Private And Public Sector Organizations

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Private and public sector organizations are increasingly becoming engrossed with the efficiencies afforded from the collection, analysis, and exploitation of massive volumes of human behavioral “metadata.” Dealing with all aspects of everyday life, metadata can derive from a variety of sources to include an individual’s movements, such as those captured on traffic cameras, to an individual’s purchases, such as at the local grocery store. Although most aggregated data is random and anonymous, sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) may also be compiled to include bank account numbers, birth dates, and social security numbers. The category and quality of PII in addition to the industry of the private or public sector organization collecting it makes metadata a highly desirable target for threat actors.
Cybersecurity Issues
Since metadata often crisscrosses networks from the point of collection to its eventual analysis location, one of the primary cybersecurity issues is the risk of interception that leads to misappropriation and misuse. Often as a result of being sent unencrypted, compromise can occur by security breaches of the collection systems or by using man-in-the-middle software to capture it after transmission. The attack vectors are both internal, coming from lax security policies and system breaches, or external as the information travels across public networks or poorly secured wireless connections (Damiani, Ardagna, Zavtarelli, Rekleitis, & Marinos, 2016).
Another significant cybersecurity concern with metadata is the potential for destructive insider threat activities. Insider threats can include staff, service providers, or external partners and can be categorized as malicious, accidental, or non...

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...are actually detected and notified their security team that malware was being downloaded and installed. The Target IT team, consequently, failed to follow through allowing the personal information of 110 million customers to be stolen (Maples & Chen, 2015).
Training is an effective mechanism to inform employees of their responsibilities. Nonetheless, just because employees attended training doesn’t mean they will remember or practice the policies presented. Even highly skilled and conscientious employees can make mistakes and download malware or respond to phishing emails (Winnefeld, Kirchoff, & Upton, 2015). Confidentiality agreements can be a deterrent, yet they are far from fool proof. Sometimes the perceived reward exceeds the risk of apprehension and/or punishment. There is also the risk of unintentional disclosure that also accompanies human interactions.

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