By Shannon McMurtrey, Ph.D.
Lately it seems like there have been news reports of data breaches almost on a daily basis. It turns out that isn’t too far from the truth. Five of the top 10 data breaches of all time have occurred within the past two years. Household names like Home Depot, Target and Sony Entertainment have been among the more recent victims of massive data breaches. One common theme running through all of these breaches is that the signs that trouble was brewing often went completely unnoticed.
We can all relate to the overwhelming feeling that occurs when we think about all the data we have to deal with on a daily basis. In the endless stream of data coming our way from text messages, email (I’ve dated myself with this one, but don’t try to email anyone under the age of 30 — they won’t get it), phone calls, voice mails, social media, endless stacks of junk mail, it is very easy to miss something important. Take that and multiply it by a factor of about a billion and you get a sense of the size of the job business owners face on a daily basis. Even small retailers are now advised to have a strong, engaging social media presence coupled with a well-thought-out content marketing strategy that engages their customers one by one.
The challenges driving the securing of big data implementations feel very similar to the challenges created when consumers started bringing their own electronic devices into the workplace (the BYOD movement). The functionality provided by BYOD outpaced the security concerns and led to many ad hoc security programs being put into place with varying degrees of success. In a similar manner we are now seeing small teams rushing to take advantage of the open source tools that they can easily download and leverage to mine the vast amounts of interesting data in their environments, with very little thought given to the security and privacy implications involved.
This is why the term “big data” is showing up everywhere now as business owners and leaders wrestle with the best way to make sense of all this data as well as how to best secure it. There are competitive advantages to be had by those who best learn how to identify trends in this data; there is also better security to be had by those who best learn how to leverage “Big Data” to identify emerging threats.
This last point, the potential to pick up signs that a data breach is about to occur, is compelling. Unfortunately, that is exactly what didn’t happen for the companies mentioned in the opening paragraph. Target, in particular, is reported to have even discovered signs of a data breach with its existing security tools, and decided at the time that it wasn’t worth following up on (New York Times, March 14, 2014).
Some of my colleagues from Missouri State University and I are hosting a “Big Data” conference on March 17th, where we will address many of these very topics. We are fortunate, here in the Ozarks, to have access to some of the best minds in the retailing and cybersecurity world, some of whom have agreed to participate in a round table discussion on “Securing Big Data.” If this is a topic that interests you, mark the date on your calendar.
This article appeared in the March 7, 2015 issue of the Springfield News-Leader. It is available online here.
Shannon McMurtrey, Ph.D., is director of Missouri State University’s master’s program in cybersecurity, as well as program director for the master’s in computer information systems in the department of computer information systems. Email: shannonmcmurtrey@missouristate.edu.