Data Security and Privacy on the Information Superhighway
IBTTA members take pride in securing their data.
But as other industries have found out, at great cost in dollars and public confidence, the security of your data is at risk as soon as pride gives way to complacency. That’s why you should be planning to attend IBTTA’s 84th Annual Meeting and Exhibition, September 11-14, 2016 in Denver, as a means to learn and stay ahead of the curve.
After attending the cybersecurity sessions in Denver, the five worst words in a data manager’s lexicon— “it could never happen here”—will be forever purged from your vocabulary.
Hackers Find Their Target
Over the last 2½ years, the U.S. retail chain Target has become an icon, for at least one reason that no marketer, manager, or senior executive would ever want. In December 2013, as Bloomberg later reported, hackers stole 40 million credit card numbers and 70 million addresses, phone numbers, and other pieces of personal information from Target’s mainframes—even though the company had systems in place to detect and prevent data theft.
“More than 90 lawsuits have been filed against Target by customers and banks for negligence and compensatory damages,” the news agency noted. “That’s on top of other costs, which analysts estimate could run into the billions,” including Target’s promise to cover customers’ fraudulent charges in hopes of regaining their trust.
“Target’s profit for the holiday shopping period fell 46% from the same quarter the year before,” Bloomberg wrote. “The number of transactions suffered its biggest decline since the retailer began reporting the statistic in 2008.”
It turned out the hackers had entered the Target system through a heating and refrigeration contractor that had access to the mainframe—in other words, a big-picture system connected to every Target cash register was defeated by a sub-routine. (For any Star Trek-TNG fans, think of the Enterprise defeating the Borg by ordering them to sleep.) The data security system generated a series of warnings, but those alerts failed to trigger a round of badly-needed human intervention—because the Target security team had turned notifications off.
How to Secure Your Systems
In hindsight, it’s easy to see how Target’s epic data failure could have been prevented. The problem is that hindsight is not foresight—and the one thing we know about the next major data breach is that it won’t look like the last one.
Which is why you’ll want first-hand access to the strategies, tools, and resources on data security and customer privacy presented in Denver.
At the general session Tuesday morning, you will hear from industry, law enforcement, and public relations experts who will help us understand the threats, the costs of data breaches, the strategies employed to protect our systems and data, and how to recover from incidents when they do happen. Then, in a breakout session later in the day, a panel of cybersecurity specialists will take a deeper dive into the evolving best practices in data protection.
Anyone who operates transportation infrastructure knows that the biggest victories are often the critical incidents that you were able to anticipate and prevent. That operating principle might be most familiar on the road, but it’s just as important along the data streams formerly known as the Information Superhighway.
So if you think you’re already up to speed on cybersecurity…that might actually be the very best reason to attend this year’s IBTTA Annual Meeting. Because when it comes to your data, and your customers’ confidence, you can never be too sure.
Register today to attend IBTTA’s 84th Annual Meeting and Exhibition, September 11-14, 2016 in Denver.