An organization can easily have 300,000,000,000 pieces of data.
The story that follows is about one file.
It could be about any of them.
A Data Lifecycle Story
001
It was created in a lab.
The health record of cardiac patient D. Johnson came into existence at 9:42am. Mr. Johnson is being wheeled into surgery. Needless to say, this data is rather sensitive.
See Infolock Protocol: DiscoveryWithin minutes, the file has rapidly proliferated.
002
It’s now in hundreds of remote locations.
Moments later and 2,000 miles away, DJOHNSONHLTH_P904824/ is accessed by a new user.
An insurance expo is underway at the Sunnydale Motel. An attendee nicknamed “Stan–O” is logged in doing claim work between meetings. Sunnydale is nice and secure. Its network? Not so much.
See Infolock Protocol: Classification003
Like taking candy from an unsecured IP.
Before he’s even finished breakfast, Stan-O becomes the object of international attention.
She has IP addresses in Brazil, Turkey, the US and Hungary.
Online, she’s known only as “The Romanian.”
And she just let herself into the insurance co’s servers through Stan–O’s laptop.
004
The romanian has ransom on her mind.
Once inside the insurance co’s walls, she has access to all shared data — including DJOHNSONHLTH_P904824/.
And so she plants a present inside our file: ransomware.
9:55am: Now she waits for a hospital employee to trip the wire.
At 9:59am, DJOHNSONHLTH_P904824/ is opened, instantly triggering a systemwide encryption of the hospital’s database farm, crashing their EMR and cutting off patient care. They have no backup and no options. Until an anonymous offer to help arrives.
See Infolock Protocol: Protection$2 million in Bitcoin, and you nice boys can have your key now.
005
And it’s au revoir to the CISO.
The CISO’s walking papers were drawn up even before they wired the $2 million. Mr. Johnson was never told why his surgery was suddenly delayed. And as they exited the hospital late that night, one executive was overheard asking, “Is this disaster over yet?”
See Infolock Protocol: Incident response006
Until the government comes calling.
Days later, hospital administrators quietly reported the incident to the Office of Civil Rights. Who is liable? Where is your Security Plan? How will you stop the next attack?
Whether or not their answers satisfied the regulators remains unknown.
As for DJOHNSONHLTH_P904824/, it continues to live on out there.
Now only one last piece remains to this story.
Those other 300 billion files.
See Infolock Protocol: Security PlanningFind out how we can help your organization or take another spin through our data lifecycle tale.
Discovery
Every engagement begins with basic questions: What data do you have? Is it sensitive? Who has access? How is it used? To protect your data, first we need to find your data. All of it.
Learn about Information Security Assessments