are reviewed monthly (12 percent) or quarterly (13 percent).

Accountability for managing fraud risks is dispersed throughout the organization. A possible reason for not prioritizing the digital fraud risks is that no single function emerges as most accountable. Twenty-one percent of respondents say it is in compliance/legal. Only 19 percent of respondents say the IT security leader is most accountable.

Without the necessary security technologies and support from senior leadership, it is difficult for agencies to be effective in protecting customers’ personal information.

Fifty percent say they are very effective or effective in reducing customer fraud, which means many agencies (50 percent of respondents) are not effective. Only 41 percent of respondents say their agencies are very effective in protecting customers’ personal information and only 38 percent are very effective in detecting and preventing account takeover fraud.

Customers are frustrated with the security and convenience of government websites. Only 27 percent of respondents say customers are satisfied with the convenience and 26 percent of respondents say customers are satisfied with the security of the website. As discussed previously, only 37 percent of respondents believe it is easy for customers to notify agencies if they believe their account has been compromised.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and improvements in identity authentication are considered important to improving the customer experience. Sixty-five percent of respondents say AI decision-making tools/technologies and interconnected devices will improve the ability to track customers’ status in order to improve the security and convenience when accessing online accounts. Sixty-one percent of respondents say improvement in identity authentication will improve the state of access governance and, therefore, improve customers’ user experience.

Download the full study at TransUnion.com

Bob Sullivan

I like a good challenge as a storyteller.  And let me tell you, making “third-party code” sound sexy is a challenge.  But that recent Apple ad showing an army of people following a cell phone user around, cataloging his every move — well, that’s real.  It’s hard to believe, but the commercial actually understates the problem.

Every day, with every click you make and every app you swipe, a virtual army of companies you’ve never heard of are tracking you.  Their 1×1 pixels and browser fingerprints lurk in every corner of the Internet, privacy landmines vacuuming up data about every aspect of your life.

I know you’ve heard this before, and I’ll bet you assume companies like Facebook and Google are tracking you to this degree — but you probably don’t realize, or don’t think about, the hundreds of small companies that attach themselves to name-brand websites like CNN.com which track you in the same way.

Why do they do that? So later, the billions of pieces of information collected about us can be married to billions of dollars being spent trying to get our attention.  Over and over and over: a mindless search for anxiety medicine or sexual dysfunction is auctioned off to the highest bidder, and shared with thousands of other firms. The result? A gigantic one-way mirror that not only intrudes on our most intimate thoughts but logs them forever, making them easy prey for murky data brokers and creepy hackers alike. For the rest of Internet time.

That’s what this podcast is about.  The Internet has a third-party problem — a number of third-party problems, really — and it’s time we talked about them.

To help me with this storytelling problem, I’ve enlisted the help of some real experts for this podcast — including Jeff Orlowski, director of the hit Netflix docu-drama The Social Dilemma. Orlowski certainly succeeded in making technology and privacy conflicts sexy. Also, you’ll hear from Chris Olson of The Media Trust; Jason Kint from Digital Content Next; and Jolynn Dellinger from Duke University. Debugger is brought to you by Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics.

Please listen to the podcast: If you prefer, a transcript of the show is below. If a play button doesn’t appear for you, click this link to listen.

The purpose of this research is to understand organizations’ approach to managing third-party remote access risk and to provide guidance, based on the findings, on how to prepare for the future. A significant problem that needs to be addressed is third parties accessing an organization’s networks and, as a result, exposing it to security and non-compliance risks.

Sponsored by SecureLink, Ponemon Institute surveyed 627 individuals who have some level of involvement in their organization’s approach to managing remote third-party data risks. They were also instructed to focus their responses on only those outsourcing relationships that require the sharing of sensitive or confidential information and involve processes or activities that require providing access to such information.

Organizations are having data breaches caused by giving too much privileged access to third parties. Only 36 percent of respondents are confident that third parties would notify their organization if they had a data breach involving their sensitive and confidential information. More than half (51 percent) of respondents say their organizations have experienced a data breach caused by a third party that resulted in the misuse of its sensitive or confidential information either directly or indirectly. There could possibly be more data breaches because of respondents’ lack of confidence that they would be contacted by their third parties, as discussed above.

In the past 12 months, 44 percent of respondents say their organizations experienced a data breach caused by a third party either directly or indirectly. Of these respondents, 74 percent of respondents say it was the result of giving too much privileged access to third parties.

The following findings reveal the risks created by third-party remote access

Organizations are at risk for non-compliance with regulations because third parties are not aware of their industry’s data breach reporting regulations.  On average, less than half of respondents (48 percent) say their third parties are aware of their industry’s data breach reporting regulations. Only 44 percent of respondents rate the effectiveness of their third parties in achieving compliance with security and privacy regulations that affect their organization as very high.

Managing remote access to the network is overwhelming. Seventy-three percent of respondents say managing third-party permissions and remote access to their networks is overwhelming and a drain on their internal resources. As a consequence, 63 percent of respondents say remote access is becoming their organization’s weakest attack surface.

It is understandable why 69 percent of respondents say cybersecurity incidents and data breaches involving third parties is increasing because only 40 percent of respondents say their organizations are able to provide third parties with just enough access to perform their designated responsibilities and nothing more. Further, only 37 percent of respondents say their organizations have visibility into the level of access and permissions for both internal and external users.

Many organizations do not know all the third parties with access to their networks. Only 46 percent of respondents say their organizations have a comprehensive inventory of all third parties with access to its network. The average number of third parties in this inventory is 2,368.

Fifty-four percent of respondents say they don’t have an inventory (50 percent) or are unsure (4 percent). Respondents say it is because there is no centralized control over third parties (59 percent) and 47 percent of respondents say it is because of the complexity in third party relationships.

Organizations are not taking the necessary steps to reduce third-party remote access risk. Instead of taking steps to stop third-party data breaches and cybersecurity attacks, organizations are mostly focused on collecting relevant and up-to-date contact information for each vendor.

Very few are collecting and documenting information about third-party network access (39 percent of respondents), confirmation security practices are in place (36 percent of respondents), identification of third parties that have the most sensitive data (35 percent of respondents), confirmation that basic security protocols are in place (32 percent of respondents) and past and/or current known vulnerabilities in hardware or software.

Most organizations are not evaluating the security and privacy practices of all third parties before they are engaged. Less than half of respondents (49 percent) say their organizations are assessing the security and privacy practices of all third parties before allowing them to have access to sensitive and confidential information.

Of these respondents, 59 percent of respondents say their organizations rely on signed contracts that legally obligates the third party to adhere to security and privacy practices. Fifty-one percent of respondents say they obtain evidence of security certifications such as ISO 2700/27002 or SOC. Only 39 percent of respondents say their organizations conduct an assessment of the third party’s security and privacy practices.

Reliance on reputation is why the majority of organizations are not evaluating the privacy and security practices of third parties. Fifty-one percent of respondents say their organizations are not evaluating third-parties privacy and security practices and the main reason is reliance on their reputation (63 percent of respondents) and data protection regulations (60 percent of respondents). However, as discussed previously, only 48 percent of respondents say their organizations are aware of their industry’s data breach reporting regulations. Less than half of respondents (48 percent) have confidence in the third party’s ability to secure information.

Organizations are in the dark about the third-party risk because most are not required to complete security questionnaires. An average of only 35 percent of third parties are required to fill out security questionnaires and only an average of 26 percent is required to conduct remote on-site assessments.

If organizations monitor third-party security and privacy practices, they mostly rely upon legal or procurement review. Only 46 percent of respondents say their organizations are monitoring the security and privacy practices of third parties that they share sensitive or confidential information with on an ongoing basis. Fifty percent of respondents say the law or procurement functions conduct the monitoring. Only 41 percent of respondents say they use automated monitoring tools.

Again, reliance on contracts is why 54 percent of respondents say their organizations are not monitoring the third parties’ security and privacy practices. Sixty-one percent of respondents say their organizations do not feel the need to monitor because of contracts and another 61 percent of respondents say they rely upon the business reputation of the third party.

Third-party risk in most organizations is not defined or ranked in most organizations. Only 39 percent of respondents say their third-party management program defines and ranks level of risk. The top three indicators of risk are poorly written security and privacy policies and procedures, lack of screening or background checks for third-party key personnel and history of frequent data breach incidents.

Organizations are ineffective in preventing third parties from sharing credentials in the form of usernames and passwords. Respondents were asked to rate their organizations effectiveness in knowing all third-party concurrent users, controlling third-party access to their networks and preventing third parties from sharing credentials in the form of usernames and/or passwords on a scale from 1 = not effective to 10 = highly effective. Only 41 percent of respondents say their organizations are very effective in controlling third-party access to their networks and preventing third parties from sharing credentials in the form of usernames and passwords.

Click here to access the full report at SecureLink’s website.

Bob Sullivan

What do you do if you think your friend is bugging you? I don’t mean bothering you. I mean…bugging you…using a device to listen to you, maybe e1ven recording your conversations, when you visit their home. Well, that’s the world most of us live in now. Personal assistants, many modern TVs, smart doorbells…they all incorporate listening devices. What if you don’t want to be surveilled like that? Should you ask your friends to turn off their Alexa when you walk in the door?  Should they offer?

Tech etiquette sounds like something maybe we should be talking to Ann Landers about politeness or whatnot, but in reality, tech etiquette has a very, very serious side. When somebody visits a friend’s home right now, it’s quite likely they have some kind of electronic devices that could be listening, smart, doorbells, smart televisions, personal assistance. What are the rules around these things? Social rules, legal rules, and what can be done about them.

For my latest episode of Debugger, I talked with Jolynn Dellinger, a privacy law professor at Duke University, where she is also a senior fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics.  (Kenan and Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy support podcast).

You can listen by clicking here, or clicking the play button below if it appears in your browser. A short transcript follows.

[00:02:05] Jolynn:  I’ve just been thinking about it more recently with the proliferation of personal assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant. But I had a very interesting conversation on Twitter the other day with a bunch of random people that I don’t know. Uh, and it seemed to spark a lot of interest and along a lot of strong opinions about … What, what is the etiquette? And my question was .. When you go to somebody’s house, do you need to ask them whether they have always on listening devices or should a homeowner when you have people over as guests? Let those people know I have listening devices on? Is that okay? And this seems like a weird question because I don’t think anyone is engaging in this kind of etiquette right now.

And as a couple of people pointed out on the Twitter conversation, you know, this is just as important to ask with phones. Because folks who have their personal assistants activated on their phones, which I don’t, but some people do, whether it’s Siri or, or whatever on an Android, it presents the same issue of being always on.

And I think that raises some questions we should be talking about in terms of what’s appropriate in terms of potentially recording other people without their permission or consent

[00:03:27] Bob: Something I can’t even imagine right now. Welcome. Let me take your coat. Would you like a glass of wine and oh, are you okay if I record it this entire evening.

[00:03:36] Jolynn: Yes, exactly. Exactly. They’re not recording the entire evening and I don’t want to over-represent, but they are always listening and able to record. Of course.

But I think back in the day, well, at least when I was in college, it was almost people treated it almost like an imposition if you said you were a vegetarian. Right? Like they invite you to dinner and you’re like, okay, well I’m a vegetarian. Oh really? And so I think nowadays, when people invite someone over for dinner, they almost always say, are there any dietary restrictions? And I don’t know whether that’s because becoming vegetarian or vegan is more mainstream or there is a proliferation of allergies. You want to make sure somebody doesn’t have a nut allergy or, or something like that. So it’s gained acceptance over time and I’m kind of wondering if we should be heading in that direction with, surveillance technology.

[00:04:36] Bob: I wonder mechanically, how it would even be accomplished. So let’s say someone says, I just really morally opposed to having listening devices around me activated, how would someone turn off all their smart devices in a swoop like that?Is that even possible?

[00:04:53] Jolynn: I was asking that on Twitter. I mean, there are certainly people far more technologically proficient than myself and many pointed that out. Somebody said, well, I have 20 of those devices around my house. It would take me half an hour to go around and dismantle everything. And another person made a really good point as well. This person had some physical challenges, um, and was using listening devices in a way that enabled him or her to, to live a safe life. So that turning off those devices would actually pose a serious problem for that person. And I think, you know, we always need to be aware of that and, and I would never ask somebody to turn something off that they were using in that way.

I think the more common situation though, is folks using these for convenience or fun. And so they’re cooking and they can say, Alexa, play my blah-blah-blah playlist. And in that circumstance, I think that, um, my preference or anyone’s preference to not have the device on, uh, should supersede. However, do you just unplug it or do you put it in the microwave or the refrigerator? I mean, these were all things that were discussed on this Twitter thread, which was hilarious. Some people said it wouldn’t be that hard to disconnect.

[00:06:08] Bob: I was surprised to see several people …seemed to say, if you have a problem with my Siri or my Alexa, then I’m, I’m uninviting you. You’re not allowed in my house anymore. That was a shocking reaction to me.

[00:06:21] Jolynn: Right. I thought so too. And that’s what I was seeing. You know, if you invited your friend for dinner, I mean, we need to keep this focused on the fact that these are usually our friends that we’re inviting over and have you invited somebody for dinner? And they said, I’m a vegetarian. You likely would not say, well, tough. I’m having steak, right? I mean, that’s probably not what you would say. I think there are many, many technologies that we use. And part of the reason I pose this question is every time that we make personal decisions to use emerging technologies, surveillance technologies, and others, it may be something that affects only ourselves and our families, or maybe something that affects others.

And this even goes for a direct to consumer DNA test, right? That’s not protected. And your DNA gets out information about other people besides just you. And is that something where you should be asking your family before you send spit in a cup to 23 and me, um, other things around the house besides Alexa is like nest cameras.

You know, some folks have those around their homes so they can see in their children’s rooms when they’re out for the evening. Well, if I send my child over to play with that child is my child then being observed by those cameras? Internet of things, Barbie dolls that talk to children or other toys, rain cameras that maybe doing audio and video recording of conversations that take place outside people’s apartments or homes.

I think there’s a lot of these questions that we should be talking about

[00:07:54] Bob: So I had a Ring experience. I sold a house, not that long ago, and I put up a ring camera because I was going to be traveling during some of the process. And I put it up with the default settings and right away, a realtor and prospective buyer showed up at the house and I could hear them talking about my house and, and I thought to myself, I was horrified by this.

Of course, there was a piece of me that was tempted to listen in closely and say, oh, perhaps I should change the paint on that wall, everyone hates the color in the living room or whatnot. Right? But that would give me an unfair advantage potentially. And more than an unfair advantage. When I dug through the paperwork, uh, then the specifications on the Ring camera, it suggested to me that it might be an illegal wiretap to be recording people’s audio conversations without their knowledge. Aren’t a lot of these things potentially?

[00:08:44] Jolynn: I’m not really sure if there’s a lot of case law about that yet. I did see a case in New Hampshire where a judge said it was not a violation. And I think they might’ve had a two party consent rule there, where the judge said it was not a problem. I think it should be a problem.

Uh, I think that the basis of the decision there was, well, the conversation was taking place in a public space where you should expect … other people may be able to hear you. But I think when you’re standing on somebody’s porch, you don’t necessarily expect that. I think if you’re in an apartment building… say, and you live across the hall from someone who may have installed a Ring doorbell, you may know, you may not know if you come in with a friend and you’re unlocking your door and no one else is in the hallway.

[00:09:29] I think you naturally would expect privacy around that conversation. So you can disable the audio on Ring doorbells. And I think Amazon suggests that people may want to consider doing that if they feel the need, but I don’t think Amazon is providing legal advice.

[00:09:45] Bob: Yeah. And I disabled my audio immediately out of fear of just that. And it also, it seemed just wildly unfair, but that suggests that there’s perhaps more serious implications to some of this. And you raised one of the most serious of all, what might be the national security implications of all of these unintended overheard conversations.

[00:10:07] Jolynn: Well, that question didn’t get as much uptake on Twitter, but I’m very interested about it. I think there was a big deal about whether or not there could be a Peloton in the White House because of the various things … it can hear with, microphones or cameras. And I just wondered about all the people working from home who are dealing with classified or secure materials, confidential materials.

If they’re sitting in their office on a Zoom call and you question about it being a Aoom call and what devices do they have around them that may be picking things up and should that be not permissible?

[00:10:44] Bob: It’s not hard to imagine a foreign adversary figuring out how to wake up all of these listening devices without people’s knowledge and using it as a sort of extensive spy network.

[00:10:55] Jolynn: It seems possible. I just think as we get more and more of these ubiquitous technologies, we should all at least be willing to discuss and have a conversation about what’s the right thing to do here for our neighbors, friends, and family.

[00:11:13] Bob: Have you ever walked into a house and said to someone, is anything listening to me?

[00:11:17] Jolynn: Yes, I have. I have

[00:11:19] Bob: I was hoping you would say that. And what was the reaction?

[00:11:23] Jolynn: These are friends of mine, so they were nice about it. And one time I said the refrigerator might be a good place for that model.

[00:11:34] Bob: You can always put your gadgets in the fridge if you’re worried about them. Professor Jolynn Dellinger from Duke University, thank you very much for your time.

Since Ponemon Institute conducted the first study on threat intelligence sharing in 2014, organizations that use and exchange threat intelligence are improving their security posture and the ability to prevent and mitigate the consequences of a cyberattack. As revealed in The Fourth Annual Study on Exchanging Cyber Threat Intelligence: There Has to Be a Better Way, Some 74 percent of respondents that had a cyberattack believe that the availability of timely and accurate threat intelligence could have prevented or mitigated the consequences of such an attack.

According to the 1,432 IT and IT security practitioners surveyed in North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific , the consumption and exchange of threat intelligence continues to increase, as shown in Figure 1. Despite the increase in the exchange and use of threat intelligence, more work needs to be done to improve the timeliness and actionability of the threat intelligence.

Following are 11 trends that describe the current state of threat intelligence sharing.

1. Satisfaction with the ability to obtain threat intelligence decreases slightly. This year, 40 percent of respondents say they are very satisfied or satisfied with the way their organizations obtain threat intelligence. This is a slight decrease from 41 percent of respondents in 2017. To increase satisfaction, threat intelligence needs to be more timely, less complex and more actionable.

2. Organizations do not have confidence in free sources of threat intelligence. Reasons for paying for threat intelligence is because it has proven effective in stopping security incidents and a lack of confidence in free sources of intelligence.

3. On a positive note, the accuracy of threat intelligence is increasing. However, the majority of organizations believe the timeliness and the actionability of threat intelligence is low.

4. The two main metrics are the ability to prioritize threat intelligence and its timely delivery. Other metrics are the ability to implement the threat intelligence and the number of false positives.

5. When it comes to measuring the ROI of their threat intelligence, 39 percent of respondents say their organizations calculate the ROI. The top ROI metrics organizations look at include the following factors: reduction in the dwell time of a breach, reduction in the number of successful breaches and faster, more effective incident response.

6. Timeliness of threat intelligence is critical but not achieved. Only 11 percent of respondents say threat intelligence is provided real time and only 13 percent of respondents say threat intelligence is provided hourly

7. Threat indicators provide valuable intelligence. Eighty-five percent of respondents say they use threat indicators. The most valuable types of indicators are malicious IP addresses and indicators of malicious URLs.

8. Most organizations either currently or plan to consolidate threat intelligence data from multiple solutions. However, 53 percent of respondents say their organizations mainly use manual processes to accomplish the consolidation.

9. With regards to how threat intelligence is used through the network, the majority of organizations are using it in IDS. United Threat Management (UTM) is usually a single security appliance that provides multiple security functions as a single point on the network. The use of UTMs has increased significantly since 2017.

10. Internal silos prevent more effective collaboration and the exchange of threat intelligence with other organizations. Only 40 percent of respondents say the collaboration between their organization and other companies in the exchange of threat intelligence is either very effective or effective.

11. The use of automated processes to investigate threats is gaining traction. Fifty-four percent of respondents, an increase from 47 percent of respondents, are using automated processes to investigate threats. There also has been a significant increase in the use of machine learning and AI since 2017.

To read the full report visit the Infoblox website.

Bob Sullivan

When a plane crashes, a government agency rushes to the scene looking for answers…and lessons that might prevent the next plane crash. When computers crash — and the economy crashes, as we’ve seen this week — there is no such fact-finding mission. There should be. And now, perhaps, there will be.

The National Safety Transportation Board, while imperfect, has a remarkable track record for getting to the bottom of transportation disasters. Air travel is remarkably safe, in no small part because of all the public hearings and final reports issued by the NTSB through the years. Yes, wounds are exposed and companies take it on the chin after a crash. That’s the price of learning. Lives are at stake.

Cybersecurity could benefit dramatically from this kind of soul-searching after major attacks.

This week’s Colonial Pipeline ransomware incident and resulting run on gas stations is just the latest incident that screams for some kind of independent agency devoted to this kind of soul searching. And I do mean “just the latest.” A quick trip down memory lane had me re-reading essay after essay calling for a “Computer Network Safety Board” or a “National Cybersecurity Safety Board.” This 2016 report that was part of a NIST Commission cites a 1990(!) publication named Computers at Risk: Safe Computing in the Information Age which called for creation of an incident database, saying “one possible model for data collection is the incident reporting system administered by the National Transportation Safety Board.”

So, this is an idea whose time has come. And perhaps it will. In the wake of the pipeline ransomware incident, President Biden issued an executive order this week addressing cybersecurity. These things can seem like pageantry, but they don’t have to be. The list of actions in the order is non-controversial and has been in the works for a while. Things like: raising government security standards, stronger supply chain/vendor oversight, and improved information sharing. But to me, this is the most critical part of the order:

Establish a Cybersecurity Safety Review Board. The Executive Order establishes a Cybersecurity Safety Review Board, co-chaired by government and private sector leads, that may convene following a significant cyber incident to analyze what happened and make concrete recommendations for improving cybersecurity. Too often organizations repeat the mistakes of the past and do not learn lessons from significant cyber incidents. When something goes wrong, the Administration and private sector need to ask the hard questions and make the necessary improvements. This board is modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board, which is used after airplane crashes and other incidents.

Finally.

This….CSRB?….faces a lot of obstacles. Paul Rosenzweig, one of the essayists who has called for such a thing in the past, laid these obstacles out well in his 2018 paper for R Street. There’s (usually) no wreckage after a computer crash, so investigations will be much harder. There are tens of thousands of important computer hacks every year. Can’t study them all. How will the CSRB pick which ones to examine? Victim companies are notoriously hesitant to share details after an attack, fearing those details will end up in a lawsuit. Sometimes…often…the investigation will be inconclusive. And finally: the “flaw” found by such an investigation will often be a person, not software or hardware.

Good.

I’ve been to 100 conferences where security professionals spend a week talking about fancy new software and then at a closing address, someone ends by saying, “It all comes down to the human element.” I suspect a CSRB will find *many* incidents come down to a mistake made by a person. That’s a good start. Of course, no one person can really screw up something like this. That person is part of a team. S/he is nearly always overworked, part of a flawed system, walking a tightrope without a net, and acting on the wrong incentives. These are the kinds of real problems that can finally be exposed by CSRB reports.

Having covered this industry for 25 years, I am suspicious of the idea that many investigations will be inconclusive. Yes, there are occasional Zero Day hacks and nation-state-sponsored attacks that might elude investigators. But many, many hacks fall into the Equifax camp — they involve an event cascade of errors that should have been caught, like a horror movie where the protagonists miss a dozen or more chances to avert the disaster.

Every one of those movies should be made, and studied, by the CSRB.

Perhaps one conclusion might be limitations on workload, the kind that now protect truck drivers, train engineers and pilots. Perhaps other innovative recommendations will arise from shining such a public light on hacking incidents. Perhaps there will be so many that we’ll move past shaming cybersecurity workers to solving the real problem. If we don’t, we’re going to see a lot more gas lines that result from malicious computer code.

Ponemon Institute and Keyfactor kicked off the first-ever State of Machine Identity Management Report with one purpose: Drive industry awareness around the importance of managing and protecting machine identities, such as keys, certificates, and other secrets, in digital business.

For the 2021 State of Machine Identity Management Report, Ponemon Institute surveyed 1,162 respondents across North America and EMEA who work in IT, information security, infrastructure, development, and other related areas.

We hope that IT and security leaders can use this research to drive forward the need for an enterprise-wide machine identity management strategy. No matter where you are in the business – IT, security, or development – and no matter the size of your company, this report
offers important insights into why machine identities matter.

In recent years, we’ve witnessed the rapid growth of internet-connected devices and machines in the enterprise. From IoT and mobile devices to software-defined applications, cloud instances, containers, and even the code running within them, machines already far
outnumber humans.

Much like the human identities we rely on to access apps and devices we use every day (e.g., passwords, multi-factor, etc.), machines require a set of credentials to authenticate and securely
connect with other devices and apps on the network. Despite their critical importance, these “machine identities” are often left unmanaged and unprotected.

In the 2020 Hype Cycle for Identity and Access Management Technologies, Gartner introduced a new category: Machine Identity Management. The addition reflects the increasing importance of managing cryptographic keys,  X.509 certificates, SSH keys, and other non-human identities.

Machine identities have undoubtedly become a critical piece in enterprise IAM strategy, and awareness has reached even the highest levels of the organization. Sixty-one percent of respondents say they are either familiar or very familiar with the term machine identity management.

“Machine identities, such as keys, certificates and secrets, are essential to securing connections between thousands of servers, cloud workloads, IoT and mobile devices,” said Chris Hickman, chief security officer at Keyfactor. “Yet the survey highlights a concerning and significant gap between plan and action when it comes to machine identity management strategy. Acknowledgment is a step in the right direction, but a lack of time, skilled resources and attention paid to managing machine identities make organizations vulnerable to highly disruptive security risks and service outages.”

In this section, we highlight key findings based on Keyfactor’s analysis of the research data compiled by Ponemon Institute. For more in-depth analysis, see the complete findings.

Strategies for crypto and machine identity management are a work in progress.

Despite growing awareness of machine identity management, the majority of survey respondents said their organization either does not have a strategy for managing cryptography and machine identities (18 percent of respondents), or they have a limited strategy that is applied only to certain applications or use cases (42 percent of respondents).

The top challenges that stand in the way of setting an enterprise-wide strategy are too much change and uncertainty (40 percent of respondents) and lack of skilled personnel (40 percent
of respondents).

Shorter certificate lifespans, key misconfiguration, and limited visibility are top concerns.

Challenges in managing machine identities include the increased workload and risk of outages caused by shorter SSL/TLS certificate lifespans (59 percent of respondents), misconfiguration of keys and certificates (55 percent of respondents), and not knowing exactly how many keys and certificates the organization has (53 percent of respondents).

A significant driver of these challenges is the recent reduction in the lifespan of all publicly-trusted SSL/TLS certificates by roughly half, from 27 months to 13 months, on September 1, 2020. It is worth noting that the real impact of this change will likely not be realized
until the months and years ahead.

Crypto-agility emerged as a top strategic priority.

Moving into the top position on the list, more than half of respondents (51 percent) identified crypto-agility as a strategic priority for digital security, followed by reducing complexity of IT infrastructure and investing in hiring and retaining qualified personnel (both 50
percent of respondents).

Cloud and Zero-Trust strategies are driving the deployment of PKI and machine identities.

While many trends are driving the deployment of PKI, keys, and certificates, the two most important trends are cloud-based services (52 percent of respondents), and Zero-Trust security strategy (50 percent of respondents). Other notable trends include the remote workforce and IoT devices (both 43 percent of respondents).

SSL/TLS certificates take priority, but every machine identity is critical.

Overall, respondents agree that managing and protecting every machine identity is critical. That said, SSL/TLS certificates were widely considered the most important machine identities to manage and protect, according to 82 percent of respondents.

To see the report’s full findings, visit KeyFactor.com’s website 

Bob Sullivan

Is there an Original Sin of the Internet? Join me on a journey to find out.

Today I’m sharing a passion project of mine that’s been years in the making. I’m lucky. I’m getting old. Much better than the alternative! My career has spanned such a fascinating time in the history of technology. I learned to *literally* cut and paste at my first newspaper. Now, most of the world is run by computer code that’s been virtually cut and pasted. Often, carelessly cut and pasted. Look around, and it’s fair to ask: Has all this technology really made our lives better? My answer is yes, but by a margin so slim that objectors might call for a recount.

Whatever your answer, there is no denying that tech has landed us in a lot of trouble, and the techlash is real. And for those of us who thought the Internet might end up as humanity’s greatest invention, this time is depressing. One of my guests — a real Internet founder — thinks perhaps he should have done something else with his life.

Debugger, launching today, is a podcast, but I think of it more as an audio documentary. There are no sound bites. I let my guests talk and try to stay out of the way. So you can make up your own mind. Thanks to the great people at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics, I have access to amazing people who were there at the dawn of the Internet Age. I hope you’ll listen, but if you’d rather read, I’ll spend this week sending out edited transcripts from each guest.

First up: Richard Purcell, one of the first privacy executives. From him, you’ll learn as much about working on the railroad as you will about the abuse of power through privacy invasions. But before that, I try to explain what I mean by “original sin” in the introduction, and why that matters.

Future Debugger episodes will deal with similar foundational questions about technology and its role in democratic society. Why do 1,000 companies know every time I visit one web page? How do data brokers interfere with free and fair elections? What should we do with too-big-to-fail tech giants? How can we capture medical miracles trapped in data without violating patients? And how can we build tech that isn’t easily weaponized by abusing people or enemy combatants? That’s coming soon, on Debugger. On to the transcript for today. Click here to visit the podcast home page. Or, click below to listen.

[00:01:27] Bob Sullivan: Welcome to Debugger, a podcast about technology brought to you by Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the Duke Kenan Institute for Ethics. I’m your host, Bob Sullivan. And I care a lot about today’s topic. So please indulge me for a moment or two while I try to frame this issue.

I came across a story many years ago, it still haunts me as a technologist and an early believer in the internet. It haunts me because it reads like a sad pre-obituary about a once-famous pop singer who’s now a broke has-been with a drug problem … and as a writer because its prose is nearly poetry. At least to my ears, the kind of thing I wish I’d written credit. Steve Maich at Maclean’s and Canadian magazine for the words. Dramatic reading by old friend Alia Tavakolian:

[00:02:24] Alia Tavakolian: The people who conceived and pioneered the web described a kind of enlightened utopia built on mutual understanding. A world in which knowledge is limited only by one’s curiosity. Instead, we have constructed a virtual Wild West where the masses indulge their darkest vices, pirates of all kinds troll for victims, and the rest of us have come to accept that cyberspace isn’t the kind of place you’d want to raise your kids. The great multinational exchange of ideas and goodwill has devolved into a food fight. And the virtual marketplace is a great place to get robbed. The answers to the great questions of our world may be out there somewhere, but finding them will require you to first wade through an ocean of misinformation, trivia and sludge. We’ve been sold a bill of goods. We’re paying for it through automatic monthly withdrawals from our PayPal accounts.

Let’s put this in terms crude enough for all cyber dwellers to grasp: The internet sucks.

[00:03:23] Bob Sullivan: The internet sucks? I’ve thought about this story for years, come back to it once in a while, but it’s been a while. In fact, it’s been 15 years since those words were first written, a lot has happened since then.

·         My name is Ed Snowden. I’m 29 years old. I work for Booz Allen Hamilton as an infrastructure analyst for NSA in Hawaii.

·         What exactly are they saying these Russians did? ….Well, there’s a lot of things that were alleging the Internet Research Agency did. Um, the main thing is that they posed as American citizens to amplify and spread content that causes division in our society

·         Tonight, Facebook stock tanking, dropping nearly 7% after allegations that data from Cambridge Analytica secretly harvested the personal information of 50 million unsuspecting Facebook users,

·         Cyber experts warn the Equifax hack has the potential to haunt Americans for decades. And every adult should assume their information was stolen.

·         Social media is just one of many factors that played a role in the deadly attack on the U S. Capital, but it’s a huge one that attack was openly planned online for weeks.

Bob Sullivan: If the internet sucked in 2006, what should we say about it now? I remember being an intern with Microsoft in 1995, a small part of the launch team for Windows 95. I helped launch internet news. I remember feeling at the time … it was very heady. Like John Perry, Barlow the co-founder of the electronic frontier foundation and a Grateful Dead lyricist…We both felt the internet could one day rival fire in the importance to humanity. Well, actually what he said was it was the most transforming technological event since the capture of fire.

So I think we should all admit we haven’t captured the internet. It’s a lot more like an uncontrolled fire right now. Or maybe like a wild animal. We haven’t domesticated. Not yet. Anyway, how did this happen? How did we lose control of it? Where did we go wrong? Was there some original sin of the internet? A moment when we turned right, as we should have turned left. Looking backward, isn’t always worthwhile, but sometimes it is. When you’re doing a long mathematics calculation and you make a mistake, it’s not possible to erase the answer and correct it. You have to trace your steps back to the original error and calculate forward anew.

I think it’s time. We did that with the web.

Maybe this seems like an academic question, but it’s not. The coronavirus pandemic has taught humanity a very painful lesson by now. We’ve all come to realize that like it or not, we’re in this together. We can’t rid half the planet of COVID-19 and hope for the best. That won’t work. We have to all pull in the same direction. All do the things we need to do. Wear masks, avoid indoor spaces, vaccinate when we can …to get and keep the virus on the run. And that won’t happen if we don’t all agree on the same set of facts. But right now the most powerful disinformation machine ever, the biggest lie spreading tool ever, seems to have truth on the run.

So it’s not just academic, it’s personal. It’s life or death.

How do we capture digital fire? How do we domesticate the wild animal that is the internet. The best way to get out of a hole is to stop digging. So I want to begin there.

For the next 45 minutes or so, I’m going to pursue this question of an original sin with the help of a series of experts who were there. As you’ll find out, while some of them might not like the way I frame the question, no one disagrees with the basic premise: We’ve built fatal flaws into our digital lives and we’d better fix them fast.

 

My first stop is with Richard Purcell. We were at Microsoft together. He was chief privacy officer at Microsoft, one of the first people to ever hold that title, back when I was a cub reporter at msnbc.com, we hadn’t talked in years. I caught up with him on Data Privacy Day, a holiday that’s been celebrated for more than a decade in the U.S. though, perhaps you don’t celebrate it.

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Bob Sullivan: Okay. So I forgot by the way, to wish you a happy data, privacy day,

[00:07:52] Richard Purcell: This is Data Privacy Day, it is the 28th. And you know, today we in an odd way, Bob, in the United States, people like me and you and others ascross the United States are celebrating the Europeans decision to ensconce privacy as a fundamental human right. Um, There are people who would say, gosh, you know, we shouldn’t be celebrating foreign countries, foreign regions, uh, social awareness. We should be doing it ourselves.

[00:08:24] Bob Sullivan: Richard took what you’d think of today as a very unusual route to an executive job at a big software company.  But then when Richard was a teenager, there really weren’t big software companies.

Richard, when I was preparing to talk to you today, I read a little bit about you. And learned some things I didn’t know. Um, including you work at a railroad maintenance when you were a kid.

[00:08:49] Richard Purcell: I did. I did. I like to ask people about what they did in their 18th years.  So  imagine you graduated high school, you’re perhaps off to university or some other, life, study to launch yourself into adulthood, what’d you do? And, and I’ve asked that question for a lot of people and I’ve had fascinating answers. Privileged people haven’t done much in my opinion, and in my research, which is anecdotal.

But what I did is I went out on, the Union Pacific track lines and I repaired railroad tracks for two summers in a row actually to pay for, for university tuition. So I sweated in the hot sun swinging hammer and pushing railroad steel around and pulling out and putting back in creosote timbers for ties and all of that kind of stuff.

It’s what’s called a Gandy dancer. That’s when you have one foot on the ground and one foot on your shovel and you’re pushing rock underneath a railroad tie in order to secure it and keep it from moving in. That’s the Gandy dance. When you get 20 people out there, Gandy dancing, it looks pretty funny.

[00:10:01] Bob Sullivan:  Richard’s work on the railroad provides an interesting metaphorical starting point for our discussion.

[00:10:08] Richard Purcell: I’ve repaired a few derailments down in the on the Columbia River, where locomotives are on their side in a slough puffin and still running and pushing bubbles into the dirty water. It’s pretty, it’s pretty bizarre when you’re working on a river.

[00:10:23] Bob Sullivan: I feel like you just described the state of the internet.

[00:10:27] Richard Purcell: I know.. Don’t you think? Yeah. Laying on its side puffing. Yeah, no I I’m with you, you know, maybe, maybe that’s true, Bob, maybe it’s not. Because I predicted when Facebook faced its Cambridge Analytica scandal, which was a tremendous scandal and, and was, uh, not only an impeachable offense, but one which they should have been convicted for that their, that their value would eventually drop.

That it would take a while, but their value would eventually drop, frankly. It just hasn’t. The users of these internet services seem to be highly resistant to the social ramifications of the kind of negative effects of those companies. And, you know, is somebody worth $62 billion to exploit the the world’s social fabric? I don’t think so. That’s not a bargain I would want to make. But it’s one we have made.

[00:11:30] Bob Sullivan: Richard’s unusual path to the tech world colors his perceptions about the internet today, and about the role of power in social circles and in leadership

[00:11:39] Richard Purcell: I grew up … strictly the 50s, middle-class easy, no problem life, but you know, but absolutely no prosperity whatsoever. But what I saw was in everyday life is that there are these power relationships that are unfair. Those with power, even in a small town, like I grew up in are loathe to give up that power. And for some reason are inuredo the fact of their privilege;  they feel like their privilege is an entitlement.

I worked in the forest. I’ve done a lot of things. I ran a grocery store. I started a newspaper. I did all these things in communities and the vibrancy and the health of a community is what I find lacking. And leadership begins to be tainted by the objective of actually maintaining a power relationship instead of sharing it, or instead of using it more, to create more community vibrancy and health, I find those practical experiences made a big difference in my life.

[00:13:05] Bob Sullivan: It seems like you connect to privacy to power, maybe more than someone else might.

[00:13:11] Richard Purcell: [00:13:11] Oh, it is not power. Yeah. Yeah. It’s unquestionably about power. If I can know enough about you, I can manipulate you without a question. And, and that is a power relationship and the more I more successful I am in the more clever I am about that.And the more disguised I am about my motivation, uh, the more advantageous it is to me. But yes, the lack of privacy is the lack of power. Without question, because frankly it is the lack of dignity. It’s the lack of, of control over my own life. And in fact, the European Union … we celebrate data privacy day today.. the European Union’s basis of data protection is the freedom to develop a personality. That’s the language that they use when they promoted data protection and privacy some 40 years ago. And so the whole idea that you are free to develop your own personality indicates how much of a power relationship.

[00:14:21] Bob Sullivan: So if data equals power and privacy is about power. And 40 years ago, people were thinking about this, where do we go wrong? Where did the engineers drive the train off the tracks? If you will. Richard, what is the original sin of the internet?

[00:14:38] Richard Purcell: The original sin of the internet to me is a failure on our part to key in on the basic question of just because I can do something, doesn’t mean that I should do it. In other words, if I can engineer something … internet history demonstrates that because I can engineer it, then I should use it in any way that that engineering allows. And that’s just, isn’t how life should work. We’ve had many, many follies in our time over that. I don’t want to get overly dramatic about that, and I don’t want to use too harsh and examples of that, but the question really is the internet was developed as an electronic means of communication without regard to the content of that communication, largely because the engineers enabled scientists and researchers to communicate with one another. And they had benign intents for the most part. And it was never thought that anybody using it would have any other kind of intent.

[00:15:50] Bob Sullivan: Our first history lesson of this podcast. We’ll talk a lot about naive take going forward. And we’ll also talk about the word privacy, which I’m here to tell you is always a pretty big risk as a storyteller.

I think the conversation we’re having, you know, if we had it three or four years ago, it would have felt a really academic and be pretty boring to most people.

[00:16:12] Richard Purcell: It has been, you’re right. It has been very boring. I’ve bored people for a long time with this kind of. Gosh, what if, jeez, you know, shouldn’t it be this way or that way? And then the stark reality comes with Cambridge Analytica and, Oh my gosh, look at this. We can manipulate people.

[00:16:31] Bob Sullivan: But I think what is new to people is, okay, it’s one thing to manipulate them into buying a certain brand of toothpaste. It’s another thing to manipulate them. Into not believing in democracy anymore.

[00:16:42] Richard Purcell: Isn’t that the truth? I mean, now that nefarious, you know, characters really have some sophisticated controls, not just blunt instrument controls, but sophisticated controls, and have clear objectives.

It’s hard to understand isn’t it, Bob? What the clear objective of somebody who wants to create an unconstitutional limit on free and fair elections. What would their clear objective be? And there’s no way that’s a beneficent objective. That’s a very much a malicious objective, um, because it means about the accumulation and centralization of some kind of power and authority and control over large populations.

That’s what’s frightening me the most is there are…there are actors in the background who have a clear objective to create a centralized, powerful control mechanism. Um, and democracy is standing in its way.

[00:17:52] Bob Sullivan: Democracy is standing in the way. Thank goodness for that. Except when this new digital battleground for control was built, we didn’t have great models to rely on. So we borrowed heavily from the one we had and that, well, that might actually be the wrong left turn we made.

[00:18:10] Richard Purcell: In the United States, our commercial world runs largely by a model from telecommunications history, way back in radio and television that said, Hey, you know, it’s free to use. We just have advertising to support it.

So you don’t have to subscribe to it. And that was back when it was an airwaves broadcast methodology. That model, unfortunately, it’s persisting, even though it’s not an airwaves model anymore, that by which we transmit this information and communicate, but still that free access to online content persists with the underlying advertising model. And they have very strong reasons to believe that. Advertising as a model has its own dark side. And we see that and we see that from all kinds of points of view, of course. Um, but Google and Facebook are. They’re not technology companies as much as they are advertising companies, Google, and Facebook, and really all internet companies.

[00:19:14] Bob Sullivan: They’re all advertising companies now, but this is a very different kind of advertising. The best TV could do was create programming that probably attracted 18 to 34 year olds. Things have changed and changed fast

[00:19:32] Richard Purcell: Narrow casting means that I can put out a blog. I can put out a podcast, I can put out a website that has a very narrow audience, but the fact is even a narrow audience in global terms can have a large population and therefore create more advertising contacts. And as a result, Better monetization. Those issues are just a profound part of how the internet works.

[00:20:00] Bob Sullivan: It sounds obvious to say that privacy stands in the way of this business model. Is that true?

[00:20:06] Richard Purcell: [00:20:06] Absolutely. No question about it. Privacy is not friendly to the advertising model of monetization and content narrow casting because frankly. The basis of advertising is for the internet particularly, but has always been the demographics of the audience