The breach of 11 million classified digital data files, approximately 2.6 TB of data, at the Panamanian legal firm Mossack, Fonseca, and Co has shaken the world to its core. Several data analysts and media experts have credited the data leak to whistle-blowers who wish to remain anonymous. Some others claim that the documents were stolen through a cyber-attack by cybercriminals.
If the data breach was through whistle-blowers, like in the case of the Snowden incident, the Manning data breach, and going back to 1971-the Pentagon Papers data breach, this recent incident once more emphasizes the domination of insiders as fundamental origins of data attacks on organizations’ vital and classified information sets. Across the world, almost every company spends substantial amounts of money to firewall their infrastructure against attacks from cyber terrorists or hackers. But most of the time, they have to confront the duality of efficaciously avoiding disclosure of information by the workers required to employ the information for their daily tasks.
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Organizations are often inadequately equipped with strategies to ensure that data is protected from insider threats. Such organizations are specifically defenseless against employees who have the means to access vital data and break the trust of their company by disseminating the information externally through surreptitious methods with media companies or selling it to trade rivals. These data damages can greatly hamper an organization’s productivity and reputation.
In the case of the Panama Papers leak, the first question that arose in the minds of many was how such a colossal amount of information got breached. The Panama Papers leak was vastly more information than previous data infringements. The data recipients, namely journalists, took over a year to analyze and examine it. Regarding computing terminology, 2.6 TB of data is not very big. That small data can be hidden away in any external hard drive or standard storage device available. Hence, 2.6 TB of data could easily be copied on a couple of external hard drives or USB drives and mailed to journalists.
When data is shared anonymously, it cannot be traced back to the hackers or the whistle-blowers. Peer-to-peer technologies that run on a shared network of computers across the globe help users create unidentified enciphered channels of communication with either the helpers or receivers of data. Unfortunately, enforcement agencies cannot determine such networks’ browsing history location as users can eliminate all records from their computing terminals or keep communications hidden.
To detect and prevent such data leaks, computing systems in organizations need to be configured to prevent classified data from being copied, moved, or printed. In some cases, organizations provide data access to employees to copy and store them on their devices; insider leaks can be greatly diminished by controlling who has access to that information. Systems can also be configured to turn off network connections when working with sensitive data files containing confidential information and prevent them from being shared online.
Author Bio: Carol is a professional blogger in the technology field. She is working with Locklizard, a reputed Digital Rights Management solution provider. They provide DRM security software. Visit their website, www.locklizard.com, for required details.
