Comedian Lily Tomlin rose to fame on the 1960s comedy hit, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, as Ernestine, the rude, sarcastic switchboard operator for Ma Bell.
She would tap into customers’ calls, interrupt them, make snide remarks about their personal lives. And her victims included celebrities as much as run-of-the-mill customers.
Lily Tomlin as Ernestine
She introduced herself as working for “the phone company, serving everyone from presidents and kings to the scum of the earth.”
But perhaps the line for which her character is best remembered was: “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”
Watching Ernestine on Laugh-In was a blast for millions of TV viewers. But facing such corporate arrogance in real-life is no laughing matter.
Clearly, too many companies take the same attitude as Ernestine: “We don’t care. We don’t have to.”
This is especially true for companies that are supposed to safeguard their customers’ most sensitive information–such as their credit card numbers, addresses, emails and phone numbers.
An October 22, 2014 “commentary” published in Forbes magazine raised the highly disturbing question: “Cybersecurity: Does Corporate America Really Care?”
And the answer is clearly: No.
Its author is John Hering, co-founder and executive director of Lookout, which bills itself as “the world leader in mobile security for consumers and enterprises alike.”
Click here: Cybersecurity: Does corporate America really care?
October, 2014 proved a bad month for credit card-using customers of Kmart, Staples and Dairy Queen.
All these corporations reported data breeches involving the theft of credit card numbers of countless numbers of customers.
Earlier breaches had hit Target, Home Depot and JPMorgan/Chase.
And on February 5, 2015, health insurance giant Anthem Inc. announced that hackers had breached its computer system and accessed the medical records of tens of millions of its customers and employees.
Anthem, the nation’s second-largest health insurer, said the infiltrated database held records on up to 80 million people.
Among the customers’ information accessed:
- Names
- Birthdates
- Social Security numbers
- Member ID numbers
- Addresses
- Phone numbers
- Email addresses and
- Employment information.
Some of the customer data may also include details on their income.
Click here: Anthem hack exposes data on 80 million; experts warn of identity theft – LA Times
Bad as that news was, worse was to come.
A February 5 story by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Anthem stored the Social Security numbers of 80 million customers without encrypting them.
The company believes that hackers used a stolen employee password to access the database
Anthem’s alleged reason for refusing to encrypt such sensitive data: Doing so would have made it harder for the company’s employees to track health care trends or share data with state and Federal health providers.
Anthem spokeswoman Kristin Binns blamed the data breach on employers and government agencies who “require us to maintain a member’s Social Security number in our systems so that their systems can uniquely identify their members.”
She said that Anthem encrypts personal data when it moves in or out of its database–but not where it is stored.
This is a commonplace practice in the healthcare industry.
The FBI is now investigating the hack.
According to an anonymous source, the hackers used malware that has been used almost exclusively by Chinese cyberspies.
Naturally, China has denied any wrongdoing. With a completely straight face, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said:
“We maintain a cooperative, open and secure cyberspace, and we hope that countries around the world will make concerted efforts to that end.”
He also said that the charge that the hackers were Chinese was “groundless.”
Click here: Health Insurer Anthem Didn’t Encrypt Stolen Data – WSJ
Meanwhile, John Hering’s complaints remain as valid today as they did last October.
“One thing is clear,” writes Hering. “CEOs need to put security on their strategic agendas alongside revenue growth and other issues given priority in boardrooms.”
Hering warns that “CEOs don’t seem to be making security a priority.” And he offers several reasons for this:
- The sheer number of data compromises;
- Relatively little consumer outcry;
- Almost no impact on the companies’ standing on Wall Street;
- Executives may consider such breaches part of the cost of doing business.
“There’s a short-term mindset and denial of convenience in board rooms,” writes Hering.
“Top executives don’t realize their systems are vulnerable and don’t understand the risks. Sales figures and new products are top of mind; shoring up IT systems aren’t.”
There are three ways corporations can be forced to start behaving responsibly on this issue.
- Smart attorneys need to start filing class-action lawsuits against companies that refuse to take steps to protect their customers’ private information. There is a name for such behavior: Criminal negligence. And there are laws carrying serious penalties for it.
- There must be Federal legislation to ensure that multi-million-dollar fines are levied against such companies–and especially their CEOs–when such data breaches occur.
- Congress should enact legislation allowing for the prosecution of CEOs whose companies’ negligence leads to such massive data breaches. They should be considered as accessories to crime, and, if convicted, sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
Only then will the CEO mindset of “We don’t care, we don’t have to” be replaced with: “We care, because our heads will roll if we don’t.”
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DATA SECURITY BREACHES: “WE DON’T CARE, WE DON’T HAVE TO”: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Social commentary on July 21, 2015 at 9:35 amIt’s become as routine as the robbery of the corner liquor store.
Name-brand companies, trusted by millions, hit with massive data breaches that compromise their customers’ and/or employees’ most sensitive financial and personal information.
Among those companies:
Click here: Data Breach Tracker: All the Major Companies That Have Been Hacked | Money.com
And as of July 15, Ashley Madison joined this list.
Ashley Madison is, of course, the notorious website for cheating wives and husbands.
Launched in 2001, its catchy slogan is: “Life is short. Have an affair.”
One of its ads featured a photo of a woman apparently kneeling at the feet of a bare-chested man, her hand passionately clawing at his belt. Next to her was the caption: “Join FREE & change your life today. Guaranteed!”
Ashley Madison claims to have more than 37 million members.
Calling themselves “The Impact Team,” hackers appear to be enraged at the company’s “full delete” service, which promises to completely erase a user’s profile and all associated data for a $19 fee.
“Full Delete netted [Avid Life Media, the parent company of Ashley Madison] $1.7 million in revenue in 2014,” the hackers were quoted as saying in an online manifesto. “It’s also a complete lie.
“Users almost always pay with credit card; their purchase details are not removed as promised, and include real names and address, which is of course the most important information the users want removed.”
On July 20, Avid Life Media defended the service, and said it would make it free.
The hackers demanded: “AM [Ashley Madison] AND EM [Established Men] MUST SHUT DOWN IMMEDIATELY PERMANENTLY.
“We have taken over all systems in your entire office and production domains, all customer information databases, source code repositories, financial records, emails.
“Shutting down AM and EM will cost you, but non-compliance will cost you more.”
The hackers threatened to “release all customer records, including profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails.”
Interestingly, the hackers did not target the company’s “CougarLife” website, which caters to female members seeking “a young stud.”
Avid Life Media assured its customers that it had hired “one of the world’s top IT security teams” to work on the breach:
“At this time, we have been able to secure our sites, and close the unauthorized access points. We are working with law enforcement agencies, which are investigating this criminal act.”
This statement gives new meaning to the phrase, “Closing the barn door after the cow has gotten out.”
It’s almost comical, except for the fact that the marriages of millions of people are likely to be threatened by the release of such information.
And it raises the question: Why wasn’t this “top IT security team” hired at the outset?
A website offering cheating services to those wealthy enough to afford high-priced fees is an obvious target for hackers. After all, its database is a blackmailer’s dream-come-true.
This latest breach comes about two months after a similar dating site, Adult FriendFinder–with an estimated 64 million members–was hit with a similar attack.
Again, it was clear that a site like this would be a prime target for those seeking information for blackmail. Yet apparently its owners didn’t care enough about the privacy of their customers to provide adequate security.
“Without question, this is incredibly valuable information,” said J.J. Thompson, founder and chief executive of Rook Security, an IT security firm.
“[Ashley Madison’s customers] are now vulnerable to a significant secret.”
As usual when a corporation’s data breach occurs, Ashley Madison issued a reassuring statement: “We are working with law enforcement agencies, which are investigating this criminal act.
“Any and all parties responsible for this act of cyber-terrorism will be held responsible.”
Brave-sounding words. But if the hackers make good on their threat, many prominent men in business and politics may soon find themselves facing expensive divorces.
And if that happens, at least some of them may well decide to take out their anger and embarrassment on the websits that assured them that the highly private information they shared was “100% secure.”
That could set a precedent for lawsuits by other victims of such data breaches. Which, in turn, could force profit-obsessed corporations to responsibly protect the highly sensitive information entrusted to them.
There is an important lesson to be learned from this latest disaster.
“Stuff that’s online is pretty much not private, no matter what you might hope or think or wish for,” said Geoff Webb, senior director of solution strategy for security management firm NetIQ.
Old records, like transactions and account details, remain in company databases long after you’ve deleted an account, he said, because the company needs them for tax and other business purposes.
“There used to be an old saying that everybody ends up naked on the Internet at some point,” said Webb.
Although that was meant figuratively, patrons of websites like Ashley Madison could soon find it applying literally.
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