On April 29th, the Raleigh Housing Authority fell victim to a cyber attack that shut down their computer system. The attack disrupted the agency’s ability to access their email, files, and financial records, leaving the organization struggling to conduct their day-to-day operations.
The RHA provides affordable housing for low-income individuals and families in the Raleigh area. The cyber attack has had a significant impact on the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission of providing safe and affordable housing. In the aftermath of the attack, the RHA has been forced to rely on manual processes to complete their work, causing delays in critical services for their clients.
Cyber attacks have become increasingly common in recent years, with hackers targeting organizations of all sizes and industries. These attacks can result in the loss of sensitive data, financial losses, and damage to a company’s reputation. In the case of the RHA, the attack has disrupted the lives of the low-income families who rely on their services.
To prevent cyber attacks, organizations must prioritize cyber security. This includes implementing strong password policies, regularly updating software and systems, and educating employees on how to recognize and report suspicious activity. Additionally, organizations should consider investing in cyber security insurance to mitigate the financial impact of an attack.
When a cyber attack does occur, it’s important to have a plan in place to respond quickly and effectively. This includes identifying and isolating affected systems, restoring data from backups, and conducting a thorough investigation to determine the cause of the attack and prevent future incidents.
In the case of the RHA, they have taken steps to restore their computer systems and minimize the impact of the attack. However, the incident serves as a reminder of the importance of cyber security and the devastating consequences that can result from a successful cyber attack.
In conclusion, the cyber attack on the Raleigh Housing Authority is a sobering reminder of the importance of cyber security for organizations of all types and sizes. By prioritizing cyber security, organizations can protect their data, their financial stability, and the well-being of their clients.
Since the start of the pandemic, there has been much disruption in some industries. Many businesses have been challenged during the pandemic as a result of the difficulty of managing cyber and data security. Data breaches relating to remote workers and hacking of corporations continue to escalate at an alarming rate, require prompt response to mitigate the fallout.
There have been several significant shifts in the ways that businesses operate and their reliance on digital systems. Many businesses moved to a largely remote working model. Some have had to focus more on online activities in order to keep their brands active and visible. Businesses in a number of industries began to deliver products and services online for the first time. Meanwhile, those that already existed in online spaces saw an increase in business. All of these changes have meant that various security issues have arisen and become more prominent for businesses everywhere.
Increase in corporate data breaches
Cybercriminals have been taking advantage of the unprecedented circumstances caused by the pandemic, exploiting the vulnerabilities of businesses everywhere. Verizon carried out a recent study called ‘Analyzing the COVID-19 data breach landscape‘, which looks at 36 confirmed data breaches that were directly related to the pandemic. In addition, there was 474 data breaches between March and June 2020. Using this data, they determined that many cybercriminals were using the same methods to obtain data as before the pandemic while exploiting the disruption experienced by many businesses.
One way in which corporate data breaches have been impacted by the pandemic is through increased use of ransomware. Seven of the nine malware incidents from Verizon’s 36 COVID-19 data breach cases demonstrated a spike in ransomware usage. Another change is in the way that criminals use phishing emails to play on the emotions of users. In a time when stress is high and mental health problems have increased, many people are more susceptible to phishing emails. Phishing was already a popular and often successful form of cyber attack before and even more so now.
Cost of data breaches for companies hit a record high in 2021
The cost of a data breach also hit a record high during the pandemic, according to IBM Security. They revealed the results of a global study showing the average cost of data breaches for companies surveyed was $4.24 million per incident. This is a 10% increase from the previous year. When remote work was a factor in the breach, data breaches cost an average of $1 million more. Stolen user credentials were the most common cause of data breaches. However, the study also showed the use of methods such as AI, security analytics, and encryption helped to reduce costs.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected corporate data breaches due to a number of shifts in the way businesses are working, user behavior, and more. It’s vital for companies to take the right steps to prevent breaches and protect themselves.
If your company recently fell victim to a cyber attack, such as ransomware, or suspected data exfiltration by an unknown hacker, call Enigma Forensics today. We offer emergency incident response services and can help preserve available data, identify the origins of the attacker, and assist with the restoration of company services. Our experts have experience testifying and helping to mitigate risk and maximize your potential of recovering damages and lost data. Call us today at 312-668-0333 for a complimentary consultation.
Are Contact Tracing APPs ethical? Are you willing to give up your private data to help slow the spread of the Coronavirus? Check out what these experts have to say!
Contact Tracing is it Ethical?
Apple and Google have the capability that allows cell phones to communicate with each other. Contact Tracing Apps use this capability and have been developed to find and alert the contacts of people infected with the Coronavirus / COVID-19. As soon as someone gets sick with Coronavirus, the APP could alert you if this is someone you have been in contact with. Alleviating the length of time it takes for a real live Contact Tracer who is doing the tracing. Basically, this is widespread human GPS tracking, that presents many privacy issues involving potential data breach, information storage, and sharing sensitive personal data. Should sensitive medical information and individual locations be available on an APP? Do you believe this type of electronic contact tracing is ethical?
Check out this video to listen in on experts as they consider the amount of data that is being collected and what it means for your data when you download a Contact Tracing APP.
Video Transcripts Follow
Lee Neubecker (LN): Hi this is Lee Neubecker from Enigma Forensics and I have Debbie Reynolds back on the show, thanks for coming back Debbie.
Debbie Reynolds (DR): Thank you for having me, very nice to be here.
LN: So I’m very interested to hear more of what your research is regarding contact tracing apps, and what you think that means for individuals that might put these apps in their phone. Tell me a little bit about what’s happening right now with the industry and how contact tracing apps are working.
DR: Yeah, so Apple and Google created a capability so that phones can communicate with each-other via beacon. So that they can store information on phones, or have phones bounce off of one another, so that if someone downloads a contact tracing app or registers there, if anyone who also has the app, it will be able to trace back, y’know, how long they spent with certain people and tell them whether they feel like they may have been exposed in some way, and tell them either to quarantine or go seek treatment in some way, or get tested. So it’s pretty controversial, the contact tracing app, for a couple of different reasons. One is, people are very concerned about privacy, like giving their potential medical information to a company that’s not a medical provider, meaning that they’re not protecting the data the same way. Also, as you know, Bluetooth technology isn’t exactly super accurate in terms of the distance that you are from someone, so the delta, in terms of how accurate it can be, may be way off. It may be several meters off, the phone can’t tell if you’re six feet apart or whatever, so I think that they’ve tried to tune that up with this new API that they created, but still, based on the science, we don’t know that it’s actually accurate or not.
LN: So you could still have a situation where, if you put one of these apps on and you’re outside biking, and you bike within 8 to 10 feet of someone who later does have it that you’re getting notified that you have to quarantine on a false basis. That’s a potential outcome of using an app like that, correct?
DR: Yeah, but I think that the way they having it now is that it’s supposed to register you spent more than 15 minutes near that person, so, y’know.
LN: Okay, that’s good to know.
DR: But let’s say you’re parked in your car and someone’s parked next to your car, so you aren’t physically near, y’know, you aren’t in any danger from that person but you wouldn’t know, just because your phone says you’re close to them. They don’t understand the circumstance that you’re in, to be able to tell that, so. I think people are concerned about, a lot about privacy, them taking the data or how the app is actually going to work, and it’s going to work differently in different countries. So what they’ve done is create this API, this capability that’s put on everyone’s phone, and then if you download the app, the app which you use will use that API to actually do this beacon exchange on people’s phones. So, that’s kind of what’s happening right now, is different countries and different places are implementing it in different ways, and some are really pushing back on them because they don’t have really any good guarantees about privacy, or data breach, data breach is a huge issue.
LN: Yeah, I mean, our Government’s never had data in their custody compromised ever, right? wink..wink
DR: Right, that never happened, exactly, so-
LN: You’re having your maps of where you’re walking, your GPS records-
DR: Yeah.
LN:time of day, your movement and that is going to Google and Apple, and under certain conditions they’re passing that data on to the CDC or other entities, law enforcement, enforcement groups.
DR: Well their concern is that data, because it’s at a private company, will get merged with other things, like let’s say your insurance carrier, or your medical, y’know, you get dropped from your insurance because you have this app-
LN: You drive too fast.
DR: No because you have this app, and they think that you may have been exposed, or you’re a higher risk, or a bank doesn’t want to give you a loan or something, because you have this app on your phone. I’ve been hearing a lot of different scenarios people are concerned about. But I’m curious, from your perspective, in terms of how certain things are stored on phones. I know beacons is a really big idea, but maybe you can explain a little bit about how Bluetooth actually works?
LN: Yeah, well Bluetooth is a near band wavelength that allows for peer-to-peer networking. Bluetooth has been exploited in the past to be able to take over devices, so it’s, a lot of people don’t like to have their Bluetooth on continuously because you’re opening your phone up to potential attacks, cyber attacks, via Bluetooth. You’re also broadcasting, when you have Bluetooth on you’re also broadcasting your MAC address identifier, your Bluetooth unique address and there have already been issues where retailers in London at one time, they had kiosks outside that would track the shoppers and they’d know how long they were at certain stores, and they’d use that information to serve custom video ads to people as they’re shopping and walking by.
DR: Right.
LN: So there’s privacy implications and security implications of having Bluetooth on all the time.
DR: Yeah, and that’s a big concern. So I know when I first heard this, about them doing this contact tracing, I was wondering like how exactly would they get the proximity right, and because we have no visibility to that we really don’t know, right?
LN: No.
DR: So we just have to sort of trust the black box and see what happens, to some extent, but I, for me I think my opinion is that contact tracing is a profession, it’s not an app. So, there are people who do this as a profession, only, let’s see, 55% of people in the world don’t even have smart phones, so you’re talking about a capability that’s only for 45% of the people, and not all those people are going to actually volunteer to get these apps.
LN: Yeah.
DR: So it doesn’t really help to contact, for people who do contact tracing, except it adds another layer that they have to work with because they still have to track people whether they have cell phones or not.
LN: It’s interesting stuff, thanks for bringing that to our viewers’ attention and thanks for being on the show again.
DR: All right, thank you so much, I really appreciate it.
Your email has been frozen and your company website is down. Your IT department has confirmed a data breach. What do you do next? Incident Expert Lee Neubecker and legal expert Kari Rollins offer easy instructions about your next important steps.
It’s a fact! Your IT team confirmed a Data Breach or incident has occurred. What do you do after the fact? Forensic Expert Lee Neubecker and Legal Expert Kari Rollins say don’t panic! First, convene with your incident response team, start to investigate under privilege, and contact a 3rd Party forensic expert to help preserve vital information. Watch the rest of this video for further recommendations about data breach response after the fact!
View Part 3 of our 3-Part Series on Data Breach
Part 3 of our 3-Part Series on Data Breach
The Video Transcripts of Part 3 of our 3-Part Series on Data Breach follows
Lee Neubecker: Hi I’m back again with Kari Rollins, and she’s here talking with me today about data breach incident response. The Sedona Conference recommends, how an organization should respond to such incidents. And we’re talking in this third part segment about what to do after an incident has been reported. So Kari, please tell me what the initial issues are that come to mind when you get that phone call from a client that says something happened.
Kari Rollins: Sure, so usually, as we were talking about in a prior segment, you may not know whether you’ve had a breach as defined by law. You are just told by your information’s security team, or an employee or a manager that you’ve had, there’s been an attack. Or there’s been, “I can’t get access to my email,” Or, “My account’s frozen.” So you immediately start to investigate. You want your.. according to your incident response plan which we’ll hopefully have in place, you’ll convene your incident response team; you’ll start to investigate under privilege. You’ll call if you need your outside forensic investigator to help you access it. Help you access what’s happened, right? That the facts in an incident are really, really important because they drive the legal conclusions. Have you had a breach, or have you had an incident that has resulted in the acquisition with just the access to personally protected information? Or are you.. did you have an incident where maybe the systems that house the personal information were accessed, but there’s no evidence that the malware ever made it into the room where the family jewels are hidden and they were taken out. And that’s an important part of understanding whether you actually have a legal obligation to notify regulatory authorities or consumers. So the first step is always convening the team, putting it under privilege, calling your experts, and starting to investigate the important facts. Was this an outside threat, was it an insider threat? I know you’ve had experience a lot with investigating internal threats, which are on the rise these days as I would expect.
LN: And a lot of these incidents, it may be reported as a data breach, and the question is well, how did it happen? And sometimes, it’s not too uncommon that IT staff don’t receive the resources they request, and that data incidents happen as a result of being under-resourced. And in circumstances like that, there’s still a lot of pressure on the people managing IT, to not only run the organization ongoing but to deal with this whole new layer of troubles. So having that team in place beforehand where those relationships are there really helps.
KR: Yes
LN: And the other thing too is, you know, if there is a failure internally, it’s more difficult and less likely that you’re going to get the facts quickly if you’re using the team responsible in some way for the breach to report on what happened. I always recommend that after that initial meeting that preservation of key data occurs, and is offloaded outside the organization. You know, log files, certain key computers, email systems to the extent that they were modified so that there’s the ability to do that analysis. Because when an organization has an incident, it’s quite possible that all the data disappears, and the effort to cover the tracks.
KR: Or it’s not even, it may not be as nefarious as that. It could be that the teams are working so quickly a lot of the remediation plans are to thwart the malware and to remove it. But, in a lot of instances, you need to safely remove it and keep a copy of it, because you need to reverse engineer it. And understand how it got there, understand other signatures it might have; so being thoughtful, and we talk about this being thoughtful about evidence preservation is really critical, especially if you get to the point at which you do have a breach that requires notification. And litigation regulatory inquiry ensues, you will have been expected to preserve that evidence and show the chain of custody. Otherwise, you could have allegations of spoliation leveled against your company.
LN: And I’ve seen circumstances too where a legitimate data incident happens and we’re able to get it quickly and identify the impacted individuals. And sometimes it’s just been a few people; in a circumstance like that, it’s much easier to reach out to those individuals, make things right, and resolve the issue. And be able to report to them what happened. It’s much better than having to publish on your website and report to the attorney general that you had some massive data breach. So, not all data incidences are massive data breaches.
KR: That’s true, some of ’em impact you know, one or two individuals, and you may still have an obligation to notify them under the relevant law. But they don’t have to be the big massive breaches. And again, I think the great thing about the Sedona Conference Guide is that it’s, you know, it helps companies navigate small to big breaches. You know, it’s not intended to be the ultimate authority on the law in this area, because the law is ever-changing. But what it does is it helps companies issue spot from a practical perspective so that they know what laws they need to consult, and why and what issues they need to address, like for example, notifying your insurance carrier. One of the big questions we always get is, Well, we’re the victims, here; the company X is a victim of this cyber attack. Who’s going to pay for it?
LN: Yes.
KR: And so, insurance coverage for cyber incidents has is a really hot button issue these days. And so it’s important for companies to know in advance what their policies say, what the notification requirements are. Even if they just have a sniff of an incident – maybe it’s not a breach. So that the third party and first-party costs are covered, and that you’re working with your insurance carrier, and you’re working with your insurance council to ensure that coverage. And to make sure that you’re getting the right information to your insurance carrier about your forensic teams. Are they approved? What rate are they going to be reimbursed? What type of reporting do you have to do from a cost an expense perspective to your insurance carrier? So.
LN: And, it true that if companies use their own internal IT resources to do the investigation, that the insurance carriers usually won’t pay out their own internal resources?
KR: It really depends. It depends on the policy.
KR: It really depends on the policy. There are, in some instances, some policies would cover the first party staffing costs, so for example, if you had to pay staff overtime to work 24 hours a day to try and investigate, you may be able to claim that. But it really depends on your policy. There’s certain.. there’s certainly reimbursement line items for business disruption and business interruption. Or, you know the loss of business, loss profits line items, as a result of ransomware tax. But again, knowing your policy is a critical step in preparing.
LN: Where do you see the benefits of using an outside forensic investigator as opposed to internal IT to investigate when an incident happens?
KR: You know I think it’s two-fold, one, a lot of internal IT teams are taxed as it is with their day to day obligations. And if an incident is one that is medium-high critical, you want to be able to dedicate the resources to the incident to investigate swiftly, and to ensure that there’s no delay. And so pulling in a third-party forensic expert alleviates some of that burden and stress on the IT teams. And then separately and secondly, it also creates a level of objectivity that is.. that benefits the company in the event. Or in the unfortunate event, someone in the IT group may have made a mistake that caused the vulnerability. There’s less likely that that mistake would be covered up. Or there’s going to be more candor from the third party expert, the to management team say like, “Hey, this issue should have been addressed”. And it wasn’t, and now you know what thwarts may be in the event. You have some litigation down the road and you need to defend. But so I would say really sort of time and devotion of resources where needed, and objectivity.
LN: Great, well thanks a bunch for being on this show; this was great.
Don’t fail to prepare for a data breach! Check out what experts Lee Neubecker and Kari Rollins say are the three strategies to prepare for a data breach.
In the famous words of Benjamin Franklin “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Forensic Expert Lee Neubecker and Kari Rollins with Sheppard Mullin agree with our Founding Father and warn that a data breach is inevitable, don’t fail to be prepared!
In her practice, Kari focuses on data privacy, data security and data breach preparedness. Together, they discuss two basic strategies to help you prepare for a data breach; understanding what data you have, where that data resides. Check out our video with transcripts to learn more on how to prepare for a data breach.
Part 2 of our 3-Part Series on Data Breach
The Video Transcripts of How to Prepare for a Data Breach Follows
Lee Neubecker: Hi, I’m back on the show again with Kari Rollins. Thanks for coming back again.
Kari Rollins: Thank you.
LN: We’re continuing our discussion about the Sedona Conference Data Incident Response Guide and some of the best practices of how to prepare for the inevitable data breach and what you should be doing beforehand. So Kari, can you tell me what some of the things are that you advise your clients to do in anticipation of a potential issue?
KR: Sure, and I think planning, in our view, is just as important as the actual response itself and how you investigate. And in the Sedona Response Guide, we’ve pulled together some suggestions for sort of two elements of planning. One is the more technical, understanding what data you have, where that data resides, what your network systems are so that when you do have an incident, and you have to understand what information may have been impacted, to understand whether you have a legal obligation to notify, you have a better understanding and a better map of what those systems are and the information they hold. And a lot of times, using not just counsel and conducting that analysis, but using third party forensic firms to come in and help with that data mapping process is a really important step in getting prepared to understand where are all of the jewels of the company lying within the systems to know what the type of critical impact could be if one of those systems is hit.
LN: And some of the problems I’ve seen is, oftentimes the documents that are distributed and given to legally become outdated, so this is something really that organizations should be periodically updating their network data map and actually using either consultants or tools to help them map out what devices exist on their network.
KR: Right, exactly. And to that point, too, understanding what contracts with those vendors control here. Especially in the event, you have an incident that impacts the system that is managed by a vendor, do you know what information is being controlled by that vendor, and how you all are going to liaise when that incident occurs, who’s going to take control, what the contractual obligations are? Because vendor management is a hot-button issue these days. The FCC itself just came down with a number of guidelines and best practices for vendor management, so being prepared in that sense, knowing where your data is, who your vendors are, who controls it is really important.
LN: Exactly, and I can’t stress enough, it’s important, too, that companies have offline backups of their data because if you have a storage mass go down suddenly, if your company doesn’t have offline documents that describe what the drive geometry for that raid array is, the ability to recover the data becomes compromised and if a hacker gets in and takes out a storage network and the documentation for how to rebuild that storage network is on that drive, that could cause a real problem.
KR: Absolutely.
LN: Do you see that this guide is applicable to companies that are concerned about cryptolocker type malware as well?
KR: Sure, I think this Incident Response Guide can help guide companies through any type of incident, whether it’s a ransomware attack, where their information is being withheld from them, whether for ransom or for other purposes, it could just be useful in investigating the so often seen phishing attacks that seek to attack the email accounts of employees and then further perpetrate other credential harvesting schemes. So it’s useful in the sense that it helps companies prepare for any of those types of attacks. And it does so by helping them with the data mapping, giving them some guidelines on that front. And then also helping them to craft an incident response plan, which I think it’s just as you were talking about, being prepared here with an incident response plan is also the other critical component of preparation and it’s not a one-size-fits-all for the companies. You can’t just, there aren’t these stock-standard off-the-shelf policies that you can then apply because each company has different data systems, and different requirements, and different teams. But this guide provides you with resources and guideposts for how you build that plan that makes sense in the context of your company.
LN: Exactly, and depending on where the company operates, if they operate in Illinois, they might be subject to BIPA, the Illinois Biometric Information Protection Act, which has a whole host of unique requirements. So in our next segment, we’ll be talking more about what should be done after a data incident arises. Just because it’s an incident, does not mean it’s a data breach, but there are certain things you want to do, like have your team in place beforehand. But before we leave, what are your recommendations and what does Sedona say about forming a team to be able to respond in advance of an incident?
KR: I think that is probably one of the most critical elements of an incident response plan is really just knowing who your team is going to be. Who are the individuals that you are going to call when an incident occurs and building that team, it’s important to have the right buy-in? Legal, of course, is extremely important because you want to be able to conduct the investigation under privilege, and in a fashion that gets the facts to your legal counsel in a timely and expedient manner so that you can understand the point at which you have information that suggests you’ve had a breach as defined by law. Because the point at which you learn you’ve had a breach is defined by law as to when your clock starts ticking for notification and that’s in some jurisdictions, that’s a really tight turnaround. So in the incident response plan, in the Sedona Conference Instant Response Guide, we talk about having that team. Having the information security teams, knowing who your third-party experts are going to be if you need third party support to come in and investigate, knowing who your crisis management team from a PR perspective would be. So having all of those individuals listed, with the contact information in the back of your plan so you know who to call, sort of the Ghostbusters, but the privacy busters of an incident, who are you going to call when you get an incident. So I think that’s most important because having the right people mobilized is going to save you time in the end.
LN: It’s important, too, that especially with your forensic experts, you want to make sure you’re working with experienced people that understand the sensitivity around email because as you investigate incidents, your initial impression of what happened or what is going on might change as you learn new information, so it’s important not to begin with the word data breach when you don’t know if it’s a true data breach. Because sometimes, an organization has a security incident but there’s no proof that any data actually exfiltrated or that it was used in any way, so that’s part of at least during that response that we’ll talk about next, those are part of the issues that need to be investigated, but being sensitive to that and making sure that privilege is in place and communications is definitely important.
KR: Yeah, exactly.
LN: Well, thanks and tune in to our next segment where we talk about what to do after the inevitable data breach.
Chicago Tribune reported, “US says Chinese military behind Equifax breach that stole Americans’ personal data” Data Breach Response Experts Lee Neubecker and Kari Rollins say “Data Breach is inevitable!” They give us advice on how to prepare.
Sedona Conference Incident Response Guide
It is not a question of if you will fall victim to a Data Breach incident, it is when. Organizations large and small need to be ready for when cybercrime strikes. Data Breach Response Experts Lee Neubecker and Kari Rollins know how to prepare for a data breach without breaking the bank. Kari is a partner in the Intellectual Property Practice Group for Sheppard Mullin in New York, and also a member of the Sedona Conference, Working 11 group. Kari describes the Sedona Working 11 as a group of Cyber Breach Experts who design tools and how-to resources that are available to the general public through the Sedona Conference website. The Sedona Conference is a nonprofit research and educational institute that brings together jurists, lawyers, experts, and academics. Kari and Lee share their combined knowledge and talk about the options available to small to midsize companies that may not have the resources in-house necessary to respond to a data breach incident.
Watch Part 1 of our 3 Part Series on Data Breach Readiness follow:
Kari Rollins and Lee Neubecker discuss Data Breach: Sedona Conference
The Video Transcript of Data Breach Response Experts Kari Rollins and Lee Neubecker Follows
Lee Neubecker (LN): Hi, I’m here today with Kari Rollins. She’s the co-managing partner of the New York office of Sheppard Mullins. Thanks for being on the show.
Kari Rollins (KR): Thank you for having me.
LN: And I had Kari, she’s a specialist in the whole area of privacy related litigation involving data breaches and personal information and what not. She’s also a member of the Sedona Conference. Could you tell everyone a little bit about what the Sedona Conference does?
KR: Sure, so the Working Group 11 is the Working Group that is dedicated to helping companies and other practitioners understand some of the hot topics and legal issues in data privacy and cybersecurity today that are rapidly evolving as the laws in that area change. And the Sedona Conference itself is dedicated to pulling together practitioners from private sector, public sector, judges, regulatory authorities who all come to talk about their experiences in these different specialized areas so that it you know, you have a knowledge base with a wide variety of perspectives.
LN: Great and so I asked you to come on to talk a little bit about the data breach incident response guide that the conference came up with. Can you tell us what this is about?
KR: Sure, so as a member of the Working Group 11, several of us at the request of Sedona Conference came together to put together what our views were on how to handle a data breach, or an incident response from the very beginning of the breach life cycle, i.e. planning for and anticipating a breach, through the breach investigation itself and even thinking about issues that may be implicated in a post-breach regulatory inquiry and how companies can best defend themselves and prepare for what is now today, the inevitable, a data incident.
LN: So this is a free resource available to anyone?
KR: It is a resource available to anyone. It’s really a practitioner’s guide. We think this is probably best used by small to midsize companies who may not have the resources or staff in-house, legal staff in-house dedicated to responding to incidents. And it’s, though it can be used by any practitioner, any counsel, any type of company, we do expect that this is probably something that would be useful to small to midsize companies as really a guideline and material to help them issue spot and understand what are the issues in incident response? What should I be concerned about? What are the pitfalls? What am I going to need to be on the lookout for?
LN: Great, and if people want more information about this or want to download the guide, where can they obtain it from?
LN: Great, so in our next segment, we’re going to be talking a little bit about what should be done before a data breach happens.
KR: Right.
LN: And then in our third segment, we’ll talk a little bit about okay, the data breach happened or an incident happened, what do you need to do to respond? So watch those segments and tune in again. Thanks Kari for being on.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used to vastly improve the eDiscovery document review process. Zylab is one of several eDiscovery vendors offering solutions utilizing AI. Lee Neubecker, Computer Forensic Expert, and President & CEO of Enigma Forensics met with Jeffrey Wolff, Director of eDiscovery Solutions at ZyLAB during his visit to the Legal Tech Conference 2020 in New York. Lee and Jeffrey discuss how AI can be used to conduct more effective eDiscovery.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is everywhere. It’s hard to imagine how it’s being used in the legal industry where legal libraries filled with law books and courts filled with black-robed judges reign. In this formal traditional world, AI is now providing smart solutions for today’s electronically stored information or ESI and is streamlining the way the Legal Industry works.
In this video, Lee Neubecker, Computer Forensic Expert, and President & CEO of Enigma Forensics met with Jeffrey Wolff, Director of eDiscovery Solutions at ZyLAB during his visit to the Legal Tech Conference in New York. Lee and Jeffrey analyze how Artificial Intelligence (AI) develops smarter solutions in the eDiscovery process. Jeffrey shares with Lee that ZyLAB’s mission is to provide automated full-text retrieval using AI, for both on-premise or cloud-based solutions.
Watch Part 1 of a Three-Part Series on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and eDiscovery.
The video transcript of AI Smarter Solutions: eDiscovery follows.
Lee Neubecker: Hi, I have Jeff Wolff, back on the show from ZyLAB. Jeff, thanks for coming back on.
Jeff Wolff: Thank you.
LN: He’s their Director of eDiscovery, and I wanted to ask him some questions as it related to what differentiates ZyLAB from other products out on the market. Some of my clients may want to use this type of artificial intelligence program to help get through their review and see what the results are of using AI verse the traditional e-discovery review process, so.
JW: Sure.
LN: Jeff, could you tell us what sets ZyLAB apart from other competitors in the marketplace.
JW: Sure, sure, so first, I think ZyLAB is uniquely positioned in the fact we understand the corporate space quite well, as well as the law firm space, but we got our start incorporate, or start in information governance. So we are very vested in search and data science, and that’s really where we’ve put a lot of our focus. We have both on-premise solutions, as well as cloud-based, SaaS solutions like every other next-gen provider. But we really push our interface, our user interface and our user experience, as one of the most unique selling points. And that is, that it is not difficult to start using. Anyone, any legal professional can pick up our product in an hour, from start to finish, and understand really how you utilize it. Drag and drop interfaces for getting data into the system, and immediate color-coding and tagging, easy search, and the ability to really visualize your data and understand what’s in the dataset.
LN: Okay. So, what would you say for a company that has to deal with multiple jurisdictions, they’re in Europe, they’re in the US. JW: Sure. LN: There are some unique challenges posed by all the various regulations out there, like GDPR.
JW: Right.
LN: Maybe the have operations in China. How could you help a company that has to deal with various regulatory authorities spanning the globe?
JW: Sure, and that’s another advantage that ZyLAB has, actually, we’re actually a global company, so we’re dual-headquartered in Washington, D.C., here in the US, as well as Amsterdam in the Netherlands, in the EU. And as a result, we have cloud operations in both jurisdictions. So our global customers can actually keep US data in the US, and they can keep the European Union in the EU, and not worry about that issue. But we also have the expertise, consulting expertise, in both environments, both geographic locations. For example, I’m doing a lot of work now with corporations, not so much focused on directly just on e-discovery, because e-discovery is a bit reactive, you know? Or corporations go through peaks and valleys with e-discovery, the litigation, something they have it, sometimes they don’t. What they constantly have though, are internal investigations, regulatory responses, in the highly regulated corporations. And more and more now, data privacy concerns. So, my European colleagues have been dealing with GDPR for a while, we’re now starting to feel it here in the US, with CCPA, the California Consumer Privacy Act. And there are a number of states on the horizon that are going to California’s examples, so corporations need to be able to find, and classify all the data that they have in their organization that has customer information because if those customers request it and they can’t provide it, they’re financially in a lot of trouble.
LN: Do you think that the regulations coming down on companies are going to fundamentally change how companies chose to communicate with their vendors, suppliers, and own employees?
JW: Absolutely. If you look at all the recent data breach situations, it’s typically not the organization that has the problem, and I won’t mention any of the large companies that have recently had data breaches, but it’s typically not the original company that had the issue, it’s one of their suppliers, or one of their vendors that had accesses to the database, and wasn’t protecting it properly, and that’s how the trouble began.
LN: Yeah.
JW: Same thing with data privacy.
LN: The supply chain certainly is a huge point of vulnerability for all types of organizations. The governments, the military,
JW: Yep.
LN: and even corporations.
JW: Yes.
LN: So what do you see happening over the next few years with the adoption of AI platforms?
JW: I think the e-discovery market is going to fundamentally change. There’s still always going to be a need for discovery within corporations and law firms, but what you do you with the data is going to become much more important, so it’s going to be about how you can extract value from the data, not just metadata, which we’ve always been able to do for years now, but now more about looking for entity information. People, places, organizations that are mentioned in documents and emails, and collaborative environments, and being able to visualize those, and quickly drill down to what was going on in your organization. You know, if you got people that are going to the dentist three times a week, they’re not doing to the dentist, they’re doing something else, They’re just writing about going to the dentist.
LN: Yeah.
JW: Software like ours that can identify those references in documents are going to be crucial to the success of organizations.
LN: That’s great. So it seems that there’s continued e-discovery service provider consolidation out there.
JW: Mmhmm.
LN: The companies that are using tools that are more of a channel partner tool to resell.
JW: Yes.
LN: But as those companies consolidate, do you think that there’s going to be a movement away from those providers where, the company, the firms, directly do their own e-discovery?
JW: Oh, yes. Yeah, very much so. We’ve been seeing that over the last few years. A lot of companies, even small companies that tend to have, in the past, just used outside vendors for e-discovery, are now deciding that they prefer to control, not just the cost, but also their data. They don’t want their data outside of the organization for reasons we’ve already talked about. So they’re purchasing in-house tools that they can use themselves, and then they can invite outside counsel in to make use of, that way they control their costs, they control the efficiency, and they control the data.
LN: Well, this has been great. Thanks a bunch for being on the show.
Energy is vital to our everyday life. Companies face a competing demand to preserve data and at the same time continue to function. Experts Lee Neubecker and Geary Sikich give advice on how to overcome these challenges.
The Energy Sector provides the global economy with oil, gasoline, electricity, wind and natural gas. An Energy Industry incident could be a physical attack on a power grid or a cyber attack that stops a company from functioning. The properly planned and orchestrated energy sector incident response will minimize or reduce recovery time and loss. Potentially saving lives! Enigma Forensics CEO & President, Lee Neubecker and Geary Sikich, Principal at Logical Management Systems, Corp. strongly urge all companies to create an incident response plan.
This is the final segment in the four-part series on Energy Sector Cyber Insecurity.
Part 4 of our Global Energy Sector – Incident Response
Energy Sector Incident Response video transcript follows
Lee Neubecker: Hi I’m here again with Geary Sikich, and we’re continuing with our final fourth part segment in this discussion about global cyber insecurity as it relates to the energy sector. And in this segment, we’ll be telling you a little bit more about some of the things that need to happen, related to the incident response of a data breach, for the energy sector. Geary, thanks for coming back.
Geary Sikich: Thanks Lee for having me. I think this is, probably one of those areas that are challenging to talk about.
LN: Yeah, certainly, and at the forefront, when things first go wrong, there’s a need to immediately take action to help preserve the data, and collect data so that it can be analyzed. But at the same time, there’s a competing demand for wanting the organization to function. And sometimes those two needs, create conflicts.
GS: Yeah, they sort of butt heads if you will. Yeah, I think the issue for a number of organizations, and I’ve experienced being in the kind of command center if you will, of organizations where their website had gone down. And it was, one of these where a lot of stuff was processed through the portals that they had there. Suddenly there was this pressure to get things back up, and then to look at, what is this costing us? Because now our customers cannot execute their orders and whatnot. And that becomes a challenge because it’s the urgency issue. The other aspect is that when we look at incident response, and this is a little bit different from the typical natural disaster incident response. If I’ve been breached in a cyber incident, how long is it before I actually realize that I’ve been breached? It may not happen very quickly, it could be very subtle. And things could be manipulated, and suddenly I’m in a situation like some of the big companies that had data hack, where all the sudden personal accounts of cardholders are exposed. Now, what do I do? So there’s a lot of not the only rapid response that’s needed, but a lot of consequence analysis that’s really needed.
LN: Is it?
GS: How do you do that and yet maintain, as you were saying, and begin to look at that.
LN: Yeah.
GS: From, not really a legal standpoint, but, from a defensive standpoint.
LN: Yeah, well there’s a lot that needs to happen in a short period of time, you have the collection and preservation. Which, forensic professionals are often called in, such as myself. To collect the data. Firewalls, servers, logs. Then you also have the analysis of that data to determine, what are the motivations of the attacker? Was it an attacker? Was it negligence? You know, oftentimes things go down, people assume it’s a cyber attack, external. It could be an internal attack, it could just be something as innocent as, I’ve seen a new system coming online that’s supposed to help back up and provide redundancy, actually reformat a storage NAS array, that it was supposed to help protect. So, these things can happen. And quickly understanding, making sure that data doesn’t disappear that could be used to rebuild is important And that’s where bringing in the outsider’s important because someone new coming in doesn’t have skin in the game. And, you really need that objective party, to help you figure out what’s happening.
GS: But I think that in that respect when you bring in someone from outside, they also have a vested interest in making sure that, from not only a reputation standpoint but also from the standpoint of the viability of their services, making sure that they’re helping to alleviate the issue. And to bring back some, equilibrium if you will. So there’s this issue of consequence management that comes to bear on those–
LN: And you have some conflicts that happen with having the people that were, kind of in charge of watching over the equipment, do the investigation. And that can cause some, serious problems to the organization. And it may be very well that, the attack wasn’t the fault of the people responsible for managing it. But, if for instance there was, an action that took place that might show some carelessness or mishandling of events by the people in charge of IT, there’s a real risk there that, that person might take actions that could result in further data destruction. In an effort to cover up, what had happened.
GS: So now in that respect, we need to protect, we need to begin to look at how we manage the data collection post-incident, or during an incident, if you will. There obviously some legal ramifications.
LN: Yeah well whoever does this might have to testify. And that’s another reason why having a third party come in to do this work is important. Because you may want, legal may want to know, “well before we put an expert up to testify in this, “just tell us what happened and how do we respond? “How do we get ahead of this?” If it was a problem with a vendor, you want to know that. Because the clocks ticking. You know from the time a data breach is confirmed, it is a real data breach and known, to the time it has to be reported, oftentimes its thirty days. So there’s not a lot of time, to wait around If your data breached before you get in your expert, your forensic expert to inspect.
GS: Okay, so we’ve got a legal consideration, that has to be looked at. Insurance today has changed in a lot of respects. So, business interruption insurance. Obviously, that’s a critical area because if you want to file a claim–
LN: Yeah you have to report it to the carrier, or even if you have cyber coverage, it might not be covered if you failed to notify the insurance company of the incident.
GS: So, when I look at that aspect and say, “I’ve got a business interruption policy,” you mention cyber. And now I know that there are other writers to those policies. Like for terrorism and things like that today. If I don’t have a cyber writer, which is a contingent business interruption issue, my business interruption insurance may not cover me, on something like that. So it really becomes more incumbent to have one, the knowledge, two, to be able to look at the legal considerations, three, to begin to understand insurance laws, what do I have from a coverage standpoint? Which is where the traditional risk management group comes into play. But IT’s got to coordinate with them, to ensure all that.
LN: Exactly, and I had Todd Rowe on my show, who’s an insurance cyber attorney, that deals with these coverage issues. So, that’s an excellent video to watch that delves into that more. The other things though with incident response, you know you have the potential PR issues that relate to being data breached. So really, you need to assemble your team, your in-house legal, your HR, your media advisor. Preferably you have a PR firm that has dealt with data breaches before. And then, you’ve got to put together a plan. And all this stuff needs to be going on in parallel. So while that’s happening, your internal people are probably trying to work on, getting their disaster recovery systems restored. You might even have an outside IT provider come in and help bring those systems back up online. The workload that happens when a data breach has occurred, is such that it really isn’t pragmatic or practical to try to have internal IT do all the work. And it also isn’t covered by insurance typically. The outside providers will usually be covered, but not the internal people.
GS: So, if from a structural standpoint, and I’ll draw this to the areas that I worked in many years back after some of the events in the energy industry. Oil spills and things like that. Where industries adopted what they called an incident command system. The United States now has the National Incident Management System. So with cyber though, the composition, in terms of that team, is not necessarily the same that we would see in a typical, incident command system as is generally presented. So from a functional standpoint, I think that there are some things that I would look at. One, somebody’s got to be in charge. Two, somebody’s got to look at planning. What’s going on, and future planning, what do we do? Three, operationally, what’s effected what’s not affected? How do we keep it from cascading? Four, a communications perspective. Internal and external. An administrative function, which looks at the financial aspects. An infrastructure function, which again, internal-external infrastructure. And then, the aspect of, you know, bringing this all together as a team. Your HR people, all these other things. So, yeah.
LN: That was an excellent wrap-up Geary. I really appreciate you being on the show. If you liked this video, please share it. And check out the other segments we did as well. Thanks again Geary for being on the show.
GS: Thank you, Lee. Very challenging to present on this topic. So much.
LN: Be safe.
Watch the other segments in our Cyber Insecurity in the Energy Sector Series.
After the most recent Iranian attacks most people don’t think about the danger to our Energy Sector that lurks in the global underworld. Cyber Security Experts Lee Neubecker and Geary Sikich are on the job! They say we can tighten our security and detect cyber attacks before they happen.
Energy Sector Intrusion Detection is complicated and delicate and necessary to maintain our power grid. The Energy Sector provides energy for the world and must be secured and protected. Many detection tools and resources of expert precision are used to ensure the security of these precious resources. Think about it? What do you do on a daily basis that doesn’t involve energy or some type of energy? Enigma Forensics CEO & President, Lee Neubecker and Geary Sikich, Principal at Logical Management Systems, Corp. put your mind at ease and dissect cyber security and intrusion detection systems that are utilized by the Energy Sector.
This is Part 2 in the four-part series on Energy Sector Cyber Insecurity.
Lee Neubecker (LN): Hi, I’m back on the show again with Geary Sikich, thanks for coming back on the show.
Geary Sikich (GS): Thanks for having me back Lee.
LN: So we’re continuing our series discussing about global cyber insecurity as it relates to energy sector. In the second part of the series we’re talking more about detection of compromise. Um Geary, what’re your thoughts in this area?
GS: I believe that there’s a lot to be looked at in terms of the detection aspect, and this is one of the areas where you from a forensic standpoint, provide sort of a critical juncture, what’re you seeing that the general person, and even the general employee of the utility, might not be seeing? And might not be aware of?
LN: Well we know from reports by Dragos Cyber Security firm, that there’s a number of groups, I think around 11 groups are specifically targeting the energy sector. This report just came out this month, so there is a heightened attack readiness requirement to defend against these attacks. And the key thing that organizations need to be doing is they need to know that they have their firewall actively logging, and they need to be looking at those logs.
GS: Those are all state sponsored groups, right?
LN: Well, we don’t know exactly who they are, there could be terrorist cells, the Dragos report doesn’t give attribution as to the entities behind them. They describe the types of attacks, and the character of the attack methods, but there is a number of them that you can check out, there’s a link that will take you to their report if you’re interested in reading it. But you know, often times organizations fall compromised, and they don’t know it, and these things go on for a long time. There was a credit reporting agency attacked recently, for instance.
GS: So from a detection standpoint, the challenge that industries are faced with, cause our focus is going to be on the energy industry, so we’ll get energy industry. In general, the challenge that they face then, is that it’s not just what we perceive could be state sponsored hacking of their systems, it could be individuals, it could be terrorist cells, it could be pretty much anyone with a desire to infiltrate a system whether it’s to do harm, or whether it’s just to see if they can do it
LN: Exactly. The barrier to entry to launching one of these attacks is much lower. It requires knowledge, but the knowledge could be in the head of a teenager, that got rejected at school and wants to take the power out in his town. So that’s a legitimate problem. Now related to detection, I mentioned the firewall logs, there’s a great product out there called, Canary. Have you heard of it?
GS: No, it’s new to me.
LN: Essentially, it’s a company they tell these little devices, you deploy in your network, and they can pretend to be a payroll mass, health care information system storage database, or you can make it be whatever you want. But it’s essentially trying to lure an attacker. So if someone’s in your network, there going to scan your network to look for resources and it will detect people trying to brute force that item. So these items are a great way to have another way of knowing are you compromised. If organizations that had recently been publicly compromised, that didn’t know it for many years had some of these devices in place, they would probably know pretty quickly, like within a day or so, of someone getting through their firewall.
GS: So the challenge then I guess, from a detection standpoint, and the way we’ve seen it, and in discussions with organizations that I’ve worked with. Is that it’s not a single point of penetration that we have to worry about, it’s become multiple points of penetration, and multiple points that are not necessarily hard wired into the operating system. So utilities in a lot of respects have gone out to do with their status systems, monitoring your water usage, or electric usage, all remotely, and you periodically might see a utility vehicle drive by, and they may have a cellular type phone system, that goes by and scans your homes to see what your energy usage is. So those all become a factor. We get into detection in terms of things, we’ve mentioned today shipping is a big issue, and we mentioned with the current situation with Iran, the concern over the Strait of Hormuz, but shipping in general, navigation systems, have been targeted, not only by state actors, but by other groups. So you have navigation systems which is not just water born shipping. Think of where navigation systems are today. Look into your pocket and see your cell phone.
LN: Well we had the recent issue with the Boeing Max airplane, it turned out the sensors were damaged. Well these sensors they’re called MEMS sensors, they’re a combination of electro-mechanical sensors, and if the chip is hit at the frequency that matches the natural frequency of the component board, it can actually cause the chip to malfunction and report erroneous readings temporarily. Or if the frequency matches and it’s of a great enough amplitude it can actually damage the chip. And there hasn’t been much discussions about whether these chips were cyber-attacked but it’s very possible, if you look up University of Michigan, they have research on MEMS chip sensors and interestingly enough, the patent for these sensors was a Boeing patent. So there’s not a lot of talk about that and I think more likely if the chips were damaged, it’s more likely they were damaged while they were on the ground interestingly enough, the two crashes that occurred were in countries that had a lot of terrorist activity.
GS: I think the other aspect with detection is that when you begin to bring out a point like that, people have a tendency to assume durability of systems when systems can be very sensitive to, if you will, shocks, minor shocks to the system. So it’s not necessarily the physical attack, you could take the example recently Puerto Rico has had an earthquake. What damages were incurred by the, on their systems as a result? That are undetected yet. The sensitivity of systems I think has become really critical in a lot of these aspects.
LN: But like with these chips we’re blending mechanical with computer embedded processors. So like these chips think of an opera singer, that sings the natural frequency of a wine glass. If he sings it loud enough, that glass will shatter. It’s the same concept with this chip. You can fire sound at it, if you’re close enough, or if you have a strong enough amplifier, you could fry it. Now that could happen, a drone could potentially launch a sonic attack, someone onboard, a passenger could do it, cleaning crew coming through could do it. So these are some questions that it’s kind of a new paradigm but we even had issues with military aircraft having this uptick in crashes, and these same types of systems are in the newer military helicopters and planes and whatnot. So I think it was good that the military grounded some of these devices that were having these problems, And you know the investigation, I’m sure, continues and the public may not fully be briefed on this, but it is a threat that needs to be detected before people die.
GS: So the real issue with the situation that we’re in, with this kind of global insecurity if you will, is our ability to detect has been I’ll put it in these terms, if our ability to detect has been compromised by virtue of the disruptive technologies that exist that are making detections more and more of a challenge, because they’re becoming more and more subtle in how they entered in the system. So I can have a system that looks like it’s working perfectly, and yet at a point be compromised like the mechanical system that’s supposed to open a valve, and it’s been doing it for a long time, and then suddenly it either leaves it open, or completely shuts it.
LN: This is where it’s important that these entities have an accurate inventory of what their equipment is, and they also have an accurate inventory of the embedded systems and what that software code should look like. And they should have procedures in place to periodically verify that the embedded firmware chips that do these functions haven’t been altered. Otherwise they won’t even know, and something could happen at a very critical time. So that wraps up our section on detection. In our next segment will be talking about helping to protect against these types of attacks.
GS: Great.
Watch the other segments on Cyber Insecurity in the Energy Sector
Hackers will continue to pummel the sector with targeted attacks.
Have you heard the news about the most recent Chicago, Illinois area hospital data breach? We’re referring to the article in the Chicago Tribune, By Lisa Schencker on December 31, 2019. “Personal information of nearly 13,000 people may have been exposed in Sinai Health System data breach” Click here to view the article.
After reading this article many questions came to mind. Who would hack a hospital system? Are cyber attacks on hospitals becoming more frequent? Could a foreign hacker be targeting hospitals to conduct cyber warfare? Could it be a disgruntled employee who maliciously wants to obtain patient electronic medical records (EMR) and target a particular patient?
It has been reported that 70% of hospital data breaches include sensitive demographic or financial information of that could lead to identity theft. The Sinai Health System data breach included 13,000 patients’ names, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers, health information or health insurance information were potentially exposed.
One could easily assume that if a hacker was armed with this information, they could sell patient electronic medical records and financial data to the highest bidder. The potential for patient harm is exponential.
Data Breach Incident Response
What happens next? Computer Forensic Experts are called to initiate a data breach response. Experts start with immediately stopping the breach, accessing the damage, notifying those affected, conducting a security audit. Forensic experts create a recovery plan to prepare for future attacks. Finally, Forensics experts train employees to protect the data and enforce strong passwords.
Computer Forensic Experts A.K.A. Cyber Security sleuths or electronic detectives are really excellent at detecting where and how the breach occurred and accessing the damage. In cases of litigation due to a data breach or medical malpractice, Computer Forensics Experts are hired by law firms to serve as expert witnesses to help win the litigation. In addition, many hospitals hire Computer Forensic Experts to assist in auditing their records to prove their side of the case.
Prepare a Data Breach Incident Response Plan
Looking forward to 2020. Cyber Forensic experts agree the entire sector needs to adjust its security approach to keep pace with hackers. The Department of Health and Services and many states may impose fines on those who are not following security guidelines. It’s vitally important to create a Data Breach Incident Response Plan.
Enigma Forensics are experts in Data Breach Incident Response. To learn more about Enigma Forensics read below.
