Data Breach: Problems and Solutions

Another day, another massive data breach! Are you wondering how this keeps happening? To start with, writing secure code is very hard. Whether its written in-house or licensed, the code is not always well-written or written with security in mind. That's because the coders don't have a horse in this race. They just want to meet their deadlines. Their bosses just want to finish the project and get a raise, and so on down the chain. Security then becomes Someone Else's Problem.

Your hotel, social media platform, store etc. probably licensed that code so they rely on patches. Many vendors generally have their software's security-tested by simply waiting for their customers to tell them how it got hacked. Truth be told, they know they won't even lose any customers as a result, because their competitors are doing the same thing.

Even if your code is the most secure it could be, it could still get compromised. The underlying libraries could be hacked. Even if they were secure, the OS could be hacked. Even if that was secure, other applications could be hacked. Even if the whole system was secure, an adjacent system could be hacked as a way in, Even if all these things were secure, the network could be hacked, or there could be a packet sniffer on the network, or computer screens could be broadcasting their screens, or the people could be engineered or paid off, and so on and on and on. There is a myriads of ways you can hack and there are many thousands more hackers trying to hack than sys admins trying to protect.

Now you're probably asking is my bank secure? Is my health information secure? Is ANYTHING secure? The short answer is no but... For example, the one thing that makes me really mad is that they lose people's passwords in these data breaches. That shouldn't happen. Passwords can be encrypted with the password itself as the key. That way no one will be able to decrypt it, except the person who knows the password or can guess it. Why would you want to keep plain text passwords or passwords encrypted with a single key anyway? Certain things should be strongly encrypted. Password, social security numbers, anything that is not used when the customer is not logged in.

If your data is not worth anything substantial, you won't get the real professional hackers waste their time on it. Most businesses and ordinary people are going to be just fine if they follow some simple security protocols. If you make your system really secure, there are plenty of other low hanging fruit the hackers can go after. These things then are part of the "but..." in our favor.

If however your data is worth something, then the price of security is eternal vigilance. Every good sys/ admin runs their own set of custom security monitors on top of everything else. These days computers are fast enough so you can use AI techniques to protect even the most complex systems.

The next world war will not be fought with stones, but electrons. AI hacker vs AI admin. Unfortunately the law is currently on the side of the bad guys. They can build their huge botnets and if the good guys try to clean their bots off the offending devices, they will be breaking the law. Try reporting a hacked server or computers to their admins. If you made a report every second you'd still be reporting well into the next century.

The powers that be have their heads firmly lodged elsewhere. These are problems beyond their understanding. If I had a penny for every time I looked into the glazed eyes of a lawyer or law-enforcement personnel, or a judges grappling with these issues, I'd have a buck or two. If I were a betting man, I would put my money on the hackers for now. Sooner or later, however something so heinous will happen - not even by the usual suspects, but some high-school kid with more intelligence than control - that it may even finally tip the balance. It is simply stupid to sit by and wait for that to happen.