Page 7 - Cyber Warnings December 2015

Why Companies Need To Encrypt And Throw Away The Key

by Dr. Leo A. Guthart

Should the government be allowed to access encrypted messages? This is a national security and
privacy rights tradeoff debate that we need to be having. What CANNOT be debated is the very
different, and important, issue of the need for commercial enterprises to do a much better job of
protecting their own data from hackers with evil intentions.

No privacy rights tradeoffs or governmental “back doors” are involved here.

Only a few weeks ago, VTech Holdings, the maker of e-learning toys for toddlers, admitted that
hackers stole information, including names, birth dates, head shots and chat message logs for more
than six million children and nearly five million adults. Not even children are safe when it comes to
these types of breaches.

That is still relatively minor by comparison when you consider the 110 million customers who may
have had their credit card or other personal data stolen in the 2013 breach of Target Corp., or the
more than 80 million customer accounts at JP Morgan Chase that hackers were able to access in
the largest bank breach ever just last year.

One common, and very dangerous, misconception many executives still have when it comes to
cybersecurity is that they believe they can protect their systems with firewalls and related software
in the first place.

Here is a reality check – not only can we not stop the hackers from breaching this “perimeter
protection”, but if it hasn’t already happened, the chances are good that you, too, will fall victim to a
breach.

According to IBM, there were one billion records breached in 2014 alone. Cybercrime now costs
businesses in the U.S. up to $100 billion each year and that number promises to climb as hackers
grow more sophisticated in their efforts.

Before you jump off the ledge, understand that just because you are vulnerable to being hacked
doesn’t mean your information needs to be at risk. New methods of data encryption can now solve
this problem readily, with technology that allows for data, down to the smallest of levels, to be split
and physically dispersed, making it completely unreadable to any prying eyes.

The fact that a relatively select few are employing this new technology when it is so readily available
is worrisome.

The fatal flaw leaving companies exposed to security breaches is that many are protecting their
networks and firewalls, but not the data within. This can be compared to a bank locking its doors
at night, but leaving the door to its vault wide open.

7 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – December 2015 Edition
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