Dan Geer’s Mandated Breach Reporting

Vision of the Cyber-Future: Can the Security Industry Help?

By Jen Andre, Co-Founder Threat Stack

THE WORLD HAS CHANGED !

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It’s in the Earth. It’s in the packet loss. !

Dan Geer lit up the security community during his opening

keynote at Black Hat 2014 with his controversial vision of

security and privacy in the internet of the near future.

In one proposal…

He outlines a policy where organizations are mandated to report security breaches

(within a certain scope).

A corollary to the CDC

Currently, medical providers are required to report any observed instances of ‘certain communicable disease’ to the Center for

Disease Control (CDC), in order to mitigate the public health risk of a widespread

pandemic.

Dan posits:

“Should we have similar mandates for reporting security breach events?”

To anyone who has been the victim of identity theft or privacy violations due to

mismanaged security practices, the answer to the previous question

is a resounding “OF COURSE!”

The argument for mandated security breach reporting is not new,

though it remains controversial…

If we look at the state of breach reporting today…

• There is already legislation in the United States that mandates this for certain classes of data.

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• PCI-compliant entities are required to report credit card breaches to their private financial institutions

• This comes with serious consequences !

• Many states (California leading the charge) also require reporting directly to the owners of the data stolen

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• HIPAA mandates similar disclosures !

• (And no, the US isn’t the only country where this kind of legislature is being mandated).

Can we presume a similar trend for other classes of data going forward?

Proponents argue: !

The mandated breach reporting is a compelling impetus for organizations to be

better stewards of data that is increasingly replicated across cloud services worldwide.

There are several philosophical, organizational, and technical challenges that make this difficult to

execute on at best, and infeasible at worst — except in the most regulated of industries.

If we presume such legislation is inevitable, what kinds of challenges do

businesses and other organizations face for compliance?

What kind of technological solutions can we expect to evolve as an industry to

make this easier?

How does this affect the widespread explosion of SaaS businesses (which have been enabled by the explosion of IaaS)

in today’s “cloud”-enabled world?

Let’s start with some of the technical challenges.

1. How do I know if I’m breached?

Most of the time, organizations have no idea they’ve been compromised. According to the Verizon DBIR,

70-80% of all breaches are reported by unrelated 3rd parties.

This is an interesting challenge when it comes to penning legislation…

It makes little sense to have mandates on breach reporting without a specified time window.

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(Otherwise, anyone could take advantage of a loophole and postpone notifications for years)

Yet, many SaaS businesses operating today do not have the expertise in-house

to even know if they are breached, never mind have the capability of response within a certain time window.

Which brings us to the other problem…

2. How do I know the scope of the data compromised?

Technically, it’s quite difficult to reconstruct the path of an attack.

As Dan pointed out in his keynote, the security industry is becoming increasingly specialized, and not everyone

can afford to have a security forensics expert on-hand or pay for breach notification services.

The security industry innovation in audit logging for systems, APIs and applications can put this kind of data in

the reach of non-specialized systems operators, but in the meantime:

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Is a single point of entry in an application log good enough to assume the best case,

or the worst possible scenario?

3. Who is responsible?

Even if you limit the scope of a breach to certain classes of data, data lives online in complex systems.

There are many attack vectors, and the scope of the entities responsible for breach reporting remain fuzzy.

Think of the proliferation of shared Facebook authentication:

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If you use your Facebook credentials to log into a medical records site, is Facebook now mandated to report breaches

within a certain time frame to the users of its auth services so that the medical records site can respond accordingly?

Never mind if you legislate widespread PII breach reporting — the personal

information embedded in private social networking sites could allow

an attacker to do real damage. !

(i.e. impersonate you well enough to get access to your Amazon account)

If I’m an internet service provider and a router is compromised that allows hijacking in such a way that I’m able to compromise a medical records site,

am I responsible for reporting? !

As a common carrier, should I even care about the content that I serve?

Taking it down a level

The philosophical argument

The internet’s power lies in its roots as an open communications platform.

If a kid creates a web app that calculates my personality type based on a quiz that asks for

my birthday, full name, and my blood type, do we enforce breach reporting?!

Certainly we can enforce that person’s ability to establish a business and make money within the

purview of the government that holds jurisdiction, but that raises new concerns…

We will start to see micro-internets whose boundaries are dictated by the government entities that

control the underlying infrastructure and who has access to what?

It’s not hard to see that mandated breach reporting would impose real

cost to innovation.

Will internet startups choose to launch their businesses in the darker, freer

parts of the internet whose infrastructure is controlled by the more

friendly governments? !

(a la what’s happening with online gambling)

The compartmentalization of internet security policy given the power of state actors and the tension between

what we value as our freedom on the internet, and the role of cyber security.

Geer alludes to this…

Already, the Chinese internet is a very, different place from

the one you and I know…

In such a world… !

How can technology help?!

Can the security industry provide software that mitigates the costs of breach reporting requirements with better-automated ways of

detecting breaches?

Will such technology be usable and affordable by masses of

startups that are out there today building real businesses and driving

technology forward?

What do you think? !

Are Dan’s ideas about mandated breach reporting farfetched, or do they represent a world we could soon live in?

Tweet your thoughts: !

@threatstack !

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