10 ms·

>If you own a company, why even bother with security? Security is expensive. Wait until a breach is exposed, offer $10 credit monitoring (at best), accept the f

>If you own a company, why even bother with security? Security is expensive. Wait until a breach is exposed, offer $10 credit monitoring (at best), accept the free press coverage, maybe pinky promise to not lie if you've been particularly egregious in your handling of multiple incidents, and then carry on like normal. (This is tongue-in-cheek, I work in security, but I am frustrated with how often stories like this one occur) As SRE, I've heard executives say this "There is no penalty for breaches, why care?"

reaperducer 2y ago
As SRE, I've heard executives say this "There is no penalty for breaches, why care?" Depends on the industry. I'm in healthcare, and our legal department is always reminding the devs that even a small breach can be financially catastrophic for the company, as they are totaled as $xx,000 per person affected. We get training on it every six months.
- stevenicr 2y ago
  I'd like to hear more about this training - I have started to put together some resources to teach C suite, maybe new-to-the-field lawyers, other interested stakeholders - about website compliance issues.. looking to mimic other good training / learning materials, extra info to consider, maybe collab and send business I can't take on, etc.
  - ziddoap 2y ago
    Not the person you are replying to, but I work in security and have spent ~5 years of my career helping various companies set up and maintain security awareness programs. There are some out-of-the-box solutions that can start you on your way to creating a security awareness training program, such as KnowBe4 and ProofPoint (there are others as well, but these are some of the big names). If you don't have in-house security staff, these types of offerings can be quite helpful. For a more grounds-up approach, there are guidelines such as the NIST SP 800-50 "Building a Cybersecurity and Privacy Learning Program" guidance. (https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/50/r1/final https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/50/r1/final) If you have specific questions, I can try to answer them.
    - reaperman 2y ago
      As a technically-minded person, I've found both KnowBe4 and ProofPoint trainings to be very lacking/boring/superficial.
      - ziddoap 2y ago
        While I agree with you, that's why they are a starting point for someone looking to stand up a program, not an end point. And, from my experience, many of the trainings that seem almost offensively easy to me (e.g. "How to read a URL") have been some of the ones that received the most positive feedback from non-technical departments. The real key with security awareness training is ensuring the training is at the appropriate level of complexity for the trainee.
      - transcriptase 2y ago
        One way to relieve the boredom is to count the number of times you see the people in videos typing away on desktops/monitors with no cables plugged into them.
      - datavirtue 2y ago
        KnowBe4 is awesome. It trains everyone to be on the lookout. The penalty for barely screwing up is another boring training session that no one has time for. Very painful. Pain is a great teacher.
      - stevenicr 2y ago
        Very glad to these options and how they can be perceived by people, this should mean there are paths and that if they can be made better / different for different audiences that they may be well received. Appreciate you and @ziddoap offering insight! Looking at starting deck for FTC issues, Hipaa issues, and Google's policies - all for websites and apps specifically very soon and let the videos / webinars / interactive / discussions grow from here.
- infogulch 2y ago
  So the answer is to put the same kind of onerous penalties that companies pay for leaking healthcare data and apply them to any PII / user data. If it can't hit the bottom line bigcorps don't care; liability is the only language they understand.
  - reaperducer 2y ago
    So the answer is to put the same kind of onerous penalties that companies pay for leaking healthcare data and apply them to any PII / user data Then you get people on HN shouting "regulatory capture!" and "stifling innovation!"
    - infogulch 2y ago
      Yeah it sucks, but what can you do when you have titanic amoral agents stomping through society? You gotta speak their language. Maybe scale the penalty with the size of the company.
    - jjmarr 2y ago
      You have to provide your email to sign up for HN, however, it is not publicly visible. If YCombinator had to pay $10,000 for leaking a user email, this site isn't going to exist since it's not their core business and represents a huge liability. It's also disproportionate. If my email is leaked in the context of receiving treatment for a stigmatized disease, that's a lot worse than an MMORPG leaking my real name. Maybe some penalty is necessary but $10k or above per user is disproportionate for the vast majority of people. A $50/person penalty with gradations for sensitivity of the information is going to work better in practice. If leaking an SSN is more expensive than an email or site-specific ID, corporations might stop using SSNs to identify people to reduce their exposure
      - pbhjpbhj 2y ago
        Have the C-suite hand back their compensation above minimum wage for the last 3 years. Fine the company, all profits, or a percentage of global revenue (and pay that back to customers). If the outcome of ignoring data security is to not make any money then companies will actually do something about it. Penalities should push the company to the point of failing.
- stackskipton 2y ago
  Except Change Healthcare got hacked, lost a ton of records and they are still operating. So those fines must be, could be up to xx,000 per person affected but in actuality, those affected will get Arbys coupon and C Suite will lose a week of yacht time.
  - junon 2y ago
    Not even that. You always have insurance for this stuff.
    - rendaw 2y ago
      But then the insurance company has to pay, and they'll work hard to make sure it doesn't happen. This doesn't sound like an explanation to me.
      - junon 2y ago
        You don't really have a choice, you have to have insurance for breaches (HIPAA term, not strictly the typical cybersec term, means any loss of control of information that results in potential of dissemination of PII).
  - somehnguy 2y ago
    I didn’t even get an Arby’s coupon. I got a letter telling me they gave away my information with a link to an “identity monitoring” site that looks like the CEOs nephew built in a weekend and just errors out when I sign up.
  - ycombinatrix 2y ago
    I'd honestly prefer an Arby's coupon or perhaps a crisp $1 note over "1 year subscription to our credit monitoring service"
- pyuser583 2y ago
  Yeah I got those trainings when I was merely healthcare adjacent adjacent adjacent.
- plagiarist 2y ago
  It turns out HIPAA is a pretty good incentive to do the right thing, and the key difference is that there are actual consequences for violating HIPAA. Even better, the consequences are stronger in the event that the company obviously wasn't giving a fuck about security. I wish we had HIPAA for all PII.
  - esafak 2y ago
    But it does slow things down. Startups don't want to deal with that stuff. So they'd have to outsource it. I'm not sure how.
kstrauser 2y ago
> As SRE, I've heard executives say this "There is no penalty for breaches, why care?" Honestly, I'm more afraid of reputational loss than government fines. Our customers don't have to use our product. They do because they trust us. Lose that trust and it's awfully hard to get it back.
- adrr 2y ago
  Crowdstrike took down all windows boxes that had their software installed and didn’t really affect them.
  - jrochkind1 2y ago
    I think customers feel, rightly or wrongly, there's no alternative to CrowdStrike. There are so many alternatives to what GoDaddy provides, it is quite commoditized. But also... true, their customers don't seem to care anyway? Or it's "cost of switch", even just mentally? If you were starting fresh it really wouldn't be any harder at all to go with any of numerous alternatives, but if you already have godaddy...
    - rez9x 2y ago
      I've actually not worked anywhere that has used CrowdStrike. It's usually ruled out as too expensive (I've mostly worked in public sector). I've had very good experiences with Sentinel One and Microsoft Defender. I've had terrible experiences with Trellix and Sophos."Oopsy" aside, is CrowdStrike really that much better than the competition?
      - alephnerd 2y ago
        The big four (CRWD, S1, Prisma, and MDE) all mostly comparable tbh. EDR (especially Windows EDR) is heavily commodified.
        esafak 2y ago
        A commodified market with no good product? Something is wrong here.
honestSysAdmin 2y ago
[flagged]
- demosthanos 2y ago
  It's a bit exhausting that every time anyone says anything about executives in any context, we have to make sure to bring up the cold-blooded murder of one of them and make sure to remind everyone that some people on the internet think that that murder was justified. It's free internet points, I guess, but it's also not constructive and frankly more than a little bit creepy.
  - honestSysAdmin 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
      - honestSysAdmin 2y ago
        [flagged]
  - datavirtue 2y ago
    It's the time we live in.
  - inetknght 2y ago
    > It's free internet points, I guess, but it's also not constructive and frankly more than a little bit creepy. What makes you think it's not constructive?! I think it's worth discussing why a large number (possibly even a majority!) of people want to murder executives. Telling those people to shut up removes yet another way for them to express their opinions. I think taking notice of the room is very constructive. I think having a point to discuss (even if it's violence) is constructive. Talk is cheap, after all; and talk is way cheaper than murder. Moreover, I've heard many many many people insist that violence is never the answer. Alas, they forget that violence is how most countries were founded; ignore that many laws and regulations are written in blood; and rarely consider the situations where all other solutions have been explored and exhausted. Further, if business is so worried about costs, and violence can be cheaper than exploring all alternative options, then there's definitely a business mindset to that. And business is what you want to discuss anyway, right? If you really think violence is never the answer then you should do everything in your power to prevent it. So instead of insulting someone for expressing an opinion, perhaps you should talk to them instead. You might discover a new/unique point of view, or you might even be able to change their mind.
benoau 2y ago
We’Ve eVaLuaTeD the RisKs

reaperducer 2y ago

As SRE, I've heard executives say this "There is no penalty for breaches, why care?" Depends on the industry. I'm in healthcare, and our legal department is always reminding the devs that even a small breach can be financially catastrophic for the company, as they are totaled as $xx,000 per person affected. We get training on it every six months.

stevenicr 2y ago
I'd like to hear more about this training - I have started to put together some resources to teach C suite, maybe new-to-the-field lawyers, other interested stakeholders - about website compliance issues.. looking to mimic other good training / learning materials, extra info to consider, maybe collab and send business I can't take on, etc.
- ziddoap 2y ago
  Not the person you are replying to, but I work in security and have spent ~5 years of my career helping various companies set up and maintain security awareness programs. There are some out-of-the-box solutions that can start you on your way to creating a security awareness training program, such as KnowBe4 and ProofPoint (there are others as well, but these are some of the big names). If you don't have in-house security staff, these types of offerings can be quite helpful. For a more grounds-up approach, there are guidelines such as the NIST SP 800-50 "Building a Cybersecurity and Privacy Learning Program" guidance. (https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/50/r1/final https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/50/r1/final) If you have specific questions, I can try to answer them.
  - reaperman 2y ago
    As a technically-minded person, I've found both KnowBe4 and ProofPoint trainings to be very lacking/boring/superficial.
    - ziddoap 2y ago
      While I agree with you, that's why they are a starting point for someone looking to stand up a program, not an end point. And, from my experience, many of the trainings that seem almost offensively easy to me (e.g. "How to read a URL") have been some of the ones that received the most positive feedback from non-technical departments. The real key with security awareness training is ensuring the training is at the appropriate level of complexity for the trainee.
    - transcriptase 2y ago
      One way to relieve the boredom is to count the number of times you see the people in videos typing away on desktops/monitors with no cables plugged into them.
    - datavirtue 2y ago
      KnowBe4 is awesome. It trains everyone to be on the lookout. The penalty for barely screwing up is another boring training session that no one has time for. Very painful. Pain is a great teacher.
    - stevenicr 2y ago
      Very glad to these options and how they can be perceived by people, this should mean there are paths and that if they can be made better / different for different audiences that they may be well received. Appreciate you and @ziddoap offering insight! Looking at starting deck for FTC issues, Hipaa issues, and Google's policies - all for websites and apps specifically very soon and let the videos / webinars / interactive / discussions grow from here.
infogulch 2y ago
So the answer is to put the same kind of onerous penalties that companies pay for leaking healthcare data and apply them to any PII / user data. If it can't hit the bottom line bigcorps don't care; liability is the only language they understand.
- reaperducer 2y ago
  So the answer is to put the same kind of onerous penalties that companies pay for leaking healthcare data and apply them to any PII / user data Then you get people on HN shouting "regulatory capture!" and "stifling innovation!"
  - infogulch 2y ago
    Yeah it sucks, but what can you do when you have titanic amoral agents stomping through society? You gotta speak their language. Maybe scale the penalty with the size of the company.
  - jjmarr 2y ago
    You have to provide your email to sign up for HN, however, it is not publicly visible. If YCombinator had to pay $10,000 for leaking a user email, this site isn't going to exist since it's not their core business and represents a huge liability. It's also disproportionate. If my email is leaked in the context of receiving treatment for a stigmatized disease, that's a lot worse than an MMORPG leaking my real name. Maybe some penalty is necessary but $10k or above per user is disproportionate for the vast majority of people. A $50/person penalty with gradations for sensitivity of the information is going to work better in practice. If leaking an SSN is more expensive than an email or site-specific ID, corporations might stop using SSNs to identify people to reduce their exposure
    - pbhjpbhj 2y ago
      Have the C-suite hand back their compensation above minimum wage for the last 3 years. Fine the company, all profits, or a percentage of global revenue (and pay that back to customers). If the outcome of ignoring data security is to not make any money then companies will actually do something about it. Penalities should push the company to the point of failing.
stackskipton 2y ago
Except Change Healthcare got hacked, lost a ton of records and they are still operating. So those fines must be, could be up to xx,000 per person affected but in actuality, those affected will get Arbys coupon and C Suite will lose a week of yacht time.
- junon 2y ago
  Not even that. You always have insurance for this stuff.
  - rendaw 2y ago
    But then the insurance company has to pay, and they'll work hard to make sure it doesn't happen. This doesn't sound like an explanation to me.
    - junon 2y ago
      You don't really have a choice, you have to have insurance for breaches (HIPAA term, not strictly the typical cybersec term, means any loss of control of information that results in potential of dissemination of PII).
- somehnguy 2y ago
  I didn’t even get an Arby’s coupon. I got a letter telling me they gave away my information with a link to an “identity monitoring” site that looks like the CEOs nephew built in a weekend and just errors out when I sign up.
- ycombinatrix 2y ago
  I'd honestly prefer an Arby's coupon or perhaps a crisp $1 note over "1 year subscription to our credit monitoring service"
pyuser583 2y ago
Yeah I got those trainings when I was merely healthcare adjacent adjacent adjacent.
plagiarist 2y ago
It turns out HIPAA is a pretty good incentive to do the right thing, and the key difference is that there are actual consequences for violating HIPAA. Even better, the consequences are stronger in the event that the company obviously wasn't giving a fuck about security. I wish we had HIPAA for all PII.
- esafak 2y ago
  But it does slow things down. Startups don't want to deal with that stuff. So they'd have to outsource it. I'm not sure how.

kstrauser 2y ago

> As SRE, I've heard executives say this "There is no penalty for breaches, why care?" Honestly, I'm more afraid of reputational loss than government fines. Our customers don't have to use our product. They do because they trust us. Lose that trust and it's awfully hard to get it back.

adrr 2y ago
Crowdstrike took down all windows boxes that had their software installed and didn’t really affect them.
- jrochkind1 2y ago
  I think customers feel, rightly or wrongly, there's no alternative to CrowdStrike. There are so many alternatives to what GoDaddy provides, it is quite commoditized. But also... true, their customers don't seem to care anyway? Or it's "cost of switch", even just mentally? If you were starting fresh it really wouldn't be any harder at all to go with any of numerous alternatives, but if you already have godaddy...
  - rez9x 2y ago
    I've actually not worked anywhere that has used CrowdStrike. It's usually ruled out as too expensive (I've mostly worked in public sector). I've had very good experiences with Sentinel One and Microsoft Defender. I've had terrible experiences with Trellix and Sophos."Oopsy" aside, is CrowdStrike really that much better than the competition?
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      The big four (CRWD, S1, Prisma, and MDE) all mostly comparable tbh. EDR (especially Windows EDR) is heavily commodified.
      - esafak 2y ago
        A commodified market with no good product? Something is wrong here.

honestSysAdmin 2y ago

[flagged]

demosthanos 2y ago
It's a bit exhausting that every time anyone says anything about executives in any context, we have to make sure to bring up the cold-blooded murder of one of them and make sure to remind everyone that some people on the internet think that that murder was justified. It's free internet points, I guess, but it's also not constructive and frankly more than a little bit creepy.
- honestSysAdmin 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
    - honestSysAdmin 2y ago
      [flagged]
- datavirtue 2y ago
  It's the time we live in.
- inetknght 2y ago
  > It's free internet points, I guess, but it's also not constructive and frankly more than a little bit creepy. What makes you think it's not constructive?! I think it's worth discussing why a large number (possibly even a majority!) of people want to murder executives. Telling those people to shut up removes yet another way for them to express their opinions. I think taking notice of the room is very constructive. I think having a point to discuss (even if it's violence) is constructive. Talk is cheap, after all; and talk is way cheaper than murder. Moreover, I've heard many many many people insist that violence is never the answer. Alas, they forget that violence is how most countries were founded; ignore that many laws and regulations are written in blood; and rarely consider the situations where all other solutions have been explored and exhausted. Further, if business is so worried about costs, and violence can be cheaper than exploring all alternative options, then there's definitely a business mindset to that. And business is what you want to discuss anyway, right? If you really think violence is never the answer then you should do everything in your power to prevent it. So instead of insulting someone for expressing an opinion, perhaps you should talk to them instead. You might discover a new/unique point of view, or you might even be able to change their mind.

benoau 2y ago

We’Ve eVaLuaTeD the RisKs