Panama Papers a Lesson in Cyber Security
Whether data breach or insider leak, Panama Papers Cyber Security lessons still the same.
By now, you’ve heard about the leaked papers from a Panamanian law firm implicating world leaders, sports figures and celebrities alike in a scheme to shelter massive wealth in off-shore corporations (if not, see the NYTimes summary below for relevant links). At this point it is still unclear whether the 11.5 million records were obtained through hacking or leaked from someone inside of the Panamanian law firm.
But from a cyber security perspective, the lessons are nearly identical either way. At issue here is the massive centralization of data that makes either breach or leakage not only inevitable, but rather convenient. World leaders and executives alike must have a sense of deja vu from the leakage of the NSA documents by Edward Snowden several years ago. From a security perspective, it is baffling in both cases that one individual would have access to such a trove of data. This suggests that the records were not properly segmented, encrypted or subjected to user-level access permissions.
