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case, individuals are receiving $10 per year of premium paid up to a maximum of $30 per
individual.

If the AvMed settlement precedent is followed in other cases, costs for companies who have
experienced a breach have the potential to spiral wildly out of control. Following the logic of this
ruling, a case could be made that every consumer purchasing goods at Target, for example,
had a reasonable expectation of data security when swiping their payment card, and as such, a
small portion of their purchases over the last several years should be paid back. This seems
highly unlikely, but the incentive structure of class action lawsuits, where legal counsel receives
a large percentage of the settlement, could influence this line of thinking.

Preventative and proactive: How to thwart data theft

Whether the AvMed settlement spawns more class action suits around data breaches or not,
companies need to mitigate the financial damage posed by these attacks. This requires a
fundamental organizational shift by making security a high priority within the organization – and
not just within the IT department. CEOs and CFOs need to participate in an organization’s
security strategy as well. The recent media spotlight on breaches and their costs has certainly
attracted the attention of boards and senior executives worldwide. To mitigate against data
breaches, consider the following steps:

Tighten up password protection policies. With recent vulnerabilities like the OpenSSL
Heartbleed bug, it’s clear that relying on simple passwords without constant rotation leaves
organizations vulnerable to credential theft. Enforce strong password practices in your entire
organization; for both end users and non-human accounts. That means requiring long, complex
passwords and automated scheduling of password rotations to protect against hackers and
social engineering.

Be aware of user activity. The reality is, as much as you’d like to keep a keen eye on all of
your end-users’ workstation activities, putting a surveillance camera on everyone’s desk
wouldn’t exactly boost morale. Instead, begin with your IT teams. Utilize best practices around
keylogging, auditing and live monitoring of IT admin sessions to ensure a detailed audit of user
activity. Monitoring behavior and events can help you detect a suspicious pattern to stop an
insider threat before it occurs.

Circle the wagons around privileged accounts. Traditional spending on the perimeter is no
longer sufficient and more attention needs to be paid to how breaches are caused and
escalated. An often overlooked area is the inadequate management of privileged accounts –
these are the proverbial “keys to the kingdom” trusted to the IT administrators, but typically with
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