Security is downstream from strategy
Following @carolecadwalla's latest revelations about the misuse of personal data involving Facebook, she gets a response from Alex Stamos, Facebook's Chief Security Officer.
So let's take a look at some of his hand-wringing Tweets.
I work on security not strategy. https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/975049688847024128This is a difficult issue. https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/975049688847024128I should have done a better job weighing in. https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/975069709140877312I’ve been trying to warn folks about this (relating to a different issue). https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/974315632589025280I just wish I was better about talking about these things (presumably in general). https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/975070166127067136
I'm sure many security professionals would sympathize with this. Nobody listens to me. Strategy and innovation surge ahead, and security is always an afterthought.
According to his Linked-In entry, Stamos joined Facebook in June 2015. Before that he had been Chief Security Officer at Yahoo!, which suffered a major breach under his watch in late 2014, affecting over 500 million user accounts. So perhaps a mere 50 million Facebook users having their data used for nefarious purposes doesn't really count as much of a breach in his book.
In one of her pieces today, Carole Cadwalladr quotes the Breitbart doctrine
Carole Cadwalladr ‘I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’: meet the data war whistleblower(Observer, 18 Mar 2018) via @BiellaColeman
Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison, How Cambridge Analytica turned Facebook ‘likes’ into a lucrative political tool (Guardian, 17 Mar 2018)
Hannes Grassegger and Mikael Krogerus, The Data That Turned the World Upside Down (Motherboard, 28 Jan 2017) via @BiellaColeman
Justin Hendrix, Follow-Up Questions For Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and Trump Campaign on Massive Breach (Just Security, 17 March 2018)
Mattathias Schwartz, Facebook failed to protect 30 million users from having their data harvested by Trump campaign affiliate (The Intercept, 30 March 2017)
Wikipedia: Yahoo data breaches
Hi, Carole. First off, I work on security, not strategy, and I agree that this is a serious issue. It's also a nuanced and difficult one, which is lost in headlines like this. pic.twitter.com/FaFUbeuxTs— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) March 17, 2018
So let's take a look at some of his hand-wringing Tweets.
I work on security not strategy. https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/975049688847024128This is a difficult issue. https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/975049688847024128I should have done a better job weighing in. https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/975069709140877312I’ve been trying to warn folks about this (relating to a different issue). https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/974315632589025280I just wish I was better about talking about these things (presumably in general). https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/975070166127067136
I'm sure many security professionals would sympathize with this. Nobody listens to me. Strategy and innovation surge ahead, and security is always an afterthought.
According to his Linked-In entry, Stamos joined Facebook in June 2015. Before that he had been Chief Security Officer at Yahoo!, which suffered a major breach under his watch in late 2014, affecting over 500 million user accounts. So perhaps a mere 50 million Facebook users having their data used for nefarious purposes doesn't really count as much of a breach in his book.
In one of her pieces today, Carole Cadwalladr quotes the Breitbart doctrine
"politics is downstream from culture, so to change politics you need to change culture"And culture eats strategy. And security is downstream from everything else. So much then for "by design and by default".
Facebook (and Google, too!) have great security teams. Some of the best in the business, no doubt. Full of conscientious people. But they can’t mitigate the business model. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) March 17, 2018
Carole Cadwalladr ‘I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’: meet the data war whistleblower(Observer, 18 Mar 2018) via @BiellaColeman
Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison, How Cambridge Analytica turned Facebook ‘likes’ into a lucrative political tool (Guardian, 17 Mar 2018)
Hannes Grassegger and Mikael Krogerus, The Data That Turned the World Upside Down (Motherboard, 28 Jan 2017) via @BiellaColeman
Justin Hendrix, Follow-Up Questions For Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and Trump Campaign on Massive Breach (Just Security, 17 March 2018)
Mattathias Schwartz, Facebook failed to protect 30 million users from having their data harvested by Trump campaign affiliate (The Intercept, 30 March 2017)
Wikipedia: Yahoo data breaches
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