Information Security Blog

When Business Partners Attack!

… tip of the cap to the late 90′s FOX show “When Animals Attack!”

I found the recent Verizon Business study of more than 500 data breaches during the past four years a very interesting read. (Kudos to Verizon for their efforts on our behalf.)

Remarkably, 32% of data breaches involved partners’ networks being used by an external attacker. To be clear, the largest single source of risk in these organizations was a business partner.

I was (and still am) very surprised by this number. For years, we have stressed the risks associated with system interfaces to third parties and the often ill conceived/executed access connections/channels.

However, to this point I had no reason to believe that it represented that high a percentage of the risk. Having a number of this nature makes it much easier to communicate the information security challenges relating to business partner connections.

So, the next time you look at that partner provided and managed firewall that “secures” the connection between you and a partner, ask yourself if you know enough to know that the risk associated with it is fully understood and well controlled.