THREAT REPORTS
Calculating the Cost of a Mega Security Breaches
The Ponemon Institute in a study sponsored by IBM Security found that the global average cost of data breaches has increased by more than six percent from 2017 to 2018 to an average of nearly 3.9 million dollars. The study, 2018 Cost of a Data Breach Study, also, for the first time, studied so-called mega breaches whose record losses range from 1-50 million. The study also articulated some of hidden costs to an organization that occur during a data breach and that often are not, when costs reported, tabulated. For example, in the mega breach category, the biggest cost was not related to remediating the actual data breach; rather, the largest expense related to mega breaches was lost business. This is often not included in publicly reported costs which typically report only costs related to legal, recovery costs, regulatory expenses, and customer reparations. The study found, as an example, that with a breach of 50 million records, the total costs could reach more than 350 million dollars.
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THE STATE OF ISIS // SUMMER 2018
Since at least 2014, ISIS – also known as the Islamic State – and its affiliates have been household names in much of the world because of their ability to rapidly take control of vast swaths of Iraq and Syria and their claiming of responsibility for terrorist attacks elsewhere in the world. At its peak, the unrecognized Islamic State held 34,000 square miles of land in Iraq and Syria and was able to march close to the borders of both Baghdad and Damascus. The United States, their Syrian/Kurdish allies, Iranian-backed Shiite militias, and the Iraqi government have been – in separate coalitions – engaging in a protracted war against ISIS to drive it out of Iraq and Syria; the endeavor has, at the very least, led to ISIS losing control of more than 99% of its land in both countries, and it has greatly diminished the ability for the organization to conduct operations as it has largely driven them underground and denied them vast quantities of revenue.
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CYBER-SECURITY FOR AMERICA'S INFRA-STRUCTURE
Body scanners have been a fact of life for air travelers in the United States and much of the world since airport security increased significantly after the September 11th attacks. Frequent air travelers are accustomed to the human traffic jam that is often the TSA security checkpoint where one’s shoes, belt, and electronic devices are removed and sent through a scanner while the individual goes through a three second body scanner and – depending on the results – subsequent manual screenings by a TSA (Transportation Safety Administration) agent. The body scanners, however, inconvenient do serve a security purpose as both a deterrent against even attempting to board a plane with a weapon or explosive and as a means to catch those who nonetheless attempt to board the plane anyway.
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