[BreachExchange] Winter is coming. Protect your content kingdom

[Audrey McNeil]

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3218073/security/
winter-is-coming-protect-your-content-kingdom.html

Like many of my high-tech colleagues I am an avid Game of Thronesviewer.
However, its appeal is much broader. The series is set in a historical
fictional medieval world made of seven kingdoms, all struggling for power
in a tense battle between good and evil. No character is safe, and this
unpredictably delights audiences by keeping them on their toes not being
able to guess what comes next.

In fact, Game of Thrones shattered HBO’s viewership record with more than
10 million global fans tuning in for its season 7 debut in July. No doubt
this record-breaking show is the crown jewel of HBO and guarded like Fort
Knox, right?

As a published author on articles on content governance and analytics, my
interest piqued as I learned about HBO’s data breach of Game of Thrones.
How relevant to my recent article, “Think you can’t be breached? Think
again,” where I discuss how 57 percent of breaches are internal and the
steps companies can take to better protect themselves.

While most of them are from well-intended employees, the malicious insiders
are more dangerous and costly to operations (per New York State Security
Breach Reporting 2006-2013). Why? A malicious insider is rarely monitored
and knows the location of the most valuable content, so the potential
damage exceeds that of the external hacker.

In addition to the external hackers demanding in excess of $6 million,
multiple insider breaches followed causing irreversible damage by leaking
episodes of Game of Thrones before they broadcast, all at the hands of
inside affiliates. Four employees or former employees of Star India, which
has the rights to air the series in that country, have been arrested for
stealing episode 4. Separately, HBO accused its third-party Nordic and
Spanish distributors for an error that caused the sixth episode to be
leaked before its broadcast.

The struggles that HBO is facing are prime examples of a breach of
confidentiality by a trusted user or group who bypassed multiple security
controls to leak sensitive intellectual property.

The first step to better protection is knowing what and where your most
valuable content is—or for Game of Thrones, your most valuable kingdom.
Like kingdoms, not all content is created equal. Would you place more
emphasis guarding Eastern Essos or King’s Landing? King’s Landing, the
royal capital of Westeros, has rich and fertile lands, has access to the
sea, and is home to the Iron Throne and ruler of the Seven Kingdoms—an
obvious target for conquest.

Similarly, would you place equal resources on marketing collateral leads as
you do core intellectual property, contractual obligations, and regulated
content to comply with Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards or the Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)? Do you treat them
differently? You should.

What is your King’s Landing? Can you draw its map along with its valuable
content to protect it with a wall?

Once you do, don’t be too busy fighting hackers that you forget about
insiders.In Games of Thrones, the kingdoms are so busy fighting each other
on one side of the wall that they ignore a much more dangerous threat to
them all: the white walkers.

You can’t fight the white walkers alone—you must know your enemy and have
the weapons to protect yourselves. Jon Snow knows the dead walkers, but did
not have the weapon. Daenerys Targaryen has the dragons and the dragon
stone, but did not know the enemy. The answer to safeguarding the kingdoms
has got to be a teaming of these two beloved characters.

Similarly, business owners and managers understand the value of the data
and are in the best position to assess preferred measures to “prepare for
combat” such as training employees on procedure. IT provides visibility and
weapons but is not intimately familiar with access entitlement nor equipped
to prioritize the business value of content.

Once winter comes, you need to be ready for the battle with all your
resources. IT together with the business owners, complete with an arsenal
of tools and processes ready for the ongoing battle. You will continually
need to refresh your strategy and perform ongoing training as your
ecosystem of employees, suppliers, and distribution partners changes over
time.

Even with careful planning, well-intended employees can and will mishandle
data such as moving a confidential file to a folder unaware that a
colleague has shared this folder with an external party. Thank goodness for
the night watch to continuously monitor threats, and in our IT context all
will sleep better knowing that a real time on-going alerting system
detecting abnormal behavior is in place and can take action immediately.

Perhaps HBO should have approached data governance the same way it thought
about Games of Thrones— hopefully it will for the next season. The only
difference between Games of Thrones and content governance is that for
Games of Thrones I don’t want a spoiler whereas for content governance I
would rather see what’s coming and know the end of the story (hopefully, it
is a happy ending).
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