Sensitive Data Exposure – What Does It Mean For Your Business And How To Avoid It

May 19th, 2023 Ben Herzberg Leave a comment

In the modern global data ecosystem, businesses collect and hold a lot of sensitive consumer data. Company databases store sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, house addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, and email addresses. Although this data is an asset for most companies, it becomes a risk in case of a data breach.

Sensitive data needs to be protected against all unauthorized access to prevent exposure to potential hackers and fraudulent activities. When unauthorized individuals access consumer data, it can be quite costly. Statistics show that the cost of a data breach in 2022 stood at $4.24 million per breach. It also compromises privacy and can lead to stolen identities and fraud. Therefore, if this happens to your business, the consequences could be severe enough to affect your operations.

In this article we’ll explain how does sensitive data exposure happen and how to avoid it?

What is sensitive data exposure?

Sensitive data exposure occurs when unauthorized people access personal information or company data. It usually happens when a company accidentally exposes sensitive information due to inefficient security measures, poor encryption, misconfigurations, and inappropriate data systems.

Data exposure leads to unlawful destruction, alteration, and loss of sensitive data. Here are some of the attacks that expose sensitive data.

SQL injection attacks — they occur when an attacker introduces malicious queries into your system to extract sensitive user information with a simple command.
Insider attacks — they happen when a current or former employee with authorized access breaks into your system to steal data.
Phishing — designed to mislead users to get them to offer sensitive information via text messages or emails.

How does data exposure happen?

Most organizations have invested heavily in complex IT systems to boost their data security. Despite that, sensitive data is still vulnerable to exposure either through employee errors or poor data control systems. To effectively protect your data, you need to know the different methods of data exposure.

Data in transit

Data is always traversing through networks, servers, or people. For instance, when you send an email, the information moves from on-premise to the cloud. As data is being exchanged between application programming interfaces (APIs) and servers, it’s at risk of interception.

Cybercriminals exploit any security flaws between two applications or servers to get the data. Sensitive data is exposed during transit due to a lack of encryption, poor data control policies, or when employees use insecure connections.

Data at rest

As of 2022, 60% of all corporate data was stored in the cloud. While this helps companies with data management, they face dangerous cloud data risks. In an average company, 157,000 sensitive records are at risk of being exposed through various channels, representing $28 million in data-breach risk.

The security of stored data depends on the protocols in place to protect it. The information is prone to SQL injections and other attacks when there’s no proper encryption on company files and databases. Additionally, sensitive data at rest can be exposed if there are misconfiguration errors, such as having private information available on the internet for anyone to access.

How to avoid sensitive data exposure

Exposure of sensitive data can be prevented by taking the right steps to mitigate the risk and quickly detect potential breaches. Here are some of the steps you should take.

Classify your data

To avoid sensitive data exposure in your business, you first need to know where all your sensitive data is. For instance, you should know which files and databases contain customer information and which ones hold important passwords. This way, you can devise better ways to secure the data.

In order to avoid sensitive data exposure, create an automated classification system that gives a clear picture of the location, owners, type of security, and governance measures your business has.

Improve your access control

Some data attacks happen due to poor sensitive data visibility. For example, you’ll find that some businesses don’t know which files or databases contain sensitive information, and where the data — like passwords, and customer information like Social Security numbers — is stored. When your business has poor visibility and classification, you can’t track and secure all the data.

One of the ways to boost your data security is by improving and automating your data access service. This determines who can access files and the networks in your business and for how long. Develop an automated access management policy that determines the privilege of every user that does not rely on manual granting and accessing of sensitive data. With proper access controls, only the intended individuals can view and alter sensitive data.

Regular testing

Attackers use different vulnerabilities to gain access to sensitive data. For instance, if your system is not properly encrypted, it becomes easier to penetrate and get this information. However, with regular penetration testing, you can detect weaknesses and strengthen security measures.

Penetration testing simulates how real-world attackers use your vulnerabilities to gain access to your data. Conducting these tests regularly provides insights into your defenses. You can hire a data expert to launch these penetration tests if you process sensitive information on a larger scale. Once you have the results, you can add extra layers of security to protect your business from potential data breaches.

Summary

Businesses must keep sensitive data unexposed. While sensitive data is at risk when in transit or at rest, you can protect your business by ensuring that you conduct regular testing, classify the data, and improve your access control measures. Additionally, you can safeguard data by using tokenization which protects social security numbers, credit cards and other well-defined databases.

It’s important to pay attention to your data, especially due to the emergence of for-profit attackers who are looking to re-sell sensitive information or hold businesses for ransom.

Author’s bio

Ben is an experienced tech leader and book author with a background in endpoint security, analytics, and application & data security. Ben filled roles such as the CTO of Cynet, and Director of Threat Research at Imperva. Ben is the Chief Scientist for Satori, the DataSecOps platform, as well as VP of Marketing.

Archives, Banking, Global Trade Daily

3 Biggest Threats to a Bank’s Cybersecurity

June 1st, 2021 Jim Hughes Leave a comment

Our world is changing. It is undergoing rapid and massive digitization. It would be safe to claim that we have the global pandemic to blame for that. However, we believe that we would have gotten there anyway given the trajectory of our current technological advancements.

Education, various business processes一almost everything can already be done online these days. The world has passed a point of no return and will never go back to what it was pre-pandemic. What has been made digital will remain digital. While this new normal does offer a lot of conveniences, it also presented a new set of challenges, particularly in cybersecurity. And of all the industries that have gone online, it is probably the world of banking that we are most concerned for. What are the financial problems that these changes will pose?

In this article, we are going to talk about the biggest threats to cybersecurity in the banking sector. Let’s start with the most basic: unencrypted data.

Unencrypted Data

Data encryption is the process of converting data from a readable format into a decoded one. Various institutions usually have their own specific codes. In this way, no one would be able to easily read their data outside the firm, should their data fall into the wrong hands.

Think of data encryption as both the vanguard and the rear of cybersecurity. An effective encryption process can deter people with malicious intent. And if they ever get their hands on the said data, they would still have to try to decrypt it anyway before it can be of any use to them. These added security measures can be truly valuable for any financial institution.

Malware

The next imminent threat is malware. While we have no doubt that most financial institutions work with competent cybersecurity agencies in order to protect their devices from being hacked, it is also true that this might not include their staff.

A breach into a system is still possible through a compromised employee phone. All he needs to do is to connect to the office’s computer network and a hacker can already begin accessing compromising information.

The same thing can happen when you’re collaborating with a third-party service. We understand how convenient it is to employ a third-party service. It can potentially save time, money, and other resources.

However, it can also expose your financial institution to certain risks if your partner doesn’t have effective cybersecurity measures in place.

The best solution to prevent potential attacks in this manner remains to be adequate employee training. Make your staff aware of the very real (and billion-dollar) repercussions of a security breach.

It is also possible to limit the access of your employees. Just let them access the minimum data that they need in order to perform their tasks. This is for their own protection as well.

Finally, running comprehensive background checks and being particularly careful with the people you hire will also help. Just make sure that your checks remain compliant to prevent any issues.

As for business partners, one should never be afraid to ask about potential partners’ cybersecurity efforts.

Data Manipulation

Another big concern is data manipulation. There are three ways in how your data can be manipulated. First, it can be stolen, copied, and distributed elsewhere, much like how hackers are able to create realistic company pages for phishing. This is called spoofing.

Data can also be deleted. This is particularly true for bigger financial institutions with competing firms. An attacker might not really have the intention to steal information but to mess up the system by deleting crucial bits of data.

Can you imagine the panic that will ensue if a financial institution suddenly lost all its client information?

Finally, data can be edited without the owner’s knowledge. Despite the common belief that data-stealing is the worst cybersecurity attack that can happen, we still believe data alteration worse. That’s because this attack is a bit difficult to detect right away.

It’s easy for bigger companies to detect if their data has been stolen and being used with malicious intent. Data deletion is a complete giveaway. You will learn that an attack has happened right after it did. There’s even a chance of stopping it halfway if you’re lucky to catch it early enough.

What makes data alteration particularly detrimental is the fact that it can’t easily be detected. A firm can go on for months without even knowing that an attack has happened. After all, the manipulated data may look unaltered on the surface, but the truth is, hundreds (if not thousands) of micro edits have already been made. If the hacker succeeds, the financial institution may be held liable to pay millions of dollars in damages.

How Imminent Is the Threat?

The cybersecurity threats that we have mentioned above are just some of the most common ones that financial institutions globally are faced with every day. It’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are definitely other forms of cyberattacks out there, and even more, being developed by the minute.

According to Mark Whelan, a banking expert from the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, cyberattacks are more prominent and brazen than ever before. It has even reached the point that they are receiving up to 10 million attacks in a month.

For him, this is the biggest threat that financial institutions are currently facing, and experts predict that it’s only going to get worse.

Final Thoughts

Indeed, it is a brave new world that we’re living in. The risks and threats that we are facing right now are so stark in contrast to what we have experienced in the past. Gone are the days of bank heists with guns blazing. Instead, the bigger threat is probably wearing a sweatshirt right now in a random room somewhere across the globe. The fact that you wouldn’t have to take such a risk on your life makes the prospect even more appealing.

This has led financial institutions to prioritize cybersecurity efforts and training. Fortunately, with adequate risk assessment and planning, we are confident that you will be able to prevent severe cyberattacks from happening.

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Jim Hughes is a content marketer who has significant experience covering technology, finance, economics, and business topics. At the moment, he is the Director of Content at OpenCashAdvance.com.

Archives, Global Trade Daily, Software

Code Obfuscation: What it is and should You Use It?

April 13th, 2021 Filan Fisteku Leave a comment

Certain programming languages like .NET and Java can very easily be decompiled to readable sources. There are a lot of definitions about code obfuscation, but to explain it better the code obfuscation is the process that makes your application binaries slightly harder to read with a decompiler. It is a very important tool to protect the intellectual property of your business.

Why Obfuscate Code?

Some compiled languages get converted directly to bytecode, for example, C++. If you want to reverse engineer, the only way to work is with a disassembler, which is a complicated and arduous process. Though, it is not impossible, inferring high-level app logic from a stream of assembly language is quite difficult.

On the other side, languages like Java and C# are not compiled for any particular OS. They are more complied to an intermediary language, such as MSIL from .NET’s. This intermediary language is very similar to assembly, but it’s very easily converted back into the source code. So this does mean that in case you have an executable or public Dynamic-link library (DLL), anyone who possesses a copy of your executable are able to open it up in, let’s say dotPeek (.NET decompiler), and directly read your source code, and copy it as well.

Any .NET DLL can be plugged into a decompiler, so code obfuscation cannot prevent this process. But what obfuscation does is use a number of things in order to make the source code very annoying to read and debug.

Renaming is the simplest form of this entity. It is a very common practice to properly name all of the methods, variables, parameters and classes according to what function they do. But of course, you don’t have to do that, so there is nothing that is really stopping you from naming them with lowercase L’s and I, or random similar combinations of unicode characters, just to make the code very hard to read and debug. For the computer, it is all the same, but to a human is very difficult to distinguish.

It could look something like this:

IlIIIIlIIIllIIIllIIll

lIIIllIIllIlIIIIlIIIl

(neat, right?)

This process will be handled automatically by a basic obfuscator, taking the output from the build and then converting it to something that is really, really hard to read. By doing this there is no performance decrease to non-obfuscated code.

There are types of advanced obfuscators that can make it possible to change the structure of the source code. This means it can replace control structures with identical syntax but it looks more complicated.

It can also embed a code that doesn’t do anything, but it would make it harder to read for the decompiler. This means the source would look like ‘spaghetti code’ – which means it would annoy anyone who tries to read the code.

Hiding strings – is one of the common things. In this way, string obfuscation can replace strings with encoded messages – which are also decrypted, and it makes it difficult to search for them from a decompiler.

There are lots of options for obfuscators, it depends on the language the obfuscators are using. For example, Obfuscar, ProGuard, Javascript-obfuscator. etc.

Another option: You can convert to a Compiled Language

Actually, you can convert one programming language to another one, isn’t that a hard or crazy idea. It is an effective way to secure games from cracking, and it is an important step to do when protecting from piracy and cheaters. For example, Unity uses an IL2CPP converter to transform .NET code into C++ bytecode.

Is it necessary to Obfuscate?

Untrusted environments exist – so if you are using a code, and you want to secure it, it is important to use an obfuscator to make decompiling hard.

Securing your code is a must. Using an obfuscator is a must. If you don’t want anybody to decompile your app, you should try switching to a language that doesn’t have these problems.