For years, I've been trying my best to stay low-key when it comes to my personal information on the internet. I don't create new accounts, I never cross-login with my email address, I don't use phones. Certainly not perfect, but a lot of times I'm preferring privacy over convenience.
At the same time, my government and society at large is pushing more and more for "digital everything". It's great when it works. But to me, every new service translates to a new opportunity for my data to be leaked.
I think one reason why we're still seeing so many breaches is that security is hard and thus expensive - and on the other hand, other than customer push-back, companies or other providers have pretty much nothing to worry about when their data gets extorted. To me, this is impossible. When I give my private data to them, I'm giving them something very valuable. If being careless with that value basically has no consequences, the incentives to care are low.
We need to establish measures of accountability for data holders. Not securing customer data appropriately needs to be persecutable, and the affected parties need to be given a right for compensation. Of course, that's not going to happen. It would be difficult to implement in practice, if at all possible. But as long as there is no monetary incentive for data holders to be as careful as possible, the laxness is going to continue.
Depends where they are in the world. I _think_ GDPR would be a good enough business reason, as they set a ticking clock of 72 hours from the breach to notifying individuals who are in the breach. And the fines involved are pretty steep (almost effing vertical for some).
At least in germany it feels like you need a very dedicated and persistent person to make the case against a company/service (bonus points if they get media attention). Other countries are a bit better but it generally is not very consistent.
The enforcement for most small to mid-sized companies is often just not present and resources for relevant agencies are often only reluctantly allocated. Ime, in government institutions it is generally not very respected as it "impedes progress".
For tech B2B companies where the founders or executive team hold the majority stake in the organisation, yes. A failure to disclose or respond when there is a public notice on an .onion address, or a sample set of your customer data has been published online, creates tangible, direct commercial impact.
You should expect every deal in your pipeline to stall. Your product and company will be flagged by every GRC team, and every stakeholder trying to purchase your product will suddenly need to go to risk committees, or into meetings with CISOs, CTOs, and founders, to explain why buying from you is worth the risk compared to competitors who have not been breached.
If you have not addressed the issue, it becomes a literal deal-breaker. The sooner you write the press release, notify customers, and deal with the underlying problems, the sooner you can turn the incident into a credible story about how you responded, contained it, and improved.
If you do not respond, or you deny it, your deals are dead.
The reason I prefaced this with companies where the founders or executive team hold a majority stake is that I sincerely do not believe the same incentives do not exist for most other companies. The stock price is not meaningfully impacted by incidents like this; it is more affected by vibes, market conditions, and the general tech economy. There are a hundred things that will move the stock price before cybersecurity and data incidents do.
Operating revenue and profit, however, will be impacted. Executives on a death march for growth, who understand that an incident like this can wipe away a year of progress (and essentially their life's work), are far more likely to take it seriously. They are directly exposed to the commercial consequences.
The companies you see trying to sweep this under the rug, or outright ignore it, are usually one of two things.
1. They are so out of touch with their customers that they would rather listen to a lawyer chasing the “ideal legal-risk outcome” than pursue the best financial, customer and cybersecurity risk outcome. In my experience these are executives who are independently wealthy or already come from wealth, and their priority is simply keeping the status quo.
2. They are simply not incentivised to deal with it properly (carrot, nor stick). That is: they don't lose their bonus, they don't face the axe, and they aren't rewarded for doing anything "well" in response to it. They might say they're "inherently" exposed because if the business is impacted, so are they (stock price, performance bonuses) -- but that's incredibly disingenuous, as it's pretty much always not a material difference to them.
For B2C or B2B doing "traditional" stuff? No. The incentive simply just isn't there.
At this stage just expect that every accounts will get leaked or rooted, it's a matter of when, not if...
Use varying email `plus addressing` (john+am2604@foo.com), varying passwords or passkey and 2FA on anything remotely important (use of your identity, not just financials).
I recommend people use proper email aliasing, not plus addressing. Duckduckgo makes a free one that's can integrate into Bitwarden, if you have iCloud+ Apple's($0.99/month) hide my email is good. Addy.io and SimpleLogin are the best and allow PGP encryption to prevent another party having access to your emails, but they are paid for full features.
> Organizations like the IAB require that advertisers normalize email addresses so that they can be correlated and tracked, regardless of users' privacy wishes.
It's not needed. There are already alternatives that could take its place. Some of them are able to actually show you what data leaked instead of leaving you blind of what was actually included in the breach.
I don't think he meant "show the actual data," I think he meant "what leaked? My name, address, phone number, email, medical records, payment history, bank account number?"
We get a "your private data is now public" email, but knowing exactly what data turns that from a depressing statement on how much corporations value their customers' privacy into something actionable.
For years, I've been trying my best to stay low-key when it comes to my personal information on the internet. I don't create new accounts, I never cross-login with my email address, I don't use phones. Certainly not perfect, but a lot of times I'm preferring privacy over convenience.
At the same time, my government and society at large is pushing more and more for "digital everything". It's great when it works. But to me, every new service translates to a new opportunity for my data to be leaked.
I think one reason why we're still seeing so many breaches is that security is hard and thus expensive - and on the other hand, other than customer push-back, companies or other providers have pretty much nothing to worry about when their data gets extorted. To me, this is impossible. When I give my private data to them, I'm giving them something very valuable. If being careless with that value basically has no consequences, the incentives to care are low.
We need to establish measures of accountability for data holders. Not securing customer data appropriately needs to be persecutable, and the affected parties need to be given a right for compensation. Of course, that's not going to happen. It would be difficult to implement in practice, if at all possible. But as long as there is no monetary incentive for data holders to be as careful as possible, the laxness is going to continue.
Is there ANY business motivation for any corporation to open such information up sooner than later?
Depends where they are in the world. I _think_ GDPR would be a good enough business reason, as they set a ticking clock of 72 hours from the breach to notifying individuals who are in the breach. And the fines involved are pretty steep (almost effing vertical for some).
A minor problem with GDPR is enforcement.
At least in germany it feels like you need a very dedicated and persistent person to make the case against a company/service (bonus points if they get media attention). Other countries are a bit better but it generally is not very consistent.
The enforcement for most small to mid-sized companies is often just not present and resources for relevant agencies are often only reluctantly allocated. Ime, in government institutions it is generally not very respected as it "impedes progress".
For tech B2B companies where the founders or executive team hold the majority stake in the organisation, yes. A failure to disclose or respond when there is a public notice on an .onion address, or a sample set of your customer data has been published online, creates tangible, direct commercial impact.
You should expect every deal in your pipeline to stall. Your product and company will be flagged by every GRC team, and every stakeholder trying to purchase your product will suddenly need to go to risk committees, or into meetings with CISOs, CTOs, and founders, to explain why buying from you is worth the risk compared to competitors who have not been breached.
If you have not addressed the issue, it becomes a literal deal-breaker. The sooner you write the press release, notify customers, and deal with the underlying problems, the sooner you can turn the incident into a credible story about how you responded, contained it, and improved.
If you do not respond, or you deny it, your deals are dead.
The reason I prefaced this with companies where the founders or executive team hold a majority stake is that I sincerely do not believe the same incentives do not exist for most other companies. The stock price is not meaningfully impacted by incidents like this; it is more affected by vibes, market conditions, and the general tech economy. There are a hundred things that will move the stock price before cybersecurity and data incidents do.
Operating revenue and profit, however, will be impacted. Executives on a death march for growth, who understand that an incident like this can wipe away a year of progress (and essentially their life's work), are far more likely to take it seriously. They are directly exposed to the commercial consequences.
The companies you see trying to sweep this under the rug, or outright ignore it, are usually one of two things.
1. They are so out of touch with their customers that they would rather listen to a lawyer chasing the “ideal legal-risk outcome” than pursue the best financial, customer and cybersecurity risk outcome. In my experience these are executives who are independently wealthy or already come from wealth, and their priority is simply keeping the status quo.
2. They are simply not incentivised to deal with it properly (carrot, nor stick). That is: they don't lose their bonus, they don't face the axe, and they aren't rewarded for doing anything "well" in response to it. They might say they're "inherently" exposed because if the business is impacted, so are they (stock price, performance bonuses) -- but that's incredibly disingenuous, as it's pretty much always not a material difference to them.
For B2C or B2B doing "traditional" stuff? No. The incentive simply just isn't there.
GDPR, CCPA, whatever, hasn't moved the dial.
At this stage just expect that every accounts will get leaked or rooted, it's a matter of when, not if...
Use varying email `plus addressing` (john+am2604@foo.com), varying passwords or passkey and 2FA on anything remotely important (use of your identity, not just financials).
I recommend people use proper email aliasing, not plus addressing. Duckduckgo makes a free one that's can integrate into Bitwarden, if you have iCloud+ Apple's($0.99/month) hide my email is good. Addy.io and SimpleLogin are the best and allow PGP encryption to prevent another party having access to your emails, but they are paid for full features.
> Organizations like the IAB require that advertisers normalize email addresses so that they can be correlated and tracked, regardless of users' privacy wishes.
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/email-aliasing/#over-plus-a...
The + trick is useless to protect you, obviously. Instead, use a a service like simplelogin to create unique emails for every place you sign in.
>why is it still needed?
It's not needed. There are already alternatives that could take its place. Some of them are able to actually show you what data leaked instead of leaving you blind of what was actually included in the breach.
This is a bad idea, for multiple reasons.
https://www.troyhunt.com/here-are-all-the-reasons-i-dont-mak...
I don't think he meant "show the actual data," I think he meant "what leaked? My name, address, phone number, email, medical records, payment history, bank account number?"
We get a "your private data is now public" email, but knowing exactly what data turns that from a depressing statement on how much corporations value their customers' privacy into something actionable.
This information is shown on the site of the breach, as example: https://haveibeenpwned.com/Breach/BakerDistributing
Can you give examples of these alternatives?
there will be more data breaches.
Google and Apple are throttling hotfix updates (for app developers) as tons of code pushes to their infra (by vibe coders) is straining their system.
The are fixing this by throttling updates to minimum 3 days review period.
so good luck fixing the vulnerability or data leaks in your apps.
I am not sure I get the connection between AI code holding up review processes and data breaches.
The post made a pretty clear claim, I thought: the volume of apps being sent through is so extreme that they can't keep up with their review process.