Data Security: Who's Stealing Your Stuff?

OK, I'll admit it. I've had a strange fascination with the Edward Snowden story. I hasten to add that it's not because of the supposedly startling revelations about NSA snooping. I and many others pointed out some time ago that this was the logical outcome of the various anti-terrorism laws passed by Congress. I'm fascinated by how lax data security is at the National Security Agency.

The idea that a low-level contract admin, with only three months on the job, could abscond with four laptops loaded with highly classified information boggles my mind. I mean, your organization is a whole lot more secure, isn't it?

I was going to ask you that question, but it turns out that someone is already doing that. Verizon compiles an annual Data Breach Investigation Report in cooperation with 18 governmental and private organizations:

The 2013 report (for incidents in 2012) covers more than 47,000 reported security incidents, 621 confirmed data disclosures, and at least 44 million compromised records. Remember that these are only the incidents that have been discovered (the report says 66 percent of breaches take "months or more" to discover) and reported (not everyone is willing to step up and say they've been breached).

The good news, in light of Snowden-like attacks, is that 92 percent of the confirmed data breaches (571, by my math) can be traced to outsiders. Don't feel too smug, though; 69 percent of the security incidents (32,430, again, by my math) can be traced to insiders.

Speaking of insiders, I hope you're clamping down on sys admins and other IT personnel with superuser privileges, but according to the report, you might be looking in the wrong place. "Data theft involving programmers, administrators, or executives certainly makes for interesting anecdotes, but is still less common in our overall dataset than incidents driven by employees with little to no technical aptitude or organizational power."

Sys admins were at fault in only 16 percent of the incidents, while 57 percent were attributable to end users. How do you spot the potential security threats among your employees?

"The CERT Insider Threat Center at the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute has produced a body of research on the malicious insiders and their behavioral characteristics. According to their research, insiders intent on or considering malicious actions often exhibit identifiable characteristics and/or warning signs before engaging in those acts."

Here are some of the warning signs Verizon cited.

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Recognize any of that behavior?

There's a whole lot more in the report, including the methods used for breaches, incidents by market sector, and sources of state-sponsored breaches. You can download your own copy, but I'll warn you not to read it just before going to bed. It will cause nightmares.