By Wade Baker

“Attacks vary, therefore risk management doesn’t work.” To be fair, that’s not a direct quote from a recent Dark Reading article entitled “Why Risk Management Doesn’t Work”, but it is an accurate expression of its message. Like us (and Alex Hutton of RMI), you may be thinking that something about that message doesn’t seem quite right. Congratulations – you’re a logician.

Non sequitur is a Latin phrase meaning “it does not follow.” It applies to an argument where the conclusion does not logically follow from the premise. Need a good example? Check out the Dark Reading article which discusses our 2008 Data Breach Investigations Supplemental Report. Actually, the article itself isn’t bad; it does a fine job covering some of the findings from our report. My main objection is with the logical conclusion implied in the title which, oddly, doesn’t seem to square with what the article spends most of its time discussing.
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by Dave Kennedy

We humans introduce risk regardless of our good intentions.  We security types tend to be a paranoid lot, thinking every unfortunate event is evidence someone is out to get us.  Yet we are regularly reminded of Hanlon’s Razor, quoted above.  Recently, we have two high-profile “oopsies” which demonstrate the premise of Hanlon’s Razor, namely that not all bad outcomes have an evil-doer involved.

Last week, a colleague at Verizon Business wanted to inform his customers and colleagues that we had published a supplement to our Data Breach Investigations Report. He crafted an e-mail message and used a list of addresses from a public (non-Verizon) website for the “To:” line in Outlook.  Oops.  He had intended to use the blind carbon copy (BCC) address line to ensure privacy of the recipients, but this did not happen. Certainly, in this case, his actions counted more than intentions.  Of course, he knows this is an easy-to-make error and thus one to guard against.  The earliest instance I’ve found of this bcc mishap dates back to 2001, but we can be pretty sure this mistake is older than that.

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Dr. Peter Tippett, VP of Research and Risk Intelligence for Verizon Business Security Solutions, was recently interviewed by Robert Richardson at Information Week about the Data Breach Supplemental Report. Visit the link below to listen.

Listen

Bryan Sartin, Director of Investigative Response for Verizon Business Security Solutions, was recently interviewed by Michael Johnson at PodTech. Visit the links below to listen.

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