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> IMO it’s no wonder companies keep getting hacked when doing the right thing is made so painful and the rewards are so meagre. Show me the incentives, and I'l

> IMO it’s no wonder companies keep getting hacked when doing the right thing is made so painful and the rewards are so meagre. Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcomes. We really need to make security liabilities to be just that: liabilities. If you are running 20+ year-old code, and you get hacked, you need to be fined in a way that will make you reconsider security as a priority. Also, you need to be liable for all of the disruption that the security breach caused for customers. No, free credit monitoring does not count as recompense.

dpoloncsak 1y ago
I love this idea, but I feel like it just devolves into ways to classify that 'specific exploit' is/isn't technically a 0-day, so they can/can't be held liable
akerl_ 1y ago
Why? Why is it inherently desirable that society penalize companies that get hacked above and beyond people choosing not to use their services, or selling off their shares, etc?
- lenerdenator 1y ago
  Because they were placed in a position of trust and failed. Typically, the failure stems from a lack of willingness to expend the resources necessary to prevent the failure. It'd be one thing if these were isolated incidents, but they're not. Furthermore, the methods you mention simply aren't effective. Our economy is now so consolidated that many markets only have a handful of participants offering goods or services, and these players often all have data and computer security issues. As for divestiture, most people don't own shares, and those who do typically don't know they own shares of a specific company. Most shareholders in the US are retirement or pension funds, and they are run by people who would rather make it impossible for the average person to bring real consequences to their holdings for data breaches, than cause the company to spend money on fixing the issues that allow for the breaches to begin with. After all, it's "cheaper".
  - akerl_ 1y ago
    I feel like this kind of justification comes up every time this topic is on HN: that the reason companies aren't being organically penalized for bad IT/infosec/privacy behavior is because the average person doesn't have leverage or alternatives. It's never made sense to me. I can see that being true in specific instances: many people in the US don't have great mobility for residential ISPs, or utility companies. And there's large network effects for social media platforms. But if any significant plurality of users cared about the impact of service breaches, or bad privacy policies, surely we'd see the impact somewhere in the market? We do in some related areas: Apple puts a ton of money into marketing about keeping people's data and messages private. WhatsApp does the same. But there are so many companies out there, lots of them have garbage security practices, lots of them get compromised, and I'm struggling to remember any example of a consumer company that had a breach and saw any significant impact. To pick an example: in 2014 Home Depot had a breach of payment data. Basically everywhere that has Home Depots also has Lowes and other options that sell the same stuff. In most places, if you're pissed at Home Depot for losing your card information, you can literally drive across the street to Lowes. But it doesn't seem like that happened. Is it possible that outside of tech circles where we care about The Principle Of The Thing, the market is actually correct in its assessment of the value for the average consumer business of putting more money into security?
    - lan321 1y ago
      I think it's more simple in the Home Depot example. Even if you care about the breach what are you gonna do? Home Depot got hacked so they'll now probably get some more security staff. Funding for the quarter is secured. Lowes has not been hacked. Does that mean they won't be hacked? Not really... For cheap smart home shit it doesn't even matter since the company will go bankrupt and change hands 3 times in the next 5 years and again, they are all garbage. Either they'll get hacked or they'll sell your data anyway. Plenty of my normie friends don't want new cars for example due to all the tracking and subscription garbage, but realistically, what can you do when the old ones slowly get outlawed/impossible to maintain due to part shortages.
    - lenerdenator 1y ago

dpoloncsak 1y ago

I love this idea, but I feel like it just devolves into ways to classify that 'specific exploit' is/isn't technically a 0-day, so they can/can't be held liable

akerl_ 1y ago

Why? Why is it inherently desirable that society penalize companies that get hacked above and beyond people choosing not to use their services, or selling off their shares, etc?

lenerdenator 1y ago
Because they were placed in a position of trust and failed. Typically, the failure stems from a lack of willingness to expend the resources necessary to prevent the failure. It'd be one thing if these were isolated incidents, but they're not. Furthermore, the methods you mention simply aren't effective. Our economy is now so consolidated that many markets only have a handful of participants offering goods or services, and these players often all have data and computer security issues. As for divestiture, most people don't own shares, and those who do typically don't know they own shares of a specific company. Most shareholders in the US are retirement or pension funds, and they are run by people who would rather make it impossible for the average person to bring real consequences to their holdings for data breaches, than cause the company to spend money on fixing the issues that allow for the breaches to begin with. After all, it's "cheaper".
- akerl_ 1y ago
  I feel like this kind of justification comes up every time this topic is on HN: that the reason companies aren't being organically penalized for bad IT/infosec/privacy behavior is because the average person doesn't have leverage or alternatives. It's never made sense to me. I can see that being true in specific instances: many people in the US don't have great mobility for residential ISPs, or utility companies. And there's large network effects for social media platforms. But if any significant plurality of users cared about the impact of service breaches, or bad privacy policies, surely we'd see the impact somewhere in the market? We do in some related areas: Apple puts a ton of money into marketing about keeping people's data and messages private. WhatsApp does the same. But there are so many companies out there, lots of them have garbage security practices, lots of them get compromised, and I'm struggling to remember any example of a consumer company that had a breach and saw any significant impact. To pick an example: in 2014 Home Depot had a breach of payment data. Basically everywhere that has Home Depots also has Lowes and other options that sell the same stuff. In most places, if you're pissed at Home Depot for losing your card information, you can literally drive across the street to Lowes. But it doesn't seem like that happened. Is it possible that outside of tech circles where we care about The Principle Of The Thing, the market is actually correct in its assessment of the value for the average consumer business of putting more money into security?
  - lan321 1y ago
    I think it's more simple in the Home Depot example. Even if you care about the breach what are you gonna do? Home Depot got hacked so they'll now probably get some more security staff. Funding for the quarter is secured. Lowes has not been hacked. Does that mean they won't be hacked? Not really... For cheap smart home shit it doesn't even matter since the company will go bankrupt and change hands 3 times in the next 5 years and again, they are all garbage. Either they'll get hacked or they'll sell your data anyway. Plenty of my normie friends don't want new cars for example due to all the tracking and subscription garbage, but realistically, what can you do when the old ones slowly get outlawed/impossible to maintain due to part shortages.
  - lenerdenator 1y ago