Goodbye 2019. It’s been real.
“Where did the time go?”
A common question, we ask ourselves. This year I decided to take a stab at answering it.
Here’s where my time went, for what it’s worth (roughly):
- 38.58% (or 3,380 hours) working
- 27.09% (or 2,373 hours) sleeping
- 23.90% (or 2,094 hours) personal (family, friends, etc.) quality time
- 10.42% (or 913 hours) other
I spent ~15% more time working than I did making memories with my family in 2019. Some priority adjustments are overdue for me in 2020.
Thank God for the gift of reflection.
The end of the year is a good time to reflect. Reflection is healthy. As I reflect on 2019, I can think of many good things about us like improved industry diversity, great personal growth, business accomplishments, and amazing people working round the clock for our collective benefit.
Unfortunately, there are also bad things. Since we’ve got plenty to cover, both good and bad, we’ll use this episode (#60) to discuss the bad. We won’t want to leave a sour taste in your mouth for too long, so we’ll cover the good things, and the things to look forward to in 2020, in next week’s episode (#61).
Now, the bad.
I already mentioned one of the bad things I discovered from 2019, that my priorities are out of whack, but I also learned things about the sad state of our industry. I learned that we’re (still) losing the war, and we’re losing it on multiple fronts.
Are you wondering what war?
The war where the bad people take advantage of the good people. The war where the immoral ones take advantage of the decent ones. Where the informed and corrupt beat the ignorant and noble every single time.
Let me preface the rest of this by saying I’m not a doomsayer. I’m a realist. I’m a realist with a deep desire to share the truth. If you’ve been paying attention, and can be objective, you’ll find it easier to predict our future. Predicting where a path leads is easier when there’s no (or little) change of course.
Our discussion points for episode 60’s year-end review:
- Front #1 – Breaches are more common than ever, but we seem to care less than ever.
- Front #2 – Our local governments and schools are losing their battles.
- Front #3 – Our homes are part of the battleground and we’re not prepared.
All is not lost, and there’s hope. There’s good news too. We’ll cover good news next week. 2020 is the year for you, me, and our industry to get real. It’s time for us to tackle our most significant issues head-on, together!
I am (Evan) leading the show this week, and these are my notes.
SHOW NOTES – Episode 60
Date: Monday, December 30th, 2019
Show Topics:
Our topics this week:
- Opening
- The year (2019) in review.
- Priorities and life adjustments
- Front #1 – Breaches are more common than ever, but we seem to care less than ever.
- Front #2 – Our local governments and schools are losing their battles.
- Front #3 – Our homes are part of the battleground and we’re not prepared.
- Closing
Opening
[Evan] Welcome to the last UNSECURITY Podcast episode of 2019! We’ve got a great show planned for you. The date is December 30th, and this is episode number 60. Joining me as (almost) always is my guy Brad Nigh. Hi Brad.
[Brad] Early morning version of Brad…
[Evan] No guest today. It’s just me and you. How you doing?
[Brad] More early morning version Brad things…
[Evan] When I put together today’s show notes, I felt like I was a little harsh, maybe even depressing. It’s not like I was depressed when I wrote the notes, but when I take an objective look at what took place this year, it’s sort of depressing to me. 2019 brought with it a record number of breaches, a record number of records disclosed/stolen, ransomware everywhere, etc. Crap man. Do I seem depressed to you?
[Brad] He’s got something to say.
[Evan] Maybe I take this too personal, but I HATE seeing people get taken advantage of. There were too many times this year that we read about people being taken advantage of, and it sucks. Ugh. Maybe I am depressed.
[Brad] More things…
[Evan] Alright, let’s get to it. The 2019 year-end review…
The year (2019) in review discussion
- Priorities and life adjustments
- Front #1 – Breaches are more common than ever, and we seem to care less than ever.
- Another record year for breaches, do we care?
- Sources; https://www.cnet.com/news/2019-data-breach-hall-of-shame-these-were-the-biggest-data-breaches-of-the-year/ and https://lifehacker.com/the-worst-data-breaches-of-2019-1840616463
- “total number of breaches was up 33% over last year”
- “medical services, retailers and public entities most affected”
- “5,183 data breaches for a total of 7.9 billion exposed records”
- Risk Based Security stated that 2019 is/was the “worst year on record” for breaches
- January – Marriott breach (383 million)
- February – 617 million accounts, from 16 websites and for sale on the dark web
- March – 100s of millions of Facebook and Instagram accounts
- April – 540 million Facebook records
- May – 885 million First American Financial records
- June – 20 million patients, bill collector American Medical Collection Association
- July – Capital One and 100 million credit card applications
- August – MoviePass and 160 million unencrypted/unauthenticated records
- September – 218 million Words with Friends accounts
- October – 4 billion social media profile records (???)
- November – Facebook again…
- December – we’re still waiting…
- Breach fatigue.
- Are we getting better at finding/reporting breaches? Are breaches happening more often? Are we getting worse?
- Front #2 – Our local governments and schools are losing their battles.
- Ransomware nails our local governments and schools.
- A great article by Michael Mayes at CPO Magazine; the Top 10 Ransomware Stories of 2019.
- “As the year ends, it’s time to declare 2019 the Year of Ransomware Escalation.”
- Baltimore was “just one of 82 cities and municipalities to publicly report being struck by ransomware” in 2019.
- “By December 1, a total of 72 US school districts have fallen victim to ransomware, impacting 867 individual schools and over 10,000 students.”
- Nine “school districts representing 98 individual schools have been attacked by ransomware just in November. They include:
- Wood County Schools, Parkersburg, West VA
- Port-Neches Grove Independent School District, Port Neches, TX
- Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation, Mishawaka, IN
- Livingston New Jersey School District, Livingston, NJ
- Chicopee Public Schools, Chicopee, MA
- Claremont Unified School District, Claremont, CA
- Sycamore School District 427, DeKalb, IL
- Sunapee Middle High School, Sunapee, NH
- Main School Administrative District #6, Buxton, ME”
- Louisiana declared a state of emergency twice in 2019
- Do we just accept it?
- We started a civic duty push in 2019, calling for citizens to inquire about ransomware protections from their local government officials. We’ll need to pick this up again this year, and include schools too.
- Front #3 – Our homes are part of the battleground and we seem ignorant about it.
- Security, privacy, and safety at home.
- We still don’t emphasize information security, privacy, and safety enough at home.
- Did this problem get worse in 2019?
- Will this get worse before it gets better?
[Evan] That wasn’t too depressing, was it?
[Brad] Gives his honest opinion.
[Evan] We’ve got a lot of work to do, and there are no easy answers. No easy buttons. I think the answer is found in learning and applying information security fundamentals. We spent 2019 working hard at SecurityStudio and FRSecure to reach people with simple, but practical information security solutions like our vCISO, S2Org (information security risk assessment for all organizations), S2Vendor, S2Me (information security risk assessment for all people) and others. We even made some of our tools free! We’ll continue our quest to reach people and help wherever we can!
Got anything to add Mr. Nigh?
[Brad] Adds if he wants to add.
Closing
[Evan] That’s a wrap for another show. Heck, not just another show, but another year!
Thank you and Happy New Year to our listeners! Be sure to tune in next week, when we’ll cover some positive developments from 2019 and maybe a prediction or two. We love recording these shows for you, and we hope you enjoy them. Send us your questions and feedback at unsecurity@protonmail.com. If you’re the social type, socialize with us on Twitter, I’m @evanfrancen, and this other guy is @BradNigh.
That’s it! Talk to you all again next week!
