Your refrigerator might have helped bring down the internet last Friday.
As many users noticed, shortly before last weekend a massive cyber-attack disrupted service to major websites ranging from the New York Times to PayPal and many more. The attack took place in three stages, all targeted at the Domain Name Services (DNS) company Dyn, Inc.
Dyn’s business, domain name services, is often referred to as the roadmap of the internet. It’s what translates URLs like TheStreet.com into the 12-digit IP address at which websites reside. This isn’t because IP addresses are secret (at time of writing, for example, this website’s address was 107.23.89.155). They’re simply tough for human beings to remember…..read the full article here with my comments as I weigh in with TheStreet author Eric Reed .
Imagine that you are driving through downtown New York City (NYC) and only relying on your GPS for directions. All of a sudden, the GPS stops working and you are stuck in mid-town Manhattan traffic during rush hour. If you have ever tried to drive in NYC, you know it’s easier to navigate a corn maze blindfolded than to attempt to navigate the complicated NYC streets.
A Domain Name System (DNS) is much like a GPS, in that DNS gets you from point A to point B online. While a GPS allows you to look up any destination in the world and find a path to that destination, DNS is your map, navigator, and transportation all rolled up in one, specifically for the internet. Behind every domain name is an intimidating looking series of numbers called an internet protocol (IP) address (Example: 172.217.0.XX) and it gets much worse with next generation addresses which may look something like (2606:2800:220:6d:26bf:1447:1097:XXX). The bottom line is it’s much easier to remember a name (i.e. – Google dot com) rather than commit to memory a series of random numbers for every destination on the internet. DNS is the foundation that translates the domain name you type into your browser to the correct IP address and routes your request to the right place in real time. It just works, but when it doesn’t, it becomes one of the most disruptive roadblocks for the web.
On October 21st, 2016, various media outlets reported multiple waves of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that targeted New Hampshire based-DNS provider Dyn, which led to the disruption of the company’s ability to provide its subscribers with DNS services – resulting in massive issues for 17 of the top 100 most visited sites such as Twitter, Github, Reddit, AirBnB, Spotify, Soundcloud, Netflix and PayPal…..read more here.
Recently RSA Security’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Holly Rollo and I sat down and put our brains together to flush out the absolute necessities of what needs to be in place when the unthinkable happens to a company and/or government organization….that being….you don’t have a data breach communication and response plan when a cyber breach happens.
Below is a highlight of what Holly and I had to say in a recent Harvard Business Reviewfeature titled “Your Company Needs a Communication Plan for Data Breaches”…..
In an instant, any business can find itself in the frightening position of watching the brand you’ve worked so hard to build being taken to its knees by a cyber breach. Few things are more damaging to a brand’s reputation than a hack in the headlines, and in the event of a public security incident, it’s highly likely that the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and the Chief Security Officer (CSO) will be the first people the CEO looks to and says “What do we do now?”
When a data breach happens, there is nothing worse than trying to figure out how to manage the crisis on the fly as it is still happening. That’s why every strategic marketing plan, and every company’s overall security strategy, should incorporate a data breach communication plan.
Even a rumor of a breach can trigger a communications crisis. Here’s a generalized scenario similar to cases we’ve experienced: A hot new mobile technology company lands one of the most successful IPOs of the year. A hacker going by the name of ‘Tumbleweed’ enters a forum and brags that the device can be hacked. Other hackers begin to post on different forums, and a newspaper picks it up. A news cycle begins. Senior engineers in the company respond to the forums by denying the hacking claims. Hacker forums go crazy and issue a “bug bounty” to try to compromise the device, with some claiming success………
Read the complete Harvard Business Review feature here….
