Security

In the first 4 parts of "Fixing Data Breaches", I highlighted education [https://www.troyhunt.com/fixing-data-breaches-part-1-education/], data ownership and minimisation [https://www.troyhunt.com/fixing-data-breaches-part-2-data-ownership-minimisation/], the ease of disclosure [https://www.troyhunt.com/fixing-data-breaches-part-3-the-ease-of-disclosure/] and bug bounties [https://www.troyhunt.com/fixing-data-breaches-part-4-bug-bounties/] as ways of addressing the problem. It was inevitable tha...

Over the course of this week, I've been writing about "Fixing Data Breaches" which focuses on actionable steps that can be taken to reduce the prevalence and the impact of these incidents. I started out by talking about the value of education [https://www.troyhunt.com/fixing-data-breaches-part-1-education/]; let's do a better job of stopping these incidents from occurring in the first place by avoiding well-known coding and configuration flaws. I went on to data ownership and minimisation [https...

This week, I've been writing up my 5-part guide on "Fixing Data Breaches". On Monday I talked about the value of education [https://www.troyhunt.com/fixing-data-breaches-part-1-education/]; let's try and stop the breach from happening in the first place. Then yesterday it was all about reducing the impact of a breach [https://www.troyhunt.com/fixing-data-breaches-part-2-data-ownership-minimisation/], namely by collecting a lot less data in the first place then recognising that it belongs to the...

Yesterday, I wrote the first part of this 5-part series on fixing data breaches and I focused on education [https://www.troyhunt.com/fixing-data-breaches-part-1-education/]. It's the absolute best bang for your buck by a massive margin and it pays off over and over again across many years and many projects. Best of all, it's about prevention rather than cure. The next few parts of this series all focus on cures - how do we fix data breaches once bad code has already been written or bad server c...

We have a data breach problem. They're constant news headlines, they're impacting all of us and frankly, things aren't getting any better. Quite the opposite, in fact - things are going downhill in a hurry. Last month, I went to Washington DC, sat in front of Congress and told them about the problem [https://www.troyhunt.com/heres-what-im-telling-us-congress-about-data-breaches/]. My full written testimony is in that link and it talks about many of the issue we face today and the impact data br...

Occasionally, I feel like I'm just handing an organisation more shovels - "here, keep digging, I'm sure this'll work out just fine..." The latest such event was with NatWest [http://personal.natwest.com] (a bank in the UK), and it culminated with this tweet from them: > I'm sorry you feel this way. I can certainly pass on your concerns and feed this back to the tech team for you Troy? DC — NatWest (@NatWest_Help) December 12, 2017 [https://twitter.com/NatWest_Help/status/940672376127270912?ref...

As many followers know, I run a workshop titled Hack Yourself First [https://www.troyhunt.com/workshops/] where I spend a couple of days with folks running through all sorts of common security issues and, of course, how to fix them. I must have run it 50 times by now so it's a pretty well-known quantity, but there's one module more than any other that changes at a fierce rate - HTTPS. I was thinking about it just now when considering how to approach this post launching the new course because le...

Yesterday I had a bunch of people point me at a tweet from a politician in the UK named Nadine Dorries [https://twitter.com/NadineDorries]. As it turns out, some folks were rather alarmed about her position on sharing what we would normally consider to be a secret. In this case, that secret is her password and, well, just read it: > My staff log onto my computer on my desk with my login everyday. Including interns on exchange programmes. For the officer on @BBCNews [https://twitter.com/BBCNews?...

Last week I wrote about my upcoming congressional testimony [https://www.troyhunt.com/im-testifying-in-front-of-congress-in-washington-dc-about-data-breaches-what-should-i-say/] and wow - you guys are awesome! Seriously, the feedback there was absolutely sensational and it's helped shape what I'll be saying to the US Congress, including lifting specific wording and phrases provided by some of you. Thank you! As I explained in that first blog post, I'm required to submit a written testimony 48...

Edit: I'm putting this up front as a lot of people are asking for it - the hearing will be live-streamed on YouTube and there's already an embedded video on the hearing page [https://energycommerce.house.gov/hearings/identity-verification-post-breach-world/] . There's a title I never expected to write! But it's exactly what it sounds like and on Thursday next week, I'll be up in front of US congress on the other side of the world testifying about the impact of data breaches [https://energycomme...