Data Snatchers

The year is 1956, the location is Santa Mira, a small California town. Several patients of Dr. Miles Bennell (played by?Kevin McCarthy) claim that their loved ones have been replaced by impostors who look, sound and otherwise are exactly like their counterparts, except for one major detail - they are completely devoid of any human emotion. Dr. Bennell initially?diagnoses?those patients as suffering from some type of mass?delusion. Soon, however, he discovers that Santa Mira is really being quietly invaded by seedpods who replace their replicas while sleep. Severely sleep deprived and with no else in Santa Mira not compromised by the giant seedpods, Dr. Bennell narrowly escapes as the entire town is in hot pursuit to prevent him from reaching the highway to tell what he knows.

Dr. Bennell does his best to convince responsible authority figures that he is in fact sane and Santa Mira and ultimately everyone is in grave danger if this threat is not contained. Exhausted and near collapse, Bennell can no longer go on and his last words are, "whats the use". Finally, word comes in that a truck coming from Santa Mira is t-boned, flips over and seedpods (seedpods are the key to stealing others identity) are strewn all over the highway, it is only then that the authorities recognize that the threat is legitimate.

There are some interesting similarities between this movie- "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and what we are seeing on the world scene- "Invasion of the Data Snatchers". Dr. Bennell is akin to information technology professionals trying to reason with and convince senior management that their respective companies are figuratively sleep from a cybersecurity respective. The seedpods represents cyber warfare in all its various forms. Juxtapose everyone else in this sci-fi thriller, as the disbelieving company who can't fathom that they could possibly be a ransomware target only to awaken and never be the same as before.

Why Some Don't Respond

Note what Benjamin Dean, a fellow for Internet governance and cybersecurity at the School of International and Public Affairs has to say. He concludes that some corporations have little financial incentive to do so. Dean analyzed the financial reports of several corporations that experienced large-scale data breaches in recent years. He referenced the Target hack of 2013 where forty million credit card numbers were compromised. He estimates that Target spent $252 million investigating the breach, repairing its network, and settling customers’ lawsuits, but Target recovered most of those losses in insurance reimbursements and tax reductions that are available to companies victimized by fraud. In the end, Target absorbed just $105 million in damage, peanuts for a company of this size.

Other Reasons Emerge For Not Investing...

1. Cybersecurity Ignorance - We've invested in a firewall and an intrusion detection system. To some, this constitutes organizational security due diligence.
2. We Haven’t Had a Security Breach - so what doesn’t seem broken doesn’t need to be fixed. Consider the following regarding the Chase Bank several years ago - The New York Times?said that the hackers were able to gain "the highest level of administrative privilege" on more than 90 of the bank's servers, according to people the newspaper spoke with who were familiar with the forensic investigation of the breach. That means they "had root" on the servers of one of the largest banks in the world — they "could transfer funds, disclose information, close accounts, and basically do whatever they want to the data," said Jeff Williams, chief technology officer with?Contrast Security?in Palo Alto, Calif.
3. In his article - "The Behavioral Economics of Why Executives Underinvest in Cybersecurity" Alex Blau states the following: "Determining the ROI for any cybersecurity investment, from staff training to AI-enabled authentication managers, can best be described as an enigma shrouded in mystery. The digital threat landscape changes constantly, and it’s very difficult to know the probability of any given attack succeeding — or how big the potential losses might be. Even the known costs, such as penalties for data breaches in highly regulated industries like health care, are a small piece of the ROI calculation. In the absence of good data, decision makers must use something less than perfect to weigh the options: their judgment."(italics mine) Relying on the judgement of non cybersecurity professionals to protect hyper sensitive data is baked into the culture of the vast majority of businesses and corporations.

What The Near Future Holds For Cybersecurity - It Isn't Pretty

It is important to remember that the United states and Russia are competing for world domination. Cyber warfare is a significant piece to this puzzle. Cyber?warfare between these and other countries is a 24x7 unrelenting enemy. In perpetuity, sponsor stated destructive computer programs are designed to damage economies and political systems. U.S. companies are expected to endure over 65,000?ransomware attacks?this year — and that's “a conservative number,” John Chambers, former CEO of Cisco Systems told Yahoo Finance Live. The hacks, successful or otherwise will continue as long as the two dominant world powers, US & Russia remain.

The data invasion is a reality. Dr. Bennell screamed to anyone who would listen - "They're here already! You're next! You're next!"

Where do you see the current crisis headed?