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There should be an ISO standard with respect to how much power and information that front line customer support agents have. The more information you need, like

There should be an ISO standard with respect to how much power and information that front line customer support agents have. The more information you need, like changing passwords or accessing personal information, should get forwarded to higher level customer support agents with better training and more monitoring. This way you can design customer support experience with as little exposure to security issues as possible.

whyever 1y ago
They main defense against internal attacks is bookkeeping. Banks have been dealing with this for thousands of years. I recommend the corresponding chapter in Security Engineering by Ross Anderson: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/archive/rja14/Papers/SEv3-ch12.pdf https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/archive/rja14/Papers/SEv3-ch12.pdf
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Bookkeeping will alert you to employees stealing your money. It won't alert you to employees selling information.
  - whyever 1y ago
    Access logs do help with this. They have been successfully used by the police to identify rogue officers abusing their access to police databases.
wepple 1y ago
> better training and more monitoring. That’s very load-bearing. It won’t help. The CS reps are based in a LCOL country so the opportunity for theft is simply incredibly lucrative. What is really needed, is customer-in-the-loop for access to their data. The problem is, not all accesses would make sense. Doing analytics over the data of the top 1% of customers, for example, requires some level of access, but would freak out those customers if they had to approve it.
- wat10000 1y ago
  If it would freak out the customers, maybe they shouldn’t be doing it.
  - wepple 1y ago
    That’s a nice thought, but naive. What about, for example, a higher-tier support person performing QA over someone else’s work? What about DFIR teams doing research on potential abuse? Etc etc.
xyst 1y ago
Compartmentalization is a very expensive customer support model.
- caseyohara 1y ago
  So are $20M ransoms and the reputational damage from data breaches.

whyever 1y ago

They main defense against internal attacks is bookkeeping. Banks have been dealing with this for thousands of years. I recommend the corresponding chapter in Security Engineering by Ross Anderson: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/archive/rja14/Papers/SEv3-ch12.pdf https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/archive/rja14/Papers/SEv3-ch12.pdf

SoftTalker 1y ago
Bookkeeping will alert you to employees stealing your money. It won't alert you to employees selling information.
- whyever 1y ago
  Access logs do help with this. They have been successfully used by the police to identify rogue officers abusing their access to police databases.

wepple 1y ago

> better training and more monitoring. That’s very load-bearing. It won’t help. The CS reps are based in a LCOL country so the opportunity for theft is simply incredibly lucrative. What is really needed, is customer-in-the-loop for access to their data. The problem is, not all accesses would make sense. Doing analytics over the data of the top 1% of customers, for example, requires some level of access, but would freak out those customers if they had to approve it.

wat10000 1y ago
If it would freak out the customers, maybe they shouldn’t be doing it.
- wepple 1y ago
  That’s a nice thought, but naive. What about, for example, a higher-tier support person performing QA over someone else’s work? What about DFIR teams doing research on potential abuse? Etc etc.

xyst 1y ago

Compartmentalization is a very expensive customer support model.

caseyohara 1y ago
So are $20M ransoms and the reputational damage from data breaches.