Published On: May 14th, 2015/Categories: Cognition/6.1 min read/

Have You Joined the Circus?

Data breaches are a scary thing, especially when you’re directly affected. In recent times their growing number has brought IT Security headlines to the front page of every newspaper and a newfound consumer awareness of the concept of data security. For those of us in the InfoSec industry this has brought one benefit, our family finally understand what we do for a living.

Whether you’re a complete IT security layman or a hardcore Russian Black Hat, or more likely somewhere in between, we’re all users and consumers of IT, and are all under threat of an attack on our data, whatever your level of awareness. For that reason we all have to act responsibility with our data. Yet conceptually we still treat our data carelessly and handle it very differently to the rest of our possessions.

SnapChatToday saw 200,000 personal SnapChat photos leaked onto the 4chan website, stolen from unapproved third party apps that utilised the SnapChat service. Whilst this doesn’t sound particularly exciting news, this breach raises one crucial question for us all to answer, are YOU acting like a clown? And for many a SnapChat user the answer is a resounding yes. Not because a trusted app was breached and maybe not even for trusting the third party app itself. The idiocy of these users was creating the data in the first place. SnapChat was and is used frequently for sending naked, inappropriate and offensive photos to friends. Sometimes the shear existence of the asset, (and in this case data) is enough to create a problem for its owner. Whether it be driving a gold plated Ferrari around town or a sending a series of naked selfies, you’re acting like a clown by creating a potential problem for yourself. The asset itself isn’t necessarily “bad”, but it can create risk, often to the detriment of enjoying the asset. What good is the expensive fur coat if you’re too worried about wearing it in public?

We’re a pretty liberal bunch here at Cognition and believe that if you want to enjoy something legal in your own home then great, and you should expect full privacy for it. But if you wouldn’t want your private activities getting in the public domain, then we’d recommend you don’t go and put them in the public domain. Even if you pay for an app, a website or a cloud service, they still reside in the public domain and are protected by security measures you cannot see, audit or control.

Ultimately it all comes down to trust. Would you trust your multinational high street bank with your money more than the latest bitcoin repository website in Russia? There’s lots of reasons why you would, and that rationale needs to be extended to every place we store our data. So the more critical the asset/data, the greater the care that is required and in turn the greater the trust necessary when using a third party. Personally I wouldn’t recommend taking naked selfies in the first place, but if that is indeed your thing and you do want to share them, then iCloud and SnapChat shouldn’t be on your list of chosen options. If you’re into “specialist” activities, you need specialist tools.

As with anything in life, the starting point for anyone in IT land should be not to do stupid stuff. Personal photos may be an obvious example but what about your passwords, files and banking information? Everything needs consideration and as soon as you put private information in someone else’s hands it is YOUR responsibility to protect it and your neck on the line if they don’t.

Leave clowning around to the professionals and stay safe with your data.

The post Have You Joined the Circus? appeared first on Cognition.

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About Cognition

Cognition is a Specialist Cyber Security Integrator, focused on delivering the very best security guidance and providing an unprecedented level of service. The team is comprised solely of industry experts with each providing the best intelligence with a real world approach. It is this philosophy that enables Cognition to cut through the complexity of today’s threat landscape and provide the latest innovative security solutions that deliver true business value. Learn more about Cognition at https://cognitionsecure.com.

 

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About the Author: Carl Gottlieb
I'm the trusted privacy advisor to leading tech companies, helping them gain maximum advantage through the right privacy strategy. My consultancy company Cognition provides a range of privacy and security services including Data Protection Officers, in-depth assessments and virtual security engineers. Get in touch if you'd like to learn more.

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